X Marks the Spot

The thing about being dead is that it hurts like hell. When you come back, I mean, like I did, the wounds that put you down are still there­—they just refuse to heal.

In my case, it was the three bullets that shredded my heart like Christmas morning wrapping paper. And—all those clichés about broken hearts aside—there was no way I could forget the woman who’d done it to me, not with the searing fire that tore through my chest every time the old thing went thump. So when I got back to my office, I filled a crystal tumbler with Glenmorangie and kept at it until the pain subsided.

About an hour later I was feeling pretty good about things, but there was still a problem, and that was the foamy porridge my heart kept pumping through the bullet holes. I was a rotten, bloody mess.

Luckily I’m a resourceful guy, so I had a cure for that, too, and with two strips of duct tape I put an X over my heart and sealed up the works. At least if the bitch ever got the draw on me again, she’d know exactly where to aim.

I’m trying out a new prompt here, called Two for Tuesday, created by Mr. Andy Black. The idea is pretty simple: Write a story based on one of two prompts (in this case, I chose the standard prompt: Duct Tape), but for more details, you should check out Andy’s directions here. Then I highly suggest you give it a try yourself (you still have a few days after all).

This is also a continuation of a story I wrote quite a while ago, Dead Man Walking, starring an as-yet-unnamed undead detective. Check it out if you’d like the inside scoop on how his story starts.

The Series:
Dead Man Walking // X Marks the Spot // Postmortem // Basic Physiology // Les Moelleux // Her Body Begs for Death // The Talisman // Madelaine