Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night.

Really!

I’m not kidding.

It WAS!!!

I know lots of authors, including Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy, all have wanted to start their story that way. Me too I guess. But as my story starts, or rather ends, it was a Dark and Stormy Night!

Yes, my story begins and has an ending on the same night.

“An ending?” you say.

Yes, you see, my story begins with me and a bullet traveling at the speed of sound, released from a trigger pull a split second ago. One that just ended my life.

I was sitting on my couch in my apartment’s fifth floor living room, mindlessly watching one of those movies that are interrupted every five minutes or so with ten minutes of commercials. I’m sure you’ve watched late-at-night movies so you know what I mean.

The title of the movie is not important. It doesn’t add another layer to my story other than to explain why I was motionless with the remote glued to my hand. Plus, I’m sure what was left of my brain that was centered on telescopic cross-hairs didn’t contain that information. Let’s say, my frontal lobe left me in the lurch.

The part of my brain that did remain doesn’t contain any of that information. What did, is perhaps part of the litter that exploded from the damage the hollow point round did to my head. I never knew what hit me. Nor did I know why I was a target of the contract killer hired to eliminate me.

I do have a secret to tell you though. There is something after!

I haven’t been here long enough to call it a “Life,” but time will tell. What’s different, I’ve already learned, is that just before you expire ... or rather I expired ... something sort of taps you on the shoulder. As you turn and try to focus, you’re pulled out of yourself and a little away from the scene. Like it or not, you get to see your demise.

After all, if there wasn’t something “After” I wouldn’t be able to pass on this story to you. Would I?

I know you’re asking yourself the how and why I can bring this story to you in this form. It’s better if for now you just accept that I can. Both the how and why will become evident as you read on.

I can’t say that seeing my head blown apart was a nice thing to observe. But it wasn’t as bad as you might think. It’s not like the blood and gore you see over and over again in a hit movie. You know one where they replay it from different angles or freeze frame the blood spattering particles.

Nope. It’s just a quick thing. Played just once. Rather than seeing it in slow motion it happens naturally. Everything is real time. It happens and it’s over.

Messy. But over.

The biggest shock is seeing yourself, knowing it’s you. Knowing you ain’t there anymore. It’s something the newly deceased has to get used to.

Being dead.

It can be a shock!

It was a shock to me I have to admit. For some it can take a long time to come to grips with the new state of being ... or of not being. Of course, that is until you get used to the idea, and pardon the expression, “Live with it!”

Back to my dark and stormy night.

I guess the plan of my executioner was to mask the sound the missile he launched at me with the sound of thunder. It had done the trick. No one heard the gunshot or rather rifle shot. Just a large BOOM and a little crackle following it. At least that’s what the police assumed during their investigation ... but I get ahead of myself.

His -- I assume for now it was a man -- undoing was the path the bullet took after leaving my head. My apartment is in an older section of town, way before walls were made of six inch thick cement blocks. The walls of my apartment were made of wood studs just covered in sheetrock with plenty of insulation stuffed into them to dampen sounds traveling between apartments.

A few inches either way and the bullet would have hit my TV or a stud in the wall as it tried to pass out of my apartment. Something like that would have stopped the bullet. No one would have been the wiser for days or perhaps weeks until my stench became intolerable. But much to my advantage it didn’t or wasn’t stopped. The bullet that is.

It passed unstopped through my inside wall, across a hallway and through another wall. There it lodged in my neighbor’s TV. The explosion of his old fashioned TV tube prompted a frantic call to 911.

That singular mistake on the part of my assassin, well, helped me in my quest to right that misdeed. Or at least get even with the person who hired him too. Interesting how fate controls things.

Of course, that misjudging how far the bullet would travel after leaving my head was a definite miscalculation. Not that it saved my life, but that it saved others lives in the process of killing me. I, in this world, was a goner. No way out of it. Doornail time. There I went.