There's something about working on Sundays that always drove me nuts.
It might have been because it was part of the traditional weekend, but since I was off two days during the week, that didn't really bother me so much. I was used to working odd hours at the dealership so having a non-traditional working schedule was like second nature to me.
The worst part about working on Sundays was the people. You see, I'm the second-best salesman at the car dealership that I've worked at for the last few years. I say second-best because Harry Martin is fifty-five, has thirty years of experience, and could sell sex to a nun with that smooth voice of his and that slick mane of silver hair. I'm not above acknowledging my faults so that puts me firmly in second.
It wasn't my first choice of career either. I'd much rather be working for one of the large automakers on design but I didn't have the schooling for it. It didn't mean I didn't try back in college, but I just didn't have the aptitude or the patience for that career path, which meant I was stuck in sales for the foreseeable future, dealing with people like Ms. Franklin.
There's no Mr. Franklin which is probably why Ms. Franklin is so aggravating. She's one of the most indecisive people I've ever met, never committing to a basic car model (let alone manufacturer) for the two hours of mine that she wasted today. To add insult to injury, her two brats tore up the kid's room at the dealership and scratched up one of the display cars. My boss was less than pleased about that one, especially when she walked off the lot empty-handed.
My day seemed to be filled with many Ms. Franklins, and that's why I left work in a foul mood. Even though it was already one week into the new month, I was already lagging behind on my sales. Without some decent commission this month, there was no way I could continue to afford my apartment. I probably should have stopped wasting my money on frivolous things (who honestly needs an actual bearskin rug?) but at the very least, I would have to watch my finances until my luck picked up.
One thing I refused to give up was my '85 Camaro. She was candy apple red, and I bet that back in the day, she used to pull some serious ass. I was still waiting on her to pull some for me but it didn't mean I didn't treat that car like a newborn baby. It was worth the expense when very little else in my life was.
The truth was if you told me that this would be my life around the age thirty, I would have offed myself back in grade school. You never expect your life to turn out a certain way, and I sure as shit didn't expect to be a car salesman with a history of bad decisions.
I arrived back at my apartment around seven that night and found a stack of bills right next to the counter. Several of them were past due, and one final notice had a deadline for today, November 8th. I ignored it for the moment and stepped into the kitchen. As soon as I did, I heard my phone begin to buzz.
I groaned when I saw the name on the screen and hit ignore. The phone dinged two minutes later while I searched the pantry for something to eat, the signal of a new voicemail. On a whim, I hit play and put it on speaker.
"Derek, it's Nicole. You can't ignore me forever. Listen, can we just talk? You have no idea what it would mean to Nathan if we—"
I scoffed and deleted it. She was always barking up that tree, and I was tired of clinging to the branch. As far as I was concerned, Nicole was just a thing of the past, ancient history that begged to be forgotten even if my shame would never let it get to that point.
I shook my head and opened the refrigerator only to see two bottles of water and about five packets of ketchup. Knowing it would be cheaper to eat in, I also knew my roaring stomach had to be cured soon. I didn't bother to take off my dealership polo shirt, but I did stop in the bathroom to give myself the once-over before I left.
I was glad to see I still hadn't become ugly but perhaps if I had, it would have been easier to explain my lack of dating options. I had short dark hair that was a little longer than usual right now, showing my need for a haircut. My ears always stuck out just a tad too far, something my mother always said gave my face character—whatever that means. I had blue eyes and a straight nose, and I always kept my face clean-shaven just out of habit.
These days, I didn't eat much because of the long hours I worked so I was in reasonably good condition. I wouldn't be lining up to run any marathons anytime soon, but I always thought I looked decent without a shirt on. I figured I'd worked hard enough today to load up on something unhealthy, and for that reason, I hopped back into my car only twenty minutes after arriving home to stop at the nearest fast food place for a squished cheeseburger and some oversalted fries.
Thankfully it was late enough that I didn't have to wait long in line. I got my food from the drive-through and parked inside the lot to scarf it down quickly. I was sated for now but I knew the cheap food wouldn't keep me full for long.
The drive back home was uneventful until I was about five minutes from my apartment. You see, the area that I lived in was fairly urban in the surroundings. Shops and big box stores lined every street and there were sidewalks on either side. Every stoplight meant waiting for people to cross in front of you before the light would turn green again. It was just a fact of life in this city that you had to mind the pedestrian traffic every time you got behind the wheel.
I can honestly say what happened next was not my fault. In fact, I did everything I could to avoid it. But when you're cruising along with a green light at forty miles an hour (under the speed limit, I might add), it doesn't give you a lot of time to react to quick movements right next to the road.
In my unlucky case, that quick movement happened to be an old lady and her grandson who picked that exact moment to try to cross the sidewalk about thirty yards in front of my bumper. They realized their mistake but it was too late. They remained rooted to the ground in fear as my headlights reflected off their eyes. My life never flashed before my eyes or anything like that, but instinct took over for the rational brain as I swerved to miss them.
The good thing was that I missed them by a hair. There might have been an inch or two between my fender and the old lady's cane but they were safe.
The bad thing was the swerve put me right on course with a low-lying brick wall. Those final seconds could have been minutes. All I remembered before extreme darkness was that spark of an explosion as three thousand pounds of American muscle hit those bricks at full speed.
Right before the end, it didn't seem like that bad of a way to go.
*****
The first thing I heard was the dull sound of beeping. It wasn't frequent beeping but rather the type that almost seems to die off completely before it startles you when you hear it again. I still couldn't see a damn thing and part of me wondered if I was truly dead and this was some form of afterlife. I could hear what sounded like moaning in the vaguest sense of word so I figured I'd ended up in hell after the kind of life that I lived.
Consciousness was something that was fleeting and fragile in that time. I'm still not sure what exactly happened, but I got the impression I was in a hospital after enough time. My eyes still refused to open, but surprisingly, my sense of smell was able to pick up that sterile scent that pervades every hospital.
At one point, I remember the beeping getting more frantic than usual, and I got the sense that my room was filling up with people. I managed to crack my eyes for a moment to see several heads looking down at me in rapid animation but then the world faded to black as an astonishing pain took me.
This was it. I was truly going to die.
*****
It was hard for me to pinpoint exactly when consciousness appeared again. When it did, I found myself not in my hospital bed but standing right beside it. I looked around on a whim, noting many of the surroundings of the room that I hadn't yet seen with my own eyes. At that point, I was still positive that I was in some kind of coma or perhaps even a dream, so I looked down at my hands and extended my fingers several times. They responded like they should, a sure sign that this wasn't just in my head.
"You're not dreaming if that's what you're thinking," came a voice from the other side of the room. That same voice then chuckled. "Although you might wish you were after you talk with me."
I whipped around in the direction of the voice, expecting to see some nurse or orderly but I found nothing of the sort. Instead, I found a man sitting in the chair on the other side of the room that faced my bed. The man was leafing through
People
magazine and chuckling to himself while he did it.
"You humans and the shit that you get up to, I swear," said the man with another soft laugh. "It makes watching you all the more entertaining."
"Who are you?" I asked, finding the words springing easily from my tongue. "Are you a doctor?"
"No," said the man as he shut the magazine and sprung from the chair. "I'm more important than that."
Here we go
, I thought.
Probably some self-important hospital administrator who thinks he knows everything
.
I looked back down at the bed and finally noted that someone was on top of it. The person was in bad shape. I guessed from the casts around the legs that both of them were broken. There was a bandage that wrapped around the man's chest and at least five or six wires that were hooked to him in some fashion. He looked like he'd been through the ringer although from his angle, I couldn't quite see his face to make out who he was.
"What happened to him?" I asked, gesturing to the slow-breathing body.
The man looked over at me. "You're lucky to still be amongst the living, do you know that? Hitting a brick wall at forty miles an hour generally isn't a great thing to do if you want to stay alive. Although at least that lady and her grandson walked away without a scratch. You should be commended for that, Derek."
I snapped my head to look over at him. "How do you know that? And how do you know my name?"
He grinned and gestured to the body on the bed. "I told you already, brother. I'm a pretty important guy. The things that I know would blow your mind. Although from the looks of it, your body has suffered enough blows lately."
At this point, I panicked. I raced around to the other side of the bed and gawked at the man on top of it.
It was me.
Despite the bandages and the bruising, I would recognize my own face before that of anyone else. A good portion of my face was black and blue but that was definitely my nose and my hair. I whipped my head back to the man and then back to the bed.
"What . . . how . . . I mean, what's going on?"
"Totally wicked, right?" asked the man with a grin. "Everyone has the same reaction at this point, I might add. To that point, you're probably going to ask me if you're still dre—"
"No, I got it," I said, interrupting the man as I snapped my fingers. "I'm just dreaming. This is just a dream and this isn't real. That's the explanation here."
The man smiled knowingly and stood up. "I can assure you that you're not dreaming although the world we're in right now isn't the reality that you know it. We're in an in-between world, just on the other side of the veil that separates the mortal from the . . . immortal."
