Chapter Twenty Nine

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. – Leonardo Da Vinci

Chapter Twenty Nine

Hep checked his schedule and saw that one Lawrence Hubbins was due to drown in his pool in an hour and a half. It was a forty five minute ride to Lawrence Hubbins’s home.

We’d better get moving if we’re going to get there in time, Hep thought. He set down the new pair of tongs he’d been putting some finishing touches on and closed up his workshop.

Barely in the house, he could hear Ares freaking out in the spare bedroom. The hippie bug seemed to have really bitten Ares hard. Hep had hoped he would settle down a bit by the time they got home, but he’d been struggling constantly and explaining, in a mildly assertive way, how this experience made him feel.

In a way, Hep was glad Ares was overwhelmed by hippie-madness. It would have been harder to avoid feeling sympathy for him if he were his usual, over the top self.

Hep had been forced to handcuff Ares to the bed. Unlike himself, Ares could, and did, travel by thought with no ill effects. And Ares did not want to partake in the business of death.

“Hey! Come on Hep, let me out of here. Imprisonment isn’t the answer!”

Hep went in to the spare bedroom, where Ares was struggling, sort of, against the handcuffs Hep had made.

“Well, Ares, I’m trying to rehabilitate you, but I can’t have you running back to the love-in before I’m done with you.”

“Man, I’ve got a bunch of letters to write to my congressman. And there’s gonna be a protest tomorrow! I can’t miss that! Everyone’s expecting me,” Ares said. He rattled his cuffs against the bed a little bit.

“Sorry. You’re going to miss the protest. But, hey, we’ve got some fun deaths scheduled for the next couple of days!”

“I don’t want anything to do with death anymore, man. I told you that.”

“Will you shut the fuck up for a change? I thought Ares the god of war was a prick, but Ares the smelly hippie is worse. ‘Whine Whine Whine. I don’t want to kill anyone.’ Shut up,” Scroat said. He had been hanging out in his room listening to Ares complain for most of the day.

“Why are you going along with this kidnapping, anyway, Scroat? Get Hep to let me out of these cuffs.”

“Oh, hell no. Hep has a plan to fix you, and I am going to help him. Fucking hippie.”

Hep dug the key to the handcuffs out of his pocket and unlocked one of them. He kept a firm grasp on the chain between the cuffs. As expected, Ares tried to vanish. It didn’t work.

“Man, you see?” Hep said, “I’d let you out of these cuffs, but you keep trying to run off. Look, you’ve just got to come along to a few deaths, and if after that you still want nothing to do with death, then we’ll send you back home with a cookie and a gold star for being a good sport. But for now, you’re going to hang out here with us, OK?”

“Yeah, whatever. Fascist.”

“I hate to say this, but, this is for your own good,” Hep said. “Come on.”

Hep led Ares down the hall, past Scroat’s room. “Come on,” he said to Scroat. Scroat grumbled a bit and followed along.

The three of them went outside. Hep’s bike was parked close to the back door.

“Get in the side car, please,” Hep said to Ares.

“I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

Hep sighed then said, weary, “Scroat, will you help me get him in the sidecar?”

“Sure thing,” Scroat said. He pulled a crescent wrench out of one of his saddlebags and waved it in Ares face. “You get in the fucking sidecar, or I’m going to introduce Mr. Wrench to your noggin, hippie!”

“OK! Jeez,” Ares said. “Lose the violence, man.”

He got into the sidecar, and Hep locked him up again.

“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, Scroat.”

“Well, it fucking worked, didn’t it? He’s in the sidecar!”

Hep rolled his eyes. “Whatever, let’s get going. Lawrence Hubbins is due to die in an hour and twenty minutes.”

“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Ares said. He struggled, a bit, against the handcuffs. It was a futile effort. Neither the handcuffs, nor the grab-rail Hep had made were going to let go.

Hep and Scroat started their bikes, and roared out of the driveway and towards Lawrence Hubbins’s home.

Ares began struggling in earnest a few minutes into the ride, throwing his weight from side to side. It was enough to make Hep fear losing control of the bike, and so he had to ride much slower than he would have otherwise.

Hep had planned on travelling at his usual rate, very fast, in his calculations for travel time. As it was, they were going to be late.

“Would you sit still?” Hep asked Ares, exasperated.

“Nope,” Ares said, and continued to throw himself around, and bounce in the sidecar. Hep’s motorcycle wandered back and forth in his lane.

“You’re being a pain in the ass,” Hep said.

“I’d say that you are being a pain in my ass, Hep.”

#

Lawrence Hubbins had called in sick that morning in order to have a mental health day. After lunch, he made himself a very strong rum and coke, and took the cocktail out to his pool. He tossed his floating lounge chair into the pool, then put his drink, book and cell phone in a floating beverage caddy. He was expecting a call from a girl he’d recently met, and he thought he might invite her over for a swim if she called soon enough.

The water was the perfect temperature when he jumped in. He swam around a little bit before climbing into the lounge chair and settling in with his drink.

Half an hour later, between the drink and the sun, Lawrence had a pretty good buzz going as he floated in the pool. His book rested on his leg as he nodded off to sleep.

#

Hep checked his watch.

“We’re going to be ten minutes late, at least,” he said.

“You could always just call the whole thing off,” Ares said.

“I’m not calling it off. I’d suggest you get used to the idea.”

“Nope,” Ares said.

Five miles down the road, Hep and Scroat turned off the highway, and started navigating the surface roads to Lawrence’s home.

#

Lawrence was dreaming about getting fired from his job. His phone rang, waking him with a start. He turned and rolled a bit to grab the phone, and wound up splashing in to the pool. He swam up to the surface, but was obstructed by the lounge chair floating over him. Groggy and half drunk, he fought against the lounge chair instead of swimming away from it. He could hear the phone ringing. As he fought the floating lounge, panicking, he accidentally breathed in a big lungful of water.

If Hep had arrived in time, this is when Lawrence would have died.

Instead, Lawrence thrashed around in the water a bit more before finally sneaking past the troublesome floating chair and breaking through the surface. He coughed up a copious amount of water while hanging on to the edge of the pool.

Lawrence decided it would be an excellent time to get out of the pool then.

#

Hep, Scroat and Ares came to an abrupt halt in Lawrence’s driveway. Hep unlocked Ares from the sidecar and said “Come on.”

“Nope.”

“Come on,” Hep said, and yanked on Ares’s right arm. Ares stumbled out of the sidecar.

“You’re a fascist!”

“OK,” Hep said. He pulled Ares along behind him on the way to Lawrence’s pool. Scroat walked on Hep’s other side.

The three of them reached the back yard and peered over the fence. There was a drinking glass, and a book floating in the pool along with a lounge chair and a drink caddy. There was not, however, a body to be seen.

“Where is he?” Hep said.

“Probably walking around, ya think?” Scroat said.

“Would you guys let me go please? I don’t think this is ethical and I don’t want anything to do with it,” Ares said, very loudly.

“Shut up,” Scroat said to Ares.

“Maybe he’s inside,” Hep said. “Let’s go check.”

The three of them walked back to the front of the house. Hep tried the front door, and found it was unlocked.

“Well, that was easy,” he muttered. They went inside.

“I’m really not comfortable with this you guys,” Ares said, quite loudly.

“Well, get comfortable with it. We’re maintaining the natural order. You hippies like the natural order, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but… wait, you’re turning this all around on me. We’re breaking in to some guy’s house to kill him!”

“We’re not going to kill him, we’re just here to collect his soul.”

“Yeah, after we make sure he’s dead,” Ares said.

Lawrence stood at the foot of the stairs behind them, staring with his mouth open at a scrawny, dirty biker, a bigger, really ugly guy with bad legs, and a hippie with a professional wrestler’s physique. Scroat was the first to notice Lawrence.

“Oh, hey buddy. Nice fuckin’ day to die, isn’t it?”

Lawrence uttered a little scream, and ran wildly up the stairs. Hep, Scroat and Ares watched him go. He had nearly reached the top step when he lost his footing. In his efforts to regain his balance, Lawrence fell over backwards and tumbled down the stairs. There were several horrible cracks and crunching noises as he fell. He reached the bottom step, and lay sprawled out on the floor. His neck was bent at an unusual angle.

“See? We didn’t kill him. He did it himself!” Hep said to Ares.

“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t have freaked out like that if we weren’t here.”

“He was supposed to drown, for fuck’s sake!” Scroat said. “By rights, he should have been dead ten minutes ago.”

Hep looked down at Lawrence, then up at the soul standing next to his body.

“So, you ready to go?” Hep asked him.

“I guess so,” Lawrence said. “I’ve had the craziest day.”

“Tell me about it,” Hep said.