Gabriel did look around. The sky, where it could be seen through the clouds, was a strange purple color that never existed on Earth, and there were at least three moons.
The clouds could have hidden any number more.
“I have everything I need to live comfortably, and your money is completely
worthless here. I’m giving you something that few people ever receive, a second chance.
A chance to redeem yourself. Take it or leave it. There’s no negotiation of the terms.
I’m not the one that lived his life completely for himself, nailing everything female with a heartbeat, and championing the most deplorable of causes. Man up, or I’ll find someone else who will.”
“What do I have to do,” Gabriel asked.
“Meet with a woman named Millie Farseer. She knows you’re coming, and will
come to meet you.”
“And then what?”
“Do what she tells you to do.”
“Okay, got it,” Gabriel nodded. “Meet Millie, and do what she tells me to. That’s it? That’ll score me some points with the almighty and I won’t go to hell?”
“You can lead a horse to water,” the Sage muttered under his breath just loud
enough to be heard. “You’re really an idiot, aren’t you? It’s not the destination that redeems a man. Ah, screw it, explaining to someone with your obvious lack of
intelligence would be a waste of my time. Maybe you’ll figure it out somewhere along the way. I will tell you this much. You must prove to the powers that be that you have it in you to be redeemed. You need to show the big guy that you deserve this second chance. If you screw it up a second time, your everlasting torment in the afterlife will be doubly bad. You can’t buy redemption with a few insincere words and half-hearted acts.
Your whole heart, mind and soul must be in it. Selfless acts of kindness or sacrifice might be a good place to start. Understand?”
Gabriel didn’t. He didn’t understand anything. He was dead, but somehow he
was not, and now he had to go run errands for god’s middle-freaking-management in order to work his way out of hell? What had he done to deserve hell anyway! He didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway, and found himself falling once more. It was a much shorter fall this time, and ended with a painful impact on dusty ground, where he lay for some time, feeling as though a bus had just hit him.
Freezing cold bit into him, breaking through the pain of Gabriel’s fall. Pushing himself to his feet, he found that he was no longer wearing his suit, nor was he still wet.
Dual gunbelts crossed his waist, weighing down heavily. The pistols in the holsters looked more like cannons than handguns. The shells lining the belts were the size of his thumbs.
A huge knife was stuffed behind one of the belts. Drawing it, he examined the gleaming black blade, which looked like plastic, but it was far too heavy to be anything but metal. Sliding it back into the sheath, he took stock of his clothing.
He looked like he’d walked straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie. Leather
chaps covered his faded blue jeans, and a heavy leather vest hid most of a faded black shirt. Over everything was a heavy duster coat. His legs were slightly bowed, and he couldn’t straighten them no matter how hard he tried. Reaching for the black cowboy hat at his feet, he dusted it off before placing it on his head.
His hair was several inches longer than it had been mere minutes before, and his black leather gloves rasped against thick stubble on his face. He would never allow his appearance to degrade so much! His looks were high on his list of priorities. It was so much easier to convince twelve people that a murderer, who was obviously guilty as sin, was completely innocent when you were polished up prettily.
Shocked, Gabriel realized that the face he was rubbing with his hands was not his own. His nose was different, and his cheekbones. His jaw seemed a bit wider. He knew his face. He put a lot of love and care into maintaining it. The face he was trying to massage cold and pain out of was not his. He needed a mirror! He had to see what that damned Northern Sage had done to him!
There was a horse nearby and he ran toward it, skidding to a stop when he
realized it wasn’t exactly a horse.
“Whoa,” Gabriel muttered.
The animal had the body of a horse, but with paws rather than hooves, and a more catlike tail. It looked up from grazing on the odd purple grass that sporadically patched the ground with a feline head as he approached. There were saddlebags and a saddle on its back. He cautiously placed a hand on the animal’s flank, expecting it to suddenly turn violent as seemingly docile beasties always did in alien movies.
When the strange horse-cat paid him no mind he breathed a little more easily and reached into the saddlebags, rummaging around until he found a small mirror. Holding it up, it took him a few seconds to work up the courage to look. When he did, the foggy, somewhat distorted glass reflected someone else. It was his face, but at the same time, it was not.
His skin had been smoother than a baby’s ass thanks to biweekly spa treatments.
Now it was leathery and callused. You could drive a Greyhound bus through some of his pores. Dark stubble far thicker than anything he’d ever been able to grow before hid his cheeks and jaw. His black hair seemed to have a lot more curl to it. His deep blue eyes had faded almost to gray. It was his face, but at the same time, it was the face of a man who had spent many long years exposed to the elements. It was almost as though someone had pieced his face together from memory and gotten a few small details wrong.
He looked more like a hardened gunslinger rather than a respectable defense attorney.
The face staring back at him looked like it should belong to his older, manlier brother.
“Who are you,” Gabriel asked the reflection. To his dismay he caught the sight of several gold teeth. He’d spent thousands of dollars to keep his teeth radioactively white.
Unable to look at his reflection any longer, Gabriel stuffed the mirror back into the saddlebag and looked around at the desolate landscape. He’d been to the Utah Salt Flats once, and they were the closest thing he’d ever seen to the wasteland surrounding him. The ground was flat as a board for miles in every direction. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sandy ground was hard and reddish brown, with those strange purple plants scattered every here and there.
The thing that made him stop and stare was not the mutant horse-cat, nor was it the flat wasteland or the purple plants. Not even the face that was not his face had shocked him so badly as what he saw in the sky above. The sun was huge in the sky, and it blazed the color of blood, yet it gave little warmth. Opposite the sun was a huge gas giant, made up of swirling hues of blue, and red, and purple. There was a scattering of moons around it, filling up the sky. It was a truly breathtaking sight.
“Eat your heart out Tom Baker,” Gabriel said in awe, unable to tear his eyes away from the planet looming large in the sky. “Where the hell am I?”
His knees wobbled and gave out, depositing him on the hard ground, but he still could not look away. He began to laugh, completely unable to stop. It actually, physically hurt, and he could feel something rather important in his mind straining toward breaking, but he could not stop laughing. Just ten minutes ago he’d been leaving his Porsche behind and getting ready to board a train to a nasty part of town, and now he was on an alien moon staring up at a gas giant in the sky that was obviously orbiting a red giant star. His inner geek was having a hysterical multiple joygasm, but the rest of him was certain he was in a coma in some hospital, perhaps County General, and he would eventually wake from this nightmare.