The Deal Read Free

everything went
black.

    Unlike my transition into the underworld, my
return to the world of the human race was abrupt. Pain wracked my
head and the left side of my body. I could hear the crumbling of
broken glass and sirens in the distance.
    It took a few seconds for me to realize that I
was still seated behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The gurney Jim
Mancini had occupied, took up most of the space where the
windshield should have been but I quickly noticed that the man
himself was gone.
    I could feel all the muscles in my body
tighten as I unclipped my seatbelt with far more effort than it
should have taken. In my right hand I could feel something cold and
hard, and once I mustered the energy to bring it up for inspection
I could see the small gold bullet resting there in the palm of my
hand.
    It hadn’t been a dream at all.
    I really had made a deal with the
devil, and for the first in a long time, I could feel my stomach
lurch.
    It was then that another
realization dawned upon me. The sirens I thought were coming towards me were actually moving away from
me. Sure
enough, when I looked at the shattered
remains of the windshield and gurney I could see an ambulance
driving off.
    Grimacing in pain I forced the
door open and quickly as I could I made my way to the front of the
car. The ambulance I had crashed into was gone, and so was Mancini,
or Argatol as he was to be called. I noticed there were gouge marks on the hood of the Mercedes and assumed that
the paramedics probably tried to free both the gurney and the
patient only to give up and settle for taking the patient
instead.
    The wail of the siren was
almost gone now and I knew I had to make up for lost time quickly.
Mustering up all the energy I had, I climbed onto the hood of
the car and yanked at the bed. At first, nothing seemed to
happen, it was well and truly stuck.
    Another tug and then another and
still nothing. Then finally after one last release of
energy I was able to pull the gurney free enough so that it slid
the rest of the way
off the hood and clattered to the road
under its own weight.
    Sliding
off the car, I got back behind the wheel
and tried to start the engine which simply wheezed and then died on
me.
    ‘ God, fucking damn it!’ I
screamed, more out of frustration than anger.
    I turned the key again and nothing. Not even a
wheeze this time. More frustrated than I had ever felt in my life,
I slammed my fists against the steering wheel.
    The deal had been rigged. The devil must have
known I was never going to get the damn car started in time. He was
probably sitting in his chapel of horror laughing his ass off at my
puny attempts to give him what he wanted.
    Sam, remember when it comes to
working with cars you need to treat them the same way you would a
woman. Roughhousing them just won’t work and
you’ll be left even more pissed off when you first
started.
    It was the voice of my old mentor Clark. He
was long gone now, another dark spot in my past, but his advice was
always solid when it came to cars.
    ‘ Okay, please start for me, baby. Please.’ I begged as I turned the ignition
key.
    For the briefest of moments there was nothing,
not even a sign of life, and then like a punch to the jaw, the
Mercedes roared to life and I couldn’t help but smile as the
instrument panel lit up in its gentle orange glow.
    The digital clock situated at the
top of the dashboard stated I had no more than twenty minutes
before my end of the deal would be broken, so without
further hesitation, I threw the car into gear
and steered it in the direction of the ambulance.

    Someone must have been on my side as every set
of traffic lights I reached where green which in turn meant it took
only five minutes of driving before I was able to catch up with the
ambulance.
    I found it hard to believe that it
was the same ambulance I had run into only moments ago. In
the back of my mind, I had envisioned a recovery crew
coming to take it away and a new ambulance arriving to