Carlos Black
sat on a small stone bench in a clinically white room. He was staring at a
solitary door, wondering how he had gotten into the room when he could not
remember walking through any door. In fact, he would willingly admit, he couldn’t
remember anything at all ... except, that was, his wife was dead and he had
done it.
Dumb bitch! It had been so easy –
she had made it so easy – and all he had to do was pretend like nothing was
pretend like nothing was happening ... like he knew nothing at all.
“Who are you?” He asked the darkly
clad figure standing in the corner of the room. He couldn’t make out the man’s
face because he had it covered by a big goddamn hood.
“You know me,” the darkly clad
figure said. “Everyone knows me.”
“I don’t.”
“I think you do,” the figure
assured. “Think about it for a moment. Think hard and you might just get it.”
But Carlos Black had a very bad idea
boiling in the pit of his stomach as to who the man really was.
Carlos nodded. “You’re ... you’re
the reaper?”
“Got it in one. Who’s a cleaver boy?”
“So I’m dead?”
“Not quite. Not yet. You’re neither
here nor there. Right now you’re on the operating theatre table. They’re
cutting you open in desperation to save your miserable life. But they won’t succeed.”
There was a light pause. “Look at yourself. At your chest. The signs are all
there.”
He looked down his chest, at the powder
blue shirt covered in blood. He unbuttoned his shirt and looked back at the
man, despairing, and there, between the bulge of his chest he saw he’d been
opened up; the flesh on his bones pinned back to reveal his bloodied and
cracked ribs.
“How’d?” He asked in a low, anxious,
tone of voice. “How’d it happen?”
“You screwed up, Carlos. You set out
to kill your wife and succeeded in killing yourself in the process. You didn’t
figure on how far the car would roll once it tipped on the roadside, did you?
Didn’t think you’d be in the firing line from so far away in your little
bolthole. ” The darkly clad figure laughed. It was an oddly empty sound. “Life’s
a bitch, ain’t it?”
Carlos nodded towards the door.
Oddly there was no door handle on it.
“And I’m supposed to go through that
door?”
“When the time comes; yes.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You think you have a choice?”
“There are plenty of restless
spirits around. I’m sure I can become one of them. I’ll haunt people from now
until ... well ... until I’m finished.”
“Hardly. You’re not even fit for
that.”
Carlos wiggled his finger in the
air, towards the darkly clad figure, and smiled. “Do me a favour and take that
hood off. I want to see your face.”
The stranger laughed at that and
pulled back his hood. It fell onto his shoulders and bunched around his bony
neck. Carlos looked into that face
for a long time and screamed.
Carlos Black screamed and screamed
and screamed and found he was unable to stop even though his lungs burnt.
The darkly dressed man smiled. Not before
long both the room and Carlos fell silent.
The door opposite the bench upon
Carlos was seated finally drifted open on poorly oiled hinged. For a moment,
the sound the door made sounded to Carlos like the resonance of agonized souls
being torn apart.
Heat followed. It came up and immediately
seized Carlos in a scorching, unforgiving, embrace.
He sniffed the air and winced.
Something was burning.
But it wasn’t only the smell of singing
flesh and curling hair he smelt right then. There was brimstone too.
He wasn’t at all surprised by that.
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