Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

“Yes. I didn’t plan them. They seemed to happen when I slept too. Upstairs they told me it wasn’t all that uncommon for people who died in a violent and unsettled state. You’re still tied to a person or place like a ghost. Those dreams were me kind of haunting you.”

“That’s funny. It always felt like I was calling you.”

“Maybe it was fifty-fifty.”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t all me. I felt pretty pathetic when I thought it was.”

I pick up a rag from the workbench and wipe Mason’s blood off the armor. She doesn’t need that to be her last image of me.

I say, “But that last dream was different, wasn’t it?”

"Yeah.”

“We both knew it, but you were the one with balls enough to say it. It’s time to let go.”

“We can’t go on haunting each other forever. Actually we could, but what kind of life is that?”

I toss the rag on the bench and walk over to her.

“You really like your friend, Candy?” she asks.

“I really do.”

“Is she going to wait for you?”

I shrug.

“Who knows? I’ll wait for her and the rest will go however it goes.”

“What happens now? We just say so long and never see each other again?”

“No.”

I want to talk but my jaw doesn’t want to move. I have to concentrate to get the words out.

“I’ve been ducking something ever since I first got out of here. I didn’t think I could stand to hear it but things will never be right between us unless I say it.”

My Kissi arm throbs. I rub it but the pain doesn’t let up.

“How did you die? How did Parker kill you?”

She starts to say something, shakes her head and starts again.

“All this time I thought you knew.”

She looks at me.

“Parker didn’t kill me. I did. Parker broke into the apartment, cuffed me, and dragged me to a crack head motel on Sunset.”

“The Orange Grove Bungalows? The magic Circle used to rent the rooms for rituals sometimes.” The Grove is also where I killed Parker back on New Year’s Eve. There’s a kind of funny symmetry in that that was probably lost on him.

“That’s the place. Parker called Mason when we got to the room so I knew this wasn’t his idea. I asked Parker what was going on and he laughed and said Mason had plans. He was going to do to me what he did to you but he didn’t say what that was. Before then, he said, we were going to have some fun together. All there was in that shitty little bungalow was a bed and a filthy bathroom so I had a pretty good idea of what he had in mind.”

My throat is closing up. I can’t stand this. I need to make her stop but wider stopI don’t. I let her keep talking.

“He took off his jacket, pushed me down on the bed, and climbed on top. I didn’t even fight him. He was twice my size. He had a gun. And he was Sub Rosa so he could use magic.”

She smiles to herself.