The instant I regained consciousness I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t the fact that I had passed out at a bar—that had happened plenty of times before, especially near closing time after I’d had a few too many Manhattans for my own good. Nor was it the fact that Jet was ranting on about Faye and Ed and how the two of them had up and left us after causing us more headaches than either of us cared to remember; he’d been doing that when I first drifted off, I think. No, what clued me in that something was off-kilter was the fact that I’d even woken up at all.
You see, the last thing I remembered was stumbling down the stairs of the Red Dragon headquarters in Tharsis, bleeding profusely from where my former best friend had sliced open my abdomen with that damned katana of his. Vicious, indeed—I still have no idea if that’s just a nickname, or if his parents actually decided to call their kid “Vicious” when he was born. Probably the first one, though if his parents really did give him the name, it would go a long way towards explaining how he got so screwed up in the first place. Then again, maybe Vicious was his last name. It didn’t really matter, though, since that was the only name he responded to. Besides, by the time I came staggering down those stairs, he was very much dead—and quite frankly, I should have been, too.
I’m assuming that the only reason Vicious’ underlings didn’t open fire on me was because they were too shocked by my continued existence to react in any way. That’s a dangerous habit—leaves you open for a lot of damage. But then, they could probably afford to slip this one instance, since I really didn’t pose much of a threat by that point. I knew I was a goner, but somehow I got it in my head that I should go out with style, so I raised my hand, making a finger-gun in the process, pointed it at some guy staring straight ahead of me, and said, “Bang.” Then, I collapsed on the stairs, and everything went black.
As far as endings went, that was actually pretty satisfying, if a bit disappointing. I mean, with Julia gone, I was ready to go myself, and I had the good fortune to make sure that Vicious came with me. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly want to go, either, but if I had to, that was the way I wanted to do it.
Except I was still here.
A dream, I guess. It had to be a dream. People just didn’t come back from the dead—at least not literally, anyway. Sure, I’d been killed before, but never to the point where I actually stopped being alive, and I was pretty damn sure that there was no way I could have survived that situation if it had actually happened. Ergo, it didn’t happen—it was just a violent, alcohol-induced fantasy, nothing more.
Still, that was a pretty damn extensive dream; I think a full “day” had passed from the time when the Loser’s Bar got shot up to my untimely end the next morning. I mean, it felt like 24 hours, anyway. Not only that, it was pretty damn boring at times, like when I was waiting for the next thing to happen. Normally, when that happens, my brain comes up with something else to keep me occupied, like talking chocolate waffle irons, or something like that, but this dream was utterly realistic.
What was more, it was all so vivid… I could still remember everything that had happened, even though I usually forgot nearly everything about my dreams within a few seconds of waking up. But all the details were there… Vicious, Julia, the last conversations with Faye and Jet, the dogfight over Mars, all the way back to the shootout at the Loser’s Bar—which, I now realized, was the bar I was currently in. And all of a sudden, Jet’s ranting began to sound very familiar.
“…nothing but trouble. I understand now why you have this attitude about women and kids.”
He’d said that in my dream, I was sure of it—Jet wasn’t the type who’d repeat himself verbatim, after all. Ah, it was probably just a coincidence.
That’s what I thought, anyway, until I heard a noise from the window. I didn’t even have time to think before I reacted: “Get down!”
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(Posted Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:30)
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