Archive of Our Own

The sound of the bullet echoes deafeningly through the backroom of the bar, drowning out the rattling half-breath that ends my life. Darkness drops like a heavy curtain, smothering and absolute. Silence follows. Then nothing.

What feels like a second later, my eyes snap open in panic. Adrenaline must still be coursing through my body, dulling the pain I know should be there. The room is empty when I glance around, Boyd and the fucking cartel thugs nowhere in sight.

Huh, was I out that long? Just as well or they’ll kill me for real this time...

My brain stutters to a stop. I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something − but if it’s important, it’ll come back to me.

First things first though, I need to get out of the fucking duct tape. I’m lying on the dirty floor, discarded like the white trash everyone ever called me. And boy, am I gonna get them back for this!

A first squirm proves surprisingly effective, so I start shuffling for real until I’m sitting upright. The tape is somehow already off when I move; and I could have sworn it was just there, wrapping me up like a damn salami. Yet when my eyes flit down, there’s nothing taped over my mouth or around my torso. It takes entirely too long for me to realize there’s no blood on my shirt there either.

I jump up, startled out of my mind, and find myself staring down at a dead body. My dead body.

The fuck?!

How is this possible? Why am I still here? Did I do anything wrong? How can you fucking do anything wrong dying?!

I lift my hands up in front of my face and wriggle my fingers experimentally. Works fine. My feet shift too when I tell them to move but everything feels kind of detached. Like one step removed from reality.

Puzzled, I gaze back down at the corpse, lying lifeless and still, then around the room again. Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of tunnel and a bright light? Isn’t that what people coming back said when they told their story to the world?

Maybe I became aware again too quickly. Maybe I merely need to wait a little bit longer for the passage to wherever I’m going. I’m not much of a believer but I hear Boyd was preaching before I met him. Kind of like the guy with the snakes last year. Didn’t end too well for his flock back then, from what people whispered around the hollers.

“You didn’t sign up with me because it was gonna be easy,” Boyd said to me a couple days ago − a lifetime ago. No, I didn’t; and it surely wasn’t. But I figure, this is not exactly what he meant either.

To be fair, he tried to send me away earlier. Only the damn cartel guys were already at the bar with me then, and I knew this wouldn’t end well. When Boyd comes back… if he comes back, maybe he can tap into whatever all these preacher types have in common, send me on my way then.

I crouch down on the floor once more, simply because there’s nothing else to do for now. The bar on the other side of the door is dead silent; fitting really. If the thugs disposed of Boyd as well, I wonder if anyone will ever find me here. Not the ending I had in mind. Although I already made it years longer here than I would’ve back home. My dad would’ve made goddamn sure of it!

Since no-one else will, I decide to hold vigil for myself for a while.

Time creeps by at a snail’s pace and I watch a tiny, five-legged spider make its laborous way from the doorway to the worn leather sofa before it disappears underneath. There’s the faint smell of Natty Light and my thoughts are drifting aimlessly, waiting for something, anything really, to happen.

At this point, I don’t even care anymore if the light at the end of the tunnel is divine or suffused with sulphor. Anything is better than endless waiting.

Maybe the grim reaper is still pissed because Boyd cheated him out of his prize when I almost met my demise at the sharp end of the rattlers’ teeth. Looking back, life didn’t treat me kindly... but who knew death would be even more unkind?

It’s not fair!

“I wonder what the basis of your comparison is?’ The memory of the movie comes to mind unbidden, and I chuckle despite myself. It’s easily twenty years since I watched that, and I’ve no idea why I should remember it now of all things.

If I was still alive, I know I might’ve given into the childish impulse to stomp my foot. On second thought, there’s no-one here to judge the actions of the dead, so I get up and do just that. It’s ridiculous and actually kind of liberating, but it’s not nearly enough. It sparks a flame of anger deep inside me though.

I turn around the room with wild eyes and spot the chair I died on. The idea of flinging it across the closed space makes my fingers twitch, and I grab for it with pent-up energy. Only my hands pass clean through the wooden backrest. A second attempt bears the same results; and another and another and another.

My nostrils flair in frustrated anger but I can’t even throw the fucking chair against the opposite wall. It infuriates me all the more, this accursed helplessness, and I scream at the top of my no longer working lungs. I’m grateful there are no witnesses to the tears that follow.

When the trickling of salted driblets cease burning down my cheeks, I wipe them away with my dirty sleeves. I find myself sitting on the floor again with my knees pulled up to the chest, and it’s only then that I notice I’ve been leaning against the table’s legs the entire time of my meltdown. This gives me pause.

Slowly I crawl out from underneath the table top shielding me from above, carefully avoiding looking at my dead body this time, as I struggle to my feet once more. The seat of the wooden chair is right in front of me and I reach out for it uncertainly. Against all odds, my trembling fingers brush the smooth surface. The moment I try to hold onto it though, my hand slips through it again and hits the floor. There’s got to be some kind of trick to it! After all, it just worked.

Another cautious try allows me to sweep my hand over the seat, barely touching. I refrain from clutching at it now, merely moving my digits from left to right, feeling the even surface under my fingertips. When I put careful pressure on the chair again, it supports my weight for two non-existent heartbeats before giving way. It’s progress I can work with.

Crouching in front of the piece of furniture, both my hands make contact with the seat and I bite my lip in concentration as I push myself up from my knees. My hard-won composure crumples the second my nose comes within an inch of a crack in the backrest; there’s blood on the shredded wood, and I realize this is where the bullet tore through the chair after ripping through my chest.

Suddenly I’m already standing and holding onto the chair with a white-knuckled grip before tossing it to the side like a rag doll. This time, it goes flying into the wall with a satisfying crash. It doesn’t even take another ten seconds to reach for Boyd’s office chair and clash it onto the table. To my utter surprise, the damn thing is more sturdy than it looks because it only loses one leg on impact. So I reaffirm my grip and bash it down again. And again, and again, and again.

My grin is maniac and my chest heaving when the broken pieces of table and chair litter the floor around me. I’m still not done, not by a long shot. Then I spot the small mirror in the corner of the wall a few feet left of the couch and rush over to it with purpose. The sight in the mirror scares me momentarily, mainly because it shows a trashed room − and nothing else.

Truth be told, I don’t know what I expected. The ghostly half-reflection of myself? Like in the grainy photos of ghost hunters all across the country?

Before my eyes can wander to the corpse on the floor in the mirror’s distorted reality, I pull my arm back and smash the palm of my hand into the glass surface with all the force I can muster. It shatters into smithereens, none of which sting my palm or make me bleed. Unlike last time I did this, long before I came to Harlan. I might’ve needed stitches back then if my family could’ve afforded them. The scar is still marring the fleshy part of my right hand like a treasured keepsake. Maybe at this point it is.

The sound of the front door opening pulls me out of my progressively violent thoughts. Steps approach the backroom without hesitation until Boyd is standing in the doorway, staring regretfully. At first, I believe the obvious destruction made him stop in his tracks, but then I follow his gaze to my corpse.

Boyd draws close slowly, kneels down and whispers, “I’m truly sorry, Jimmy. But trust that I’ll be takin’ care of you.”

He covers the body’s closed eyes with the palm of his hand, bowing his head in deference. “Now rest.”

The kind gesture is almost like a phantom touch. For some reason, I feel calmer then, lighter somehow for someone acknowledging my violent death. I shiver as I watch Boyd pick up my lifeless form with effort.

My surroundings turn dimmer, less distinguishable, and I get caught in a moment of paralyzing fear for even losing what poor shadow consciousness I have now. When Boyd carries his burden out of the room and the backdoor closes behind him, the weightlessness increases dramatically, and slowly, I fizzle out of existence.

At last, I will rest.