Category: Writing

With a flick of a wrist and nary a word, Oman escaped my life just as quickly as he had arrived.  At least he was kind enough to drop me back outside my door as he bowed gracefully out of my realm.

‘So Doug’, I said to myself as I opened the door into my office.  (Funny how I already thought of it as ‘my’ office.) Time to review what we know. Don’t judge me, I like my internal running monologue.  It is what keeps me grounded. Let’s approach this with the Sherlock Holmes method.  What are the facts?

First, I am dead. But not a big deal, seems there is more to life than your first life.  I can deal with that.  Step at a time.  My Death Transition Consultant, Chuck, is trying to help where and when he can.  But he seems to be at a loss with my situation as much I am.

Second, reality is spread between two extremes, the Authority, which I assume is THE God. With a capital G, underline, bold.  And the other is the Angelus, which I assume is the fallen angels from the creation myths. The two are in a struggle to control the balance of reality, called the Verse, with the fulcrum being the world that we all are born into, called Prime. They vie for the only place that new souls are brought into existence.  At this point, I think I have briefly encountered God’s presence while with Chuck, and I think I met one of the Angelus, Oman.  Oman definitely wasn’t like Chuck or any other souls that I have encountered so far.  Including my late absent mentor, Anthony.  Which brings me to…

Third, my would-be-mentor, a pious and analytical saint of sorts, blows his head off not even five minutes after my stumbling entrance into his realm.  A man that would never kill himself found a reason to do just that.  His aspect, a way to partition of your mind into other objects, continues to live for a short while in my copy of the map.  Which at this point, I am thinking is pretty much a Hitchhiker’s Guide for the Afterlife.  He has tasked me to figure out the last few days of his life before he evaporates into the ether.

Fourth, there are three open cases, two of which concerned the aspect of Tony, because he didn’t know about them. Under his blotter, there was a strange piece of paper, and the best clue as to what happened in the intervening days to drive a saint to self-eradicate.

And lastly, a fallen angel Oman has hired me to figure out why a long dead half breed daughter is alive and well on Prime. And I have nothing more to go on than his hunch.  Which is worth about nothing at this point. Although, surprisingly, I did find out that I can travel to Prime, assuming the rest of the Verse, as soon as I learn how.

What are my options?

And that leaves me…  Sitting on the edge of my desk, drinking a dixie cup of water from the dated water machine sitting next to my inherited couch, not knowing what the fuck to do.  I can’t travel like Chuck and Oman (yet), and the aspect of Anthony is sitting on my desk, probably impatiently waiting to be caught up on the cases. I am stuck here, being a research assistant for a grumpy ghost.

I can try calling Chuck. But he said he would be back tomorrow.  Is it tomorrow yet?  How does one track time in the Verse?  I looked out the windows framing one corner of my office, and the mountains looked the same as they did when I first arrived.  Snow capped, majestic, and kind of fake.

I can explore my realm, although that just appears to be an office, an apartment, and a bunch of questions that need answers.

I can eat, sleep, and shower, and dress up in some other dude’s clothes.

What are my assets?

I have clothes, shelter, food, and water.  I need exactly none of those.  I have case files. I have a gun.  I have a bunch of things that don’t belong to me.  I have the map.  I have an implied ability to do things, but I have no idea how to do them.

What are my liabilities?

I lack information.  Lots of information.  I could ask questions for days. Months.  Maybe years. And as I have told myself about 10 times in the last 10 minutes of this internal monologue, I CAN’T DO SHIT.

I sighed, and set my dixie cup on the desk blotter next to the two case files.  My finger brushed the edge of the map, and I felt an urgent pressing of something that sounded like ‘what’ from Tony before I pulled my finger away.  Let him stew.  I needed to think.  I walked to the windows and lamented on the view.  I miss the city.  I miss the noise of traffic.  I miss weather.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it sounded like from my apartment.  The bustle of the noise on the street below, the honking of horns of the highway a mile in the distance, the trundling sound of the delivery trucks dropping off produce at the farmer market down on the corner.  I tried to remember the humidity of the night, the fog of the morning, and the crickets singing their songs.

Then I heard them.  The crickets came in first, then with a pop, the other sounds flooded in behind it. The trucks, the people, the cars, the horns, the unsatisfied noise of humans going to and fro, striving against the trivial nature of existing, yet defining themselves as something more in the process.

Like a glorified stagehand skipping from show to show, job to job, barely making rent… and dying, brutally.  To find himself an investigator of sorts, way out of his depth.

I sighed again, and opened my eyes.  The windows were gone.  At least the windows looking at the mountains.  These windows were different, sliding windows, looking at a fire escape.  One was open, with a lonely plant sitting on the sill, the noise of people below filtering up.  I poked my head out the window, and saw actual real people moving about down below.  I could see cars parked on the street, and young couples walking hand in hand, while older folks sat on their stoops talking about the weather or their hemorrhoids or their ungrateful kids living up in San Fran.

It was perfect.  Not quite home, but close enough.  I looked up and saw night sky, a filtered haze with a few glimmers of light of far off stars trying to shine through.

It felt like Prime. What was real?  Was Prime real?  Was any shadow of Prime any less real than Prime itself?  Jeez, the questions just could spin philosophical far too quick.  I shrugged and let it go.  The real question was… did I just relocate the office?  Or is that a memory out there?  I would have to ask Tony, or Chuck, or something.

I thought about Chuck. Wandering about Prime, sight unseen, picking up new souls as they came to their unfortunate end, moving them to the career fair, trying to help them adjust to the new reality they found themselves in.  Then I heard his voice.

“Hey, Doug.  What’s going on?”

“Oh hey, Chuck.  Sorry, did I just call you?”  I said guiltly.

“You did.  Nice job.  I take it was an accident?” I could hear his grin.

“Yeah, sorry.  Since I have you on the line, how do I tell time in this joint?”

“Anthony must have messed with his realm.  Usually you just look up.  Sun and moon and all that.  Watches still work, the solar system still spins, and time marches on!”

“I think I did something to my realm already.  The mountains are gone, and I am in a city of some sort, feels like home.” I admitted.

“Nice one, Doug.  You are picking things up quick, aren’t you?”

“Am I home?” I asked meekly.

“Probably not, but everything fits in the Verse.  You are probably damn close.  I will stop by tomorrow at 9am, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Later Doug.”

“Later.”  But he was already gone.

…Screw it, I am going to bed.

The name’s Eddie T.  I am a burner by trade. I have been since my graceful fall from the 23rd floor of the Walter and Routte Investment Company back in ’29 on the prime side. I had been a trader, and now I am a burner.  Fair trade in my opinion.  I am not to worried about sharing the details of my deathday… anyone that asks can know.  If they think it will bother me any, it won’t.

A burner is something special in my opinion.  The Colos is a force outside of the Authority and the Angelus, and it leaves a mess.  Most of the people will tell you that the Colos is efficient, fast, and clean.  But me and fellow compatriots know the truth.

It leaves a fucking cesspool of filth.  Like a flock of seagulls.  It flies in, shits all over everything, and then flies out.

Yep, that’s right.  I clean up the shit of a reality eating monster.  But don’t take that the wrong way.  I love it.  You see, not many people get to see what I see.   I get to see the world for what it is.  It is a machine that chews souls up and then spits them out.  The Colos just chews them up and then shits out the stuff that attracts the Briars.

And that crap is scary.  Pun intended. The Briars are the trolls of the Verse.  These gross underthings that can grow, and consume, and spread outwards.   Like dark angels made of evil and destruction. Some of my compatriots think that the Briars are the offspring of the Colos.  But I don’t think that is it.  I think the damn things are refuse… the worst possible refuse there is.  Because my theory is they grow out of the shit.

What do you get when you chew up reality and digest it?  I would think you would get the worst of the worst coming out.  Think about it.  Humans eat food, we digest the stuff our bodies can use and shit out all the stuff that we can’t.  Imagine the filth that comes out of the Colos.

That is what I do.  I burn it.  Hopefully we can get there before any of the Briars do, but sometimes we are a bit late. Then I have to use my gear to fight the damn things.  Its like something out of a storybook, man.  Me and my boys go in there with business end of our burners burning, and our backpacks fully charged.   We use the plasma lances and try to cut those nasty ghouls up… then trap the shit.  We take the floating ether from the Colos’s invisible backend and take it to our containment vessel in our shared realm.

The containment vessel is a big red vault door, sunk in the wall of the building’s basement.  It has huge flashing lights, big alarms, and I am sure is very expensive to run.  The building is pretty simple really.  It looks like an old firehouse.  You know the kind, all brick and mortar, with brass poles penetrating the floor leading to the other floors so you can get from the bunks to the realm gate quickly and efficiently. First you have to gear up of course.

We drop through the floor and put on our coveralls first.  They are grey, with lots of pockets so we can carry anything we might need.  The boots are heavy, black, and have seen their fair share of battle.  On our backs, the plasma containment units are heavy whirring metal behemoths that connect to our lances.  The lances themselves are about the size of a cut of broom handle having sex with a dustpan.  We just point and shoot.

That simple.

Although we have been told to not the cross streams… its hard, because the lances kick something awful.

Now all we need a theme song to play when we are headed to an emergency.

Something catchy…

“Welcome home, Doug.” Oman let go of me and took a few steps past me.  “Welcome back to Prime.”

The implication hit home immediately.  I felt like retching.  “How?!  What do you mean back to Prime?  We can’t come back to Prime.  I am dead!”

“Your soul is gone from Prime, yes, but that does not mean that you cannot come back.  How absurd.  Its the same part of the rest of the Verse.  Think of it as a single note in the symphony of the universe… it has its central role, it has its place, but it is not outside of things.”

“It is absolutely absurd! What is to stop me, or anyone, from going back to my old life?”

“That is the beauty of creation, Doug.  You could try, but you would not be able to.  The design prevents it, you would look different, act different, be different.  Your very presence is different.  In fact, you would find it so frustrating and unattainable, that you would give up, and move on to some other part of the Verse.  Things are far more interesting out in the shadows.”  He turned and smiled widely. “Unless you care about Prime more than anything else.”

I stepped up next to him and audibly gasped.  I could see the Hollywood sign off to the right, the urban sprawl in every direction, and the constant dirty nasty haze hovering in the air.  I could see the slow pulse of traffic everywhere.  “We are in Los Angeles?”

“Yep, it is.  Early December.  Isn’t it beautiful?  Truly a city of Angels.”

“Not really…  how can it be December?  I was just here… a couple days ago.  It was May.”

Oman smiled again, a creepy smile, and I could see overly long canines.  “As a friendly point of advice between future friends, Mr. Gates.  Don’t share your deathday with others.  And be careful about details of your previous life on Prime.”

“Why?”

“Oh, this and that.  Don’t worry about it.  Just take the advice for what it is.  Now come.  Let me show you my problem.”  He grabbed my wrist and he stepped out into an alley next to a restaurant.

“Won’t people see us jumping in and out?”

“Not at all.  Remember Prime is where the rules are tightest.  Our jumping about violates the rules, so it is a negated perception.  People just don’t notice.  There are some caveats of course, but that is not all too important right now.  That young lady right there.  See her?”

“Yes I see her.”  She was about 5’5″, brunette-ish and pretty in a surfer girl kind of way.  She had an apron on and about 15 glasses on a tray held above her head with one hand.  She was confidently talking to one of her coworkers without her arm moving or flinching.  It looked odd, but maybe she worked out.  Who was I to say, she probably was just good at her job.

“She is not supposed to be here.  I want you to find out why, Mr. Gates.”

“Odd request coming from an… Angel… Oman.  Why wouldn’t she belong here?”

“Because that young lady is my daughter, Mr. Gates.” He sighed.

“How can she be your daughter?  Angels can have children?”

“Of course they can.  Haven’t you ever read a bible?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Agnostic.” I grimaced.

“Feel the fool?” He asked.

I shrugged nonchalantly.

“The conditions have to be right for a daughter of man and an instrument to be born.  Just right.  One could say, astronomically right.”

“How do you know that is your daughter?”

“Because certain things link an instrument to their own. I have only ever had one.  And she is standing over there.  A creature I loved more than everything, and a creature that was lead to her own end.  The world and all the worlds since have been poorer for it.”

“So your daughter isn’t wandering the shadows of the Verse?”

“She was taken by the Colos.  She was lost to the whole of reality.”  Oman frowned heavily.

“And you remember?  I thought the Colos obliterated all memory of a person.”  One of my eyebrows slanted up inquiringly.

“You have been talking to someone, haven’t you?  You keep surprising me, Mr. Gates.”  He flickered (?) for a moment.  It was subtle, just the faintest of changes in how he was standing. Like a bad connection on a tv… the picture adjusted momentarily, and Oman still stood before me, but his position was different.  Out of place. I could hear another sigh.  “I remember.  The instruments of the Authority have long memories that the Colos cannot touch.”

He raised a finger and pointed at the waitress moving among the tables.

“That is my Imaria. I can see her for what she is, Mr. Gates.  She is my daughter.  She is impossible.  Yet she is here. And you need to find out why.”

“Start with the obvious, what is on the desk?” Tony asked.

I stared at the neat stacks standing perimeter around the blotter. “You know, this would be a whole lot easier if I was able to use both hands.”

“True, but then I would miss out on your running commentary.  So… please be descriptive.”

“Fine, fine.” I sighed.  I started reading off what I was seeing. “There are three folders in a pile to the right, there are two more to the left. There are a couple of stacks of miscellaneous papers around the blotter.”

“Go left first, those are cases that are closed.” Tony said.

“Top one, some numbers at the top, Ramsey vs Authority underneath.”

“Skip it.”

“Bottom one, random numbers, Viridian vs OKI.”

“Skip that one too.  Both of those were low stakes, minor cases.  What about the upcoming pile?”

“Read the tabs?  Top to bottom?” I asked.

“Go ahead.”

“PrimEstates vs Authority; V. Hale; and Miles vs Takai.”

“The last one I know about, seemed to be minor, I am surprised it is still open. The top ones must have usurped their order. Put those on the blotter…  What about the stacks of paper above the blotter?”

“Hmmm.  Two stacks.  The first stack looks like bills.  Seriously?”

“Yes, still accounts payable and receivable off prime.”

“Now that is just plain retarded.”  I shook my head. “Everything is different, but it all stays the same.”

“Hey kid, I am a thousand or so subjective years older than you, and I still think the same thing.  So no surprise there.”

“The other pile is two notes.  The first is…” I picked it up and read it aloud. “Contact Charles Markoff, need signature for PrimEstates.  The other is symbol of a angel?  A black angel shape, kind of like six arm cross surrounded by a large circle.  Looks like a simplified Da Vinci; Study of Man sketch-thingy.”

“That odd.  That is the Angelus mark.  Is it printed on the paper?”

“No.  Looks drawn in, with a pen or something.”

“Really?”  Tony said with some surprise.

“Really.  It is definitely drawn by hand, I can see the pen strokes.  The circle looks uneven too.”

“Huh.  Anything else?”

“No, that is it.”

“No it isn’t.”  Tony said smugly. “Lift the blotter.”

I pulled the edge of the blotter up and saw the edge of a scrap of torn paper.  “There is a torn paper here, like the corner of a bigger page.  How did you know?”

Tony’s voice ignored me. “Any writing on it?””

“Yes, scribbles almost.  Like a shaky hand was writing it.” I said.

“Or a drunk hand.  You said I was acting like I was drunk right?”

“Yeah, sloshed. Out of a little flask thing.”

“The flask still there?” Tony asked oddly.

I pulled the chair out, and saw the flask laying on the ground under the shadow of the drawer.  “Yep.  I am not picking it up.  This is all freaking me out a little.”

“Back to the scrap. The writing?  Can you make it out?”

“Chil…Chill?  Child?  Child.  Of?  The.  I can’t make the last word out.  Almost looks like Los Angeles?  LA?”

“Child of the Los Angeles?”

I flipped the paper over. “Hold on, more writing on the other side.  Block writing… not the same. R-E-0-5-0-4. All caps.”

“Wish I could see what you are seeing.” Tony said. “For now, just hold on to the scrap.”

“How did you know about the paper under the blotter, Tony?” I asked a bit more assertively.

“That is where I stick things I am worried about.  Out of sight, but not out of mind.  It is a sorting method I use… I used.”

“What now?”

“We start working the cases.  Time to get your feet wet, son.  Have a seat and start reading the two you laid on the blotter.”

I started reading the cases as best I could, but the gun kept looking at me.  The flickering of the bullets was distracting, and it kept drawing my eye.  I pulled my sleeve up to cover my hand and slid it gently into the center pen drawer.  Out of site, and hopefully out of mind.  Then I picked up the briefs and tried my hand at objective reading.  While some of it made absolutely no sense, that content seemed small in comparison to what I thought I grasped.  The briefs read like technical documentation describing people and events in relatively concise terms… they were not overly laden with confusing legalese.

When I was done, I dropped them both with a heavy sigh.  I ‘understood’ the two cases from a topical point of view, but I didn’t see how they mattered to anything regarding the death of my little companion’s owner sitting in the map, waiting for me to come back.  I was about to pick up the map when there was knock at my door.  I stood warily and walked as quietly as I could over to the door.  I took a deep breath and pulled it open.

Framed by the doorway was one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen in my life.   I thought I could kiss the guy, and I was straight in my past life.  He was that handsome.  Alluring.  Downright exuding sexual tension.

“Who are you?” He asked.  His voice was velvety smooth scotch caressing my consciousness.

“Doug.” I said stiffly. The guy just smirked.

“Nice to meet you Doug.  About time Anthony got himself an assistant.  When will he be back?”

“Oh… not for a while.  Something I can help you with… Mr…” I led.

“No need for Mr or Mrs here, Doug.  My name is Oman.  Pleasure to make your acquaintance.  Can you do me a favor and have him contact me when he gets back?  He owes me a call.”

“Yes, of course, O… Oman.”

“Tell him that I most interested in his thoughts on my problem.”

“What case is this related to?” I asked curiously.

“No case.  Just a separate inquiry. A private matter.” He smiled, like a patient father.  It did something odd to his face though, he lost some of the pure lust inducing power he was radiating before.  He looked more paternal.  I could feel the pressure of his presence change.  It wasn’t lost on me… so I reacted.

“Stop it.”  I said.

“Stop what?” He said penitently.

“Stop that.  First the sex symbol thing, and now the father thing.”

“Ah ha.” He smiled widely. “You are an Adjudicator.  That means… Anthony is no longer with us, is he?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”  I lied.

“And you can lie without fear to me.  Definitely an Adjudicator.  In that case, a reintroduction is in order.” He flourished a deep bow, and I immediately felt all the waves of influence fall away.  “I am Oman, Order of the Angelus, Freed and Unbound.”

He stood back up and while he was still handsome, and some ways, a traditional cut of a mature father figure, he was far more ordinary.  Regal, and striking, yes, but not the impossible thing he was before.

“My name is Doug Gates.”

“I know, Doug.  Your name is on the door.  I just wanted to make sure.”

“Ah. The door.” I slapped my forehead. “It has my name all over it.”

Oman let a sly grin slip, a bit of teeth revealed. “Yes. Yes, it does.  And now you have to assist me.  Since that is your job now, Mr. Gates.”

“Help with what exactly?” I asked.

“Perhaps I can show you?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”  He grabbed my shoulder with barely a hint of movement, and he stepped away before I could even protest or try to grab my map.

A single word came to mind.

Shit.