Dead & Godless Read online

  DEAD & GODLESS

  DONALD J. AMODEO

  Dead & Godless

  Donald J. Amodeo

  DeadAndGodless.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Donald J. Amodeo

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Penny Fletcher (PennyFletcher.com), with contributions by Christine Amodeo and Steven Kospender.

  All referenced brands and artistic works are the property of their respective owners.

  Cover design by Renu Sharma

  TheDarkRayne.com

  ISBN 978-0-9910366-7-7

  Table of Contents

  1 - THE REAPER RIDES THE J LINE

  2 - LEGAL REPRESENTATION

  3 - SHADES OF CHANGE

  4 - DARK WINDS RISING

  5 - THE LONGEST NIGHT

  6 - WHEN SCIENCE IS SILENT

  7 - AN ABSURD HOPE

  8 - SHADOWS IN THE STORM

  9 - APPLES AND RAZOR BLADES

  10 - THE DIVINE SUPERMARKET

  11 - SUPERNATURAL FLYING SPACE GEEZER

  12 - THE LUNATIC’S LABYRINTH

  13 - THE SOULLESS STRANGER

  14 - A SAVIOR TO SOME

  15 - LOVE MACHINES

  16 - THE PRICE OF PARADISE

  17 - DEAD ON THE INSIDE

  18 - THE BOARDROOM OF THE BEAST

  19 - YESTERDAY’S SINS

  20 - ENSLAVED TO HAPPINESS

  21 - A HEART-SHAPED CAGE

  22 - WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

  23 - RIDDLES AND REVELATIONS

  24 - THE RISK OF REDEMPTION

  25 - THE CISTERN AND THE SEAL

  26 - RECOVERING FROM REALITY

  27 - THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1

  The Reaper Rides the J Line

  A deep freeze iced the gears of time, entombing the city in day-long twilight. Corwin drank it in and threw out his chest. His breath steamed with satisfaction.

  “There’s nothing like the smell of the subway in winter! Garbage, piss and a fresh coat of bleach—I love public transportation!”

  “Great, then you won’t mind us making an extra stop,” Mary said cheerily, her auburn hair bouncing as she descended the stairway beside him. “I need to drop a few things off at my mom’s place.”

  “Hasn’t she had the place blessed to ward off people like me?”

  “She doesn’t hate you, Corwin.” Mary’s smile was unwavering. “Quite the opposite. She prays every night for the conversion of your stubborn atheist soul.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “I know you’re just dying to argue with her, but I do appreciate your discretion.”

  “A wise man chooses his battles,” said Corwin in a stoic tone.

  Mary cast him a warm glance. Her mother was one of the few people with whom Corwin resisted the urge to debate all things metaphysical (or superstitious, as he preferred to say).

  “Visiting doesn’t make you feel too uncomfortable, I hope?”

  “Not at all! The fact that your mother’s house has more crucifixes than the Vatican makes me feel right at home.”

  Corwin’s boots clomped onto off-white tiles at the foot of the stairs. They were taking the J line and had made good time. The next train was yet several minutes away. In this cold, at least he didn’t have to worry about the ice cream melting. He lugged two overstuffed bags of groceries, snowflakes dusting his shoulders and flaxen hair.

  “What’s all the commotion?” inquired Mary.

  Following her gaze, Corwin noticed an odd sight ahead. The usually scattered crowds had congregated around a single spot near the edge of the platform. A hum of anxious voices joined the rustling of coats as they pressed in for a closer look.

  “Somebody should do something,” muttered a short, round-faced woman.

  Corwin peered over her head and spied the cause of the scene. A homeless man lay sprawled on the tracks, his grubby fingers still gripping the neck of a liquor bottle in a paper bag. He might have been asleep, knocked out or already dead for all Corwin could tell, but whatever the case, the man wasn’t moving.

  “Check this out!” exclaimed a teenage girl, holding her phone aloft to record the event.

  “Do you think the train will hit him?” asked one of her giggling friends.

  “If it does, this video is totally getting a million hits!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” snapped Mary.

  Without waiting for a reply, she pushed forward and crouched towards the ledge.

  “Hold it,” said Corwin with a firm grasp on her sleeve. She shot him a look of iron resolve, but he wasn’t letting go. “Are you really planning to drag that guy up here?”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “He’s probably twice your weight!”

  Staring into her eyes, Corwin sighed, fully aware that it would take more than the laws of physics to keep Mary off those tracks.

  “Listen, there’s no need for both of us to climb down,” he reasoned. “I’ll do the dragging. You wait here and help pull him up.”

  The J line’s platform was one-sided, with the rear wall of the station rising opposite the ledge and sporting some freshly-inked graffiti. Before Mary or his own better judgment could object, he plopped the groceries down beside her and leapt onto the tracks.

  What have I gotten myself into this time?

  The tracks suddenly felt a lot lower than they had looked from atop the platform. Corwin glanced back to make sure Mary wasn’t following and his gaze briefly wandered the crowd. A young woman clutched her purse, its leather studded with a silver ichthys—the Greek symbol for fish that Christians had repurposed, now the latest in Jesus fashion. Off to her right, a rabbi stroked his beard pensively, looking on from under the wide brim of his derby hat.

  That’s right, just leave it to the godless heathen, thought Corwin with smug irony. But then again, he couldn’t really blame them. They were the sane ones. It was he who was defying all good sense, risking his neck for the sake of some homeless drunk whose greatest contribution to society was warming a park bench.

  Corwin leaned over the man and grimaced from the stench. He reeked of alcohol and old socks, and looked no better, with bits of food lodged in his dark, scraggly beard.

  “Hey buddy, wake up!”

  He jostled him by the shoulder. No response. From the shadowy depths of the tunnel, a low, rhythmic rumble arose. A light pierced the gloom.

  “Come on!”

  With a hard pat on the cheek, Corwin elicited a weary groan from the man. He was starting to awaken, but not fast enough. I haven’t got time for this. Hooking his hands under the man’s armpits, he struggled to heave him towards the platform. To Corwin’s relief, a tall fellow in glasses and a trench coat set down his briefcase to offer assistance.

  “You take one arm, I’ll take the other,” he said, rushing onto the tracks.

  Corwin wasn’t about to argue. With each passing second, the metallic roar grew louder. Was it possible that the train would brake in time? Surely somebody had to have called 911. That is, unless everyone in the crowd was under the assumption that someone else had already called. The Bystander Effect. Corwin had heard of it before, though he never expected to be a living example.

  “Give us a hand!” yelled his partner as they neared the ledge.

  Summoning the wherewithal to stand, the homeless man planted his feet, but his balance failed him. Luckily Mary reached down and grabbed one of his hands. Corwin pushed from behind, and soon others in the crowd were helping to haul him up. The tall businessman vaulted onto the platform.

  “Thanks for the help,” Corwin called after him.

  “You can pay me back later.”

  “Hurry!” urged Mary.

  Corwin di
dn’t dare look towards the train. He boosted the vagabond with one last shove and clasped Mary’s outstretched hand. Safety was only a short climb away. Then a heavy boot struck him square in the chest.

  While clambering onto the platform, the drunk’s knee had slipped, his clumsy kick finding its mark at just the wrong moment. Corwin felt Mary’s fingers slip from his grasp. He was falling. A steel rail greeted the back of his skull with a sharp thunk.

  Blacking out for an instant, a surge of adrenaline was the only thing that kept him conscious. He vaguely heard Mary screaming over the ringing in his ears.

  “Corwin, get up! Corwin!”

  As he turned his head, the world blurred into slow motion, yet one thing was crystal clear. In that split second, he saw every dent, every scratch in the paint, every glimmer of light reflected in the glass. The look of horror on the conductor’s face was burned into his mind. Corwin had never seen anything as vividly as he saw the front of that train speeding towards him.

  A chill draft pulled at his cashmere coat. He felt his heart beating, the cool touch of the steel tracks, and then Corwin felt nothing at all.

  Sparks flew from the rails and the brakes squealed in protest as the J scraped to an emergency stop. Mary collapsed to her knees, her eyes wide with a vacant stare. She couldn’t cry out, couldn’t speak. The breath had been robbed from her lungs. It all seemed so unreal.

  “Get yer hands offa me!” slurred the drunk beside her.

  With a violent twist, he shook free from the grip of those who had helped to pull him out of harm’s way. The stunned commuters parted before him. Bleary eyed, he glared into the crowd, completely oblivious to what had just taken place. No one spoke a word to explain, not that he would have listened. Only hushed voices and quiet sobs filled the station.

  Spitting curses, the man stomped off for the stairs.

  “Don’t nobody in this town know how to mind their own damn business?”

  2

  Legal Representation

  Corwin was dead. And yet he still was. Like a man half dreaming and half awake, he gazed down upon the station with a peculiar sense of detachment. His body, or what remained of it, was hidden from view beneath the train cars, a spatter of blood on the headlights the only sign of his untimely passing. He imagined himself as an unrecognizable smear staining the tracks. The thought didn’t bother him.

  From above, the shuffling crowd was all heads and shoulders, but Mary’s green sweater was impossible to miss. She knelt beside the edge of the platform with her head in her hands. A pang of guilt struck him. She was everything good about this rotten world, and now he was leaving her. How could he have been so careless? He yearned to swoop down, wipe the tears from her eyes and whisper a promise that he would always be there. A kind lie, one that would forever go untold. An irresistible force was pulling him away from her, away from all that he knew, and there was no use fighting it. It was time to go.

  Corwin belatedly realized that reaching out and touching anything was beyond his power, for he had nothing to reach out with. Thinking of sight, he saw. Thinking of sound, he heard. But Corwin had no eyes or ears. Lighter than air and even less tangible, he was a consciousness without a body.

  This can’t be real.

  An exhilarating sense of freedom filled him, but also a creeping dread. This weightless, borderless realm of the spirit was an exciting place to visit, but he was at home in a body, and the prospect of not returning to one made him feel lost, incomplete.

  The ceiling of the subway station sank through him like a cement cloud. Soon snowy streets were receding below. An endless procession of cars and pedestrians hurried about the business of life. Cyclists tempted fate, weaving in and out of traffic while travelers waved down taxis and beggars tried to wring the last drops of sympathy from a city that was running dry. Broad windows climbed a high-rise office building where room after room of workers hunched towards computer screens, their fingers rattling keys. They didn’t look particularly happy.

  At least that’s over with.

  He ascended higher, past the tallest rooftops and loftiest spires, until all the city spread forth beneath him, a concrete expanse that faded to white hills and misty waters on the horizon. Here, so close to their birthplace, the snowflakes whirred with youthful vitality. They danced in the wind’s embrace, seesawing and gusting, obscuring the land behind a wondrous veil that grew thicker as he rose.

  A dense sheet of clouds swallowed him and the busy world slipped away. Corwin was somewhere new, somewhere dark.

  “Hello?” he called out into the solemn shadows.

  The sound of his own voice affirmed what he knew instinctively, that his vocal cords were back where they belonged. He blinked, felt solid ground under his feet.

  “Is anyone there?”

  Corwin’s words bounced off walls high and far. It was his only clue as to the size of the place, for the darkness was so complete that he could scarcely tell whether his eyes were open or closed. A profound silence descended as the last echo died. Extending his arms, he quested a few tentative steps.

  Straight ahead, a brilliant light blossomed, its gleam giving shape to a long corridor ribbed with soaring gothic arches.

  “Really? A light at the end of a tunnel?” remarked Corwin incredulously. “You’d think that they could come up with something different for a guy who just got hit by a subway train.”

  Having nowhere else to go, he set off towards the beckoning light, admitting that he was indeed curious about its source. Radiantly aglow with shimmers of blue and gold, it at first gave the impression of being a doorway, but upon drawing near, Corwin found himself staring through the panes of a tall, arched window.

  The shining land on the other side took his breath away. Across a diamond sea, the walls of an idyllic city rose from a shoreline. Pearlescent towers and the boughs of huge, verdant trees peeked over the parapets, converging towards a column of solid light that lanced from the center of the city into the heavens. Waterfalls cascaded off the rocky cliffs of islands that floated amidst the clouds, and innumerable stars beamed brightly through the crisp blue of the midday sky.

  Corwin pressed his palms to the glass, straining his eyes to take it all in, but the land was so very far away. He could only glimpse its splendor from where he stood in the passage.

  To his left the hallway bent and he noticed two more windows, identical in size and shape, but offering altogether different views.

  “Somebody must have slipped some LSD into my coffee this morning.”

  The first revealed a wooded valley where mossy fountains rilled under the shade of poplars and cypress trees. In the middle was a meadow, upon which a great carpet had been spread. Threads of gold and lavender wove patterns through the deep red tapestry. Atop it, a king’s feast was laid out, fixed with succulent meats and glazed pastries that made Corwin’s mouth water just looking at them. Piles of treasure were heaped, sparkling jewels and doubloons and stacks of dollar bills. Beautiful young men and women lounged in faceless masks, a few strips of silk their only clothing. Wisps of smoke wafted from hookahs and wine glistened in crystal carafes. And there were also more abstract prizes, plaques of honor and ticking timepieces and mirrors.

  But for all the pleasures that the tapestry promised, no one was indulging. A middle-aged man stood off to the side, emptying his pockets. He tossed silver coins one-by-one onto the carpet, and it seemed that parting with each pained him greatly. However, his expression eased as his pockets lightened. Others strolled amidst the trees and fountains, free but not quite at peace. Corwin could sense a distinct loneliness in the air, the longing of separated lovers, desperately hoping to reunite.

  Approaching the last window, he gazed out across the dunes of a searing desert. Lines of emaciated figures marched, their sallow skin stretched taut against their bones. They were shackled at the ankles and joined with long chains. Flames leapt from the blistering sand wherever their bare feet stepped, and their backs were bent with the weight o
f ponderous slabs of rock. Corwin watched as one man set down his boulder, only to pile another atop it before heaving them both onto his bony shoulders. The whip of a hulking guard with the head of goat lashed his back, and wearily he resumed his march.

  An obsidian tower loomed beyond the desert. Like the tip of a spear, its monolithic walls tapered sharply, stabbing at the cloudless sky. Farther still, a column of light arose, not unlike the one that he had seen through the first window. But while that column had been a beacon of life, here its blaze scorched the land, bringing only misery and death. It occurred to Corwin that this whole world was a twisted reflection of that one, the glittering sea replaced by a barren sea of sand, the twinkling stars swapped for the dust rings of shattered moons.

  From the tower a sonorous bell tolled. The damned paused in their march and a cold hand closed around Corwin’s heart. The bell was tolling for him, claiming him. He covered his ears.

  “Get out of my head!”

  With a determined effort he wrenched himself away from the joyless window. Silence returned at once, calming his nerves as he pressed on.

  He didn’t have far to go before the hallway came to an end, and there stood a white door. It was cracked, a sliver of warm light spilling out into the passage. Corwin clutched the knob and ventured cautiously within. The room that met his eyes had all the trappings of a posh corner office, minus the view. No windows disturbed the walls. The carpet was burgundy, the hardwood furniture polished to a shine. Fine art and framed certificates hung proudly, alongside glass shelves where bottled ships and samurai swords and all manner of curious trinkets perched.

  Before Corwin could study any of them too closely, something gave him pause. He wasn’t alone. At the sound of a carefree voice, he spun to his right.

  “Corwin Francis Holiday, I presume,” spoke a man seated behind an executive desk. “Well, not that it’s much of a presumption. Considering that my secretary hasn’t made a single mistake in the last eight hundred years, I’m quite certain that you’re Corwin.”