Death Sucks

by Andrew Mallen

  Bobby got it loud and clear. He nodded, which wasn’t easy with Granelli’s hand testing the roots of his hair.

  “Good,” Granelli smiled then shattered Bobby’s nose with an abrupt hammer punch of incredible power.

  The crack echoed in Bobby’s head as pain erupted. Blood pulsed from his face and down his throat, drowning his screaming. “Consider this a warning you little bitch,” Granelli whispered and released him.

  Bobby dropped face first onto the unforgiving gravel but the fun wasn’t over just yet. Granelli kicked him in the ribs like a striker taking a penalty shot. Bobby tried to scream but there was no air left in him to voice it. Granelli kicked him again, and again. Bobby rolled away but only presented his attacker with a fresh target. Granelli followed, driving his foot into Bobby’s back, his guts, and anywhere else he could. Bobby couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. There was pain and fear, and not much room for anything else.

  Two sharp cracks echoed, followed by a heavy thud. Bobby was too busy gasping for breath to care.

  “Are you okay?” a timid, trembling voice asked.

  Bobby rolled over to see the girl he tried so foolishly to save kneeling beside him, one hand pressed against her blood smeared breast, the other holding a snub nose revolver. “What…what happened?” he asked.

  The girl looked at something on the floor, then back at Bobby. His brain kicked into gear and he pushed himself onto his knees. Granelli lay sprawled beside him like a fat snow Angel, two geysers spewing dark blood from the crest of his ample gut.

  Perfect. What’s next? Earthquake, alien invasion, maybe a good old fashion nuclear holocaust?

  “Fuck me,” Bobby groaned.

  “He…he was going to kill us,” the girl whispered, her trembling lips swelling, the welt around one eye darkening towards a bruise.

  “It’s okay,” Bobby lied.

  “They’re going to kill me.”

  “No they won’t. It’s okay.”

  More lies.

  “They’re going to kill us!”

  Us? Not good.

  “Who’s they? Who’s us?” Bobby’s ‘bad shit’ alarm was blaring again.

  “Them…his crew…he’s Lou Granelli!” she said it as if Bobby was supposed to know, he didn’t.

  “I don’t know the guy but we better call the cops,” Bobby said, patting his pants for his phone. “We need help.”

  “No cops,” Granelli groaned, scaring the last remnants of shit out of both Bobby and the girl.

  The girl raised the gun to finish what she started. Bobby swatted it down before she could. “Are you crazy?”

  “We have too,” she sobbed.

  “You can’t just kill him. Its murder, like lethal injection murder.”

  “Doesn’t matter, we’re dead anyway,” she said, raising the gun again. “At least we can send this piece of shit to Hell first.”

  “No!” Bobby grabbed the gun this time.

  Wild with panic and fear, and something Bobby had yet to understand, her eyes pleaded. “This…he’s a murder. He’s a rapist, a fucking rapist. Don’t you get it? He steals people, he sells them, he’s…he’s…a…he has to die, he has to!”

  “No,” Bobby tried to sound like he wasn’t as scared as she looked.

  “We’re dead anyway!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Me and you, and probably Jenny and the other girls back there, we’re all going to die for this. His people will kill all of us,” she cried, desperately trying to pry the gun from Bobby fingers as he tried to wrap his mind around her proclamation.

  “I…I won’t let them if you help me,” Granelli moaned. “I swear on my mother.”

  “Fuck you!” the girl screamed.

  “Kid, I swear,” Granelli looked at Bobby when he said it, realizing the girl’s mind was already made.

  How did I end up in the middle of this shit show? Seriously? I’m going back to school, fuck this.

  “Listen kid, there’s a bag of cash in the car, take it,” Granelli offered as he struggled to stem the blood flow from his wounds. “Just get me the fuck outta here.”

  The girl turned to Bobby again, her expression morphing from deadly desperation to reluctant hope. “I’ll check,” she said, releasing the gun and running toward the limo.

  “Kid?” Granelli whispered. “Kid, she’s nuts, you see that right. You gotta take her out. Pop her and get us the fuck out of here before shit goes bad.”

  Shit goes bad? This isn’t bad?

  Bobby studied Granelli. The fat gumba had been such an arrogant prick all night and so eager to hurt him just a few minutes earlier, now here he was groveling and bartering for his life. One minute the merciless bully, the next the pitiful victim seeking what he never offered. Bobby dragged a glob of bloody phlegm from deep in his throat and sent in sailing. It splattered across Granelli’s face with William Tell accuracy. “Fuck you asshole.”

  The girl returned wearing Granelli’s sport coat and a smile. “It’s a lot of money,” she whispered.

  “It’s five hundred grand, I swear,” Granelli hissed while writhing in pain, the gut shots were working their magic. “It’s why I’m here with those suits.”

  “Let’s just go. He’s dead anyway, we can just go,” the girl’s eyes were as desperate as here pleading. “Please?”

  Why me? God must have a wicked sense of humor.

  “Listen…”

  “Carli.”

  “Listen Carli. We drop this prick at a hospital, Hampton General is like ten minutes east of here. We’re back in the city in like an hour, an hour and a half. We dump the car, split the cash and head for the hills. Sound good?” Bobby proposed and prayed it would be that simple.

  “He’ll come after us.”

  “You can go a long way on a quarter mill,” Bobby pushed.

  Carli looked from Bobby to Granelli, and back again, “He’s not going to make it.”

  “Even better but I’d sleep better knowing I tried,” Bobby tried to smile his nose hurt too much.

  “Bobby right?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You’re a good guy right Bobby?”

  “Occasionally I guess.”

  Carli leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, “Thank you occasional good guy Bobby.”

  Bobby smiled then despite the pain, “You ready?”

  “No but let’s get this tub of shit in the truck,” she replied with a sore smile of her own.

  “Fuck you,” Granelli seethed.

  Carli kicked him in the ribs and he roared. She smiled again, wider and brighter and full of hope.

  *

  Bobby pulled the Caddy up beside Granelli and, with Carli’s unnecessarily brutal help, hauled the three hundred plus pounds of swearing, sweating, bleeding mobster inside. Back behind the wheel with Carli at his side they headed east once again passed the still bustling Sandy Oyster and toward Hampton General.

  “Open the glass so we can watch him,” Carli suggested, she had reclaimed the revolver but the bloodlust behind her eyes was gone.

  “You sure?” Bobby liked the idea of keeping the thick glass between them. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

  “We should watch him. What if he’s calling his boys or if he has another gun or something?”

  Bobby was too busy navigating the oversized SUV down the dark, narrow, twisting road through a developing fog at eighty miles an hour to argue. He felt for the partition controls and triggered the silent motor that lowered the divider. Carli crawled up onto the seat and leaned through the opening to get a better look at her victim. Her head rocked back and dragged her body with it. She crashed into the dashboard amidst a rain of blood, vodka and the shattered, frosted glass of the bottle that demolished her face.

  “Cunt!” Granelli roared in ecstasy as he pulled himself into the opening and reached for the gun in Carli’s hand.

  “What the fu…!” Bobby cried but Granelli cut it short.

  Grabbing
hold of Bobby’s throat and sinking his thick fingers into the soft skin around his windpipe, Granelli squeezed with the force of five well-manicured vices. Bobby’s vision blurred. A moment later the steering wheel bounced in his weakening grip as the huge tires veered from the pavement.

  “Turn kid! Turn the fucking wheel!” Granelli’s last words in life were as useless as his first.

  A massive oak, older by far that the road beside it, stood like a sentinel guarding the younger, smaller of its kind behind it. The Caddy hit it head on doing close to seventy miles an hour. Carli’s neck snapped with the force of the crash and her dream of seeing Granelli dead died as quickly as she did. The impact propelled Granelli through the partition and the windshield before the tree abruptly ended the flight of the boxer clad mobster, instantly pulverizing his skull and the vile brain inside it.

  The huge engine block of the powerful truck, popped into the cockpit like a tape from a VCR with an overenthusiastic spring. Nearly two tons of super-heated metal severed everything Bobby owned below the waist, crushed his ribs and rupturing most of what he needed to live. Unfortunately for Bobby, he lived regardless of the severity of damage and the enormity of the pain. He watched, as if in a dream, as fire burst from under the crumpled hood and spread quickly toward him.

  No fucking way. This can’t be happening! Please! Not fire! Not fire!

  A few seconds later the flames engulfed the front end of the truck. Three shadows walked among them. Tall and hooded, carrying oddly oversized canes of some sort, they looked like they were searching for something, or someone.

  Maybe they’re here to save me.

  The flames found him first. They fed. He screamed. Someone was laughing. Carli was wailing. Granelli was cursing. The pain grew with the fire.

  “Come on, get a move on!” a voice, angry and in a hurry, shouted.

  What’s her problem? Why is she in such a rush?

  “Come on asshole,” she growled, pulling him through the fire toward a weird light that just appeared.

  “What going on? What happened?” Bobby asked.

  “Looks like you hit a tree. Hurry up, we gotta go before….”

  A bright light lit the night. The hooded figure heaved Bobby into the odd swirling portal. “What’s happening to me?” he whined.

  “You just made history.”

  “What?”

  “Welcome to Hell.”

  5.

  “I am deeply sorry for what happened to you but I am also glad it did,” Gordon said when Bobby woke.

  The fucking balls on this guy!

  “You uncovered the truth. Others who suffered the same fate accepted it but you did not. You chose to fight even if it meant you would suffer even more.” Gordon said, nodding in approval.

  “It…it wasn’t that noble dude, I just…I didn’t…”

  “Listen to me Robert, just listen to me. Let me explain a few things that might help clear this up.”

  This should be good.

  “I hope so.”

  “My bad. I’m all ears. ”

  “Sin, Satan as you know him, is a creature capable of fantastic things, but he let his gifts poison him, as many of power are prone to do. He was good once and I loved him. He was my brother and my friend. I do believe he loved me as well but that was a very long time ago. He changed slowly and I did not see it or maybe I refused to see it. Love is blind, a phrase I consider the most profound humans have coined, but I had yet to hear it then. Love is blind Robert, and I loved Sin before and above all others. It is not an excuse. It is simply the truth. Love blinded me to what Sin was until it was too late to change him.”

  Gordon paused for a moment. Bobby waited without interrupting him. The wounds Sin inflicted so long ago were far from healed. “When I created life and love, he saw only weakness and waste. He wanted the living creatures in every world to suffer to prove their worth and loyalty. He wanted them to fear, to worship, to die for him if he asked it of them. I would not allow it. He tried to change me, to bend my will to his own but would not. He darkened then, hate festered inside him, poisoning him. He hid it well, or perhaps I refused to see it, the result is the same.

  “Once I realized I could not save him I banished him. I was too weak to kill him. I should have, it would have saved a great deal of suffering if I did. I could not bring myself to do it. I loved him and I let that cloud my judgement. As I have said, love is very powerful.

  “Sin wanted power, he wanted a world of his own and creatures to lord over. I gave it to him, I let him create his Hell and I sentenced those of the same mind as his to an eternity in his keep. I did not know then how vile a world he intended to create, or the atrocities to be committed there. If I had, I would never have allowed it. It is because of me that Hell exists, and it is because of me that so many suffer at my brother’s hand.”

  Gordon paused, closing his shame filled eyes, taking a long, deep breath to calm himself before opening them again. Tears streamed down his weathered cheeks, into his beard and onto his trembling lips. “Not killing him was my greatest mistake,” He confessed. “Not killing Sin is my greatest regret. Not a moment of time passes where it does not haunt me, when it does not agonize me.”

  Bobby saw the pain he spoke of and realized, for the first time, that God was more like him than he imagined. He loved, laughed, cried, made mistakes and hated Himself for them. The Reaper pitied the weeping old man before him, forgetting the anger he’d harbored for so long. “It’s okay Gordon, people make mistakes. You can’t choose your family and they’re usually the ones who burn you the most, I’m talking flamethrower to the junk kinda burns ya’know. Sin, Satan, whatever the fuck you want to call him, his choices are not yours and his sins aren’t either. He turned evil and he used that big old heart of yours against you. But now you know who you’re dealing with, right? Now it’s your turn to do what you have to do to make things right.”

  Gordon smiled despite his tears, “Thank you. You are quiet the wordsmith.”

  Bobby accepted the compliment with a nod.

  “There’s more.” Gordon went on once he had Bobby’s attention, “Forgiveness, I thought it a trick of my own creation. I thought all those who failed to live life well would seek the escape of its promise, that they would embrace the gift of unconditional mercy, but I was wrong. Many refuse it, either to punish themselves or to turn their back on me one last time. I feel for those poor souls most of all, for what must have happened to them to breed such hate. When a life ends, Sin and I agreed to each send an agent to determine the fate of the soul. One thousand Angels and one thousand Reapers were assigned to each world. Each was to carry a weapon, created by my hand and by his, the sword and the scythe. They were never to be duplicated, and the ranks of our champions never to be increased.”

  “That’s the fly in the ointment right there!” Bobby cried. “That sicko is banging out Reapers and scythes like they’re going out of style.”

  “Yes, Maria told me,” Gordon said, shaking his head.

  “And?” Bobby asked, expecting a big eureka moment.

  He got some bad news instead. “Sin wants it all. He means to turn every world into a different version of Hell, to recreate every existence in the image of his own.”

  “Can he?” Bobby asked, realizing the pile of shit he stepped in was a lot deeper than he first thought, like Grand Canyon deep.

  “If he has built an army large enough, and if he finds a way to unleash it, then yes, it might be possible.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs Gordo.”

  “Can he?” Maria asked, her delicate hands wrestling anxiously in her lap.

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said exactly what none of them wanted to hear.

  “You don’t know?” Bobby reacted. “You’re God, how can you not know? Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”

  “I can’t see into his world…into Hell. It is the only place I can’t, it was part of the pact.”

  “Poor fucking planning Gordo! Poor fu
cking planning!” Bobby was shouting and his temper was rising.

  “It can’t be changed,” God replied calmly.

  “Why not? The fucking pact is broken!” Bobby roared, wanting Him to step up, willing Him to forget the rules, and do unto his brother as his brother had done unto him.

  “If I do, I will give him exactly what he wants, what he needs, an excuse,” Gordon explained. “He will lay the blame at my feet.”

  “This isn’t Judge Judy bro! You can’t worry about who started it or who did what, when and how. This prick is determined on taking you out! You gotta react! You gotta forget about being a good guy for a minute, roll up on that fool, balls out and guns blazing!”

  “Stop!” Maria screamed, her face twisted in fear and shame. “Bobby stop!”

  Bobby realized at some point he’d gotten to his feet and was now standing over the old fisherman with his scythe in both hands, ready to kill. “Oh shit…I…sorry Gordon. I…I…this has me all messed up in the head.”

  God smiled, his eyes held free of fear and contempt. “You are right Robert,” he whispered.

  “What?” Maria’s head spun, inside and out.

  “He is,” Gordon replied, patting her knee softly. “I should wage war. I should drag him to Yoba and destroy him but I fear that if I try and fail then all of my creations, my children, will pay the price.”

  God has self-confidence issues! What the fuck?

  “Fail? You’re God.”

  “I have not seen him since I banished him, which was an eternity ago by your measure,” Gordon replied. “I believe, fueled by his hate and greed, he has grown stronger. He could be more powerful than I am by now.”

  Bobby felt like an innocent little kid a moment after his love of Christmas, secrets and candy canes, jolly fat red-suited magic strangers and flying reindeer, was shattered by the merciless, cruelty of an underachieving bully intent on making everyone feel as shitty as he does. “But you’re God,” Bobby whispered as the weight of it settled.