Snippet #1752358

Being a man of a pragmatic upbringing and a youth which was spent alternately crossing the Texas plains in search of work and diving into and out of burning buildings wearing nothing but a burlap coat, Duane Cooper was surprised - but pleased - that he had managed to die on something even remotely resembling his own terms.

Sure, it was completely unexpected - that greaser boy, pale as a corpse, appearing seemingly out of thin air and striding over to Duane like he owned the place - but it was at home (well, one flight of stairs from home), it was quick and it didn't hurt much. He'd always thought he would meet his end one of two ways; the preferred way being laid out in bed, rattling his last breath as he stared out the bedroom window at the sun slowly creeping into the sky over the plains and mountains, the crow of a bird circling somewhere overhead, quiet and peaceful like. The other method, the one he would prefer not to have lived out but nearly did on multiple occasions, would be in a building collapse when his luck finally ran out and everything - not just two ceiling beams - came crashing down on him, trapping him until his suit singed through and he burned to ash in a godforsaken basement somewhere.

No, Griff's timely intervention was neither of these things. It was not overly pleasant, but it hadn't been the building. And Duane couldn't complain.

However, he didn't expect it to be so simple. Death wasn't a drawn out affair like it had been in his imagination, fueled by the many TV shows and comics he'd been raised on as a kid and the movies he had watched and cherished well into his adulthood and early retirement. It was more like... Fainting. Or being knocked out. You blacked out for a little while and the next thing you knew you were awake again; usually in a strange place surrounded by people you don't know or remember, usually surrounded by fog, aching all over.

In short, death and transportation to the Ever was a lot like a bar fight. Duane looked about him, watching his fellow shuffling masses. A lot of them were much older folk than him, some of them were younger. Not too many of them looked to have died of violence. Still, he was a bit disoriented by just how many of them there were. Duane had no idea that this many people were on the world, let alone how many of them died every single day. Compared to them, he was just another number. He started breathing a little bit harder. Once he realized he was starting to get a little bit frayed in the nerves, one hand immediately slid over to the left pocket of his jean jacket and removed a pack of Lucky Strikes and his trusted Bic lighter. He flicked the top open and wrapped his lips around one of those wondrous Virginia Killin' Sticks, then popped the top shut again and lifted the lighter in a practiced maneuver, carefully gripped between the fingertips of his left hand. He flicked once, twice, three times - and finally the fire stayed, and the cigarette lit. He sucked in a slow breath, felt the smoke wrap and curl down his throat and into his lungs, closed his eyes. Then slowly breathed out through his nose.

His sinuses burnt as smoke filled them, the scent of tobacco familiar but the texture of the smoke itself revealing bad memories and even worse feelings of his wounded nerve endings flaring up. He quickly, impulsively, coughed as the rest of the smoke filtered through his nose, expelling the source but leaving the lingering pain behind for a few moments. He coughed, nearly doubled over as the burning in his nose spread slowly across his face, down his spine, across his body -

"Ticket to Ever."

He looked up. A receptionist's desk had appeared before him in lieu of the line of common folk ahead, headed up by a very disinterested-looking receptionist. She stared at him now with a glazed look of complete and total indifference. Duane assumed she must be from the city. Where-ever the city was around here anyways.

"Should be right 'round here somewhere..." Duane sounded confused, discarding a piece of paper that had been in his off-hand to search for the ticket in the pockets of his coat.

"Sir-"

"Naw, ma'am, ah know ah got a ticket 'round here somewhere." Dean refused to give up, still searching every pocket in desperation for his ticket into the hereafter.

"Sir -"

"Naw, I'm close, miss. Ah know it."

"Sir, you just dropped it."

Something in her voice made Duane freeze and look very stupid for a second. The look that the desk-clerk was giving him was equivalent to the look that a chef at a Michelin Star-ranked restaurant gives a mangy rat scrabbling across the kitchen floor. Complete and utter disdain flowed from clerk to cowboy as Duane sheepishly bent down, retrieved the crumpled paper and handed it to the clerk, who snatched it, gave him an annoyed look and said, "Welcome to Ever."

Just as he was about to walk past those (not so) Pearly Gates, a hand reached out and snagged him. Once they'd been brought to a stop, Duane got a look at his abductor - Griff. The same guy who'd killed him in the bar. "Well, mister," Duane said simply, lowering his hands to his side, "fancy seeing you again." He noticed a few others milling around - a redheaded girl, an older blonde, a spooky-looking man in clothes way out of his time, and - eventually - a tiny Asian girl. If that girl wasn't creepy, then Duane didn't know what creepy was. His brother and his oldest son had once gone to see a movie a few years ago, and Duane groped for the name of it, hoping, praying, and suddenly it appeared before him. The night they came home, Duane's brother had called to him and spoken at length about how creepy and fucked-up this one movie was.

This girl sounded a lot like the one his brother had described to him that night. The girl from The Grudge, or whatever it was.

Griff spent some time speaking, and meanwhile he noticed the girl flinching from the cigarette smoke filling up the air. In what he assumed was a gesture of politeness, Duane took his cigarette out and stamped it on the ground, grinding the half-smoked butt with the heel of his suede boots. Eventually, Griff opened up the floor for questions. Duane intentionally stayed quiet, letting everyone else go first - and boy, did they take the opportunity. Duane decided to turn towards the most aggressive one - he didn't know her name - and sigh. "Ma'am," he drawled softly, "Much as I 'preciate what you're saying, I have to admit that this is, after all, the man that stuck somethin' very sharp through the back of y'all's head and killed you in a matter of seconds, so can we try to refrain from insultin' him? Just to save our own necks for a while longer, see?" The cowboy slowly, carefully crossed his arms and shrugged, turning back to face Griff. "Ah got nothin; 'sides saying that if yore plannin' to hit that girl there -" he gestured towards M, having noticed the way she seemed to flinch around Griff - "Ah would suggest either tellin' me to walk away or turn my back so I'm not inclined to bust you one right here and now."

Having spoken his piece, Duane stepped back into the fold of the group, taking another Lucky Strike from his pack and storing it (softly, ever so softly) behind his right ear.