Aloha from Hell

Something crunches through my left shoulder. The pain turns off my brain. When I’m thinking again, I realize I’ve been stabbed three more times. I mumble a healing spell, but Mason is ahead of me, delivering a counterspell before I’ve finished mine. I’m suddenly exhausted. The angel reaches down and reads my body. There’s something funny in my blood all of a sudden, but it’s a Hellion brew he doesn’t recognize. I fall to my knees and Mason pushes me down onto my back.

“I always admired your black knife. So, when I couldn’t make a key to the Room, I made myself a knife. I think I even made some improvements. Let me show you.”

He jabs the blade into me just under the collarbone and makes a downward cut to my sternum. He does this again on the other side so there’s a big V sliced into my chest. He carefully puts the tips of the blade into the bottom of the V and pulls down my body, heading south of the border. Even through the pain I can tell he’s not trying to kill me. He’s looking for something. He drags the knife down my chest and something clinks. He’s found the key. If he’s going for my heart, I’ll return the favor. I shoot my hand out and through his skin and bones, feeling around inside his chest cavity.

But whatever is in my blood is making it hard to keep my eyes open. Mason is playing operation, cutting me up like a weekend surgeon, but it doesn’t even hurt anymore. I have my hand in his chest, but when I find his heart, I don’t have the strength to grab it. My hand falls out of him as my muscles decide it’s break time. I can’t even keep my eyes open. It finally occurs to me that this isn’t sleep. I’m dying.

The last thing I see before I’m gone is Mason pulling a piece of glowing metal from my chest. Then the lights go out.

AND I’M REALLY no-shit, no-fake-outs-or-take-backs, no-paralyzing-spells-or-glamours dead. I don’t know how I know I’m dead, but I do and all I have are questions. Like, where’s all the light coming from? I thought death would be a lot blacker than this. Also, it feels like I’m stuck in someone el, In someose’s death because this one is two sizes too small. Death doesn’t feel much like dying. More like being on a crowded bus. And what’s with all the jagged edges that keep poking me? Maybe I’m still stuck in my dead body while it’s on ice. Fucking great. My body’s gone because one asshole stabbed me and now my soul is going to get the flu because another asshole stuck me in a morgue deep freeze. I fucking hate Mason. He can even make death a pain in the ass.

Somewhere far, far away, Alice is screaming. Then Mason screams. A pattern is developing. I don’t know what’s going on, but someone’s moved my body. It’s dark again, but I’m not on ice anymore. There’s more screaming. It hurts my ears and I would really appreciate it if whoever’s doing it would shut the fuck up and let me be dead. I sit up to tell them that, but it feels like I gained a thousand pounds since I died. My head and arm weigh a hundred pounds each. I open my eyes to see what’s wrong with them, but they’re fine.

Why are my eyes open if I’m dead? And why is there a second me standing there with Mason in one hand and a Gladius in the other? Alice kneels down in front of me.

“Are you all right?”

I try to tell her yes but all that comes out is, “Being dead is stupid.”

Did I say that? I’m not sure, but it’s true. I’m pretty sure I’m alive again because there’s a big hole in my chest and it hurts like I got shot with rock salt and porcupine quills.

The other me drops Mason, kneels down, and puts his hand against my chest. I feel the hole closing, the bone, muscle, and skin knitting back together. I stare at the other me and my face stares back at me.

“Goddammit, did someone cut my face off again?”

The other me helps me to my feet. This close I see that he’s exactly me. He’s me without the scars and eleven years younger.

“How do you feel?” asks the other me.

“Like Lazarus if Jesus brought him back to life by having Mike Tyson use him as a speed bag.”

“He’s all right,” says the other me.

Mason is on his back where the other me dropped him. I go for him, but I’m still a little limp, so I don’t so much attack him as fall on him like a cow thrown from a blimp. The other me pulls me to my feet.

“I know who you are,” I say to the other me. “It’s quiet all of a sudden. You’re the Boy Scout who’s been squatting in my brain. You owe me back rent, fucker.”

“Why don’t you take it out of Kasabian’s beer money? Or yours.”

I look at Alice.

“Is this real? Or am I back in Mason’s hallucination?”

She shakes her head and comes over like she wants to put her arm around me but remembers she can’t and ends up standing a few feet away looking awkward.

“It’s real. He appeared the moment you died and took the key back from Mason.”

“Is Mason still alive?”

“Unfortunately. He’s playing possum now,” says the angel. “First he was afraid of me and now there are two of us.”

“What just happened?”