A WARNING: YOU MAY GET PUNCHED IN THE FEELS
HERE I AM, flying through the orange sky with a Cowboy and a Demon. Before you even ask, no, I’m not dead; no, I’m not in a coma; no, it’s not a dream.
It better not be; I hate it when they do that in stories. What a waste of time.
I slowed a little to give the Cowboy a chance to catch up.
“Can I do a loop?” I ask.
“No,” he shakes his head at me.
“Why? Does it stop working?”
“No, everything falls outta yer pockets; it’s terrible; just fly normal.” The Cowboy replies.
I think about it for a moment.
“There is not one thing that is normal about any of this.” I state.
The Cowboy laughs his smoker's laugh.
“No, I guess not. Do yer loop, then.”
I do, and it’s great. I guess I was expecting butterflies in my stomach or something. Zip; zilch; nada. It kind of makes me sad. I feel nothing.
I flew normally, as the Cowboy calls it. Something wonderful and unexpected happens. First I saw her head, then her back, and her bum. She moons me. The Demon does a barrel roll, passing me. Green bum sticking out of her new black pantsuit. She mooned me.
I laugh, the Cowboy laughs, the two-headed crow laughs. We are having a weird time.
Below, I can see familiar rubble. We are near the hole in the ground where my apartment building used to be.
We lower to the ground. I’m not going to lie; landing is hard. I did not land on my feet.
Getting up off of my green bum, I stand at the mouth of the hole.
The Cowboy takes a step closer and looks into the rubble. I can see the red bricks, furniture, and even the bones of people and their pets. No one pulls the dead out when a building falls, at the end of the world.
I MISS MY APARTMENT
It was a redbrick building. It only had ten floors. The basement smelled like Old Spice.
There was a laundry room that had eight machines, and you were shit out of luck most of the time because somebody was already using them. (I used the coin-o-matic down the street.)
I lived on the third floor, apartment three zero four. There were not over three hundred apartments in the building, but that was the address.
The front door was a heavy wood, oak I think. It was old and grey. The entrance had a little lip.
Once you’re in, there is the front closet to the right. There were two peepholes in the door, one low and one high. My guess is that long before I came along, a husband and wife lived there; one was taller than the other. You can picture them both squished up against the door, making sure it’s just the pizza guy.
Turning to the left, you have a fair-sized living room and dining room sharing space, or in my case, a living room and office. (Where I kept my computer. It was new at the time, but I still called it Ol’ Betsy, because one day I would be right.)
The kitchen was large enough to have a small eat-in table, so I did.
There was a fair-sized bathroom in the hall. A tall linen closet and one big, beautiful bedroom. I could fit a king-size bed in there, which was expensive for no good reason, so I had a double. (I could afford it, but I liked my money in my pocket, not the greedy people.)
Oh yeah, I had a balcony too. Or what I liked to call my little coffee spot. I did not get to use it as much as I would’ve liked on account of the bees; there were a lot of bees.
I had one nice oak bookshelf near my bed. It was great, all my favourite books. I read every night. A habit since I was a kid.
THEY WERE STARING AT ME
Guess I said all that out loud.
“Sounds like a good home.” The Cowboy says.
“It was, but it’s gone now. You know, I never did anything to those fat old farts. They told those young people to do this, and they did. They didn’t think about the little kids or their moms and dads. Not only that, but they didn’t care that families lived here. It’s always about money in the end…”
“What do ya think about that?” The Cowboy asks.
“It’s how they reshape borders. It’s how they take land and resources that don’t belong to them. They are deceitful cowards; no old farts should ever be in charge of these things again.”
“They’re all dead.” The Demon states.
The Cowboy walks closer to me. He puts his hand on my face.
“It’s time you let go of him. You gotta let em die here.”
I don’t know what's happening inside me. I'm freaking out. I can feel my heart jump. The strained voice that came out of my mouth, so full of fear.
“NAOOOOOO!” I moan out.
I fall to my knees; it’s like I have no power over my body.
The Cowboy puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Ya gotta let him rest. He’s been fightin fur so long.”
“I dooon want to goooo!” I cry.
The Cowboy has tears streaming down his face. The Demon’s back is to me, but I can feel her emotional battle.
“That ain’t yer life anymore. That is the life of a mortal man, and it ended. Let em go be with his family.” He says. His voice fighting his sadness.
“I’l geeeet better. It will be like before….” The voice from inside pleads.
The Cowboy nods and lets out a hard breath. He pulls me up to my feet and embraces me.
“There’s nothing left for ya ta do here. You earned yer rest. Yer family’s waitin on ya. Go be wit them, we got this.” He says in my ear.
I can feel my head shaking, ‘no.’
“Be brave. I love ya boy. Yer family did too. Yer ma; yer pa; They all waitin for ya, GO BE WITH THEM.” He yells.
I can see the sky becoming bigger. I’m falling; no, he’s guiding me to the ground. I can feel his hands. He’s strong.
I can see a ball of light in the sky, and it’s moving away from us. It’s me. I sit up and watch it disappear into the nothing.
They saw me cry. I haven’t cried in front of someone else since I was a little kid. I don’t know how to feel about this. Did they just become my family? I’m sure that is the only people who have seen me cry.
The Demon still has her back to me. I turn and look at the Cowboy.
“Spilled milk. There’s nothin you can do. You gotta take that hurt inside and transform it. It aint doin ya any good as it is. You flew like a bird, Boogeyman.”
“Boogeyman?” I repeat.
“It’s who ya are now.”
I look him in the eyes; they tremble. The Cowboy is holding back some powerful emotions.
“Ya git yer name by what they call ya. The soldiers called ya Boogeyman. YOU ARE THE BOOGEYMAN!” He says.
I look at the dead and the rubble in the pit. He puts his hand on my chest and moves me back up to my feet.
“Your old life is left in that hole; it’s dead. You, on the other hand, are not dead. You and that green face of yers. You flew. You melt down the enemy. You are the scariest sum bitch I ever saw.”
“I wasn’t done.” I state, holding back my tears.
Damn face won’t stop smiling. I’m smiling, but I’m not happy about it.
“What do I do?” I ask.
“Ya gotta let em die. His life ended when you were born in this hole. Respect, he was here first, but you’re here now. Ya gotta separate you from him. He’s gone, and he’s never coming back; he moved on. This is yer life now; live it.” The Cowboy says.
I close my eyes. (Feels good.) Tilt my head back. I don’t feel the breeze; I don’t feel the warmth of the sun; I don’t feel bad about being me.
People like to do that. They try to make you feel bad about what makes you happy. That is called jealousy. All of that behaviour will die with the humans.
I look at them both and nod my head.
“Okay, I’m good.” I say.
The Cowboy smiles.
“Who’s good?” He asks.
“M… The Boogeyman.”
The Cowboy smiles and puts his yellow sunglasses on.
“Try and keep up Boogeyman.”
The Cowboy lifts into the air, followed by the Demon. I feel the air rise up in me, and I push the whole world down. I’m in the sky.
I begin my approach, and as I am getting closer, I could swear I hear the Cowboy say:
“My sunglasses.”
A tiny dark shadow is falling to the ruined streets below. The Demon is on it. She can really move. She dives there like a fat pelican about to get a fish and catches those tiny yellow sunglasses.
The Demon spins and floats under the Cowboy facing him. She reaches out; she hands him his sunglasses. He takes them with a smile.
“Thank ya kindly.” He says.
They share a quiet moment. I have no idea what he is seeing in her eyes right now.
“I promised you I was gonna help ya find them dirtbags, and I mean it. I got the ghouls lookin, we’re gonna meet em and find the sack of shit who killed yer friends…”
Am I about to help them hunt down murderers?