Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

“I don’t have to be strong,” he finally said, refusing to dwell on it. “I’m dead.”

And that’s how he got through his days. His job was to escort Takes to the Everlast, that’s all. Didn’t matter if their deaths had been accidental, if they’d been murdered, or if they’d severed the rip cord themselves. It wasn’t his responsibility to figure out how they’d gotten that way. Not anymore.

Evie laughed beside him, like she could read his thoughts.

“Yet you still help people. Never could break you of that soft habit, could I? All the time, helping others instead of just keeping your head down and doing for us. And look where it got you. Look where it got me.”

He finally did turn to her, and she was just as pretty as he remembered. Eyebrows plucked into perfection above irises of dipped chocolate, blond hair styled into waves so flawless they were severe. But she was also angry. “I don’t know where it got you,” he said.

He’d never seen her in the Everlast. She’d probably bypassed it, went straight into Paradise. That’s what the pure angels did, right? And that’s what she’d been to him. His angel. His Evie.

His wife.

But right now she was his conscience.

“Yes, you do,” she said accusingly, just as Grif knew she would. He’d had this dream before. And what Evie didn’t say, but what still rose in the dark between them, was that if he hadn’t died, he could have saved her. And that was really why it was so hard to look at her: all that beauty and life and energy straining forward in anticipation of a future that would never come.

He scrambled for an answer, trying to think of something that would make it better-

“Hey, man.”

Coming to with a hard snort, Grif squinted, and tried to focus. Darkness, layers of it, crowded in and he shook his head. He had no idea where he was. Then the marching band took up again in his skull, and he remembered.

“Hey,” the voice said again. “Over here.”

Bleary-eyed, wiping drool from his chin, Grif turned his head. Dark lumps rose from the ground in uneven mounds, and a brick wall speared up at his back. The sky rose darkly behind that.

“Where am I?” he rasped.

“Man, and I thought I was wasted.”

The voice found form in the face of a shaggy-haired man who sat up among the lumps on the ground, plastic shifting around him as he peered, too closely, at Grif. The man’s breath kept Grif from doing the same. He recoiled. The pounding in his head throbbed.

Breathe.

“Yo, how’d you find this place? This is prime real estate. Usually nobody bothers me out here.”

“Ain’t gonna bother you,” Grif said, the words guttural, and scraping raw. Clearing his throat, he focused on bringing his senses back to life. That’s what was happening, after all. He was coming back to life.

His first observation was of the dark. That, and the chill. It was predawn, by Grif’s best guess, and nighttime in the desert was notoriously cold. He already knew from the bungled Take that it was winter but hadn’t noticed until now. Then he remembered it’d been late winter the last time he’d been in Vegas, too.

A cricket chirped, pricking his ears, and a breeze caught on the plastic bags around him, but the thumping headache was still rattling his brain’s pots and pans, making it hard to concentrate.

Breathe.

But he already was. The cold was only pressing in from the outside now, and his insides were beginning to thaw. He willed his hands to move, concentrating on touch as pins and needles shot into his limbs. He tried to sit up.

Never mind, he thought, barely able to lift his head. Though it wouldn’t be long. He was already feeling stronger, less panicked, so he settled back to wait. One thing he’d learned in his half-dozen years as a P.I. was when to act and when to sweat out a moment. Most people didn’t have the discipline to be still and wait. Grif didn’t have a problem with stillness or discipline.

The same obviously couldn’t be said for his companion. “You got some funky threads there, buddy. You first come around that corner, I thought to myself, Jimmy, ol’ boy, that man is straight up Dragnet. Like some old detective and shit.”

Two points for the wino. At least the man’s babble gave Grif another concrete detail to focus on. He was, indeed, wearing his favorite suit, the gray flannel with give in the sleeves, his white shirt, black tie. For some reason, that had a smile crawling up his face. Material things had no value in and of themselves, he knew that. There was no difference between a diamond and a brick in the Everlast. Only those things God had assigned value to could sustain a soul.

But this was the suit he’d died in, and though he’d worn it ever since, it hadn’t felt like this in the Everlast. The soft, clean cotton never caressed his skin like a lover’s touch while there. This sort of touch was a gift only the living possessed, though most never realized it.

“Missing your stingy brim, though,” Jimmy, still babbling, observed.

Grif perked up. Where was his hat?

Frowning, he looked up in time to spot a star hurtling across the sky. Grif followed the movement, eyes tickling so deeply in their sockets that he gasped, and for the first time in half a century, he sucked in raw ozone and earth instead of the silky cosmos.

And dust, he thought, choking. And decay, he realized, scenting the trash around him… fruit rinds, coffee grounds, half-finished meals that used to be animals. Human waste. The unwashed bum. No wonder the Pures would rather Fall than don flesh.

But then Grif covered his face with his palm, and was reintroduced to himself. The hotel soap he’d showered with fifty years earlier, the Sen-Sen he chewed after every meal, the faint whiff of coconut in his pomade, and beneath it all… flesh. Warm, gritty, and real.

And it was the flesh- the sinful flesh -that finally grounded him. No sooner did he have that thought than click . The radio found its signal.

For one brief moment his senses were amplified. He could scent the shadows. He could taste the night. Yet before he could reach out and touch anything, it was all whisked away, the protective blanket of the Everlast ripped entirely from beneath his chin. All that remained was its knowledge, buried in the coils of his gray matter.

Grif sat up, then rose unsteadily to his feet, bracing against the dirty brick wall for support. He had to figure out where he was.

“Yo, Dick Tracy!” Jimmy called, as Grif began walking away. “Buy me a brewski, right? I let you crash at my pad… least you could do!”

Grif had no idea what Jimmy was talking about, not until he rounded the corner and caught sight of pumps, a glowing storefront, and a dark-haired man standing cross-armed with his back to Grif. Ignoring the man for now, Grif looked up at the backlit sign. Gas station. Perfect.

On a hunch, Grif checked his pants pockets for his wallet. Opening it, he saw it, too, was as when he died. Same amount of money-and lucky for him he’d just cashed out at the casino cage-and the same photo of Evie that he carried with him everywhere. He took time to study that with his new-old eyes, then tucked it safely away, just like the dream.

His watch was on and working. His piece strapped to his right calf. Lot of good that did me, Grif thought wryly, before frowning. Odd, though. His driver’s license was missing. He coulda sworn he’d had it on him when he died.

Grif didn’t know if the dark-haired man heard his sigh, or just sensed Grif behind him, but he turned suddenly, giving a startled curse when he saw Grif. “Where’d you come from?”