Infinite Loop

Chapter 1 - The First Act

Typical!

I'm the fall guy for her!

It's obvious now. She'll let the boyfriend get the chair!

He could only groan as his fedora tumbled away.

It's the same familiar cold.

Next is nothing but black.

He played a private detective, and the script killed him. Warren knew this as he fell over to his side. His body swiftly grew numb by the second. His mouth groped for words, but no sound escaped. The last image the stranger carried into death was the long legs of the woman stepping over his body. She briefly glanced at him. For a brief instance, her stony expression changed. Not sympathetic, but stunned, was the look Warren noticed when lifted his hand. There was a fleeting recognition about his angel of death.

His final thought was really an observation. Blackness washed over him, and the last thought was the little heart tattoo he saw on the woman's ankle.

It was so out of place.

Warren H. Phillips heard it. The strange slapping noise, distant but irritating, nevertheless. He also realized he was waking. Still, he kept his eyes closed. He remained on his side, exactly in the same position as his body landed on the pier. But he was alive.

Well, similar, but not!

People consider living after receiving two bullets in the lungs to be miraculous. Most of them might think he should kiss the ground for a second chance.

Those damn people are wrong.

Yeah, he was alive, in some sense. He could breathe, eat, piss, whatever. But he remained trapped, and his first urge returned. Every time he woke up after dying inside his personal hell, he wanted to kill the asshole who put him here.

But Warren ignored the frustration, realizing the waste. He carried no power to remove the gods or whatever put him here. Instead, the last moments of the night before remained with him when he woke. He always recalled his fatal error before everything went black. He read somewhere that returning from the dead somehow felt like the spirit passed through a long and dark tunnel. That sounds nice, but it's bullshit.

Returning to hell feels the same as dying does.

In his hazy state between sleep and consciousness, Warren remembered the first time he had died. He carried the slow-motion recollection of an overpowering, stifling gasp for each breath. At the same time, he was overwhelmed by a clutching pain twisting through his chest. The dashboard wobbling in front of him and the sound of screeching tires pierced through his head. A sensation of being on some twisted roller coaster, tumbling inside a metal container with glass shards flying by his face, cutting him. Slowly, the light turned to darkness while moving images of his wife holding two young daughters etched into his mind. Then a sudden nothingness enveloped him.

Memories of his first loss of life, then the next and the next, came to Warren when his brain turned on each morning. Similar to rebooting a computer and seeing all the flashing pictures of your life sweeping in front of you.

It was a relentless cycle of death!

Gathering himself, Warren sensed his surroundings. A comfortable, if thin, mattress replaced the cold concrete under his body. Even the clothes he wore were gone. The trench coat, clothing, and hat disappeared somewhere between scripts. Warren slid his hands carefully along his side, determining only his underwear remained. It left a person feeling vulnerable.

Warren felt a soft breeze suddenly brushing cooling air over his arm and face. His senses heightened and suddenly focused. The air was fresh, coming from outside. The steady slap of waves striking steel.

It reminded him of happy times. Curiosity filled him. An optimist might say he cheated the reaper once more. Of course, that's a lie, but it helped keep him from going crazy. His mind reasoned logically. Still, the same inner voice suddenly laughed at him, reminding him of the cycle of death.

Who are you kidding, mister?

Opening his eyelids would reveal a reality of fleeting hope, followed by utter dread. Warren recalled a song which talked about God having a sick sense of humor. Now he understood he was part of that sick joke.

Go on, pilgrim; let's see what awaits you today. Maybe Saint Peter was standing at the pearly gates.

As a child, he envisioned the white-haired man with a long beard would smile, pointing out the name of Warren H. Phillips inside the massive book. It would take him to heaven.

Or was it purgatory? Frank would remember.

The thin, reedy voice of his deceased brother, Frank, came to him. It was a recollection of the day he and his brother angrily started their feud, never to be reconciled.

Whatever!

He'd seen it hundreds of times and he turned off the image. As far as he was concerned, his baptism in the afterlife was not the stuff described by any religion he heard about. Instead, Warren awoke in a hellish hereafter of make-believe.

Warren H. Phillips existed in a strange movie world. Each time he woke from dying, he entered as a minor character in one forgotten film after another.

Yeah, that's my hell!

Warren resisted opening his eyes because he already knew about his preordained death in each script. His new existence meant struggling to survive while knowing he would die.