Soul Hostage

by Jeffrey Littorno

  “Sorry if I’m a little off balance right now. I just got the news I’m dead,” I tried to sound casual but was not completely successful. After a minute, I said, “Okay, Louis, I’m ready to listen to whatever you want to tell me.”

  He smiled and said, “I thought hearing from Joseph might bring you back and help you to process all of this new information. I brought him back to keep you grounded. Even a voice which is solely a product of your imagination might help. In fact, imagination may be the very thing which keeps us sane,” Louis paused for a moment as if enjoying his deep insight. “As I was saying, the maintenance of evil in the world is a huge undertaking and requires a multitude of personnel. Each of us is focused upon a single task without knowledge regarding those involved in other tasks. I am therefore authorized to offer you a position as an entry agent.”

  Louis seemed amused by the blank expression I gave in response. “Don’t worry you already know much of what is expected in this area. You see, I am an entry agent. Should you agree to take on this position, you would be handling cases in such a manner as to determine the placement of new arrivals.”

  I was suddenly aware of Joey standing next to me as he said, “Lou, I thought you were gonna give it straight. How about you repeat that in English?”

  Louis chuckled. “Of course, I can, Joseph. To put it simply, the job is to bring in new arrivals and decide if they will be staying here or going on to that ‘other’ place.” He gave a sour look as his long fingers made air quotes at “other”.

  “How would I decide?” I asked.

  “I am truly glad you asked, Thomas. Besides posing an excellent question, you cut right to the heart of the job.” Once again Louis beamed with fatherly pride. “Think back on our own journey together. You made plenty choices which helped to guided my decision as to where you should be placed. I am sure you must be able to re-member some of them.”

  My blank expression returned but was suddenly swept away by a memory. “I remember the first time we were alone together … I mean without Joey around … you said his lack of control could get me into a world of trouble. You said I should just take off and leave him.”

  “Excellent example! This is just what I mean! You made a choice at this juncture to continue along the path you were following. There were many such scenarios during our time together. I simply made note of you be-havior at these junctures, these crossroads, in order to confirm your proper placement. All along the way, you made choices which effectively sealed your fate. Even after we had arrived in San Pietro, you had the option of simply walking out of the house, getting in the car, and driving away. You wrestled with this decision as I recall.”

  “Yes, I did. But then again, it turned out you had the keys, remember? So I really never had a choice,” I challenged.

  “Of course, you had a choice. The freedom to choose and exert your free will is central to everything. Why else do you think I returned the car keys to you?” He paused to let me answer. When I could not, he continued, “You will soon learn freely-made choices are the only windows into a person’s true being, spirit, soul, or whatever you want to call it. Most people will follow directions when they are told how to behave. However, it is in those times when no clear instructions or guidelines are provided and a course of action must be chosen that one gets the clearest glimpse of a person’s true nature. Excluding those suffering from some legitimate psychological incapacity, everyone knows right from wrong. Of course, this does not mean everyone always chooses to do the right thing.”

  I couldn’t help but to smile as I asked, “Of course, people don’t always make the right choice, but they try. You may believe I decided to do the wrong thing, but what if I made the decision for the right reasons?”

  “This sounds interesting,” Louis commented with obvious pleasure. “Please, Thomas, enlighten me as to the possible right reasons for choosing to do wrong.”

  “You never considered the reason I chose not to leave might have been out of loyalty?” I glanced over at Joey and was nearly blinded by his bright, wide grin. “I think loyalty to a friend might qualify as a good reason to do something”

  Louis smiled and said, “Interesting. You are correct in that I did not consider your choices might be the product of loyalty. Of course, you and Joey have a unique friendship. ‘To thine ownself be true’ I suppose.”

  “Well, I’m not sure about anything like that, but I figure Joey is my friend and I should stand by him. And…well…I know it sounds silly to you, but I thought that since I promised to help you I should keep my word. Seems like a pretty honorable reason for not taking off.” I watched Louis to see if he was buying anything I had said.

  He was still and had a sort of faraway expression for a moment. Then as if he could no longer contain himself, he threw his head back and let out a roar of laughter. “Loyalty and honor! Are you going to use loyalty and honor as the reasons for not ending your participation in such an underhanded plot? This is absolutely delightful! Louis and Joey shared a long laugh.

  “Well, I am glad you find it so amusing,” I snapped back. “My point is that a person’s reasons for doing something or not doing something might not always be as obvious as they seem.”

  At once, Louis stopped laughing. His expression became serious, and he said, “I am afraid you are entirely mistaken on that point, Thomas.” His mouth curled into a smirk as he continued, “People enjoy thinking of themselves as complex creatures with an assortment of intertwined emotions and motivations. Horse shit! In almost every single case, the most obvious motive is the correct one.”

  “So much for Freud and all the rest of the guys who spent their lives studying the reasons people do the things they do,” I muttered. “Sounds like you got everything all figured out.”

  Stoaffer looked at me trying to decide whether to be angry or amused. He decided upon amused and said, “You may find this difficult to believe, but I once felt the same way you do. I began this job determined to explore the intricacies of the human condition. However, experience has taught me a couple of things. First, there really isn’t much more than meets the eye when it comes to human behavior. Second, what meets the eye in most cases involves sex, power, revenge, or some combination of the three. I suppose this is what interested me about your case. I apologize for all the theatrics and misdirection, but it was really the only means by which I could keep you engaged. You truly are a unique specimen. I have to admit I got a bit carried away on the backstory with all the betrayal and the idea of seeking revenge and the camaraderie of planning a caper.” He looked closely at me with those cold, yellow eyes without moving for a long time before suddenly jerking his head up and saying, “I would love nothing more than to discuss this further after you have experienced a case of your own.”

  I started to ask a question but stopped myself. Sometimes in life… or even in death, there are moments when you do not know enough to ask a question. This was one of those times.

  “I hope you’re ready to get started,” he said and without waiting for an answer walked out of the room.

  Joey grinned at me as he trotted after Lou.

  I followed them to a new career in soul collection and placement. There were many further discussions between Louis and me in the following days.

  Look for Stone Cold by Jeffrey Littorno coming soon!

  Chapter 1

  The grimy fingers poked slowly into the skin of the stomach. At first, the skin pushed in and then popped back out. I smiled at the thought of that little doughboy in the old commercials. But then as I lifted my head and looked down at my stomach, the fingers began digging more quickly and with more purpose. They became more like claws and then the skin was broken. Blood seeped out around the fingers until they were splashing in it. In just seconds, the contents of my body were being pulled out. Long, bloody tubes of flesh and darker-colored organs left my body.

  The horror of what was happening suddenly struck me, and I opened my mouth to scream. Despite my efforts, no
sound came from me. Considering organs such as my lungs had been removed, the inability to scream should not have come as a surprise. The struggle to force sound from my ravaged body always woke me.

  Like everybody else these days, the first thing I did when I woke up was check my temperature. Of course, I simply put my palm on my cheeks and forehead to check. Lots of people use thermometers to get an accurate reading. Seems a bit anal to me, forgive the pun. Sure, a perfect ninety-eight point six is great. But as far as I know, it does not make a damn bit of difference what your body temperature is as long as you are giving off some heat. Something to do with metabolism. Anyway, a touch of my cheek proved I was warm and still alive, which is always a wonderful thing to know.

  A world where you can not tell whether you are alive or dead without checking must sound pretty weird. No disagreement there. The strange truth is in this world every place where lots of people are gathered at least some of them are stone cold dead.

  I forced myself out of bed with the violent images still fresh in my head. Even in a world where things seem to be headed into the proverbial toilet, a bad dream does not count as an acceptable reason for staying in bed.

  Something in my worn-looking face in the bathroom mirror brought up memories of past mornings. Those were mornings before the colds started. Those were mornings when Bonnie was still alive.

  For the past six years, I had been working as a newspaper reporter for the Marin Gazette. The Gazettette was not big as far as newspapers go but it had a good reputation for publishing straight-forward, factual stories without a whole lot of political bias.

  Before starting at the paper, I taught English at a Northern California high school. Why does someone make such a career change? The truth is some people are simply not cutout to be teachers.

  One might think my job gave me greater insight into the problems of the world. One might think access to all the details of events, the figures, photos and percentages gave me the means to recognize the problem quickly. One might think a whole lot of stuff, but it is a load of crap. Anyone with half a brain should have seen things were getting bad just by taking a look around. The incidents of random, unprovoked attacks skyrocketed within a few weeks. Cases involving cannibalism suddenly became regular stories in the news. The number of doomsday prophets as well as their devout followers shot up overnight. To miss all of these signs, people had to commit themselves to ignorant bliss. I am not trying to sound all high and mighty. Given the choice, I might have chosen ignorant bliss myself. However, I was not given the choice. My job was to face the truth and bring this truth to others. Not much room for looking the other way and preserving the illusion of a bright, happy world.

  Looking back on it with some time in between, I can see the first sign of things heading off the rails came to Northern California with an unusually large number of colds. All of a sudden, everyone had a cold. Everywhere people were sneezing, wiping noses, hacking up phlegm, and/or complaining about feeling lousy.

  I had somehow managed to escape the epidemic of colds. My wife, Bonnie, was not quite as lucky. I remember giving her a bad time about letting a little cold knock her off her feet. It seemed a small thing at the time to give her a bad time about letting a little cold knock her off her feet. Now this is one of about a million things I regret.

  Despite my best efforts, the memories of that morning took over my thoughts once again.

  “It’s nearly seven,” I said when I saw Bonnie shuffling to the kitchen table still in her pajamas. “I don’t think Principal Thomas will approve of you teaching in your pajamas! Even if you are his favorite math teacher.”

  My mention of Principal Thomas brought a flash of anger to Bonnie’s eyes. She started to say something but suddenly stopped, took a deep breath, and said. “I don’t know that I am anyone’s favorite teacher, but I already called in sick.” She looked at me for a moment before turning toward the refrigerator.

  If I was not feeling like enough of a jerk already, Bonnie sealed it by pouring me a large glass of orange juice and setting it on the table in front of me. “You ought to drink this. Maybe some vitamin C will keep you from getting knocked out by this cold.”

  I looked at the glass and said, “No time. I have an interview with one of the victims of the attacks at the airport.”

  If Bonnie said anything, I did not hear it as I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door of the apartment.

  My light brown Jeep was parked in the building’s big ground-level garage. I noticed many of the parking spaces were still filled. Typically, when I left home during the week, the lot was nearly empty.

  Once out of the garage, I noticed the traffic was much lighter than usual. In fact, it was the fewest cars on the road I could remember seeing. I certainly could not complain. The drive over the Golden Gate Bridge was painless without the normal stop-and-go traffic. In fact, the entire trip to the airport was smooth sailing.

  My interview with Jerry Clark was scheduled for nine thirty. But thanks to the exceptional traffic conditions and a surprising availability of parking spaces, I arrived just before nine. Of course, I put the extra time to good use by grabbing a table in the brightly-decorated coffee shop near the airport’s entrance. My happiness at being able to find a table in the shop was quickly tempered by the realization that there were a number of empty tables this morning.

  I sat down in a bright orange chair and pulled some index cards from my briefcase and started going over the notes I had taken about the attacks at the airport. Clark was a customs agent at the gate where the assaults took place. On the afternoon before, a flight from Europe had landed and begun unloading. As was normal, the just-arrived passengers were directed toward the customs booths and stood in long lines waiting to be screened and declare any goods from overseas. Nothing was out of the ordinary until the screaming started.

  I was looking out at the quiet, nearly-deserted airport trying to imagine the long lines of passengers when the waitress arrived. She was a young Asian woman with long black hair and a bright smile, but her eyes gave lie to the sincerity of her expression. “Good morning! What can I get for you today?”

  “Oh, just a cup of coffee, please. I’m meeting someone here.”

  The waitress did her best to appear interested in the reason for my visit to the airport.

  “Be right back with you coffee,” she said and smiled.

  I turned my attention back to my notes and began jotting down questions to ask Jerry Clark.

  Did you notice anything unusual before you heard the screams? How long after the screams did you reach the victim? Can you describe what you saw? The theory is that the attacks were the result of some sort of mass psychosis brought on by the long flight. What is your opinion of that?

  By the time I had finished the questions and a cup of coffee, it was after nine thirty.

  Given the scarcity of customers, I received extra attention from the waitress who returned to refill my bright orange coffee mug and ask if I wanted anything else. “No thanks. But maybe you will let me ask you some questions,” I tried to sound like a professional reporter rather than some guy hitting on a waitress in an airport coffee shop.

  Her giggle and shy manner showed that I

  had not succeeded. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “My name is Kevin Turner, and I’m a reporter for the Marin Gazette. I am supposed to meet a customs agent… Jerry Clark to ask him about what happened yesterday afternoon…you know…about the attacks.” Her expression showed that she did know about the attacks.

  The giggles and the shyness instantly disappeared. “Yes, I saw some really weird people running around right after I heard the screaming. But I don’t know exactly what happened.” It was obvious that she did not like remembering what she was being asked to remember.

  “Okay, thanks anyway. Hopefully, Mister Clark will have some idea of what happened.” She nodded and smiled and looked grateful to be away from me.

  It was now nearly ten o’clock, and
I decided to head over to the customs area to see if I could locate my missing interviewee.

  After talking to one of the few agents standing around in the area, I learned that Jerry Clark had called in sick that morning. Another victim of the cold that was going around. Judging by the number of airport employees I saw sneezing and blowing their noses, the ailment was indeed widespread and travelling quickly.

  For some reason, I wondered if it was a chicken and egg kind of thing. Was the cold widespread and lots of people got it or did lots of people have it and so the cold became widespread. The question needed no answer since it had no effect on the results.

  As I was looking around trying to decide what to do next, I saw the answer in a pair of large security guards heading into a door with a black plastic sign above it that read “Employee Break Room, Authorized Personnel Only”. Not being one to be discouraged by black plastic signs, I glanced around and then marched right through the door.

  Once on the other side, I found myself in a large room with white folding tables and chairs. There were a few others in the room aside from the security guards who were standing in front of a large coffee urn on a table against the far wall. They were turned away from me as I walked up to them. Each of them had to be at least three fifty and stand over six feet tall.