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Matt woke and immediately understood something was wrong. A lot of things were wrong, actually, but they were all of different levels of urgency, and the Smaller Wrongs were only barely noticed compared to the screaming Very Wrongs taking the spotlight.
The first Very Wrong thing was his head. Not his head, exactly, but his thoughts. His sense of self. He was in there, he could tell that, he remembered living and dying but… he felt different. Like he was, very slightly, off-center. Something had thrown the balance off in his head, in his core. His perception had stayed somewhere in the center, but the Matt part, the part that felt like it had always been him, had been pushed somewhere to the side, ever so slightly. He was still Matt, he was who he had been; but he was something else now, too.
And whatever else Matt was, it was thinking thoughts in Matt’s head.
I don’t really know how to start this. But we gotta get through this part to get to the next one.
It was like a migraine. But only for the time it took to think the thought that he didn’t really think.
There’s a lot you aren’t going to understand right away, but how this happened and how this works are two different things, and one is a lot more important than the other.
There was a kind of claustrophobia Matt didn’t know was possible, or fully understand.
I don’t know if this is gonna make you feel better or worse, but… you chose this. You could have moved on. To whatever it is that comes after all this. But you weren’t finished, and so you didn’t.
You chose to live.
What’s happening? Matt’s head, his mind, his soul felt too full, like he was sharing a room with someone standing behind him, and he could never turn around fast enough to see them.
I need you. You need me. Without me, you slip through the cracks back to where you’re supposed to have gone already. Without you, I go wherever things like me go, after our considerably longer time is up. Only if I go, things around here are going to get a lot worse.
Something felt wrong, felt perverse. It felt like something had marked him, marked his very being, his soul, like he couldn’t go back to how things were. He was in an irrevocably different place, was an irrevocably different person, than he was before.
It was the second time he’d felt that in as many days.
For the first time, Matt took note of the Smaller Wrongs. He was in a damp, cold room. Part of the reason it was so cold was the fact he was naked. The cold floor slid underneath his cheeks with every movement. The room was lit by a single lightbulb, hanging by a cord from the center of the ceiling, a single fly buzzing around and bouncing into it.
Who are you?
Look, I can answer everything you’re about to ask. You’re gonna think I’m full of shit. That you’re going crazy. We’ll go in circles, and I’ll have to show you anyway.
Or. We can just do this.
A man stood in an alley, tossing a knife to himself in one hand. On each toss the knife flipped; on one he caught the hilt, on the other he caught the blade. He did it absentmindedly, his attention really on the door ahead of him. The only light around was from a bulb flickering just above the door, making a giant Shadow Man toss his own knife in lockstep all the way down the alley.
Matt’s view was from nowhere. Out of the wall, maybe. He looked down, and there was nothing below him but wall and ground. No feet, no legs, no body. Like, if he kept tilting forward, he would flip all the way around. It was enough to fill him with vertigo. He took his attention back to the man with the knife.
This man is going to kill you.
Matt’s view shifted, like a new frame was inserted into his eyeballs, and he saw a door slightly ajar in front of him, with light coming in from outside. He rested a hand on the wall, was surprised to find that he did, in fact, have a hand; along with a body and legs, too. If anything, it made the vertigo worse. He fought the urge to vomit.
What in the holy shit are you doing to me?
I’m looking at something. And because you and I are… I don’t know what to call it. Linked? Connected? Symbiotic? You’re looking at it, too.
How did I get here?
We’ll get to that part.
Why aren’t I wearing pants?
You don’t need pants to die.
Matt was about to object to both not wearing pants and to dying, when the sounds outside changed. The kachunk of a door opening, a wordless question, then the shuffling and grunting of quiet violence. After a final wet thump, someone started pleading.
“Please. Please. Tell Marion I–” another wet sound, and something collided with the door in front of Matt, slamming it shut inward and into Matt, knocking him backwards. Matt fell onto his back, but without the light coming in from the door, it was pitch black. He slid backwards, pushing with his legs and hands, and the back of his head collided with a wall.
There was a sliding sound outside the door before it lurched open.
In the doorway stood the man with the knife. Behind him, lying in the alley, was a crisscross of bodies, the most consistent color red.
The man looked down at Matt and cocked his head to the side.
Matt raised his hands. “Dude. Just ch–”
The knife was out of the man’s hands before Matt even registered movement. Matt was confused at first, trying to speak and finding he couldn’t. His throat was full of something warm and wet. He tried swallowing, but couldn’t. He lifted a hand to find a knife sticking out of his throat.
Matt coughed involuntarily, blood lifting out of his neck and mouth and nose. He put a hand to the ground, trying to get to his feet, but the world seemed to lift up towards him. Black swam around the outside of his vision.
He knew what came next.
Matt opened his eyes. Above him hung a single lightbulb hanging from a cord in the center of a cold, damp room.
You’re gonna be seeing a lot of that guy. And if you keep reacting like that, he’s gonna keep killing the shit out of you.
Let’s do another.
Wait–
Matt felt carpet under his feet. Not the comfortable, walking around the living room barefoot kind of carpet; the rough, scratchy carpet that sits in backrooms and boardrooms in buildings that people rarely inhabit after 6 pm.
It was, in fact, a boardroom. It was dark, but lights streamed in from the window that formed the wall that overlooked the city. He was high up; at least two dozen stories. Probably more. At a certain point, it was impossible to tell.
He looked to the opposite side of the room. Glass formed the wall between this room and the bigger room on the other side, full of desks, other doors, more boardrooms. Everything was empty. Matt stepped toward the door, and opened it as quietly as possible.
You gonna tell me what I’m doing here?
Matt kept the door from closing behind him too loudly, and looked around again. The floor here was cool tile. Shadows cast long across the room from the small amount of light coming in horizontally from outside. It was cooler than was comfortable, but there would usually be more people in here. And, typically, those people would be wearing clothes.
The room to your right.
Matt looked to his right.
A silhouette of a man stood behind a desk in an office. Matt couldn’t tell if the man was facing him or not. He took a step back, instinctively, and bumped into a desk, sending a cup full of pens and pencils onto the tile floor, the cacophony breaking the silence like an explosion.
Matt looked again at the office. The silhouette was gone.
He started to shuffle sideways, as quickly as he could, all thought of stealth gone. At the edge of the large reception desk that formed the center of the room, he turned and broke into a sprint toward the elevator. He tripped on his way in, catching himself on the side of the door, and swinging himself to face the buttons. He smacked the buttons leading to lower floors, hitting multiple with one hand, and pressed the button to close the door repeatedly, looking out the elevator doors at the still dark-and-quiet office.
In the boardroom that he’d appeared in, he saw the silhouette. It was crouched down, looking at the ground where he’d appeared. As the doors began to close, the silhouette stood and faced Matt, watching him.
The doors finally closed completely, and the elevator begin to move smoothly downward.
That… wasn’t a person, was it?
Depends.
Depends?
How loose is your definition of person?
For fuck’s sake.
They… did things. Made some deals. I’m not sure what they are, now. But they’re part of the problem.
What problem?
We’ll get there.
The elevator started to slow. Matt could feel his heartbeat quicken. The door began to open in front of him–
–the man with the knife stood in front of him, evidently waiting to ride the elevator up. He saw Matt standing in there, cocked his head to the side, and twirled the knife in his hand to hold it by the blade. Matt tried to back up, but there was nowhere to give.
“Give me a fucking br-”
There was a cool breeze. It was dark, but the moon made it bright enough to see.
In front of him was an empty chasm. There was a gentle lapping sound coming from far below. Water. He was on the roof of a building at the edge of the city, overlooking the lake. Matt turned around.
The Bleeding City stood in all of its morbid glory in front of him. Stone and metal giants stretched towards the sky, their tops only discernible because of the reflections and the lights. In between the buildings stretched streets, some alive and bustling, others deserted and darkened. The breeze from the water behind Matt rolled over him, seeming to hit him right in the bones.
It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t standing there alone.
“Y’arnt wearin’ any pants.”
Matt’s next death was nearly of a heart attack. He turned toward the voice to find a man lying on the ground a few feet beside him. This man was weathered and worn, wearing stained and torn clothes. Beside him lay a mostly empty backpack, and in front of him, some kind of feed was spread about. He was peeking underneath the brim of a fraying hat that was covering most of his eyes.
“Ain’t proper for a man to be walkin’ around with no pants,” the man said. “I’d offer ya mine, but I only got th’ one.”
Matt couldn’t think of anything to say. He half expected, after what just transpired, that this man would pull out a weapon and kill him in some strange and inventive way.
The man must have mistook Matt’s silence as a question. “Th’ feed’s for th’ pigeons. They like it better than bread. They wake me up in th’ mornin’. Make sure I don’t sleep in.”
Try as he might, Matt still had no reply for this. Pantless, cold, repeatedly killed, and with a voice in his head trying to describe what exactly was happening through a series of seemingly random violence, he did not feel light on his feet, conversation-wise.
“Y’arnt wanna them crazy fellas, are ya? Only the dick in th’ wind got me thinkin’. That’s why I moved all th’ way out here, th’ cold keeps most of th’ crazy fellas away. An’ some of ‘em eat all th’ food for th’ pigeons.”
“I won’t eat the food for the pigeons,” Matt said.
“Yar. That’s mighty kind of ya. Th’ pigeons’ll thank ya, and so will I.” The man tipped his cap to Matt. “Name’s George.”
“Matt.”
“Say hi, I do. You’re welcome to sleep beside me, if yer wantin’ that. I can spare my coat. Dunno how you’ll like it out here, though.”
Matt sat down beside him. The thoughts in his head that weren’t his own were suspiciously quiet. Part of him hoped it would stay that way. He didn’t figure he was that lucky. “Thanks. I don’t mind the cold.”
George stripped off his coat, and handed it to Matt. “Ain’t th’ cold that’s th’ bitch of it. It’s th’ spooks.”
Matt graciously accepted the coat. “Spooks?”
“Yar. Used to me, they are. But they don’ always take kindly to new folk. Another reason for me t’ sleep all th’ way up here.”
Matt wrapped the coat around his midsection, the warmth spreading like joy. “What do you mean by spooks?”
“Ain’t ever got a proper look at ‘em. But they’s out there. Can hear ‘em sometimes, when th’ water’s quiet.”
Matt smiled. He decided that he liked George. “Thanks, George. I’ll keep an ear–”
Something collided into Matt from behind, hard enough to lift him into the air. The force of it radiated all through his ribcage, like it had rattled his bones. Matt rolled to a stop just at the edge of the building, his head colliding into the concrete more than once. He regained his sense of gravity, and looked up.
In the darkness beside George was the vague shape of a man. But it wasn’t quite right. Like a child’s drawing of a man, where sticks made the arms and the legs. The proportions weren’t quite right; the limbs too long, the torso too short. Where the head should be faded into the shadows. It was the color of moonlight. Not quite bright, but bright enough to stand out from its surroundings. Like an afterimage, in reverse.
As soon as Matt saw it, really registered that it was there, it faded backwards and disappeared.
“George?”
“Sorry, I am, Matt. Like I says, they ain’t always fond of new people.”
Matt heard it to his right, close enough that he knew it was too late. He started a vain attempt to roll away, but it shot into his shoulder. Matt felt his entire upper arm shatter. He was sailing into the air again, but he was taking too long to fall, wasn’t he? Which meant it launched him off the roof. Which meant–
I swear to you, I am going to make it my life’s mission to figure out how to kill myself and make it stick.
We’re getting there. I promise, if we didn’t have to do this, we wouldn’t be doing this. But you’re not gonna get what you need to get unless we do.
Get what?
Matt stood on a fire escape. On the street below were a couple of parked police cars. Silent, but with red and blue lights flashing.
I found you pants.
Thank you for the pants. Who’s going to kill me this time?
Look in the window.
Matt turned around, and looked in the window.
The first thing he saw was a pair of eyes. Wide, scared. A child hid underneath a bed, just a few feet from the window. Their door was open, and in the hallway behind them, flashlights poked through the darkness.
What’s going on?
Watch.
Is the kid in danger?
Watch.
The flashlights in the hallway were getting closer. Coming from the direction of the flashlights, a man was backing up, hands in the air. Matt couldn’t hear what he was saying. But the kid under the bed looked, if possible, more scared.
The flashlights made it to the man. It was a group of cops. Two of them stood pointing their flashlights and pistols at the man. One officer moved to a room on the opposite side of the man. The other moved into the room the child was in.
The moment he did, the man in the hallway yelled and lunged towards the cop. He didn’t come close to making it before he was caught around the neck by one of the ones in the hallway. The cop whipped their pistol into the man’s head, and he fell to his knees, blood running down his head and into his eye. The cop in the child’s room thought it was funny and turned to watch.
Matt moved towards the window. The kid looked, if possible, more frightened. Matt tried to grab a lip, to lift the window open, do anything, but it was locked. In the entry to the room, the cops were still distracted by the man.
He owes someone money. Someone you don’t get to owe money to for long. Someone who’s got a use for kids.
One of them stomped on the man’s jaw. The man’s head turned at an awkward angle to flatten with the ground. A couple teeth, or pieces of teeth, fell out of his mouth. Another grabbed the man’s arm, pressed a knee to the his back, and pulled.
Matt looked around the fire escape for anything to break the window with. Other than a small plastic kids’ chair, there was nothing.
Do something.
I can’t.
What do you mean, you can’t? You bring me back from the dead, move me around at will, but you can’t save this kid?
No. I can’t.
The cops beat on the man some more. A stomp in the back of his head sent his face crunching into the floor, breaking his nose. Between hits, the man looked anywhere but the bed. The kid glanced back, now and again, to see the man being beaten, before looking back at the window.
Looking back at Matt.
Fuck you. That’s bullshit. Help them.
I can bring you back to life. I can move you around this city. I can show you things that you need to see. I can do that with you.
Matt looked the kid in the eyes. They clutched a stuffed rabbit to their chest.
But I cannot help this kid.
Matt punched the window.
On the second punch his fist went through the glass, shredding his skin as it went. The hole he made wasn’t big enough for all of him, but he planted one foot on the railing of the fire escape and launched himself through, landing on the edge of the bed and falling into the pile of broken glass on the floor.
The cops all turned from the man bleeding on the floor to look at Matt, in various levels of astonishment, some with their guns raised.
“Run,” Matt said, keeping eye contact with the cops. He ran at them, keeping himself a big a target as possible. They fired, and in the small dark room, the flashes were blinding and the gunshots were deafening. All of the air left his lungs, but mostly, hit body just felt hot before it went numb.
Matt kept his feet for a couple seconds, but fell at the foot of the police, head smacking sideways onto the floor.
The cops stood over top of him, but if they were doing anything to him, Matt couldn’t feel it. There was a kind of dull, icey ache across his body, especially his chest, and that was all he could feel. He risked a glance toward the bed.
Underneath the bed, it was empty.
Matt smiled. And then he died.
