Connor cleared his throat. “How about a bet where you don’t put any money on the table?”
“What?” The boy stared at him, suspiciously.
Connor grinned. “I’ll bet fifty bucks, against your soul, that your team rallies and cuts the lead down by at least ten before the end of the game.”
“My soul? What the hell does that mean?”
Connor shrugged. “Effectively? Nothing. If you win, I pay you fifty bucks, straight up. If I win, all you have to do is write your name down in this notebook.”
Connor pulled a pen out of his pocket and scrawled, “Souls Collected” over the top of the first page.
“And?”
“And nothing.” Connor stuck the pen back into his pocket.
“Hey, wait a second.” One of the other drunk high schoolers scooted a little closer to Connor and his mark. “You’re willing to put fifty bucks down, against nothing?”
“Not nothing,” Connor countered. “Fifty bucks against your soul.”
“Hell, I’m in!” The new mark chuckled.
“Hey! He was talking to me, first!” the old mark growled.
“Relax, boys.” Connor laughed. “There’s enough for both of you.” He glanced at the wad of money, thoughtfully. “Only, don’t tell anyone else, huh?”
***
Back at home, Connor tossed the notebook, with its two new names, onto his table, and sank into his chair, sorting through the wad of cash.
That last bet, the one for the souls, he knew he shouldn’t have done that. He’d won, and it hadn’t done anything for him. Well, nothing but the thrill. His heart still raced at the memory, having so much on the line . . . true, it was only a hundred dollars, he’d had much bigger bets than that, but it was a hundred dollars that he needed in order to keep from dying.
Speaking of which, it was time to find a poker game. His usual haunts wouldn’t do. He owed too many people to show his face. He needed a new game with people who didn’t know his face, and he knew just the pawnshop to stop in to find one of those.
Peeling off his sweat-stained shirt, Connor headed to the bedroom and grabbed an old button out of his mostly bare closet. After some consideration, Connor tore off the fake finger. Sometimes it paid to have people know just how desperate you were.
Connor folded his pile of cash into his wallet, intentionally putting twenties on the outside of a wad composed mostly of ones, and headed for the door. He paused before reaching it and headed back to the table to grab the notebook. After all, it was better to have it and not need it . . .
***
Hope Eternal and Diamond Bishop were neck and neck up to the last turn. If anything, Diamond Bishop gained a few inches from his inside position.
Then he stumbled. It wasn’t much of a stumble, just a short hop, like he’d stepped on something hot or sharp, but in a horse race, that’s all it takes.
Hope Eternal surged across the finish line, head and shoulders in front of Diamond Bishop.
Connor cursed and tossed his ticket on the ground in frustration. He’d had better days. To be fair, he’d had worse days, too. All told, he was only a thousand down from when he started, which put him at about three thousand total. Three thousand in six and a half days was a lot better than he’d done for a long time, but it wasn’t where he needed to be.
Turning away from the monitor that provided a slow motion replay of the end of the race, the compulsive gambler scanned the board. He passed over a few familiar names that he’d once considered lucky. He stopped suddenly on an unfamiliar moniker.
“Soul Collector?”
“Oh, don’t bother with that one,” a man standing a few feet away advised. “The lineage is alright, but the racing gene must’ve skipped a generation.”
Connor glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah. Thanks for the advice.”
There was no way he was listening, though. The name was too perfect, too obvious. The dream the other day, it had been a sign! Connor looked down at the notebook he was still carrying. He only had two names in it, but that didn’t matter. It had been about the race.
Connor headed to the front counter, dropping the notebook in the trash on his way, and peeling off the hundred dollar bills that made up the bulk of his earnings. “Twenty eight hundred dollars on Soul Collector.”
A few seconds to document the transaction, and Connor walked away with a ticket clenched firmly in hand and a knowing smile on his face. At twenty to one, this single bet would give him the cash he needed to buy the most precious commodity in the world: time. He’d have months. Hell, the bastard might give him a year.
Connor tossed a couple bucks to a vendor for a bottle of beer and waited, breathless, for his race.
It didn’t take long to start.
And it didn’t take long for Connor to realize just how much of a mistake he’d made.
Soul Collector was at the back of the pack almost immediately and lost ground all the way to the end of the race.
Connor stared, bewildered at the screen, ticket still clenched in his hand.
Behind him a familiar voice whispered, “Told you so.” Connor realized, with a start, that the voice was familiar, not only from a few moments before, but from a conversation he’d had days ago. A conversation he thought had only taken place inside his head.
Connor whirled around, but the speaker was nowhere to be seen.
“Son of a bitch.” Connor pulled his remaining cash out of his wallet and flipped through it. Less than a hundred dollars. So much progress, gone, in the blink of an eye he’d gone from having a vague, vain chance, to hopelessness.
He took a deep drag from his beer; then he slipped it into his pocket, so he wouldn’t get stopped by security, and headed towards the front door.
Halfway there, he stopped, a familiar blue shape catching his eye. Somehow his notebook was still at the top of the trashcan.
After a moment’s hesitation, Connor grabbed it and headed out.
Less than a hundred dollars. It had taken him the better part of a week to earn thousands and less than a day to blow everything but a little pocket change.
He pulled the beer out of his pocket and took a deep swallow.
“Hey.”
Connor glanced down. He’d almost walked by the man without noticing him. The bum was so dirty he almost blended in to the wall he was sitting against.
The older man pointed at the beer in Connor’s hand, a look of desperation in his eye.
Connor snorted and started to turn away, then stopped. “You want this?”
The man nodded, licking his lips.
“How about a trade? This bottle,” Connor held the beer forward with one hand as he pulled out the notebook with the other, “In exchange for your soul.”
The vagrant grinned, toothlessly.
***
The walk from the bar to his apartment was in the range of five miles. Connor didn’t waste the time, though. In the course of his walk, he stopped at three liquor stores, spent all but seven dollars of his remaining cash, collected five more signatures, and became so inebriated that he spent twenty minutes trying to unlock the wrong front door.
When he finally did find his way to his apartment and got in, he sobered up faster than he ever had before.
The man in the black suit was waiting for him. Sitting in his chair. Watching a television sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Well, well, I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it back at all.”
Connor opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“I hope you don’t mind. I went ahead and made myself at home. Unfortunately your TV appears to be, um, shall we say, absent, so I brought my own. I just love watching the evening news.” The man pointed at the screen.
Connor turned his attention to the television. It was muted, but on the screen he could see a young newswoman standing in front of a familiar-looking street corner. A car had crashed i
nto the side of a building, and two paramedics were moving a body bag out of the wreckage and into the waiting ambulance.
It took a few seconds for Connor to realize that the corner he was looking at was where he had met one of the bums who had traded his soul to him for a half-empty bottle of booze.
A picture of one of the drunk high schoolers from the basketball game flashed up on the screen, and Connor felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
“It’s been a hell of a night, actually.” The man in the suit grinned widely, displaying a row of pointed teeth. “One of that boy’s friends decided to get drunk and beat up on the homeless. Beat a few of them to death. Then he went and set one of them on fire. How the fire spread to him, the police aren’t quite sure.”
“You . . . killed them?”
“Collecting immortal souls, you have no problem with, but you get squeamish when the meat sack they wear gets damaged? You humans are so odd.”
“You KILLED them!”
“No, Connor.” The man’s voice was soft, but harsh. “You killed them. You picked them; you collected their names, their souls, their consent. You did.”
“But . . . but I didn’t even get enough. I only have eight.”
“One shy, and two minutes to midnight.” The man in black said, glancing down at his watch. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
“I don’t think Mr. Gruber . . .”
The man put up a finger and cocked his head.
Connor listened. Down the hall, he could hear footsteps, and voices. Familiar voices.
“Mr. Gruber is a very punctual man.”
Connor swallowed. “There’s no time.”
“No time? Oh, contraire, there is only just time enough.”
“What? To get Gruber’s soul? I don’t think he’ll--”
“Not Gruber.” The man growled. “Think about it. One soul to go, and of the two men in this room, only one,” he pointed a long finger at Connor, “has a soul left to sell.”
“Me?” Connor shook his head and backed away. “No, no, I don’t want to go to hell.”
“Do you really think you have a shot at heaven?” The man in black laughed. “In the past seven days, you’ve damned eight people. And that’s just your most immediate sins. Tell me, do you even remember the last thing you did that wasn’t worthy of damnation? Oh, you’re hellbound, my boy, no question about it. The only thing that signing that notebook does, is grant me a little finder’s fee. Oh, and it spares you whatever punishment Gruber has in store for you.”
Connor whimpered. He could hear the footsteps of two very large men -- and one very powerful man -- coming ever closer.
“Promise you won’t take me right away.”
The man in black shrugged. “I never intended to.”
Connor pulled the notebook out, opened it, and scrawled his name just under the illegible one he’d been given by a Vietnam veteran with no legs and a terrible twitch.
As he finished signing, the door swung open, and a very sweaty Mr. Gruber entered, talking quickly and nervously as he did.
“I know, I know, you don’t have enough money, but I have a deal for you, all you have to do is sign away your soul, and I . . . .” The loan shark stopped in his tracks, eyes fixed on the blue notebook in Connor’s hand.
His gaze shifted, past Connor, to the man in black. “But . . . no. He was mine. I had him; he was mine and I . . . no, please, I only need one more!”
The man in black shook his head slowly. “Ah, Gruber, so close. So very, very close. But close doesn’t seal the deal, I’m afraid. Now, unless my watch is wrong, and my watch is never, ever wrong, your year comes to an end in ten . . . nine . . . eight. . .”
“Please! There has to be something I can do for you, something I can give you. There has to be!”
“Three . . . Two . . . One.” The man in black nodded at one of the giants, then turned his back to watch Connor’s face as the two thugs leaned in, opening their broad mouths to reveal rows of jagged, sharpened teeth, which dug deep into the flesh of Mr. Gruber.
The man in black waited for the screaming to subside. “Now then. I believe there is the matter of your soul.”
Connor’s face went white.
“As promised, I am not going to collect your soul just yet. I’m going to wait for, oh, let’s say, one year. Well, a few seconds shy of one year. I’m big on the whole ‘midnight’ thing. So, here it is: you have until one year from now, midnight, to fill that little notebook up with souls. One soul per line, for a total of, if I’m not mistaken, and I never am, one thousand, eight hundred and fifty two souls. I know, I know. The notebook doesn’t look that big. Well, it is. If you fill it, completely fill it, I’ll give you your own soul back. But, if you don’t, if you’re even one shy, I get every soul in there, and I keep yours.”
“But . . . but I can’t . . .”
“Can’t never could, my boy. Can’t never could. Just think of it as a bet. The biggest bet you’ve ever made.”
***
Return to Table of Contents
Last Day on Earth
Erin had to admit, the man across the table from her didn’t look dangerous. Of course, a great many people said exactly the same thing about a great many sociopaths and psychopaths, only to be proven wrong. But Erin had met a lot of killers in her life, hundreds, if not thousands, in fact, and this man did not strike her as violent in the least.
The night before, looking over the court case that had put him in prison, she’d thought that the evidence seemed a bit circumstantial, and now, having met him, her doubts became even more pronounced.
Terrence Quail, as he identified himself, or John Doe, as the courts had dubbed him, stared through Erin, his eyes seeming to examine an invisible landscape as he tapped arrhythmically on the table in front of him, as though pounding equations into a calculator. If she didn’t know who he was, Erin would have assumed him to be a professor, or some eccentric. He was, of course, insane. If the fantastic history he’d given was not sufficient proof of his madness, then his behavior during the trial made up the difference. Instead of mounting any kind of defense, he’d spent his time querying the judge about the legal system and taking extensive notes on the clothing and speech patterns of everyone who appeared.
Terrence’s eyes flickered suddenly and focused on Erin. “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”
“I was explaining about my book,” she pressed, gently.
“Oh. Yes. The last words thing. I remember.”
“So, did you have anything you wanted to say?”
Terrence blinked. “About what?”
“Well, some of the men I talked with apologized to their victims. Others reasserted their innocence.”
“I am innocent,” Terrence replied with a shrug, “but that isn’t something I feel the need to belabor. It’s not like telling you will change anything.”
“True.”
Terrence thought for a moment, “I suppose, if there is anything I’d like to say before I go, it’s that your legal system is awful. Just awful. I mean, the entire system, top to bottom and all the way across is such a mess.”
“You’re referring to your trial?”
“That is a prime example, but from what I’ve been able to learn, the whole thing is just ridiculous.”
“There are some people who might argue that you’re as much to blame as anyone,” Erin answered. “After all, you didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“And I take issue with the assumption that I should have,” the small man argued. “In a simpler legal system, one might make the argument that having two parties argue over the facts in front of an impartial jury makes sense, but in a legal system as impossibly complex as yours, where evidence can be disallowed and where the opinions of experts can be bought and paid for, you cannot ever assume that the two sides will be operating on equal ground. You have a system where, essentially, the search for truth is laid at the fe
et of the people who have the least knowledge of obfuscation and politics, and have put two ambitious and greedy men to arguing over details and trying to use passion where their logic is weak.”
Erin nodded, pushing her recorder a little closer to her interviewee. For a crazy man, he came across with surprising coherence.
“But it isn’t even the courtroom that is the most broken,” Terrence went on. “Never mind the police, who used lies and overt intimidation in an attempt to extract a confession from me. The jail system is, by far, the most unreasonable arrangement I’ve ever seen. One would think that some effort would be put into rehabilitation, if only for those who are expected to one day rejoin society, instead criminals of all personality types are lumped together and treated like animals. They spend years in a sub-sect of society where antisocial behavior is rewarded. This place creates and trains criminals.”
“What would you change, if you could?”
Terrence considered the question for a moment. “I can’t really answer that question. I have a hard time imagining any changes that wouldn’t make things better.”
“I see.” Erin glanced at the clock on the wall. They were running low on time, and Terrence looked like he was about to fade back into his own private world. “How has prison been for you?”
“Boring, mostly. I’ve been able to observe quite a bit, but my direct interactions with other inmates, or even guards, have been rather limited.”
“You seem to have developed an interest in body art in your time here.” She pointed at his bare arms as she spoke. His tattooing was unique, quite different than most prison art, consisting primarily of artistically drawn equations and what looked to be graphs.
Terrence made a face. “A necessary evil. I started out doing my work on paper, but one of the guards seemed to take offense, something about me thinking I was smarter than him. He took to tossing my cell and confiscating everything with writing on it.”
“And the scars?” Erin pointed at the dense lines of flesh that traveled up the convict’s neck and over the top of his head, then down to the lines running down his arms, all the way to his fingers. “Are those your first attempts at tattooing yourself?”