A light fog swirled around the legs of the stranger as he approached a silent shadow standing at the end of the pier. Amid the dim glow of the yellow lights overhead, Warren saw a feminine form wearing a dark fur stole draped over her shoulders. Her tight gray dress showed off a long and lean figure as he drank in the pleasant sight.

He shook his head while reminding himself to focus. The man was closer to figuring out an escape. She carried the answer to a riddle. He desperately needed to solve it.

As Warren pulled down the brim of his fedora, it reminded him of how different things were now. The hat no longer felt so foreign, becoming part of him like the trench coat he wore.

Still, the night carried the usual sense of death. In the twilight, he felt the grim reaper walking with him, tugging at his sleeve while a grinning skull kept whispering into his ear. It was a mocking poem by Seeger that came to him.  

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

He dismissed the words, knowing only too well he must keep his attention on any blind spots to the plot. It was simple enough. The stories were always second rate in his mind. Her boyfriend was dead, and she was a suspect. Now the married woman needed help. He understood this. The clues leading him to this point revealed an argument, but the dead man killed himself. Still, Warren could not shake the vague cold that wrapped around his spine as he drew closer.

Some foreigner named Lumina wanted his estranged wife back in L.A. He was getting twenty-five bucks a day to find this dish. While Warren never met the client, his underlings paid real greenbacks up front. And his job was simple enough. Just find the wife and return her to L.A. No need to track down her tennis playing boyfriend since he already found the man’s body. Lumina just wanted his wife back on the estate.

He grinned to himself. It was funny how he was picking up the lingo now, acting as some private flatfoot, a shamus. Once he finished the job, his client offered a bonus. But the actual goal for Warren was more personal.

Warren would stop Death in its tracks. Then, his nightmare existence would go away. It had to. The game played for keeps, and Warren had plenty of experience from losing too many times.

The woman appeared to be lost in thought and showed no awareness of the slight sound of his leather shoes slapping the concrete as he got within a few feet. His green eyes widened when she slowly turned to him. Warren slowed, verifying her appearance from a grainy black-and-white photo he saw a few days before.

Shadows from her feathered hat made it difficult to see her features clearly. However, a breath of perfume drifted over him. He recognized the opulent air of Vol De Nuit from her dressing table. Mixing with the dampness of the surrounding air, the memory of the aroma caused emotions to go off in his head.

He wasn’t sure why. The man suddenly wondered if he knew her. The scent set off hazy memories.

Her eyes flashed surprise as she lifted her head and the light showed Warren a troubled expression. She bit down on her lower red lip and the man in the gray trench coat missed the silver glint of an object in her hand moving from her pocket.

Two shots rang out. Their echoes quickly muted in the thick air around the pier. Warren clutched at his chest, feeling the pain that racked his lungs as warm blood spilled across his hand. Dropping to his knees, his face turned calm. It was a dumb move. He recognized the plot now as thoughts ran through his head.

Typical!

I’m the fall guy for her!

It’s obvious now. She’ll let the boyfriend get the chair!

He could only groan as his fedora tumbled away.

It’s the same familiar cold.

Next is nothing but black.

He played a private detective, and the script killed him. Warren knew this as he fell over to his side. His body swiftly grew numb by the second. His mouth groped for words, but no sound escaped. The last image the stranger carried into death was the long legs of the woman stepping over his body. She briefly glanced at him. For a brief instance, her stony expression changed. Not sympathetic, but stunned, was the look Warren noticed when lifted his hand. There was a fleeting recognition about his angel of death.

His final thought was really an observation. Blackness washed over him, and the last thought was the little heart tattoo he saw on the woman’s ankle.

It was so out of place.

Warren H. Phillips heard it. The strange slapping noise, distant but irritating, nevertheless. He also realized he was waking. Still, he kept his eyes closed. He remained on his side, exactly in the same position as his body landed on the pier. But he was alive.

Well, similar, but not!

People consider living after receiving two bullets in the lungs to be miraculous. Most of them might think he should kiss the ground for a second chance.

Those damn people are wrong.

Yeah, he was alive, in some sense. He could breathe, eat, piss, whatever. But he remained trapped, and his first urge returned. Every time he woke up after dying inside his personal hell, he wanted to kill the asshole who put him here.

But Warren ignored the frustration, realizing the waste. He carried no power to remove the gods or whatever put him here. Instead, the last moments of the night before remained with him when he woke. He always recalled his fatal error before everything went black. He read somewhere that returning from the dead somehow felt like the spirit passed through a long and dark tunnel. That sounds nice, but it’s bullshit.

Returning to hell feels the same as dying does.

In his hazy state between sleep and consciousness, Warren remembered the first time he had died. He carried the slow-motion recollection of an overpowering, stifling gasp for each breath. At the same time, he was overwhelmed by a clutching pain twisting through his chest. The dashboard wobbling in front of him and the sound of screeching tires pierced through his head. A sensation of being on some twisted roller coaster, tumbling inside a metal container with glass shards flying by his face, cutting him. Slowly, the light turned to darkness while moving images of his wife holding two young daughters etched into his mind. Then a sudden nothingness enveloped him.

Memories of his first loss of life, then the next and the next, came to Warren when his brain turned on each morning. Similar to rebooting a computer and seeing all the flashing pictures of your life sweeping in front of you.

It was a relentless cycle of death!

Gathering himself, Warren sensed his surroundings. A comfortable, if thin, mattress replaced the cold concrete under his body. Even the clothes he wore were gone. The trench coat, clothing, and hat disappeared somewhere between scripts. Warren slid his hands carefully along his side, determining only his underwear remained. It left a person feeling vulnerable.   

Warren felt a soft breeze suddenly brushing cooling air over his arm and face. His senses heightened and suddenly focused. The air was fresh, coming from outside. The steady slap of waves striking steel.

It reminded him of happy times. Curiosity filled him. An optimist might say he cheated the reaper once more. Of course, that’s a lie, but it helped keep him from going crazy. His mind reasoned logically. Still, the same inner voice suddenly laughed at him, reminding him of the cycle of death.  

Who are you kidding, mister?

Opening his eyelids would reveal a reality of fleeting hope, followed by utter dread. Warren recalled a song which talked about God having a sick sense of humor. Now he understood he was part of that sick joke.

Go on, pilgrim; let’s see what awaits you today. Maybe Saint Peter was standing at the pearly gates.

As a child, he envisioned the white-haired man with a long beard would smile, pointing out the name of Warren H. Phillips inside the massive book. It would take him to heaven.

Or was it purgatory? Frank would remember.

The thin, reedy voice of his deceased brother, Frank, came to him. It was a recollection of the day he and his brother angrily started their feud, never to be reconciled.

Whatever!

He’d seen it hundreds of times and he turned off the image. As far as he was concerned, his baptism in the afterlife was not the stuff described by any religion he heard about. Instead, Warren awoke in a hellish hereafter of make-believe.

Warren H. Phillips existed in a strange movie world. Each time he woke from dying, he entered as a minor character in one forgotten film after another.

Yeah, that’s my hell!

Warren resisted opening his eyes because he already knew about his preordained death in each script. His new existence meant struggling to survive while knowing he would die.

gordonbrewer

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