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Hell on the Installment Plan
$5.00
Fiction:
Re-Possession: My Life as a Soul Thief - Abel Diaz & John Edward Lawson
Mercy-Jacking - Susanne S. Brydenbaugh
Brimstone Cowboy - Tim Curran
Excerpt from "Re-Possession: My Life as a Soul Thief
by Abel Diaz & John Edward Lawson
When you're paid to steal human souls, your life is in permanent flames.
I've been burning in Hell for years, even though physically I'm up here on
the ground, hunting the damned. You don't live like this for the money.
Business is good in California, but the money is flushed away on locating
targets, renting cars and motel rooms, purchasing firearms, payoffs to shady
doctors and lawyers, and just staying alive. You're always on the move.
You're always in pain. And you're always alone.
It's blood and guts out there. You've never seen a man fight until you've
seen him fight for his soul. He comes out with all fangs showing. Like a
beast. I've been cut up, beat down, hit in the mouth with a baseball bat,
stabbed in the neck, thrown out of a second story window, shot in the guts,
and buried alive.
I look like a car crash with skin. Scars all over my face; only half my
teeth are real. And my insides are wrecked. That bullet went right through
me bursting important meat on the way. The doctor dug out several feet of my
entrails. I don't eat solids anymore. You don't live like this for the
money.
There's a tattoo across my chest, the only one on my body. It's barely
legible anymore through all the knife scars. Big black letters above my
nipples: LIVE TO KILL, KILL TO LIVE.
* * *
There's a lot of ways to die when you repossess a soul. People always know
you're coming. They don't know when, they don't know how (if you're any good
they should never know how), but they always know why. They borrowed
something from the Devil and ran when he came to collect. We call them
Skips: customers who skip town with souls they no longer own.
Skip will try to bribe you with money and sex. Skip will come out swinging
when you knock on his door. Skip will sneak up behind you when you're
sneaking up on him. Skip will put a gun to your belly and squeeze the
trigger. Skip will dig your grave while you bleed very quietly in the trunk
of his car. Skip'll do anything, absolutely anything, to keep his soul
because it's the last thing left to lose. You've got to want it more than
they do. It's that simple.
I work around the clock, but most repossession takes place between midnight
and five a.m. I'll get one or two souls on a slow week. Track them down,
stake them out, take their souls. One week I got eight. As far as I know
it's a record, but I don't know a lot of people in my line of work. You
don't get this job by applying. This shit isn't advertised. They come to
you because something in your past attracts them. You have skills they need
or you're simply Hellbound. Either way, you're qualified for the work.
Your recruiters are men in business suits. They're built like heavyweight
boxers, like steroid pumping maniacs, but their skin doesn't fit right. It
sags in all the wrong places, bulges awkwardly in others. And they won't
take off their sunglasses. Ever. You find out later they were demons in
human flesh. They put us on like we put on Halloween costumes, and then they
throw us away.
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