The Wrong Goodbye

in one hand and a cordless phone in the other. He was trying desperately to dial the cops, but his hands were shaking so bad, it was all he could manage not to drop the phone —that, or bean himself with the bat.

I spotted the base of the phone on an end table beside the couch, and I dove for it, wrenching the phone cord from the wall. Ethan stared in horror for a moment, and then leapt at me with a guttural —if not entirely manful — scream, his bat brandished high above his head.

I rolled. He missed. His bat instead met the floor with a crack, and Ethan yelped in pain and surprise as his wispy frame was wracked by the reverberations. He tried to wheel toward me, but I’d already found my feet, and I sidestepped the blow with ease. Then I wrenched the bat from his hands and drew it back to strike. It was instinct, nothing more, and when I saw him cowering on the floor, his hands raised to protect his tear-streaked face, I tossed the bat aside. Then I extended a hand to help him up. But he just lay there, cowering, and regarded my hand as though it were an asp about to strike.

“You OK?” I asked him.

He said nothing. I stooped a bit to bring my hand closer, and he flinched.

“Look, I’m sorry about the entrance, but I had a feeling if I knocked, you weren’t going to let me in.”

Still nothing —that is, unless you counted the sobbing.

“Damn it, Ethan, I’m not here to hurt you —I’m here because I need your help! Now will you take my hand so I can help you up?”

He blinked at me a moment, and then accepted my offer with one trembling, hesitant hand. I helped him up off the floor. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve, gulping air all the while, and cast a sly sidelong glance toward the gaping apartment door.

“I wouldn’t,” I said, and he deflated slightly.

“P-p-please d-don’t…” he stammered as he tried to bring his panicked breathing under control. “Don’t tie me up again. I couldn’t take it.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, but it was for your own good. As for whether I’m going to have to do it again, that’s going to depend a lot on you. Besides, you look like you came out of it OK.”

“Took me six hours to get out,” he said. “My legs still hurt like hell.”

“You call the cops?”

“No,” he said too quickly.

“OK, I’ll take that as a yes.” His eyes bugged out in panic, and he went a little green. “It’s OK, Ethan —I would’ve too if I were you. But it does complicate things a little. Which means you’re going to have to make it up to me.”

His eyes narrowed. He took a small step backward. “What do you mean, make it up to you? Make it up to you how?”

Fuck it, I thought. The truth was probably the safest thing I could tell him —after all, who in their right mind was gonna believe him?

“The fact is, Ethan, I am not the guy they wheeled in to your funeral home. That guy’s dead and gone —I’m just borrowing his body for a while. As for who or what I actually am, that’s complicated, and you’re probably better off not knowing. Suffice it to say, I’m a guy who’s got a job to do, just like you. Now, if you help me do my job, I promise you I’ll walk out that door tonight and you’ll never see me again. If, on the other hand, you don’t…”

Ethan swallowed hard. It seemed he got the picture. Good thing, too, because that whole implied violence thing was nothing but a bluff —the worst I was going to do to the guy was tie him up again until I got what I came for. Still, this night was going to go a whole lot smoother if he’d cooperate, so I’m glad he was on board.

“W-what,” he said, wincing at the quaver in his voice. “What is it that you need?”

“What I need, Ethan, is a body.”

“You sure this is the best you got?”

Ethan shrugged his shoulders. With his willowy frame, he looked sort of like a twitchy scarecrow. “It’s been a slow week, death-wise. Besides, uh, you, Mr Frohman’s all we’ve got. He was the sausage king of Chicago!” he added helpfully.

“Yeah,” I said, “he looks it.”

Though the guy wasn’t an inch over five-four, he must’ve gone four hundred pounds, and every inch of him was covered in a thick mat of hair —well, every inch that wasn’t on his head. Even in death, his face had a sort of pinkish hue; I couldn’t help but think it was his sausage subjects who’d eventually dethroned him. Eh, I thought, he’ll do. And hell, it’s not like I’d have to worry about him making a break for it.

I fished Varela’s bundled soul from my pocket and picked at the dirt-caked twine until finally, the knot untied. The tiny orb swirled gray-black atop the scrap of fabric in my open hand, and Ethan stared at it, entranced. “What is that?” he asked, his voice full of awe and wonder.

“Gumball,” I replied. The pale man frowned. He was standing at the corner of the mortuary table, scant inches from Mr Frohman’s bald pate. I jerked my head by way of indication, and said, “You may want to stand back a little —this is liable to get messy.”

Ethan took a big step back, and I drew in a deep, halting breath. Truth is, I didn’t know if this’d work. I’d never done anything like this before —as far as I knew, no one had. But hell, a bad plan is better than no plan at all, right?

In one swift motion, I grabbed the soul from the fabric upon which it sat, and plunged it into Mr Frohman’s meaty chest. For a brief moment, I was engulfed in a swirl of light and sound. Then the Frohman body gasped, and the world came rushing back.

The wooly mammoth of a man sat up, his eyes wide, his limbs flailing madly. Then he doubled over and puked. Ethan let out a whimper, and crumpled to the tiles. That made twice in two days. Still, you couldn’t really blame him. At least this guy he managed not to cut.

Frohman/Varela’s eyes were wild, panicked. His massive chest heaved as it sucked in breath after labored breath. His neck craned as he took in the scene around him: me, standing over him, expectant; Ethan, lying unconscious on the floor; him, draped in white as he floundered on a stainless steel slab. Despite myself, I felt a stab of pity for him —as I well know, that first wake-up is pretty damn traumatic. But when he decided it was time to flee, my sympathy evaporated.

I had to give it to him —for a big guy, the man could move. He rolled away from me, the sheet falling from him as his feet hit the floor on the far side of the slab. He got halfway to the door before his limbs gave out on him. It’s always that way with a fledgling meat-suit —it takes a while for the body to acquiesce to your commands. And never more so than your first time out, which is why I didn’t even bother giving chase.

The big man hit the tiles with a fwap, and I was on him in seconds. I rolled him over with a nudge of my shoe, and slapped the look of blind panic from his face.

“?Habla ingles?” I asked him, but he just let out a wail of confusion and panic.

“?Habla ingles?” I repeated. “?Como te llamas?”

He blurted out a couple nonsense syllables as he struggled with his unfamiliar meat-suit. Then he squinched his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it. I cocked my hand back to slap him a second time. It seemed to do the trick. He grabbed my wrist with one sausage-fingered hand to still the coming blow, and, anger glinting in his eyes, he finally found his voice.

“Listen, asshole, I don’t speak Mexican, so slapping me ain’t gonna help! You try that shit again, you’re liable to lose your fucking hand, comprende?”

I stared at him a second, dumbfounded. “You speak English?”

“That a trick question? Yeah, dipshit —I speak English.”

“I’m guessing your name isn’t Pablo Varela then, huh?”

“Wow, a gold star for the good guesser.”

“So who the hell are you?”

“Why the fuck should I tell you?”

I plunged my free hand into his chest and gave his soul a twist. The big man’s face contorted in fear and pain, and reflexively, he released my wrist from his grasp.

“’Cause I’m the guy who rescued you from oblivion —and if you don’t start talking, I’m the guy who’ll send you back.”