In Life

By Megan@Midnight

CIA Sheldon Jeffrey Sands breezed through customs like a falcon through a city street. Beauty with the look of a hunter and a scent of death, heat, and cinnamon. It was hot and dusty and bright. Sheldon considered getting out his sunglasses but he doesn't. He managed to pack them, but he can't seem to wear them. "Fuck it."

"Things to do, people to see, places to burn…" Sands smiled as he walks through the streets. "Now I lay me down to die, burn with ashes in my eyes, now I rise up from the ash, and grind these fuckmooks into dust!" Sands received a few bemused glances from the people around him, but most ignored the crazy American man in the stupid T-shirt and shorts, talking to himself. Sands loves this country. Anything you want, you can take. Well so long as you don't spill your plans to the psycho secret daughter of the guy you're trying take down. "Yeah, that was a bit of an Oops on my part." He muttered softly and laughed.

A week later there were fires in Culiacan. The palace, the square, a little restaurant and a building where a man had once had his eyes gouged out burned. The fires weren't put out for days. They burned white hot and furious. The firefighters pronounced it arson with incendiary devices. No witnesses could be found, though a few people were found shot around the areas that burned. In the restaurant one of those killed was the cook, who'd been shot three times in the chest.

Two weeks after Sands arrived in Mexico he got a phone call from The. Well, a message from The anyway listing a date, time, and place. Sands beat the man there by nearly thirty minutes. He wanted to be set up and ready for anything.

Sands mentally titled the evening in his head, 'Dining and Dialogue with El Mariachi.' After all, El was a legend and legends deserve books and movies and catchy themes and titles. And bright red tights. Sheldon snickered quietly to himself at the image of The in red tights and a Superman cape. He was still smiling when El walked in and sat across from him.


"You live."


"I do."


"It was said that a man in black died on the streets that day. The people said that man was blind, that his eyes had been torn out of his head by Barillo and that he rose up and took his revenge on the woman who betrayed him to the cartel."


Now Sands grins at El. "All true. And aren't we mister chatty today?"


"You seem very alive for a dead man."


"I got better. And I could say the same about you."


"You could."


"Want me to tell you a story, mister guitar fighter?"


"No."


"Well, too bad, cause I'm going to tell you anyway. It goes something like this. Once upon a time a little boy named Sheldon Jeffrey Sands was walking on beach. And he walked and walked and walked some more. And then he came to hole in rocks. Being a curious little boy, Sheldon decides to go in. And it's dark but he's not afraid. And he walks for a very long time in the dark. And then there's a light. And there's in this cave and little Sheldon knows that's not right. Doors don't belong in caves. So he goes in. And there's this voice and it says 'Are you lost?' and he says 'No'. But that's not where this story ends. Once upon a time in Mexico a CIA Agent named Sheldon Jeffrey Sands was trying to bring a little balance to a country. And he was betrayed, by… well, lots of people really but mostly by a woman named Ajedrez who was actually the daughter of his enemy. And in her betrayal of this man she took his eyes and left him to die. And he did. He died in the street."


"Barillo has a daughter." El tensed at that, looking worried.


Agent Sands shook his head. "No, Barillo had a daughter. I may have been dead, but I made sure she went with me. And don't interrupt. You'll ruin the story." Sands paused for a minute to recover his train of thought. "Anyway. This man, this dead man, he wanders as a ghost for a very long time. Eventually he wandered back into that cave. And the voice said 'Are you lost?' and the man said 'Yes.' And the voice found him and brought him back to life."


"Why?" Sands was mildly surprised that El didn't question the story, but then, Sands thought, he probably thought I was nuts before this.


"Because it wanted him."


"And you paid for your eyes, your life?"


"No yet."


"The price must be heavy."


"Not as heavy as being surrounded by darkness forever. I've been in the dark before, but this time I was dead. No price too high to lift that."


"When do you pay this price?"


"Payment is due very soon, and I'm always punctual." Cold smile, eyes like the bottom of the ocean.



"What price did you pay for your eyes?"


"What I had to."


"You sold your soul?"


"Maybe I sold yours, El old pal."


"Either tell me or do not."


"I'd show you, but I don't think you could see it anyway. And you called me remember."


"Do not play games with me."


"But that's the fun part of all this. I can."


"I could kill you."


Fingers of the right hand tap the table restlessly. The left hand is very still. "Maybe." Quirky smile stable on Agent Sands' lips.


"You started the fire. In Culiacan."


"Maybe. And it was fires plural."


"How many have died because of you?"


"Just me." Tiny shift of the lips. Black-chipped eyes.


El gets up and starts to leave. Sands waved at his back and said, "See you around." El Mariachi froze in his tracks. Looked back at the grinning CIA agent and left going just a bit quicker than he came in. Sands grinned after him.


Two days later he arrived at the shore. Climbing rocky shoreline different and yet very much same as Wilmington. It's barely an indentation in the rocks but a voice inside him says Stop.
"This do for you?"


Yes.


"Okay then. Get out."


Done.


And there's a rush like wind from a firestorm, burning and pain and heat and movement. And Sands is free. Free finally of the thing he's been carrying inside since he got his eyes back. Free to walk the streets and not have to listen to shadowy whispers saying "There's one. And there. And there…" every time he sees someone.


"Happy now?"


Yes.


"Why did you want to leave?" And why did you pick me?"


I didn't.


"Well, you did."


No. I am as I always was. Here.


"What about..."


I am still there. And here.


"Oh. I see."


Yes, you do.


"Why here? What do you want here?"


To find.


"Find what?"


The lost. You were found. There are so many others to find.


"Ahh. Well then, I'll leave you to it."


And Sheldon Jeffrey Sands of the CIA left his savior/burden to itself and walked back up the beach. He had a job to do after all. And this country was crying out for his kind of balance. He hoped he'd see The again. The man could be very useful if he could only get the right leverage. "And I will. I will." After he's Agent Sheldon Sands, He'd come back from the dead, anything else would be just a piece of cake.