Back To Normal?

Redemption

Frank Landow’s late. In the twenty two years since he’d started working at The Hermeson Bureau he’s always been sat at his desk at 09:00 prompt and even though he abhors what he does, he is too far embroiled in the bureau to quit.

His temperament is severely tested this morning when his company car, a moderately inexpensive Japanese Mazda, inexplicably overheats, a trait not normally associated with Japanese fan assisted motors vehicles. He believes the designers in Tokyo or Fukishima or wherever should experience a 41 degree New York heatwave one day and decides to check out Mazda designers when he gets to work.

The subway now is his only alternative, a mode of transport he detests. It isn’t so much the train but the people he'll have to travel with, those of low intellect, the sad commute of loud, coughing, whingeing plebeians, and the inevitable touching of strangers that a crowded compartment offers.

A group of Japanese tourists delays his wait for a couple of minutes longer at the ticket machine. They are probably Mazda workers. This may be a bad day for Japan.

The morning gets rapidly worse. He’s missed one train already when there's an announcement.

“Please evacuate the station. There’s no need to panic. Please use the stairs. Do not use the elevators. Please evacuate in an orderly manner. I repeat, there’s no need to panic.”

People panic. Frank watches the writhing throng head up the stairwell and calls work.

“Late you say? A breakdown? Mazda’s never break down. You’re where…the subway. Evacuation. You think it’s a bomb. Wait…no, there’s no bomb scheduled in that area for two years. Trust me, okay. Get here when you can!”

He switches off. He glances at the stairwell and thinks “Fuck it” and heads for the elevator.

It's still in operation so he enters and presses the “up” button. The doors close and it starts ascending, then with a shuddering jolt it stops. The lights flicker and in the darkness he swears, slamming his hand against the door. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. In the silence he hears the drip, drip, dripping of water. He moves his feet. A splosh. Looking down he sees he’s treading water.

“What the…”

“You signed the paper.”

Franks’ knees buckles at the sound and he twists back, slamming himself into a corner. The lights come on again exposing a crouched figure in the opposite corner. The figure wears a hoodie and sits squat in a foetal position. Water drips from its clothing.

“What the… who are…how did you get here?”

The figure raises its head and uncovers the hood. It’s a woman, her drenched face coloured ashen grey seems devoid of life, her hair limp and straggly sticks in emaciated strands to her face and her eyes although just opaque pools of darkness hides behind them a hellish whirlpool of circumstance.

She rises.

“You signed the paper, you’re just as guilty as much as my killer is.”

Frank Landow’s face twists in fear.

“l…I don’t know what you’re talking about. I work in insurance, I do claims…”

“My name is Rose Wilson. Two days ago I was murdered. They haven’t found my body yet, it’s still in the Hudson. I’m dead.” She shuffles forward. “I didn’t believe there was an afterlife Mr Landow, but there is. You know that because you work for Hermeson. You work for the Deparlier section, the one that signs off the killing lists. The lists that end lives. You never read them, do you?”

Frank shakes his head.

“It’s just my job.” He mutters

“The Deparlier group’s part of the Four Horsemen, a secret, ethereal society that controls life, death, famine and war. Look, don’t let’s waste any more time. You know when you die you’re put in a big white room and told about everything there is to know. Angels, fate, heaven, everything and about Hermeson and the Four Horsemen. Everyone thought it’s quite cool. How these things really are so Twilight Zone. Look, I want you to get my papers rescinded, I want my murderer found before he kills again.”

“What! You know that’s impossible. How did you get out anyway? It breaks all the rules.”

“The Gate Keepers asked me about my life. I’m one of life’s losers. It was one lump of crap from start to finish. Abused, bullied, drugs, prostitution; then just as it seemed to be taking a turn for the better, I get raped and killed. I put it more eloquently there and gave one of them a blow job. Old habits, you know. There wasn’t a dry eye in heaven, so they gave me a redemption card, a last chance but only if my death can be rescinded. As I said, I’m a loser but I want to win, Frank. Just once. You don’t know what it’s like, do you? To be one of life’s losers? It’s like a faulty tap. Drip, drip dripping. Little thinks go against you, all day, every day. I accepted it in the end. I accepted that I am…was, one of life’s losers. That is until I found about the truth; about life and death and then I got angry and that’s when I decided that I wanted to be a winner. I wanted to know what it really felt like. I want my life back, Frank. A little bit of normal, you know, another chance.”

She stood close to Frank Landow’s face.

“Elation, Frank. To me, it’s just a word, like symbiotic. I have no idea what it means. I’d like the chance to find out. I want to be a winner, Frank. I want to win the Lottery, I want to marry Johnny Depp. I want…I really want normal and nice, Frank. Maybe I will, if you’ll give me that chance. I’m not asking you for a winning run of good fortune but just this once Frank, just once, I really want to win. I want my life back.”

“In all my years of working at Hermeson, I’ve never known anyone get…oh God, I hate my job I can’t do this anymore. The misery I’ve wrought. I’ll give it up….”

“No, please. Please Frank, at least not yet.”

The elevator restarts. Landow startled, looks up then back at the woman but she’d gone.

********

When he finally arrives in work he asks to see copies of the death files for two days ago.

“In case we have an audit,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.” Later that day he pulls out another file, postdates it two years ahead and signs that off too.

*********

At four fifteen that afternoon Patrolman Ryan Wyzinski radios in to his precinct.

“The Wilson woman. I’ve found her, yeah, in the Hudson. Got caught up in a reed bank just off Fisherman’s Wharf. She must’ve been here while and she’s in a bad way but she’s alive.”


Two years later, as serial killer Rodney Anders sits in the electric chair, he looks at the gathered group that have come to witness the execution. Some are judiciary, some guards and there’s that fucking Wilson dame that fingered him. How had she survived?

He stares at the smiling man behind her, who’s waving a piece of paper. Who the fuck is he?