Chapter 5: Hello Soul, Goodbye Sanity

"Why haven't you taken this girl yet?" Dennis asked, tapping his foot as he stood in front of Jack with his hands on his hips. "Is she too tough for you, Jackie-boy?" he said mockingly.

"I'll do it. I just need time." You little prick, Jack added to himself.

"Time?" Dennis laughed. "Well, bucko, time is just what you'll have. See, word from downstairs is this: You screwed up big time. You need punishment."

"Punishment?" Now it was Jack's turn to laugh. "What could you do to me that I haven't already done to myself? You can't send me to the Corridors. That was part of my deal. The Boss doesn't break his own contracts. So tell me, Dennis the Great," He leaned in close to the other man's face. "What could you do to me?"

"Jack, Jack, Jack…" Dennis chuckled. "You said you needed time? Well," he lifted his hands and placed them on either side of Jack's head. "Time is what I'll give you."

The scream that was torn from Jack's lips was like nothing that had ever been heard before. It was the sound of true punishment. It was the sound of life being given back to a body after decades of not feeling. It was the sound of 70 years of bringing death and torment to hundreds upon hundreds of people, both innocent and guilty.

Dennis removed his hands and smiled as Jack fell to the floor in a heap. He looked down at the boy, with his blue eyes now swimming with tears of pain and guilt and misery.

Go me, he thought. Job well done.

"Well Jack, you take care. Oh, and just so you know, you can try to kill yourself…" He patted him on the back. "But it won't help. You can't die pal! Now you got plenty of time to kill this girl. And when you do that, well, the Boss said he'd think about a new contract."

With that, Dennis raised his hands and was consumed by a tunnel of flame.

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When Dennis was gone, Jack did something he hadn't done since he was a child. He cried. His body was racked with sobs. The voices, the screams, the faces of the men, women, and children he killed or had made someone kill were with him. For nearly 70 years, he had killed. It was a job. Nothing personal, just a job.

"Just a job?" a little green-eyed girl with red curls circled him. "Just a job? You killed me! I was a child and you took my life from me!"

A blonde man stood in front of him and laughed. "Welcome to hell buddy! Nice to see ya again."

"Come now Monsieur Dodge. Don't be bitter," the beautiful brunette said as she ran a hand down Dodge's arm. She knelt and stretched out a hand to brush a tear from Jack's face.

"Dominique?" He closed his eyes as the memory screamed into his head. The ship, the flames. Bodies burning. He gagged.

"Bonjour l'amor." She smiled at him. "Do you know what you are now Jack? No?" She giggled.

"You are dans enfer. In Hell, just like all of us." She stood up and placed a delicate hand on the little girl's head.

"No! I was just doing a job! I couldn't go back…" Jack drew his knees to his body and put his hands over his ears, but still he heard the cries of despair.

"Remember me sir?" A young boy, maybe 12, stood before him. Beside him stood a child of 6.

"You told me that you would give me food and a home. All I had to do was get rid of her." He nodded to the little girl beside him.

"So I did, and what did you do? You killed me. All I wanted was a home!"

"And don't forget us Jack." A beautiful woman with honey blonde hair and a woman with raven black hair took their place before him.

"We were just making money the only way we could. You liked our skills. Six times wasn't it? Before you decided to make us eternally damned?" the blonde said.

"Seven. You weren't in on one of them." The dark haired girl said.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Jack screamed.

Memories of all the things he had done, or made other people do so that he could keep their souls, came flooding back. He got up and raced out the door, trying to leave the spirits behind him.

He ran down the hall of the motel. As he started around the corner, an arm shot out an clothes-lined him.

"Ouch. Shit. That had to've hurt."

As Jack tried to clear his head, he looked up, and saw the face of Jason Munder staring back at him.

Munder smiled and laughed. He tucked a lock of dark brown hair behind his ear.

"What? No hello? No 'sorry about that whole having you squashed like a rotten tomato thing'? Yeah, that hurt by the way."

"You are not here. None of you are really here!" Jack got up and ran out the motel door and out into the rain.

"Well, I think that went well." Munder said as Dodge appeared beside him.

"You gonna follow him?" Dodge asked.

"Don't see why I should. Why don't some of the older ones go after him?"

"Because…" In honesty, Dodge didn't know either. "Are you going?"

Munder sighed. "I'll shoot you for it," he said holding out a fist indicating a game of paper, rock, scissors.

They played, and Dodge dropped his balled up fist on top of Munder's 'scissors' and laughed.

"Have fun," he said as he slapped Munder on the shoulder and disappeared.

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Ok. The guy that you have been having intense dreams about is over 90 years old. Ewww. And you kissed him. A lot. I think therapy will be in your future.

How was he in her dreams before she met him. Holy shit. Maybe Gloria's whole paranormal thing actually has some substance.

It was past midnight. She sat alone in her kitchen drinking coffee from a purple mug that said "Rabbi: It's a heavenly job" on the side of it. She had picked it up at some store or another because it appealed to her since of humor.

She listened to the rain and thought.

Is that why he had turned around this morning? Why he had left in such a hurry last night? Last night. Oh God.

She scrubbed her hands through the thick mass of wild red curls.

What if I had slept with him? I mean, the fact that he looks maybe 24 doesn't discount the fact that he's 90! Which means that he's got some sort of evil power, right? I mean, being around just before one tragedy is coincidence. But two…and that's only the two that Gloria's friend had photographic evidence of.

A knock on her door jogged her out of her thoughts.

She went to the front door and unlocked it, thinking it was Deb. She opened it and spun to go back to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, "You're out late Deb. Date go bad?"

"Natalia."

She froze where she was. The hair on her arms and neck stood on end. Her heart sped up and she wanted to believe it was just from fear, not from the sound of that pleading voice.

Slowly, she turned to face him. He stood outside in the rain. She started backing away slowly.

"You stay the hell away from me." She said. "I know who you are. Sort of. Well, I know that you are a hell of a lot older than you look. Just stay away from me."

"Nattie, please." His voice broke. "I promise, I won't come in if you don't want me to. But please…don't leave me alone."

She looked closer at him then. His eyes were red and swollen and wet with tears, not rain. They radiated like a silvery blue light. Against her better judgment, she walked back to the open door.

"You tell me one good reason why I should even consider not calling the police." She raised her chin.

"I can't." Jack lowered his gaze and closed his eyes. There were bodies floating before him. Dismembered, bloated bodies with dead, staring eyes. He shook his head as Munder appeared beside him.

"HEY! There you are! I was wondering-"

Jack fell to his knees. "Leave me alone!"

"Are you ok?"

Munder whistled in appreciation. "Damn. That was your assignment? And you couldn't bone that? Funny world iddin it?"

Jack put his hands over his ears and began to rock. "It was just a job. JUST A JOB!" He screamed.

"You don't think I'm going to fall for that, do you?" Nattie asked, hesitantly. The man was bowed over on her front stoop. She couldn't just leave him there, right? "Ferriman?"

He spoke to himself, rocking and holding his ears.

What are you doing, you idiot! Nattie scolded herself as she ran outside and grabbed his shoulders. "Jack? Jack? Come on."

She helped him up out of the rain and into her house.

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"Drink this." She shoved a coffee cup into his hands.

"I'll be back in just a second. I'm going to get you a towel."

He nodded, his teeth chattering together. He took a drink of the strong coffee and burned his tongue. The cat…Lorien, he remembered, was watching him closely from a nearby chair, as if wondering why in the name of God there was a man dripping water all over her floors and drinking from her human's coffee cup.

"Here." Nattie came down the stairs carrying a thick blue towel, a pair of boxers, and a multi-colored fuzzy blanket.

"The boxers are from one of Deb's…friends. But they should work as far as size goes."

She went to him and dried off his face, then ran the towel over his hair. He stood there, watching her. He looked nothing like the guy she had gone out with such a short time ago. He looked defeated. His eyes were still wet from tears threatening to fall.

Without thinking, she slid his flannel shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. She dropped it to the floor where it landed with a wet plop. She took the hem of his white t-shirt, now completely soaked, and pulled it over his head. She added that to the pile on the floor. She ran the towel over his shoulders and chest before it dawned on her that this was like holding a steak in front of a starving man. She cleared her throat.

"Get out of those wet clothes and then you have to talk to me. Deal?"

When he just nodded, she handed him the towel and the blanket and went to the living room.

When he joined her a few minutes later, he held the pile of wet clothes with one hand and held the blanket around him with the other.

"I dripped on your carpet." He said, nodding toward the foyer.

"It's ok." She got up and took his wet clothes from him and threw them into the laundry room. When she sat back down on the couch, he was still standing in the middle of the room.

"Come sit down. You owe me a talk, remember?"

He walked over to her and sat on the edge of the couch.

"Tell me what happened. Why were you saying it was just a job? What job?"

"You won't understand." He sighed and looked at her. She was so beautiful. So good.

"Look, I know that something isn't right with you. I've seen pictures of you taken in 1938 and 1962. Unless you, your father, and your grandfather all have STRIKING resemblances, then you were there then, looking not a day older than you do now." She searched his eyes. "Make me understand."

"I died on August 2, 1933. I was 24 years old. I was vicious, and I was cruel. I did what I wanted, no matter who tried to get in my way. I killed my first person the day I died. They must've been waiting for that."

When he hesitated, she encouraged him on.

"I was taken to the Corridors--the pits of Hell. Nothing that you can learn in church can prepare you for that. I don't know how long I was there, but I was brought out by Dennis. He's an Assistant Manager. He told me that the Corporate Boss was impressed with my resume when I was alive and wanted to know if I was interested in working for them now. I didn't want to go back to the Corridors, so I said yes. The contract was drawn up. I would go around forever collecting souls and they would never send me back to the Corridors. My first job was on September 8, 1934. The luxury liner Morro Castle."

He swallowed slowly. "133 people died in a fire. I had killed the captain before I started it. Actually, to be more accurate, I had the crew start the fire. Then they commandeered the lifeboats and left the passengers to burn. I got them later though."

As he was talking, tears streaked down his face. He heard the screams of the passengers as they were engulfed in flame. He took a deep breath and swiped at the tears.

"I loved it." He sounded disgusted with himself. "I only got worse from then on. They put me on boats, well traveled bridges, whatever. Kill the people, keep their souls. I had the highest turnover rate of all of my peers." He sniffed and laughed, but there was no humor in it. "It appears that I have a way of making people trust me."

He looked at her to gauge how she was receiving this. She looked disturbed, but not necessarily afraid of him… Yet.

"You heard of the Terma Bridge? The one that fell onto the interstate in '78? That was me. Unfortunately, it wasn't my assignment. Another collector was given that job, but I did it instead. Just to piss Dennis off. I wanted it so bad. All those people…209 dead. 400 injured. But, due to the fact that it was me that did it and not the assigned collector, we couldn't keep them." The muscle in his jaw worked as he thought about his past.

"I was taken off land assignments after that and put out to sea. I had a pretty good racket out there, ya know. Not much going on out on the Bering Sea. Everything was in order but my boat got a hole in it and I picked the wrong crew to fix it. I fucked up royally and my ship got blown up.

So there was that many MORE souls we lost and management was not happy. They put me back on land, but on a single-subject basis. Kind of like probation. My next assignment was to take a single soul and make it sin so it could be kept under control. I was good at manipulating people, but this soul was going to be tricky because it was pure. It had a few little spots here and there, but nothing that we counted."

Nattie knew by the way he was looking at her that he was waiting for her to become afraid. She knew where he was going with this. Somehow, she knew.

"I started watching you. In the shadows when you were awake, then later dream-walking on you. The other day was the day I was going to take you. But something--God, I don't know what--something happened to me. I couldn't hurt you. Dennis came today and did something to me. I can hear them… the other people I've killed. I can see them… They're haunting me."

He looked at her with his blue eyes intense. "I swear Nattie. I swear I won't hurt you. But I don't want to be alone."

She believed him. She believed all of it. It was ludicrous, but she believed him. She took his face between her hands and brushed his wet hair from his forehead.

"You should get some rest." Nattie said.

"I can't sleep. They'll come. It's all I can see every time I close my eyes."

"Shhhhh… It's ok. I'll be right here. I'm not going to leave you like this."

She sat back on the couch and took the blankets from his shoulders. She gently eased him down so that his head was lying in her lap and spread the blanket over him.

She sat there, playing with his hair. Several times, he would start to fall asleep, but would wake himself up with a jump. Finally, he seemed to sleep deep enough that she was able to sleep too.

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