Authors: Cliff Hicks
Randall let out a deep sigh, then ruffled his brow in thought. “Do you think he would’ve gone back to check on his friends and family?”
Bob let out a loud single laugh, then a series of smaller ones. “Oh, I don’t think so. The guy had had a pretty crappy day.
Hell
of a day. Jake was having one of those days you hope to never have, where you wonder if you’ve pissed off the big G personally and he’s taking it all out on you at once. No, I can’t see him going back to his old life. Besides, he’d have to get out of Heaven first, and I dunno how you expect him to pull that one off. Just because he’s gotten out of the guest quarters doesn’t mean he got all that far. You check with any of the local checkpoints?”
“Don’t you think we tried that already?” Randall barked at Bob. “He got past the first checkpoint.”
Shelly decided to try a different tact, stepping up next to Bob, placing one of her hands on his shoulder in a soothing fashion. “Bob, clearly you have more experience with the areas outside of guest quarters than we do. We could really use your help on this one.” She slipped to stand behind him, leaning her breasts against the back of his head as her other hand rested on his other shoulder, making sure he could get a good whiff of that perfume he’d noticed earlier.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, missy,” Bob said with a grin, although he made no effort to move her away. “Pretty girl trying to play Good Cop to mister Stone Wall and mister Bad Cop here.”
Shelly laughed softly, the kind of laugh that sent shivers up Bob’s spine. It was sultry and playful and not at all condescending. In fact, it almost felt a little naughty, like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and wasn’t going to apologize for it at all. “We have so many people, Bob, that we can’t know them all well. You’ve read his file. You walked with him while he was up here. Surely you might have some idea where he might go.” Shelly was keeping her voice soothing and warm, alluring without being cheap or sleazy, her fingertips moving up to tease atop of his balding head. “Bless us with your wisdom, O great Cherubim.”
The short angel pondered the situation for a moment, mulling it over in his head. “Was he happy?”
“Happy?” James asked, expressionless. “He escaped didn’t he?”
“Mmm,” Bob murmured in agreement. “Well, I would imagine he might trace his steps back, then. Maybe he went to try and talk to one of the people along the line.”
“The line?” Randall asked, clearly confused. It had been a long, long, long time since any of them had been processed and the experience hadn’t really stuck with any of the three. Bob, on the other hand, spent much of his working days traversing the lines, wandering through the rows of souls after souls, setting them in the right place so they could start playing connect-the-dots to get to where they would eventually end up.
“Oi,” Bob groaned. “Okay, look, when we all came up, there was barely any line. You’re in, you’re out, you’re off to where you’re supposed to be, doing what you’re supposed to be doing, yeah?” The three angels nodded in response, prompting Bob to continue. “Well, now the line goes on for a long time, and there’s a lot of checkpoints. Form after form, line after line. Mostly it’s a stalling tactic, but some of the forms are there to help figure out where to put people, get them into a Heaven that’ll make’em happy, or at least keep them satisfied where they are. The person who knows the most about who Jake is, what he wants out of life and where he might be, is probably his case officer. Hell, Jake might have even have gone back to him to see if there was a mixup or something. He might’ve thought he did something wrong in the forms.” Bob closed his eyes, leaning his head back. “Now lemme see… Who was he going to end up talking to?” Shelly started to back away from him, but Bob placed one of his hands on her hand resting on his shoulder, keeping her there. “Easy honey, you’re helping me think.” Shelly laughed again, another purring laugh, then made no more efforts to move. Bob talked the problem aloud as he thought it through. “Jake was in the batch on the day I had the spar with Lenny, which would mean he was in the last of the line for his batch, so, follow the line, follow the line, follow the line… got it. Yer looking for Gilbert, over in sector M83. He’d have been the guy who got Jake after he’d done the heavy lifting in the paperwork and helped filter it down to where he was supposed to be going. You want to ask someone about where to find Jake Altford, Gilbert’s probably your best place to start.”
Shelly patted Bob’s shoulder as she pulled back away from his slowly, Bob letting out a slight sigh of disappointment. “Thanks Bob. If we run into each other again, I’m sure we won’t have forgotten the favor you did for us.”
James lifted his legs from the table, swung them out, lowered them and then stood up, moving to pat Bob’s other shoulder. “It’s good to have friends, isn’t it, Bob? Enjoy your music.”
Bob had to admit to himself, it was odd that Jake had suggested Bob bring up music and now there were angels here asking about how he might have escaped. Sure, it could be one colossal coincidence, but Jake had honestly done something nice for Bob when he probably should’ve been thinking about himself and his own future, and it was something Bob hadn’t forgotten, nor taken lightly. Which was all the reason why he’d sent the angels on a wild goose chase. There was no chance that Jake would’ve gone back to where they’d brought him through for several reasons. Besides the obvious one, which was that Jake would never have been able to find his way back along the path, the more compelling thought was that Jake would probably be trying to get
out
, which Bob could understand. He wasn’t particularly fond of Heaven himself, if he was being totally honest with himself. Sure, it was the final resting place and all, but Bob hadn’t really ever found himself happy in being here. In fact, the happiest he’d found himself as of late had been listening to music again, something that Heaven certainly hadn’t helped him with. No, it’d been a common man named Jake Altford, and Bob felt like he owed the man something at the very least, so he’d given the angels bad intel, not that they’d have known, of course.
Randall moved with Shelly and James, shooting Bob a dirty look as he stopped at the end of the row of stacks. Bob could tell the angel had pent up frustration about something, but couldn’t really tell what it was, so he offered the angel a smug wave. The annoyed angel turned the corner, and moved out of Bob’s field of vision, leaving Bob alone in the library cul-de-sac.
“Jake’s gotten out of his quarters, huh?” Bob said to himself. He enjoyed talking to himself now and again – he found it was often the only intelligent conversation he got. “Interesting… Maybe I can do him another favor or two.”
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I
t hadn’t taken Jake long to get the hang of the doors. He’d done a few to practice, going to places he remembered amazingly well. The house he’d spent most of his childhood in, which was owned by someone else now. The building he’d been working at the last few years, which had a large “For Lease!” sign out front. His apartment, except it wasn’t his any more. There was a newly married couple that had moved into the place, and none of his things were still in the apartment, except some shelving he had hung up. Apparently when they had cleaned out his place, the landlord had assumed the shelves were in there to begin with. He almost wanted to turn tangible just to tear them down, but his conscience got the better of him. It wasn’t the fault of these people. They had rented the apartment in good faith. Besides, Jake had to admit to himself the idea of being a haunting spook didn’t really seem much like his kind of deal.
He hadn’t much in the way of family left to speak of, no one in particular he wanted to peek in on. He didn’t have much of an interest in his ex or his ex best friend or how their lives were getting on without him. He didn’t know where Nathaniel lived, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure he honestly cared enough about him to see what he was up to.
Nathaniel had been his friend mostly because he hadn’t cared enough to go out and find new friends, and because he could commiserate about work with him. Nathaniel knew exactly what the horrific day-to-day was like working in a call center, but that was about all they really had in common. They’d tried talking music a few times, but found they didn’t listen to absolutely any of the same people. Nathaniel liked dumb, gross-out comedies when it came to movies, and the kind of horrific social films about a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who learned how to rap or dance or something and then everyone accepted him and told him he’d “always been” one of them. They were the kinds of films Jake told Nathaniel “just weren’t his thing,” but now he realized he’d always just been too polite to tell the younger man he thought they were utter shit. Well, he thought to himself, being dead certainly teaches you that you don’t always have to be polite.
Jake mulled that thought over for a moment, then chuckled softly. It was true; he didn’t have to be polite. He didn’t have to be delicate or soft spoken or any of the other passive-passive things he had been when he was alive. He didn’t have to be the old him. He could be the new him. He had died, gone to Heaven and then escaped Heaven. If ever there was a moment when a man could truly reinvent himself, this was it. And, to be fair, ever since he’d started breaking out of Heaven, he’d been doing that, one footstep at a time. So what would the new Jake want to do, newly back on Earth, a free pass, no rules and nothing to hold him down? Reevaluate his decisions and look at them again, he thought. He didn’t have to be polite or kind or…
Oh, that’s good, he thought.
A wry smile passed over Jake’s face, and he knew exactly where he needed to go, and whom he needed to see. Oh yes, he realized, he truly should have thought of this sooner.
He withdrew the sword hilt from his belt and snapped the blade of fire back out. He drew the blade through the air and cut himself a door. He knew this location very well, and it would be a cinch to get there. He jammed the blade in the center of the door and turned it, as cracks of fire rippled out from the sword until they reached the door lines he’d cut. The door hissed and filled with a splash of fire as Jake pulled the hilt away, letting the blade vanish before he tucked it back on his belt and stepped through the doorway, moving across the city.
He found himself outside of the familiar apartment building, and sure enough, he recognized the car in the parking spot as he walked up the familiar stairs and towards the door. He paused for a moment then stepped through the doorway, passing through the door intangibly. He had been almost tempted to turn solid and knock on the door, but he realized this would be more satisfying. And it never hurt to do a little recon before anything else.
The look of the apartment hadn’t changed much. He had expected that the pictures that had him in them would’ve been taken down, but instead there were more of them than ever. His ex-fiancée’s apartment, although a lot had changed. Before she had been a bit of a neat freak, and now the place was a disaster area. Clothes were strewn all over the place, and not a scrap of them were men’s clothes. The dining room table, once pristine and spotless, was covered in pizza boxes and fast food takeout bags. The couch was covered with them as well, except for one portion, which had been cleared so there was some place to sit. The lights were off, it being the middle of the night, but the room was still lit by the glow of the television, which was playing some late night infomercial, illuminating the apartment that barely resembled the one he remembered. Frankly, it looked more like the apartment of a college student than a successful businesswoman from an affluent family who lived in one of the nicer areas of town.
He saw her cellphone resting on the kitchen table between refuse, and he forced himself to be solid, picking it up, turning it on to see the date and time. It had been forty-five days since his death, which meant he’d spent close to three years on Heaven time. Three long, unbearable years being told to make arts and crafts, to better himself, to blend in and mesh with the rest of the flock. “Flock that,” he quietly muttered to himself with dry laughter.
The room light flicked on and Jake spun quickly, turning intangible and invisible as the phone fell through his fingers and fell onto the ground. There, standing in the doorway from the bedroom, was his ex-fiancée, Kelly, wearing a ratty nightgown that looked like it hadn’t been washed in months. Her hair was a mess, those pretty reddish-brown locks greasy and going in every direction. There were heavy crows feet under her eyes, and she looked thinner than he remembered. Her skin was even paler than he was used to. She looked like she’d had a tough time since he’d been gone, but for some reason, he just couldn’t bring himself to have any sympathy for her. Oh, that was right – the cheating. Let her have her misery, he thought to himself. Her voice was a quiet whisper, as if she was fighting back the urge to burst into tears. “Jake?” He stood there imperceptibly for a long moment as she moved into the room and over towards the kitchen table. “Am I losing my mind?” She looked down and saw her phone resting on the floor, clearly where she’d seen it fall from Jake’s fingers. She crouched down and picked up her phone from the dining room carpet. “Jesus, Jake, if you’ve come to haunt me, just get it over with, okay? I deserve it.”