Category: Short Story

I awoke to an awful loud knocking coming from my front door.

BAM BAM BAM.

I rolled out of bed as best I could.  I had slept like the dead, which is funny, cause I am.  But the bed was amazing.  The best sleep I have ever had.

What do dead guy’s dream of?  I was hoping for sexy time with a harem or something, but all I got was a dream about looking for a job at the Career Fair.  Just wandering forever, feeling lost, wondering if and when I would ever find anything.  Kind of like those dreams you have after getting out of school where you think you are showing up on the last day of a class you never took or forgetting about the test that would let you graduate.  It was that sort of dream.  All sorts of wrong.  Not a nightmare, but sure enough close enough to be called one.

BAM BAM BAM.

“I am coming!” I stumbled a bit as I rounded the doorway out of the bedroom and caught the door frame on my shoulder.  At least the impact cleared my head.  I started talking to myself, “wall there, genius.”

I pulled the door open and there was Chuck, holding a greasy bag and a drink carrier full of what looked like coffee.

“Oh its my personal Jesus,” I mumbled.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. Its nine.” He smiled.

“The pounding on my door kind of helped me figure it out.”  I grumbled.

“Not much of a morning person, are you?” Chuck laughed. “I have to give you some major kudos, Doug.  You managed to latch your realm right on to Prime.  I have no idea how you managed, but you managed it.  Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible.”

“You mean outside that door is the real world?”  I said.

“Well its all real, Doug.  But outside that door is the only part of the Verse where souls come and go.  If that is how you want to define ‘real’, I guess you can, but I wouldn’t.  The shadows of the Verse are wild and varied, as they say.  And it is all real… no less real than Prime.”

“I am a miracle worker.” I took a sip of the coffee, it was very good.  I didn’t know what I grabbed out the bag, but it appeared to be made out of eggs and something, so I took a big bite.

“No… I am thinking it is because of your job, to be honest.  The assumptions that I make for most folks just don’t apply here.”

“So what now?” I asked.

“You tell me, Doug.  You called me, remember?” Chuck took his coffee and strolled over to the window.  I followed him and looked down.  The street was bustling all right.

“Do you know where we are at?”

“Denver.”

“Well shit.  I don’t know Denver.”

“Something landed you here.”  Chuck grinned.

“My first case is in Los Angeles.”

“And you are from the east coast.  Fish out of water.”

“I think that happened the moment the elephant made a bad choice.” I said.

“You are funny guy, Doug.”

“Maybe because it is between where I was and where I grew up?” I ventured.

“No.  Stop that right now.  You are on Prime, but you can step out to other parts of the Verse any time.  You aren’t constrained to planes, trains, and automobiles.”

“Good movie.” I muttered.

“Yeah, John Candy is a hoot.”

“You met him?” I said, surprised.

“I have.  Same department.”

“No shit.”

“No shit.  What else, Doug?”

“So on Prime… what do I look like?  Who am I?”

“Does it matter? Come on Doug.  Think about this.  You are dead, they are not.  You can travel and get any item you want or need, they can’t.  You can interact with anyone, anywhere, any time… they can’t.  You following?  You just got the easiest investigations job on Prime.  Your leg work is going to be a whole lot easier.  Think about it that way.  You are Doug Gates, Adjudicator.  On Prime, even if you went to your own mother and said ‘Hi, I am Doug Gates, your son.’  She wouldn’t even register your presence.  There are no connections that any living person on this planet can associate with you.  You are off grid, no paper trail, invisible. You are subjectively and literally a ghost. Make sense?”

“I guess so.”  I muttered again and took a sip of coffee.  It was still pretty good. “Where did you pick up the coffee?”

“Downstairs. You dropped your office right on top of a small market and coffee shop.  They roast their own beans and all.”

“Oh great.  Do I pay rent on Prime now?” I smirked.

“No, your realm is your realm.  It fits wherever you want it, with the exception of Prime.  But as you can tell, I have no idea on that one any more.  The universe adjusts… it fits.  The landlord will probably see the extra door on the second floor and remember that his tenant paid in advance for 10 years or something strange like that.  I bet all your neighbours know of you already, they just don’t recall ever meeting you.”

“You are completely and utterly flying by the seat of your pants, aren’t you, Chuck.”

“Yep! You will too.  Get used to it!  If you have nothing else, I will step out.  The people keep dying and they always need someone to applaud their horrifically funny deaths.”

“And if I need you again?”

“You won’t… really, you just figured the big one out.  I don’t have all the answers.  Those are up to you to figure out now, Mr. Adjudicator.”  He tapped my shoulder gently with his palm and headed out the door.   I heard it close behind me and stood at my new window wondering what the hell I was doing in Denver.

Denver.

Isn’t it supposed to be in the mountains?  With 10 feet of snow everywhere?

This is bullshit. I should move to Hawaii.

…

This coffee though.  Hmmm.   I might need some more.

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.”