A/N: GH-nope, not mine, Dickens's Christmas Carol-ditto.
Midnight
Jason was dreaming that he was trudging barefoot through a field of snow. The wind was howling and blowing the snow horizontally, directly into his exposed face. He looked down at his body, he was dressed in the flannel sleep pants and thin t-shirt he had donned prior to going to bed. His teeth were chattering as he wrapped his arms around his torso in a vain attempt to warm himself up. He couldn't feel his fingers or his toes and he couldn't see a damn thing in the howling white nothingness he was trapped within.
He was awake, the dream still real and echoing in his mind. Jason's chest was rising and falling in his agitation and he was freezing. He had tossed and turned so much, caught in the thrall of the nightmare, that he had kicked all the sheets and blankets into a bunch at the foot of the bed. Even awake, Jason continued to be chilled to the bone, he was shivering and goose bumps were raised on every inch of exposed skin. He looked wildly around the darkened room trying to determine the source of the unnatural cold which had so unceremoniously seeped into his dreams and now that he was conscious was still surrounding him.
Jason looked in amazement at the plume of white smoke that was issuing from his mouth every time he breathed out. "It's so cold!" He moaned to himself while he wrapped his arms around his body and rubbed his torso in a vain attempt to warm himself up, precisely as he had in the dream. He sat up and turned on the lamp on the night table. Blearily, he looked at the bedside clock. "Almost midnight," he intoned to himself and then spontaneously shivered, though this time it didn't feel as though it was due to the intense cold in the room.
Now that his eyes were adjusted to the light, he slowly scanned the room looking for any cause of the abnormal chilliness that pervaded it. Not surprisingly, since it was late December, there didn't appear to be an open window in the room. So, after standing up, he walked over to the nearest heat register and crouching down placed his hand over it. There wasn't any air-hot or cold-coming up at the moment, so that couldn't possibly account for the abnormal temperature.
"Morgan!" The word crackled through the frigid silence of the room, coming from somewhere behind him.
Startled, Jason whipped around. Caught off guard, he overbalanced and fell on his rear. He peered up at his uninvited visitor in complete amazement accompanied by a slight and unfamiliar twinge of superstitious terror. "You...you're…de…dead!" He tried to convince himself that it was his chattering teeth which caused the stammering rather than pure unalloyed dread.
Lorenzo Alcazar cocked his head, a powder burnt bullet hole forming a perfect circle in the center of his forehead. His eyes were black unreadable holes as he considered Jason's assertion. "You would know," he agreed courteously, his usual unflappable demeanor seemingly unaltered by being deceased for over two years.
Jason reached his right hand over to his left forearm and without hesitation plucked a fold of skin up between his thumb and forefinger and, doing the best he could with his blunt fingernails, pinched himself viciously. He squeezed his eyes shut in reaction to the pain and when he opened them and peered out hopefully he was disappointed to see that Lorenzo's ghost was still standing in front of him. Jason was sure he was a ghost as he could clearly see the door and the edge of his bureau through him. Which meant one of two things and neither of them was good news.
"No," Lorenzo spoke in the same measured tones, not entirely devoid of sympathy though containing an additional faint underlying edge of humor, "You're not dreaming, hallucinating or insane. I am indeed here, sent to give you a message which I advise you to heed."
"Message?" Jason had managed to get his recalcitrant, half frozen body enough under control to finally scramble to his feet. Now he didn't feel quite so vulnerable being towered over by a ghost. Yet, on the other hand, he didn't really know what else he could do to Alcazar in the way of defending himself. Killing people had always been pretty final in the past. "Are you responsible for the drop in temperature?" He held out a goose bump covered arm as supporting evidence for his accusation.
Lorenzo shrugged unapologetically, "Yeah, it's a side effect of traveling in this form. Actually, I'm kind of enjoying it. It makes quite a nice change from you know…down there." He nodded significantly down at the floor and then looked up at Jason his eyebrows raised inquisitively as he checked to see if the mob enforcer had taken his meaning.
"I sent you to hell." Jason said it as a flat statement of fact.
Lorenzo stared at him narrowly, his lips forming a thin, unforgiving line, "Let's see if you can say that so easily when it's your turn."
"I know that is where I will go." Jason spoke quietly, his voice free of any inflection. "If that's the message you came to deliver, consider it received."
Lorenzo laughed abruptly, "No, that's not why I came. They don't really seem to care if you know whether you're heading down there or not. After all, they have eternity to make the outcome eminently clear. Do you know what the overriding emotion you feel is, when you're down there, time dripping through the hourglass like molasses?"
Jason just stared at him, not really wanting to have this conversation but then again if it would help to get this meeting or whatever it was over then he would play along. So, finally, as Lorenzo remained imperturbably silent, he shook his head and asked, "What?"
"It's not what you would expect. I mean don't get me wrong, all the stuff in books and paintings, that all really occurs. Well, not all actually," Lorenzo was momentarily distracted, his mind obviously elsewhere as he stared at an impatiently shifting, cold Jason without really seeing him. "Dante was entirely off the mark but then again he tried to get way too specific and Eurocentric. Hell has to cater to everyone, you know. It's an equal opportunity inferno." Suddenly Lorenzo's face transformed from that of a benign, introspective scholar pondering an abstraction to a grinning fiend who clearly was comfortable dwelling in the nether regions of hellfire and damnation. "So, as I was saying, it's not all the mundane and hackneyed things that consume you-the pain, the heat, the repetition, the despair. No, they're all terrible I grant you but they alone don't break the souls trapped down there…"
"Then what does?" Jason hadn't intended to speak. He didn't want to make Alcazar think he cared anything about his opinions, about what could possibly make hell worse than its publicity painted it but he couldn't seem to help himself.
"Regret," Lorenzo said the word so softly that Jason had to crane forward to hear him. "You regret everything you did, everything you didn't do, everything you should have done. It consumes you each moment of your existence down there until one of two things happen." Now he was looking directly at Jason, his eyes bleak and unfathomable. "Some crack under the relentless, never ending pressure and go insane and then nothing else really matters. The miserable souls who reach that point are released to just wander around the nether regions gibbering and providing local color. The other option is that you don't break. Instead, you do the complete opposite and are forged into the things which have been torturing you all along. Then, at that juncture, you move up and take your rightful place next to your comrades. Learning and honing your craft on the never ending supply of new arrivals." Again that soulless smile briefly creased his face before abruptly vanishing. "Still, I envy them, the crazy ones, they lose the ability to feel regret along with their minds."
"Regret," Jason echoed, rolling the word around on his tongue, finding it imbued with a smoky flavor as though the fires of hell were already licking at his soul.
Lorenzo regarded him through narrowed eyes, his face showing mingled feelings of hatred, resentment and most strange of all-envy. The next time he spoke, his tone was altered, it was darker, heavier and entirely somber. "For some reason that I have yet to comprehend, Morgan, you are to be given a unique chance. A final opportunity to stave off that conclusion which so many benighted souls, who indeed performed many fewer mortal sins than you have, are fated to suffer with no hope of leniency. It would seem the scale that measures deeds and thus, determines eternal destinations, in your case, is not irrevocably tilted toward damnation. You performed many…" There was a pause as Lorenzo grimaced and appeared to struggle for a moment before finally managing to eject the words with a disdainful growl, "Self-sacrificing acts. You saved lives, you repented and felt remorse upon numerous occasions and you risked your life for others. Yet, as you are well aware, you also repeatedly violated the sanctity of life."
Lorenzo's lips stretched wide in an unholy grin which Jason found he couldn't bear to behold. His eyes shifted down and he stared fixedly at the carpet while Alcazar continued his speech. "I am but one example, of your continuous blatant disregard of mankind's ultimate taboo. You have taken judgment that on earth duly belongs to the laws of man and in heaven solely to the will of God and made it your own creature. Of late, the totality of your acts has tilted the measured balance more clearly toward the danger of losing your immortal soul. It is an invisible but vital line that once is crossed removes all further hope of redemption."
Jason found he was shaking, his entire body trembling, the cold in the room was fiercer than ever but he knew that wasn't the cause of his discomfort which verged on agony. Every one of Lorenzo's words struck at his core, their harsh truth undeniable. Still, accompanying the despair engendered by Alcazar's dispassionate description of his heinous deeds, Jason felt deep inside himself the tiniest stirring of something he had long believed to be dead-hope.
Looking dazedly up at Lorenzo, he whispered, his voice strained and reedy, "I can avoid hell?"
He couldn't believe he was standing in his bedroom on Christmas Eve, no strike that-Christmas Day-conversing with a man he had killed years ago about the ultimate dispensation of his eternal soul. It wasn't that Jason didn't think about such things, he did. It wasn't that he didn't believe in the concepts of heaven and hell, he absolutely did. Sonny hadn't just taught him how to be an unfeeling and merciless killer; he also inculcated all his Catholic guilt within his new made protégé.
Yet, there was a telling difference between the intrinsic beliefs of the mentor and his acolyte. Sonny, like so many mobsters before him, fervently believed that strategically placed church visits to confession perpetually washed his sins-even murder-from his soul. Thus, his heartfelt, if convenient piety, made his entry into heaven, perhaps after a brief wayside stop in purgatory, definitively ensured. Sonny was so confident of the positive outcome of his divine bargaining that he planned for his time in purgatory to be curtailed as much as possible through the modern day equivalence of buying indulgences. That is he contributed obscene amounts of money to charitable projects sponsored by his church.
Jason, however, held a substantially different viewpoint on the subject. He didn't know if it was a matter of degree of faith or that in this one case Sonny was simply in denial. He didn't think words spoken in guilt to God's representative on earth were enough penance to expatiate such a wicked act as taking a human life. He particularly doubted the likelihood of such forgiveness if the penitent had every intention of repeating the action the next time a similar set of circumstances arose. Jason thought this might be one situation which Sonny couldn't argue, buy or order his way out of facing the associated consequences.
With regard to his own circumstances, he wasn't going to compound his sins by being a hypocrite or by begging clemency for being a natural creature of the dark. He wasn't imaginative and he didn't dwell on the afterlife. Whenever he did consider it, he viewed it as a done deal. He was on the hell express, no if, ands, or buts. Yet, here Lorenzo Alcazar stood, transparent and terrifying, exuding cold, very cold comfort for the man who had taken his life, separated him from his son and infant daughter and sent him to hell. He was apparently offering Jason what had been denied him-a second chance. It was the surrealistic combination of a demonic messenger offering the gift of immortal deliverance which was pushing Jason toward reluctant acceptance not only of the visitation itself but for the purported reason behind it.
Lorenzo lazily inclined his head, his baleful eyes gleaming with a flat light as he answered Jason. "It isn't assured but there is a possibility that you may. You are being offered a singular opportunity. Tonight, when the clock strikes the hours of one, two and three you will be visited by a succession of specters. They will guide you on a journey of discovery after which the choice as to salvation or damnation will be yours alone to make. You yet possess free will and the chance to exercise it."
He was starting to fade, to become even more translucent and Jason spoke rapidly, desperate to know the answer to his question from the only person who could give it. "Wait!" He pleaded, "Alcazar, your choice, if you had one, what would it have been?"
He was almost gone, impervious to Jason's attempt to stop him. His answer wafted across the empty space where he had stood, immaterial and ghostly, mere seconds ago, "To not feel regret."
The room wasn't cold anymore and it was only occupied by Jason. He shook his head as though to dispel the remnants of a dream, a nightmare. He suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to sleep. Turning he stumbled back to the bed and tumbling into it pulled the covers up over himself. Cocooned securely within them and without even turning off the lamp, Jason fell immediately into a deep sleep.
A/N: Reviews are appreciated