You've Been Warned

I’M STARTING TO FEEL very afraid now, and I’m nauseated as well. I smell something burning again. Hives all over my body? Who knows? I have so many questions, I don’t know where to start.

I hear this slap, slap, slap—and I see that Delmonico is tapping his foot beside my head.

“I don’t have all day for this, missy. I should say, you don’t have a lot of time left.”

“For my interview?”

“Exactly. So talk to me. It’s almost time to go. We have to leave these hallowed halls.”

“Go where? Where am I going?”

“Oh, you know as well as I do. What is this you’re trying—the stupidity defense? ‘I’m not accountable because I’m dense?’ You’re not so dumb, Kristin. Boston College. Prelaw. Well, that wasn’t such a great choice, was it?”

“So the Fálcon Hotel is the portal, one of the gates—to my destination?”

Delmonico isn’t pleased. “I believe we’ve covered that ground already. But yes. ”

I can barely speak. “Because?... I’ve made some terrible mistakes?”

“To put it mildly, yes. You’ve been a bad, bad girl. Like so many of your kind.”

My throat feels as if it’s closing up on me, but I still manage the next few words.

“Am I... a devil?”

At this, Delmonico has a hearty laugh. “Oh, you wish,” he says.

He sighs out loud, then starts to talk again.

“Here’s a way that might help you understand what’s going to happen to you. Growing up, in Brooklyn this was—near where you met up with the guy with the ponytail, actually—I went to Catholic grade school. I’ll never forget this one. Parish priest gives an inspirational talk to our class. Sixth grade, I think it was. The talk is all about eternity, eternal damnation, and how to comprehend it, as if that’s possible. The priest says, ‘Imagine there’s this tiny little blackbird, lives on a huge mountain in upstate New York or some other godforsaken place. And every thousand years, that little bird fills its beak with whatever it can carry and flies down to Brooklyn and deposits its mouthful in our school parking lot. Now, imagine that the blackbird does this until the entire mountain has been transported there. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be just the beginning of eternity.’

“Here’s another thought for you. This whole nightmare, all of it, it’s been going on for about thirteen seconds. Start to finish, thirteen seconds. Count ’em—thirteen. So do you see how horrible an eternity of this would be?”

All of what has happened so far... it’s taken thirteen seconds? My God!

Delmonico flicks the ash of his cigarette, and some of it drifts down onto me.

“But what’s going to happen to me for eternity?” I ask.

“The dumb defense again. I love it,” Delmonico says and laughs. “Oh, you’ll see. You’ll find out soon enough. That’s a good one, missy. What happens next. How’s this for a sneak preview?”

Delmonico opens his mouth wider than I’ve ever seen a human mouth open. And then a rat sticks its furry head out the opening. The vermin looks at me, then it disappears back inside Delmonico. “Yum,” he says.

He laughs and laughs, and a smoke ring he blows floats over my head as he turns and walks back into the room, and the darkness.

“Is that the portal to hell in there?” I call to him. “Is it? Delmonico?”

Just then, though, a policewoman leans in very close to me, and I wonder if she’s going to move me somewhere.

But then—don’t think, just shoot—she takes my picture.

PART 14

Chapter 110

TWO PARAMEDICS ROLL OUT a long plastic bag next to my body, zipper side up.

“Stop!” I plead. “I’m not dead! Please, please, won’t you stop?”

They raise my arms to tuck them in close to my sides, and I glimpse the blood dripping from my right hand.

“One, two, three,” they count. Then they lift me and deposit me into a body bag.

My God, my God, please, no. Don’t do this!

They close the zipper even as I continue to beg them not to do it, to give me a second chance for some reason that isn’t even clear to me.

I’ve never felt more helpless, more frightened or alone.

As they wheel me down the hall, into the elevator, and across the lobby, I stare out in horror and dread. Through the dark, dingy plastic, everything looks gray.

Even the red awning as I’m taken out of the hotel.

They push me toward the curb, the wheels of the gurney squeaking like sick birds as they spin against the pavement.

I listen to the murmuring of the crowd that’s gathered outside on the street. They’re wondering what happened.

Who died in there?

I keep screaming, “There’s been a horrible mistake. I’m not dead!”

But no one hears me.

Not the businessman in his pinstripe suit, the bike messenger, or the mother with her stroller, the same ones I saw in my dream. The strangers... who are now attending my funeral, so to speak.

I’m so scared now.

Please, God, make it stop! Please, God, please, God!

But he can’t hear me either.