"Shinigami Blues II" - Rob visits Mona

With a sound like a muffler popping, Jack landed on the couch, deflating in time with the cushions beneath him as he deftly turned on the TV without taking the remote off the coffee table.  "Hurry up, babe," he called, shooing their old, grey cat off the armrest as he stretched out longways and let out the sigh of a man who had supped of his girlfriend's grandmother's secret-recipe pumpkin pie.  "The game's about to start!"

"Coming!" Mona shouted back, putting the last of the dishes in to soak with a triumphant smile on her face.  Her grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe had gone off without a hitch; a kindness, given how badly Jack's attempt at chicken kiev had turned out.

She wiped her hands on the towel by the sink and turned off the light, pausing by the window as something caught her eye.  There, for a moment, behind the fog that had sprung up when the heat of the kitchen air met the chill winter evening outside the window, she could have sworn she saw a boy's face.  Looking closer now, she knew it was nothing, but for that one moment, she would have guessed-- no, she was sure.  It had looked just like Rob.

Her smile returned as she headed into the living room where Jack lay already cursing at the game on TV, no longer a triumphant grin but the calm, contented look of a happy woman.  "Who's winning?" she asked as Jack sat up to give her a seat beside him.  The old, grey cat hopped up onto the armrest as she sat, giggling as Jack leaned over to kiss her cheek before she was distracted by the TV.  "Oh come on!" she shouted, sending the cat flying with the sound of it.  "There's no way that was 'holding'..."

Outside. in the stillness of the winter air, Rob sighed to himself, watching through the living room window at the two lovers enjoying the game, or at least delighting in barking at the officiating crew.  He no longer felt the cold on his skin, but he could still sense it in the air, the way a deaf man might imagine a symphony sounds.

The whole world looked like winter, from the empty branches of the trees outside their two-bedroom apartment to the high, wispy clouds soaring silently by overhead.  The quiet street sang of winter and coming snow.  Inside, all the couple could think about was the warmth of each other and the glow of the TV screen.  They could hardly be expected to notice the faithful spirit lingering outside, blending into the cold silence like a corpse.

It was his first Thanksgiving without her, Rob knew, though he never expected it would hurt like this.  It was his favorite holiday in the way most children revere Halloween.  It wasn't out of any misguided sense of patriotism but rather a love of sitting around with family, stuffed to the gills, playing Trivial Pursuit while the Lions lost again.

More than that, it was the day they had first met.  Rob and Jack had been on their way home from a party on campus, bucking tradition with a dozen other friends that night in favor of good, old-fashioned college debauchery when they ran into Mona trying to push her old Geo down Cates Avenue, alone.

Rob could still remember the effort she'd gone to to convince them she didn't need any help, all scraped up with no jacket on a cold November night, trying to negotiate the pedestrian speed bumps of the long campus drive.  She hadn't wanted to admit she had run out of gas because she couldn't afford it until her next paycheck cleared.  Nevermind that the two half-sober boys offering to help had barely two cents to clap together themselves.

They had barely gotten it up the long hill to East campus when the snow had started falling. Rob could still hear the crunch beneath their feet as the winter stillness had set in around them.  He could still feel the churning in his gut, as much from trying to push a car uphill after a night's worth of drinking as from the looks he kept getting from the girl working to steer the vehicle.

Inside, the two lovers cheered, Jack nearly falling off the couch as he threw his hands into the air in twin fists of celebration.  The ghost outside couldn't help but smile, remembering the soft talk with Mona afterwards, offering to drive her to class the next day, narrowly avoiding the offer to put her up that night, purely for the convenience.

He vividly remembered the feel of the snowball slamming into his head from behind, hurled by his less-than-sober friend.  The mere memory of the chill sent a tickle up the back of his neck.  But more than that first salvo in the fight that would ensue, he remembered Mona's laugh, her cheeks red from the cold and flush from the effort of getting her car home.  The sound of it seemed distant now, teasing the edges of his senses like the sight of someone ducking around a corner just as you were starting to catch up.

Another tickle grazed his neck as Mona settled into Rob's arms, her eyes trailing again to the window.  For a moment, she was looking right at him, and the ghost felt the memory of his heart start to swell.  He almost forgot he was in the Slip, in the space between worlds.  For however brief a moment, he forgot he was dead.  But then her eyes trailed back to the glow from the TV as she tucked her legs up beneath her and leaned against the warm body of the boy sitting beside her.  Feeling all altogether new kind of chill, Rob turned to go.

He stopped at his first step, staring down at the form of the small boy glaring up at him from beneath the dusty black hoodie with the faded skull print on the front.  "What are you doing here?" Rob asked before he could stop himself.  He knew already Shin wouldn't be here if he hadn't screwed up.  He was only waiting to learn what it was he had done this time.

"Same as you," Shin answered, not taking his hands out of his pockets, "doing something stupid."

Rob could feel his temper start to flare at the boy's softly-spoken words.  To his surprise, the world seemed to echo his sentiment.  An unseasonal heat moved swiftly into the yard, carried on a sudden and eerie wind.  "You're going to bust me over this?" Rob asked, not bothering to mask his irritation.  "I figured you, of all people, would understand."

"Don't," Shin said firmly, turning to go.  "Besides, I'm here as a friend.  If Finnegan caught you coming out here off-duty..."  The boy went silent, staring at Rob's empty hands with a look of horror on his face.  "...Where the hell is your scythe?"

Rob looked down at himself, pulling open the sides of his red and white letter jack as if the object might come falling out by surprise.  "I dunno," he answered earnestly, "I guess I left it in my locker."

"Idiot!" Shin shouted, his hands coming free from his pockets immediately.  The sudden heat that had started to gather in the slip vanished like a scared kitten, leaving a heavy darkness in its place.  The boy grabbed Rob's much larger hand and forced his own small, black, gnarled baton into the other boy's fist.  "Do you try to be this stupid, or does it just come naturally to you?"

"Hey!" Rob shouted back, stirring a new spark into the air around them.  "You went blazing across hell to get your boyfriend back--" he started, ignoring the warning look on the smaller boy's hooded face.  "Where do you get off telling me what to do with my time??"

"What to do with your--" Shin repeated, his brow furrowing in a pained look of confusion.  He grabbed Rob's arm at the wrist and held it up under much protest from his partner.  Rob stared through his hand at the boy, trying to wrench it free without any success.  It was then that he realized he wasn't looking past his hand at Shin, but through it.  There was only the barest outline of a hand left, thickest at the edges like the lines around a sandbox.

His point made, Shin let go the boy's wrist and tucked his hands back into his pockets with a forceful shove.  "You can't come out here into the Slip without your scythe," he said as the boy stared unblinkingly at his own translucent palm, "how many times do I have to remind you, these things are for our protection out here!  Do you want to become an un-tet and get hunted from here till Doomsday?"

Shin rolled his eyes, swearing something under his breath that Rob couldn't quite make out.  "Souls fray in the Slip, Rob.  That means us, too."  His tone softening to clear concern, Shin turned and took his first few steps back toward the still-open portal behind him, sticking out of the side of an old Volkswagen van.  "Forgive me to trying to save what passes for your life, jackass," he muttered, trudging across the parking lot toward the yellow glow and soft hum of the elevator back to the Central Office.

Rob couldn't stop staring at his hand, watching as it slowly began to solidify, the color pulsing like blood coursing into his veins again until his hand was back to its old self.  He lifted his other hand, still clenched tightly around Shin's scythe in its collapsed form.  He shut his eyes just as tight, swearing under his breath and marching off after Shin, well aware of the risk he had taken.  He could only think of how made Mona would be if she knew the risk he had taken.  With broad steps, he walked into the elevator after Shin, breathing out a heavy sigh rife with frustration.

"Sorry," he said curtly, offering Shin his scythe back.  He was too angry with himself to bother making the apology sound more heartfelt.

"S'ahright," Shin answered, staring straight ahead as the doors swung shut and the feeling of movement rocketed up beneath them.  "You were right, by the way," he added, chancing a glance up at the boy's face.  Rob seemed earnestly confused at the statement, so Shin explained:  "I do understand."


With a deep breath, Rob nodded, resting his head back against the wall of the elevator.  Their shift would be starting soon, and he hadn't slept a wink.  It was shaping up to being another long day in Purgatory.