After shoving a few tissues up his broken nose and snagging the keys, Billy commandeered Abelia’s little white sedan. Three herky-jerky tries, a severely dented rear fender, and one chunk of siding taken off the house later, the reaper finally succeeded in backing the vehicle out into the street, only to drift into the other lane and narrowly miss getting sideswiped by a pickup truck coming the opposite way.
You might be the worst fucking driver on the entire fucking planet, Kevin thought. In the breast pocket of Abelia’s fluffy pink bathrobe, Kevin had a front row seat to what was sure to become a brutal automotive accident.
Ignoring Kevin as he accelerated, Billy laid on the horn and flipped off the driver of the pickup truck.
At least you got that part right.
The car jerked as Billy braked suddenly, wound the wheel all the way to the right, and then gunned it once more to put the vehicle in its proper lane. The Chicago Blackhawks travel mug banged around ominously in a cup holder that was two sizes too big. Visions of it tipping and releasing its contents danced before Kevin’s eyes. If Abelia got free, Billy would be in deep, deep shit.
The reaper sighed and depressed the gas again, exercising a bit more finesse this time. The car crawled forward for several moments at five miles per hour.
What are you pushing the accelerator with, your little toe? Kevin thought. He needed to get that travel mug rocking. Give it some gas, you pussy!
“Grow up,” Billy snapped, maintaining the car’s current speed and anxiously checking the mirrors.
We just got passed by three turtles and a sloth, Kevin tried. I’ve seen octogenarians going to bingo drive more aggressively than you. At this rate, Ren and Driff will be dead by the time we get to them. You might want to get a move on before the car’s inspection sticker expires and we get pulled over—the cops around here don’t take kindly to transporting immortal souls in unlicensed beverage containers.
Although Kevin could feel the reaper’s heart racing, Billy kept his cool. He tried again to escape his pocket prison, hoping his captor’s focus on the road meant inattention elsewhere, but the invisible influence keeping him in place remained impermeable.
As they rounded the edge of the town common, Kevin changed his tactics. Never driven before, have you?
“What do you think?”
That new tidbit fit well with what Kevin already knew about his captor. Combined with Billy’s aversion to alcohol and his awkwardness around forward women, the reaper’s inability to drive a car painted the perfect picture of a young man somehow frozen in adolescence.
Kevin poured compassion into his next question. What happened to you?
“Don’t worry about it,” Billy snapped, his heart pounding even harder. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
That was empathy, dumbass.
“Really? You’re going to try to lie to an individual who can read every thought and emotion in your soul?” The reaper paused for a moment as he carefully adjusted course. “Empathy implies understanding. You couldn’t possibly understand anything about my fucked up life.”
Try me.
Billy slowly removed his right hand from the wheel and wrapped his fingers around Kevin’s soul. “Fine. Just remember: you fucking asked for it.”
The view of the reaper’s hand exploded, replaced by a cascade of sound, images, and emotions that mentally knocked Kevin to his knees. The aftermath of a violent car accident, an entire family in various states of injury, all of them dead or slowly dying and raving hysterically. A man’s soul staring down sadly at what remained of his skull after eating the end of his shotgun. An old woman passing due to liver failure, wailing in agony because she hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye to children who lived on the other side of the country. Death after death after death streamed across the canvas of Kevin’s senses, bombarding him with sorrow and regret. But he was so much more than an outside observer; the panicked thoughts and wild emotions of the dead and the dying flooded his mind just as they had the reaper’s. He screamed in horror, trying vainly to block it all out.
In each and every case, the soul of the recently deceased immediately fought to restore his or her ruined body. The man who shot himself scrambled to put his brains back into his skull. An accident victim stuck her ghostly finger up into the torn artery through which she’d bled out, trying to staunch the remaining flow of blood. The old woman willed her liver to begin repairing itself. With their existences on the line, each awakened a torrent of inner power none had ever suspected they’d possessed.
And in each and every case, Billy put a stop to it. Sometimes all it took was a few kind words, reminders of a life lived well and good deeds done. Sometimes it took a bit more persuasion. Sometimes Billy simply grabbed hold of the offending soul and yanked, as he had done to Kevin and Abelia. Regardless, as each soul slowly faded into oblivion or the hereafter or wherever it was they either went or didn’t, the reaper’s own anguish at his role in events blocked out all else.
Billy’s hand moved back to the steering wheel, restoring Kevin’s view of the dash. “Get it now?” the reaper asked.
Despite his lack of lungs, Kevin nonetheless found himself hyperventilating. To call what he’d seen intense would be an understatement. What Billy had just forced into his mind were endings, irreversible and unstoppable. There was no pause and no rewind—and there would be no sequel. The purest expression of the finite. Kevin felt dirty, like the worst kind of voyeur, as if in experiencing their last moments he’d violated the dead in a most gruesome fashion.
Given the nature of the reaper’s responsibilities, it was no wonder he was a little cracked. Hell, it was a damn miracle that he wasn’t a raving lunatic. Kevin knew he wouldn’t have held up half as well in Billy’s place.
I get it, he gasped. I’m sorry.
The reaper started shaking. “Not yet, you aren’t.”
See, that’s the attitude that made me lie to you about Nella.
Billy completed the turn around the common and straightened the vehicle, pumping the brakes unnecessarily a few times as he adjusted direction. He fiddled with the blinker, shifting it up and down until he finally found the right turn signal. The turnoff onto the private road that led to the Roberts estate was coming up quickly.
Kevin searched vainly for options he knew deep down just weren’t there. Without any ability to manipulate the physical world on his own, he had no hope of escaping, rescuing his mother, or getting a warning to his friends. His attempts at tricking the reaper into a mistake had only succeeded in producing an episode of mental and emotional torture. Although he hated to admit it, Kevin was completely fucking stuck. His only hope would be to ride this thing out and hope Driff could find a way to put it all right. Surely the elf had planned for something along the lines of this particular eventuality.
As the little white sedan sputtered right onto Hampstead Street’s perfect blacktop, Kevin retraced his steps. Perhaps locating exactly where he’d gone wrong would serve some use. The problem, of course, was in choosing a starting point. It would be easy to say he’d doomed himself the moment he’d chosen to return to Harksburg, but how was he supposed to have known that in doing so he’d ruin the wedding of the local avatar of death? What about his decision to not run, but to stand his ground and—well, not fight, exactly, but to try to do something to change his fate? Should he have kept his nose out of Oscar’s little revival on the town common? Had hurling eggs at Mr. Gregson sealed his inevitable doom? Would life be any different if he had succeeded in his quixotic quest to find the damn gnomes he was convinced had infested his home? Could he have handled things better with Sweatpants Bob, Muffintop, Lil, Fran Kesky, or any of the rest of the motley crew of lunatics and scumbags that had crossed his path?
He shook his non-corporeal head and corrected himself: the real problem wasn’t choosing a starting point. The real problem was how consistently he’d fucked up.
A short burst of sad laughter from the reaper jiggled Kevin about his prison in Billy’s breast pocket. Stay out of my head!
“Technically, your head is back on the dining room floor.”
Something inside of Kevin snapped. Billy’s comment, while not particularly insulting in its content, was far too glib for the situation at hand. It burned with overconfidence, with arrogance, with a conceited knowledge that he was in absolute control and he was going to enjoy it for as long as he could. It was just the wrong thing to say at just the wrong moment. Anger flooded through Kevin’s being, hot and rampant. He couldn’t punch Billy in the face as his instincts screamed at him to do, but maybe he could do something even worse.
Fuck off. Like poking around in other people’s minds, do ya? Here, I’ll give you a real fucking show!
Focusing intently, Kevin dredged up his memory of his most recent evening with Nella. He ran back through that night slowly, focusing on every tiny detail. He started with her coy smile as he pushed her down into the mattress and leaned in for a kiss, her breath warm on his face. He forced his mind’s eye to linger on her soft lips and the weight of her legs as she wrapped them around his midsection, then he mentally moved onto the cool skin of her lower back. Their tongues danced across each other as Kevin slowly traced his fingers up her smooth sides and then across her breasts. At the moment of penetration, he focused not on his own pleasure but the smile on her face, the joy in her eyes, the gills in her neck fluttering open as he pushed himself deeper…
Billy slammed the accelerator to the floor, launching the little white car forward. Having not achieved such speeds in at least the last five years, the car protested with an ear-splitting whine more animal than vehicle.
Please crash, Kevin plead with the reaper. In his memory, Nella flipped him onto his back and started riding him. Put yourself out of your fucking misery, you piece of shit!
Moments later, just as Kevin had finished remembering the curve of his lover’s hip in inexorable detail, Billy spun the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The car spun out with a squeal of shitty tires on hard asphalt.
Billy, Chicago Blackhawks travel mug in hand, was halfway out the door while the vehicle was still moving. Abelia’s sedan came to a pained stop right at the edge of the cement walk leading to the Roberts estate’s front porch, sputtering and rumbling like a fat man who’d run a mile on the treadmill for the first time in his life. As Billy stomped purposefully up to the house, Kevin fed him memories of a particularly good blow job. The reaper stumbled on the first step but managed to catch himself.
Which, Kevin realized, made little sense. Why hadn’t Billy severed their mental connection the moment he’d started reminiscing about Nella? Without the ability to physically manipulate the world around him, those memories were the only real weapon in Kevin’s possession. Either Billy was a super creepy voyeur, or he simply couldn’t disconnect himself from his captive’s mind.
The reaper’s abrupt sigh was all the answer Kevin needed.
All you have to do to make this stop is let my mother and me go. None of us will ever bother you again.
Billy ignored him and rang the doorbell. A soft chime echoed through the house, but no one answered. Kevin shifted his focus to a romp in the shower, his attention on the soap bubbles dripping down Nella’s slender blue back as she rinsed her hair.
Three increasingly angry rings of the bell later, the reaper visibly shaking with fury, Ren finally called out from somewhere inside. “Keep your fucking pants on! It’s too fucking early for this shit!”
The sound of Ren’s voice put a quick end to Kevin’s mental assault. This was really happening; Billy was going to magically murder his best friend and there was nothing he could do to even try to stop it. He couldn’t even warn Ren about what was coming. He’d hoped they’d encounter Driff first, but the elf didn’t seem to be anywhere in the area.
See, I stopped. Please leave Ren alone.
Billy shook his head.
Please?
“No.”
Leave my fucking friend the fuck alone or I fucking swear you will relive every last fucking night I spent with your ex. And I will make damn sure you don’t miss how much fucking fun she had.
“No. You brought this upon yourself. You fucking deserve it.”
So do you, asshole.
Before Kevin could queue up another memory, the door in front of him was violently yanked open. Dressed in his favorite pair of red silk pajamas, Ren appraised them with bleary eyes and a haggard look. He’d never been able to handle champagne.
“Billy?” he asked, his eyes widening as he realized what he was looking at. “The fuck—”
He never finished his question. The reaper’s hand snapped up to his face, found the purchase it needed, and tore a ghostly duplicate of Ren Roberts out through the young man’s nose. His empty body crumpled to the floor. Billy flipped open the travel mug’s spout, shoved Ren’s soul inside, and then snapped it back shut.
Motherfucker, Kevin moaned. He couldn’t believe how quickly that had gone. Where the hell was Driff?
The telltale click of a revolver’s hammer being pulled back into the firing position answered Kevin’s question. Driff had snuck up behind the reaper while he’d been busy with Ren. Kevin smiled. The elf had a plan!
Billy didn’t even flinch. “You’re not going to do that,” he said nonchalantly, as if dictating a law of physics rather than responding to the threat of his imminent death.
Of course he’s going to do that! He’s going to blow your fucking brains out if you don’t let us all go!
“What makes you so sure?” Driff asked.
“Because you know the consequences.”
Yeah, that’ll stop him! Keep threatening him with paperwork! Or—gasp!—maybe he’ll get fined! The horror!
“So do you. I’m sure a man in your line of work has been privy to many a gaping head wound.”
Kevin flashed back to the time Driff shot him in his own dining room, focusing on and amplifying the brief burst of white hot pain as the elf’s bullet tore through his skull. He’ll do it! The man’s a stone cold killer!
Billy spun on his heel to face Driff, the barrel of the long silver six-shooter now firmly against his cheek. “If you were prepared to pull that trigger, you wouldn’t have wasted your time with all these idiots. You would’ve just done it.”
Driff scowled, unimpressed. “Last chance.”
“Same to you.”
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The two opponents stared at each other, waiting for the other man to make the first move. Kevin watched in stunned silence, unable to comprehend the fact that Driff hadn’t simply blown Billy away and called it a day. How bad could things really get for the elf if he killed a reaper? Was there some big law against it that Kevin hadn’t been informed of? As Billy had suggested, that certainly would better help explain why Driff had worked so hard to get him back on the job rather than simply removing him and installing someone new. Kevin didn’t like the implications.
Billy moved first. He slowly raised his hand toward Driff’s face, daring the elf to pull the trigger and giving him ample time to do so. Driff didn’t even flinch when the reaper’s fingers settled over his nose—but neither did he fire his weapon. Kevin couldn’t understand it. What the hell was Driff waiting for?
“I won’t give you the satisfaction,” Driff said, the slightest quiver of fear in his voice.
The elf’s soul slipped right out of his face like all the others. Driff’s body collapsed, his revolver clattering to the porch with a sound that broke Kevin’s heart. If the Council of Intelligence wasn’t going to stand up to Billy and save him, who was?
The reaper shoved Driff’s soul into the travel cup and closed the spout, stepping over Ren’s lifeless corpse and into the Roberts estate as he did so. “Gotta make a quick stop to find something… special,” Billy growled. “Then it’s off to the Works to see Nella.”