Body Surfing

Leo’s chest exploding when the doctor shot him flashed through his mind. The pool of blood that had filled the concave roof of the Town Car.
    Dr. Thomas started to nod, but his forehead tapped the woman’s gun barrel and he took a quick step backwards. “I understand. You—you have to say my, that is, say his , say the, say the demon’s name.”
    “Very good, Doctor.” The woman leveled the gun at his forehead. In a deep voice—a voice like the one J.D. Thomas had used to intone the bible verses—she intoned: “Show yourself, Leo.”
    As far as Q. could tell, nothing happened. The doctor’s eyes continued to blink rapidly behind his glasses and the woman still held the pistol to his forehead. After a moment he began to fold the shotgun’s barrel into the stock. But even as he did so, the woman dropped her arm. She turned the gun around, offered it handle first to Dr. Thomas.
    “You really shouldn’t keep these in the coffee jar, doctor. Not only does it gum up the firing pin, it tarnishes the finish. And you,” she said, turning toward Q. “If you’d taken any longer with that shotgun, I would have had to put it together for you.”

21
    I t wasn’t just Larry’s smile that was crooked. His whole body seemed slightly off kilter, as if it had been taken apart and put back together by a dyslexic toddler. His torso skewed to the right as it came out of his pelvis and his left leg turned out like a hockey stick. The fingers of his right hand zigzagged crazily at the knuckles. No, not at the knuckles: between them, as if each of his fingerbones had been snapped in half. Ouch, Jasper thought. That must’ve hurt .
    Leo waggled Larry’s wonky fingers. “Please pardon our appearance while we renovate,” he said as he pulled the ambulance out of the hospital parking lot. “Larry should be good as new in a few days. Well, he would be good as new, if I planned on sticking around.” He examined his host’s crooked fingers in the glow of passing streetlights. “Who knows, maybe he’ll get used to them.”
    Under different circumstances, Jasper might’ve found Larry’s fingers fascinating, but right now other things were more pressing.
    “You really expect me to believe someone shot you? That you fell off a nine-story building ? How are you still alive?”
    Leo laughed. “I’m not, remember?” He glanced at Jasper, eyes twinkling. “Come on, buddy. You been in Jarhead long enough to know the answer to your question. Takes a lot more than a couple-a shotgun blasts to put one of us to sleep. If the guy had aimed for the head, of course, it would’ve been a lot worse.”
    “And why did this guy shoot you again?”
    “Turns out ol’ Larry here was having a thing with a mafiosa down in Jersey City. Watched too many episodes of The Sopranos or something. Needless to say, Mr. Mafioso wasn’t too happy when he came home and found Larry shtupping his wife. Lucky for Larry I was there too, or he would be dead.”
    Jasper shook his head incredulously. But there was still one more piece to the puzzle. A piece he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to.
    “And…and how did you end up in Larry?”
    Leo flashed him another of Larry’s crooked smiles. “Well, it’s obvious you haven’t quite figured this out, as evidenced by the fact that you’re still occupying Mr. West’s fleshy domicile.” He looked Jarhead’s body up and down. “Looks like he dropped a few pounds though. Nice work.”
    “You’re saying you came back? For me?”
    “Guardian angel Leo, at your service.”
    Jasper bit back a laugh. Somehow he didn’t think Leo had ever guarded anything in his life.
    “So, uh, what happened back there? At the river?”
    “Well, Jasper, if you need me to explain that to you, then the situation is worse than I realized.”
    Jasper would’ve blushed if he’d been in his own body. “I don’t mean that . I know what that was, thank you very much.”
    “No, thank you .”
    “This is all a big joke to you, isn’t it? Pulling pranks on people, then skipping out before they can pay you back?”
    Leo stomped on the brakes. “Listen, buddy. A practical joke is only funny when there are consequences. And there are no consequences for us anymore. We’re dead, remember? It’s time you started accepting that fact and stopped acting like a mopey teenager.” He chuckled. “The joke was supposed to be on Mason and Danielle, but you neglected to play along. You didn’t come ,” he added,