Reborn

15

Jim sat on the concrete ball atop the column and looked down on the small, uneasy crowd.

"Come on, folks!" he said, making a shooing motion with his hands. "Get packing! This isn't funny anymore!"

They recoiled at the sight of his hands.

"Look!" someone cried. "His palms! The Mark of the Beast!"

"It's proof!" Spano shouted. "Proof that Satan dwells within!"

They oohed and aahed and muttered together as they clustered below him. Jim looked at his fuzzy palms.

The Mark of the Beast? What the hell did that mean?

Whatever it was, it seemed to frighten them, and maybe that would scare them off.

"Yes!" he said, rising up, straddling the concrete ball with his ankles and spreading his hands out in front of him. "The Mark of the Beast! And if you don't leave now, all your future children and grandchildren will be born as frogs and crawly things!"

And then his right foot slipped.

For an awful, gut-wrenching moment he thought he was going to fall, then his foot found the edge of the capstone again. He thought he was okay, then realized he'd lost his balance.

He was falling.

He saw the iron spikes atop the gate rising toward him and thought as clearly as he had ever thought—

I'm going to die!

He tried to twist to the side, but it was too late. He managed to swing his head off to the right, but the spikes caught him in the groin, stomach, and chest. There was an instant of blinding agony as the points speared his heart with a tearing, thudding impact, ripping through to his spine and beyond.

Not yet! Oh, please, not yet! I'm not ready to go!

He opened his mouth to scream, but he had no air left in his lungs.

Abruptly the pain was gone as his ruptured spinal cord stopped sending impulses to his brain. A strange, ethereal peace enveloped him. He felt strangely detached from the cries of horror rising all around him.

Suddenly Carol's face swam into view, looking up at him with wide, horror-filled eyes. She seemed to be saying his name, but he couldn't hear her. Sound had slipped away. He wanted to tell her he loved her and ask her to forgive him for being such a jerk, but then vision slipped away as well, with thought racing close behind.