“Dead. He’s dead.”

Gabriel noticed a lone slug crawling up the wall. Another one. It was a greenish-grey number with a black leopard-print pattern across its back. The tiny creature was oblivious to the depressing scene going on outside of its small, meaningless existence.

“It’s over.” Beatrice sighed. “Sam, can you do postmortem care?”

“Yeah. I can… yep.”

“I’ll phone the funeral home.”

“Does he have family?” Baraka asked. “A wife? Kids? Anyone we should call?”

“No. Nobody. Nobody at all. Gloomy as hell, I know.”

Suddenly, the slug stopped. It tilted its head with what almost looked like curiosity and raised its twin black antennas. Those tiny little eyes on the slug’s antennas were pointed right at Gabriel, as if it were looking at him.

But that was ridiculous. For a moment, though, the bizarre thought had seemed all too possible. Gabriel shook his head, and the slug crawled away. Marvelous. He’d gotten so stupidly demented that he was anthropomorphizing a slug.

An unfamiliar male nurse came around the curtain. “You okay, Gabriel? Do you need to talk?”

Gabriel clenched his hands together. “I’m fine.”

As the minutes went by, everything became blurrier and blurrier. Samantha did postmortem care on Robbie’s cadaver. A black-suited worker from the funeral home came in and took the body away in a black bag. Gabriel rocked back and forth in his armchair, unwilling to go back to sleep.

The hubbub was over. Lights were out. Everything was supposed to go back to normal. Sure. Right.

From the corner of his eye, Gabriel noticed movement in the hall outside his room. Leaning forward, he peered around the jamb. Edna Foster, clad in a nightgown and scowling, rolled her wheelchair over and stopped in his doorway.

Slowly, she turned her head to look in on him. “Hi…”

“Hi, Edna,” Gabriel replied, rubbing his eyes. “You’re up late tonight.”

“Late? What are you talking about? It’s morning. I’m waiting for breakfast.”

Gabriel checked his watch: two a.m. Edna rolled into his room and peered around in the dark, as if looking for something.

Edna sat there, twitching from her Parkinson’s, her brow deeply furrowed into a ridged mountain range. Wheeling forward a bit, she peered over at the other side of the room. “Is he dead?”

Gabriel gnawed on his lower lip. “Yes. Just a few minutes ago.”

She nodded and took Gabriel’s hand, holding it tightly. Her eyes were unfocused, yet at the same time, looking right into him.

“Oh,” Edna said. “Good for him.” She wheeled out of the room and returned to her tour of the hallway.

Good for him. She’d said that with none of her trademark malice. No sarcasm. No negativity. She’d said it, and she’d meant it.

Another person may have found her comment to be in bad taste, but Gabriel understood the genuine compassion in it. Robbie Gore had suffered from the incurable, and death had released him. Gabriel had never believed in an afterlife, and he didn’t much care whether it existed or not.

Sighing, Gabriel looked at the chaotic jumble strewn across his table. God, what a mess. He felt a great temptation to swipe it all to the floor in one fell swoop.

Except… something was sitting on top of his papers, its head raised into the sky, staring right at him. It was the same slug from earlier, the greenish-grey one with the leopard pattern on its back. Its black antennas squirmed above its head. Gabriel lifted his finger, getting ready to flick it away.

Then, something happened. Something that Gabriel never could have anticipated. Something so bizarre, so utterly impossible and ludicrous, that he nearly had a heart attack.

The slug spoke. “Hello there, Gabriel.”

Chapter 6:

Storm

Gabriel shook his head. He wasn’t going to even pretend the nonsense was real.

“Gabriel,” the slug repeated a bit more sternly. Its voice was vaguely metallic and way too big for its tiny form. Its head was tilted in what could only be described as a quizzical gesture.

Oh, no. This was it. The final sign that he’d totally lost it. “Zero, one, one, two.” Gabriel was already out of breath. “Three, five, eight, thirteen…” The Fibonacci numbers didn’t help. His mind was utterly, completely gone.

He stared at the slug, trying to somehow fit it into reality. He felt as if his mind had separated into fluffy pieces of lint. “You… you’re just a… a voice. A voice in my head,” Gabriel said as calmly as possible. “That’s all. A voice in my head. Now, if you don’t mind, please shut up.”

“No, thank you,” the slug replied, nodding its little head.

“Pardon?”

“I said no thank you. I’ve been pretty reserved for quite some time, and it’s grown tiresome. I’m actually very talkative, to tell you the truth. Silence doesn’t suit me.”

Trembling, Gabriel rubbed his temples. “Fuck you.”

“That’s very crude, Gabriel. Come now, you’re better than that.”

“Oh my God.” Gabriel broke down into loud, hysterical laughter. Tears flowed from his eyes. Oh, it was all over now! All over!

Down the hall, Bob Baker screamed for him to shut up. Gabriel took in a deep breath, and his laughter faded. The only thing that remained were his tears.

“Marvelous.” He glared at the slug. “You’re still here.”

“Yes.” As it spoke, the slug’s tiny mouth opened and closed.

“Okay, listen.” Gabriel shook his head. “I know that you’re just a figment of my imagination, some stray hallucination caused by my degenerating brain. I don’t know why the hell my consciousness decided to imagine a talking slug, but—”

“I’m not a figment of your imagination, Gabriel.”

“Yes you are. Don’t confuse me. I’m still going to talk to you, just in case my consciousness has anything important to say, but don’t even pretend to be real.” Gabriel wiped sweat from his forehead, hands shaking. “Why are you here?”

“Well, I did come here for a purpose, after all. Seriously, Gabriel, if a slug talks to you, don’t you think there’s a good reason for it?”

Gabriel stood up and began pacing. The sight of Robbie Gore’s empty bed made him shudder. He considering pinching himself but dreaded the possibility of doing so and then finding that the slug remained in place. It’s not real. Don’t forget that.

He sat down again, squinting at the slug’s face. “I wasn’t aware that slugs spoke,” Gabriel muttered. “Actually, last I heard, the only thing that slugs are any good for is destroying gardens.”

“You don’t understand,” the slug said. “But none of you do, not really. Humanity has never understood slugs. Look at me. Doesn’t my slimy, odd-shaped physical body seem a bit… odd? A bit unreal? A bit alien?”