The body on the floor looked too peaceful, merely asleep, at any moment about to arise and relate the strange happenings of a dream, to wonder about the significance of dreamed events, as if such things had significance, were more than just the screensaver of the mind, a star field marching past at Star Trek speeds as we journey to no particular destination, or until we awake, a little sadder upon realizing we’ve gone nowhere at all. But the body didn’t move. It wouldn’t move again, except with the spinning of the earth, around the sun, swirling slowly (by cosmic standards) around the galactic core, spreading out from the ancient explosion of which existence is the only memory. Eventually somebody would carry the body the short distance to the incinerator, where it would settle as ash or float up into cotton white clouds (a new pope has been named), rain down, be sucked into the parched soil, burst miraculously from the ground as a tiny green shoot, always reaching up until the inevitable fall. Fuck the circle of life.

“Fuck it hard,” said Drausinus.

His henchmen looked at him warily, knowing better than to speak. He raised the gun in his hand, which, having recently expelled the bullet responsible for the dead guy on the floor (and indirectly responsible for ruminations about life and the end thereof), still reeked of gunpowder. He pointed it at the body. The gun shouted out twice, angry yells like a cornered beast, and the peaceful scene degenerated into a Pollock painting of brains and body fluid, and what used to be a face became something else indescribable. Drausinus threw the gun to the concrete floor. It clattered like a cheap plastic toy, the sound overpowered by the echoes of the shots.

“This shit isn’t going to cut it,” he said. Shoulders hunched, he swayed to the corner like a sleepy drunk, stepped onto an old wooden pallet that squeaked and moaned under his weight, and sat down on a rusty steel barrel. His eyes swept across the abandoned warehouse. Corrugated sheet metal walls rose from cracked and crumbling concrete and vanished into shadows near the ceiling. Windows the color of pilsner funneled in murky light like muddy water. Imaginary catfish skimmed the floor sucking up the kind of scum that grows in such places. A dry, brown leaf fell on the surface, ripples spread and the faint light filtered to the bottom, performed a dance across the silt, but the catfish didn’t understand.

“You two, get your asses over here,” Drausinus said, motioning the henchmen toward him with his hand like he was fanning himself on a Southern summer day. The henchmen scuttled to the corner, and looked up at him with eagerness and trepidation. They were both short with builds like cavemen. Deep set eyes below large brows conveyed persistence more than intelligence. They bunched close together, the whole length of their arms touching, left to right, and while beyond their Neanderthal features they looked little alike, the thought that sprang to mind was twins.

“I seem to have lost my balance,” Drausinus said. “My chi isn’t straight. I’m going through ups and downs. I’m pushing rocks up hills only to let them roll down again, carrying the world on my shoulders one minute, sitting on top of it the next. Singing songs that voices never share, then singing it from the motherfucking mountaintop. Looking forward and looking back but never looking where I am.”

The henchmen nodded in unison, not to convey understanding, but to prove they were paying attention at least enough to know when to react in the affirmative.

“I leave it to you two,” he spread his arms towards them, “to find a way to get me back on track. This roller coaster shit is killing me.”

The henchmen looked at each other, not sure exactly what this assignment entailed, but without any noticeable signal, they hurried off to another corner to confer.

Drausinus leaned back against the cold aluminum wall, and felt the heat seeping out from his skin through the fibers of his shirt, spreading through the wall, conducted rapidly by the metal until he’d heated the whole structure. And then his life flowed with it, following the heat, and he was the warehouse, looking out through window eyes at the pier, the ocean water lapping against weathered pylons that had turned dark brown, the color of cockroaches, by some process of the sea and wind and sun and a disapproving god making a black mark on the water every time we screwed something up, a gesture more effective when the water could still represent purity, before the syringes and Coke cans washed up like exotic shells from unfathomable fathoms deep where the fish glowed in place of the sun, and where the catfish wouldn’t understand. Breathing in the heavy, cold water, Drausinus fell asleep.

The warehouse door slammed shut, and Drausinus woke up. Morning light splashed through the amber windows and fell in puddles at his feet. His body shivered, shook out the chill of the night, limbs felt heavy, neck ached from the awkward sleeping position. He had not dreamed. The dark feelings of the previous day rose up in him again, deep dissatisfaction gnawing at his insides like a rat trying to escape, scratching and screeching. From the outside he was assaulted by the sour stench emanating from the faceless body in the middle of the warehouse, rigid from rigor mortis, limbs splayed in a tragicomic dance, or a marionette with cut strings, sad and paralyzed but remembering something like glee when it was hung from a wooden cross, crucified when it was let down, most letdowns being crucifixions. Drausinus smiled at the body while a lump rose in his throat. Envy. Here before him at last was perfect balance, death something worth dying for.

The henchmen came rushing forward from the direction of the door, and stepping into the citrine light the one on the left held out both his hands, palms up, supporting a fine chrome pistol that seemed to glow with heavenly warmth, wrapped in holy water as the sun glinted across its mirrored surface like liquid, and it came alive and breathed and fumed and in its terrible glory called out for a target.

Drausinus reached down and caressed the gun with his fingertips, leaving oily smudges on the virgin metal. The handle was textured, and it felt like a thousand tiny teeth biting into the palm of his hand. He looked into the barrel, and deep in the shadows he thought he saw the golden glint of the bullet like water at the bottom of a well. He thought he saw release. He thought he saw balance.

He turned the pistol over in his hands, admiring the fine craftsmanship, feeling its perfect heft. A band of light swept across the chrome and revealed an engraving on the barrel, and he held it close to his face and the words etched themselves on his retina and he understood. He read the engraving again: THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

“You like it, boss?” asked the henchman who had handed it to him.

Drausinus exhaled, pressed the gun against the henchman’s chest, and pulled back lightly on the trigger until the gun kicked back and the henchman collapsed in a heap of himself and the warehouse rang like a church bell sounding out high noon through the crisp winter air on a bright and sunny Sunday.

Drausinus glanced, cold and uncaring, at the remaining henchman. “Will you get rid of the body? Both of them while you’re at it.”

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