A Quiet Tuesday

Sitting in my favorite chair, reading Edgar Allan Poe, I become overwhelmingly aware of the silence in our home. The grandfather clock's heart beats in the hallway with the speed of a humming bird.  It's ticking and pounding mimic my imagination when I have a good story idea, pounding away at the weary keys on my computer.  It's funny how slothful I can be on a lazy, hot day in a Phoenix July.  The sun creeps through the windows and beams of it reflect off the dust in our home. It's almost as if hands are reaching into my home.

As the strangeness of the light begins to get to me, and quite frankly, the strangeness of Poe's imagination, I decide that there's got to be a place in our house I can go to get away from phantom specters in the middle of the day.

My wife is an interior designer and always believed that a view of nature was important to sound mind, body and soul.  I have to hand it to her, she makes me feel incredible, not to mention her sexual prowess would intimidate rabbits, but to the tormented mind that I so well disguise, she comes across to that part of me as invasive as the gaunt and yearning solar fingers that plague my diseased mind right now.  Don't get me wrong, to look at her, you'd say what a lucky guy and I do feel that way but she's slender with perfect shape, filled with energy and joy and my demons could plague and darken the skies of Neverland were I to let them freely express themselves like they wanted.

For the time being, it is not my demons I fear but those demons that exist in reality: heat, UV exposure, the eerie feeling that I am not alone and death himself walks amongst the hydrangea that so neatly moat my home.

"What am I reading for anyway?" I tell myself.  "There's articles to write and bills to pay.  Suffer the writer who doesn't infest the world with the insanity of a deranged mind through his tortured drivel."

Looking down at the story of Annabel Lee, the irony of the preceding thoughts are not lost.  I admire Poe but people make him out to be a god.  As if he never scratched his butt when he arose from a lazy boy in a Phoenix July.  The desert heat sticks to you.  It surrounds you like a warm blanket when you think back to New Jersey where you were raised but after living here for some time, that warm blanket becomes a noose and just as maddening as the still beating heart of the dead old man beneath the floor boards or that damn grandfather clock that won't fucking shut up with its incessant ticking of the seconds that whine through time in a never ending loop that goes on to infinitum till the ticks become a hum and you wonder why there's never a tock?

"It adds character," my beautiful wife would say.

It adds character like the windows everywhere and the bony sunshine fingers that mock me and scratch the floor...

There's a scratching noise from somewhere.  Where is that coming from?

I head into the garage; Yes! At last. The garage where there are no lights and no peep holes for the heat or sunshine.  If only it were air conditioned in here because it's like one of those "rejuvenating," clay sweat lodges out in the desert.

Scraaaaaatch... Scraaaaatch... Scratch scratch...

There it is and it's coming from outside the garage door.

I pull up the segmented pieces of chained wooden door links like a serpent into the top of the garage and a cat, as if startled jumps directly into my line of sight.  Being the dumb ass I am, I actually get startled and bump my head on the garage door which I have not fully lifted yet.  Well! The weight is more than I can bear on my head so it knocks me down to the floor but this brilliant ballet ends with all segmented heavy wooden pieces crashing down on my neck as I watch my own demise.

When I come to, I can clearly see the chaos that has become of me and my head barely hangs onto my neck through pieces of lacerated skin.  Behind me, there's a man with wings and a rather cro-magnon brow.  He looks to be Mesopotamian or something middle eastern but is that even possible?  Mesopotamian?  How do I even know what that looks like?  His smile looks devious and yet at the same time proud as if he'd just figured out how to make some incredible Rube Goldberg machine that ended in...

"Aw shit... I'm dead..." I say aloud.

I can tell he's speaking Aramaic but for some reason I can understand him as he says, "Yes, my good sir, you are indeed."

Story Stopper

Part VII: Dead Stop

It had been building for a few weeks and although j had for seen it, there was nothing I could do to stop it. A soothsayer is a human being with the extraordinary gift to predict the future but a reaper exists outside time its self and therefore he knows the future.

I remember it in bits and pieces as I do most of my experiences being human. I was a student at Virginia Polytechnic institute in the year 2048.  You'd think there would be flying cars and robots everywhere but not much had changed, really.

The first thing I remember is lounging at the bottom of a staircase that crossed under a bridge and looked out onto a garden. It was there that a couple of students were talking philosophy and though I could see them, there was a man in a long black camel skin coat who stood in the shadow of the bridge. His face obscured, he talked to me of philosophy and as I debated him, I walked over to him and crossed past him and as I walked into the garden, I saw that this man was wearing a Guy Fauks mask which made my human brain think, "what a poser," buy my angel mind was terrified.

The next scene I remember is seeing the man in the mask on the roof of a building and as people passed by, no one seemed to notice. I had just gotten to an art building when I heard a scream from behind me. Several people wearing Guy Fauks masks walked around an island amidst a brick walking path circle with guns drawn. People ran and I ran to a small concrete wall jutting out from the ground like a tree would grow. It had a square base at one end and columns that grew out of the ground like tree trunks along the way up a hill.

In front of me, I saw the panicking art students and in their panic, I saw them looting art supplies like oil base paints and charcoal pencils. I remember thinking to myself, that would be how humanity would act when doom is imminent. All the while, this man in the Guy Fauks mask stood at the top of the building looming like a seven foot tall gaunt monstrocity or a perverted VanGough version of a human gargoyle. Still, no one noticed his presence but me.

As the chaos escalated, someone noticed one of the people in the Guy Fauks masks open and close a briefcase while someone else shouted, "bomb!"

I remember being glad I was on my back behind that end pillar of cement but I also remember thinking if the bomb should go off, how much of this mortal body would be protected from the blast? I remember trying to change positions as the chaos ran rampant and more people tried to take shelter being the slats in this small wall. Still other people next to me, stood next to the wall, watching the bomb squad at work as they arrived.

None of it made very much difference because as the time for the explosion drew nigh, I could feel it in my bones. As the bomb exploded, I crawled out of my physical form and into a world where time had stopped.

Not stopped for real, mind you. Only god can stop the flow of time but more along the lines of the world was on pause like one would pause live TV from a TiVo remote: the program keeps playing but for the moment at least, I am able to view a still image of the world that is already burning in live time.

Ironically, the man on the roof top could still move in this frozen time and at this, it became apparent as to who he was. I had gotten my job from him.

"Good evening, Samael," I said.

Stretching out three pairs of darkened wings, he floated to the ground, leaving his mask on.

"The heat from it is amazing, is it not?" He said.

In the moment the bomb had exploded, the last thing I felt with my human nervous system was the heat and the last thing I saw was a great blue light; it was the lightest shade of blue I had ever seen.

"I have been at this job for a long time, Dolphael," (He pronounced my name slightly differerent than I did) "...and in none of my destructive exploits have I ever seen the awesome power of mankind's own vision of destruction equaled. I reigned down vulcanized sulfer from the skies on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the power of that destruction made me weak but these days, all it takes is the slight convincing, in human form no less, to fit a bomb into a briefcase and set it off. What is the high angel of death to do with himself when his job gets to be this easy?"

As he wandered the frozen scene, he poked and prodded at the stagnant chaos in this vignette from a nightmare. He loomed over those who cowered in fear of the explosion and I found the irony that they were all this close to the true angel of death and the Grim reaper, but still afraid more of the bomb, almost humorous. I say almost, of course because mass death such as this, despite it being god's will and god's personal hand of destruction, is still tragic in both the metaphysical and the physical sense.

Our lord kills indiscriminately but he is the designer and everything he does has a part to play in his master plan. Looking at the way Samael scoped out the destruction, however, made me think that after all this time, making world wide floods, hitting the planet with an asteroid, reigning down burning silver and the list goes on to infinitum, I thought I might have seen a glimmer of joy exuded from the being of Samael.

Even I had to admit that he had become an artist at destruction and the people were almost placed in this vignette of frozen time to make a living work of art. A living work of Goya, mind you, but never-the-less a picturesque vision of the beautifully grotesque avant garde.

In this moment, I remember the times when I was still reaping often and the times I had orchestrated deaths of my own to picturesque horror. I misses those days.

"Well," Samael told me, "My job is done here, time for your reapers to come collect the mess. Good to see you again Dolphael. I miss your early work. Perhaps I'be inspired you with what's happened here. I look forward to the individual encore. Until we meet again, Dolphael."

With that he faded away; like a sand sculpture drying out and falling apart grain by grain. I hated to say it but the truth was, he had inspired me and I couldn't wait for an order from god to end a person before his time. I wasn't going to pass this one onto one of my lesser reapers this time.

Story Stopper

Part VI: Death is timeless

Watching a fire burn one can experience a moment in which all reality is represented. It eats the fuel that it has and in this way it is as ephemeral as time its self. For a reaper, time is not linear. Yesterday could be a Scottish Moor as it was for Deviel and today is the fourth of January 2086 for me. The period of time in between is immaterial because the days are not counted as one proceeds to the next but rather any proceeds to any. It becomes aparant to me in times like this why God created the universe: because existing outside time and space is exhausting.

This can make living a human life stabilizing to me. As it was the first time I made love to Deviel: the wind in between worlds kissed our ambivelant naked forms as we melded souls in the eternal abyss. As much as we experienced this emotion, our aomebic forms stretched across space and time to every creature feeling exactly as we did in that every moment.

You see, the tunnel between worlds stretches across all time and space so that all time and space has access to both heaven and hell. As we were, our forms were like a great white gelatinous spirit blob that would seep through the pours of this swirling gateway to seek out the human emotion known as love and live that knowledge in our embrace. In all recall, I do my best to describe it using words the human mind can understand but there is another language of sensation that is impossible to dictate to any mortal at any time.

This romantic tryst, however, is entirely draining and though Deviel, not being an angel cannot, "take a vacation," I find it useless were I not to take advantage of the ease of human life. One might query, "what about your duties while you're living as a human?" To this I say your lives are as brief as a fly flapping its wings once. In the grand scheme of my duties, 8 human lives are but a flash in the pan.

I have many reapers but time means nothing to eternity in the timeless tornado between the worlds. I can live a human life and then go back to the moment when it began as if nothing happened at all. The paradoxes perplex, I'm sure, but there is no need to concern yourself. There is a body that mimics my actions that holds a place in time but my consciousness does not have to be there.

I have loved in human form and it seems like forever but to know forever is painful when I think about it in human form and peaceful as the grim.

Humans focus on things so ephemeral because they exist in a world that ends. Hubris and pride leading to murder was especially poignant in Deviel's most recent case because the human flaw is timeless but the moment meant nothing.  I am curious at times, however, what can be considered timeless to a reaper or a Grim?

Celtic Scream

Across the plane I saw his eyes on my plunder, my winter's prize:
From winter lands the wind did blow tracked summer dirt across the snow-
My Genevive she'd milk the throws of other gains I plundered.
I wondered how, that day I took her, his eyes might wander if he'd not mistook her-
For a golden treasure he'd horde instead while I be comforted with milk and bread-
But love is powerful, more so that greed
And so I took the reigns of my steed-
And rode towards his visage in the wheat.
Come at my love I challenge and entreat-
But ye will suckle only death's teat when I am down from the highlands.
And so I picked my scythe up quick and rode towards king and rode too quick-
To turn or think my brother's advance was no more than an outward glance-
Towards outer heaven's fluffy shell and I were to send him straight to hell
For he did not die battling well but rather in a muddy field.
My cows did shriek at the startled scream that lasted a minute for lack of means:
When I did send his head aloft to land at the foot of my humbled wife.
If there existed love before she did not show, for him, remorse.
She only showed a jilted glance that I had slain in cruelty of chance-
That the sun set softly behind her head and his gaze had met the sun instead
And for his life, I'd made him dead
In the field of my last day on earth.

I'd know the reaper later that night and she would show no Valkrie's might
But yet her softness was my light unto the heavens everlasting.

Story Stopper

Part V: Divine Retribution

Deviel once told me about an Indian man she visited in 1983 who was murdered slowly by a bag placed over his head. The pain in her heart caused a thunderstorm in Pottstown Pennsylvania that night.

Death is something that should be delivered quickly and those souls that linger in between life and death are pitiable in my mind. The brutality of a slow death is one every reaper has encountered in one way or another but the suffering is never something to be admired or envied.

Mob hit murders are cases of sick and twisted minds that can be so drawn out that, especially in the present case,  even a reaper like deviel is compelled to give that soul (however evil it may be) a second chance at paradise.

"I waited  half an hour in the room as he kicked and struggled before passing," she said. "The killer let air into the bag periodically so the death was drawn out as much as it could be. At the end, his soul was in bits and pieces and the killer had residue on his clothes that he seemed to revel in like he was the reaper its self."

She went on to explain that after she had assembled what remnants of a soul this man had, pieces of how his physical form would have been represented were still missing. She tried to convince what was left to repent its evil ways and gain access to paradise instead of hell but it had the capacity of a four year old and she was forced to carry it to hell despite its best intentions.

Nothing so skims the realm of the hereafter like a murderer. Especially one that kills his victims slowly. When that man died in 2013, she did not hesitate to reap him in a way that forced him into his acceptance of death as she dragged him to hell with vigor and ferocity.

When there is no punishment on earth for an evil doer, you better believe that a reaper can take divine retribution like none would ever believe on earth. As light and fluttery a spirit as Deviel was, when it came to punishing the truly wicked and depraved, she showed no remorse and did her duty with a resolve only the heavenly host himself could match. I think this is most what I loved about her because it is the human element that one loses when they die and become a reaper.

It is that power that they gain, however, when they get to talk a spirit into acceptance of death. A reaper is a cog in a divine machine of amazing magnitude and splendor. We are all that stands in the way of a soul and its final destination. She became more than just a reaper the moment she decided to "give man fire" by giving him the ability to choose where he felt his immortal soul belonged; when she became Promethius she gained the human element of reaping that went beyond human understanding. She played god and was allowed to because that is truly what he intended when he made "man" in his own image.

Throughout the centuries, I have loved her and fallen out of touch; loved her again, only to fall out of touch again for a lifetime or two but on that day in 2013, I swore that we would cohost the divine position of Grim and at the same time, we inadvertantly became the balance of power between heaven and hell.

The Mind state of a Mobster

The most satisfying way to kill a man is slowly. A knife is a quicker way to kill somebody than a plastic bag and a plastic bag isn't as quick as a piano wire. The satisfaction I get from making the reaper wait means I get to spend time with both the reaper and the soul he reaps like a party where we all get a bullet of cocaine.

God knows what the reapers of my marks thinks about in those moments of sheer blissful release.  One can only hope that the man talks to his maker in those moments and asks for forgiveness for all the people he killed and fucked over. It's a rare pleasure.

It's a rare pleasure because I am the one who gets to force them into a corner of goodness. The longer it takes them to die, the longer they have to make their final arrangements with the one they call god. People have different gods too.

I once had to kill an Indian mobster who had statues of gods all over his house. Who am I to complain because being catholic, I think I might want to pray to the various saints in those precious moments.

Life is funny like that. Most of us think about nobody but number one but when you got a wire around your neck, you all of a sudden turn a celebrity at an awards show.

"I want to thank Jesus Christ who is my lord and savior (I truly feel this in my heart); saint Xavier who helped me find my keys when I kept on losing them; the holy mother who guides me daily and Saint Edmund who will hopefully make life hell for Tony Mo who ordered this hit."

God knows what that Indian douche prayed to but I'll bet he went to hell for killing people and screwing people out of their money with his system to short change people on gasoline. I didn't feel bad about any of it because I am the purveyor of death, not the one who judges. It's a job and though I revel in the moment of slaughter, it's still only a job I like when all is said and done.

Sometimes, when I'm unfocused, I wonder what I might eat for lunch or if the pretty girl who gave me a lap dance for free one time at Vito Pinciotti's joint will be there tonight. It really depends on my mood that day but when you follow orders, it doesn't matter if I'm killing someone new or killing someone who gave me the hit order the day before. I am the purveyor of death and like any bussiness, my services are up for auction to the highest bidder.

The Mind state of a Mobster

Everyone starts off with a gun. It's painfully easy to point and click to make a long struggle into a short drop. It's even easier to kill someone with a phone call; hence the reason I have a job. To be a "hitter," you could have several different motives; most people do it for power.

It is in this way that these people kill to gain rank and find their last weapon in hitter training to be a telephone. The phone is a weapon that's only suited for those who know death and have carried out the sentence but who also no longer have a reason to kill. It's OK for people who are in it for the power but for those of us who enjoy the job, our last weapon is the knife.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more satisfying to the professional hitter as the struggle followed by the look of fear and surprise in the mark's eyes as the knife slowly drains the life from the mark's body and into the hands of the knife weilder.

To kill with a knife is the ultimate in professional killing because it brings you as close and personal as you can get with death. It moves you into a warm embrace with a real life escaping soul. It's enough to make you want to kill an innocent but that's against the rules.

Evil doers are acceptable targets though because in that final moment where your hand is over their mouth and nose, the weight of your body pressing their warm spiritual essence upwards, they see the extacy that is their final moments and you get the sensation in your mind that this may be the most transcendant, good and truly purest moment of their lives. It's not always  rapture though.

Anthony Maurice Genovece better known as Tony Mo, once "allegedly," chopped Berto Benece's head off with a pizza spatula for sleeping with Frederico Genovece's sister. He later told Rico Genovece, "upon entering the establishment, I knew he was going to run and as I could not access my gun or knife, the closest thing was a 3 foot pizza spatula so I did him with that instead." Poor Tony could have turned him into the headless horseman were it not for that pesky spinal column which turned Berto into a pez dispenser instead.

Tony told Rico about the ordeal not half an hour after the event over baked lasagna and Pasta Fajole. It is my impression that Rico got his emotional mortal retribution over the hanging spirit of Berto in the clothes and skin of Tony Mo as he sat at the table that night.

This may need some explaining: you see, when a hitter kills a mark, some believe that as the soul leaves the body, it hangs in the air like a bad stench on the hitter himself.  Some might be worried about such things haunting them but there's very little one can do to punish the rich and damned.

Oh! There's an evil spirit haunting me? Either kill me or shut the fuck up and let me sleep.