Chapter 3: Three Deaths Before Lunch

Chapter 3: Three Deaths Before Lunch

Mort’s voice was a nagging echo in Eddie’s skull. Observe. Record. Do not interfere. The words were a warning, a corporate policy for cosmic janitors. But standing there in the Mojave silence, staring at a twelve-foot succulent that had clearly committed vehicular homicide, Eddie felt the same old stubborn spark that always got him into trouble. It was one thing to be told a rule; it was another to see the crime scene with your own eyes and just walk away.

“Primary directive can go to hell,” he muttered, tossing the clipboard into the passenger seat of his Ranger. “You don’t get to just… be a killer tree.”

He popped the hood and unclipped the tire iron he kept wedged next to the battery. It was heavy, solid American steel, a tool for solving tangible problems like lug nuts and, he hoped, sentient plant life. He felt a surge of familiar, reckless confidence. He’d dealt with cracked-out tweakers in warehouse parking lots and cornered coyotes trying to get into his trash. This was just a big, ugly plant. How tough could it be?

He approached the Joshua Tree with a wide, deliberate circle, the tire iron held like a club. The tree stood perfectly still, its twisted arms silhouetted against the pale blue sky. It looked ancient and inanimate.

“Alright, you leafy son of a bitch,” Eddie said, his voice low. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

He swung.

The tire iron never connected. The instant he committed to the attack, the ground beneath his feet erupted. It wasn’t a tremor; it was a targeted explosion of dirt and roots. A single, gnarled tendril, thick as a python and sharpened to a woody point, shot up from the earth. It moved with impossible speed, a blur of brown and splintered bark.

Eddie had only a fraction of a second to register the shape of his own death. The root speared him through the chest, just below the ribs, lifting him a foot off the ground. A wet, tearing sound echoed in the sudden silence. The pain was absolute and blinding, a supernova of agony that erased thought. He looked down and saw the dark, fibrous wood protruding from his sternum. His tire iron clattered uselessly to the ground. The world dissolved into a tunnel of searing white light. His last conscious thought was a flash of pure, unadulterated annoyance.

Mort is gonna be so pissed.

---

The transition was like being thrown into a tumble dryer full of ice and static. One moment, oblivion. The next, a violent, full-body wrench.

Eddie materialized on his hands and knees, gasping for air that smelled of cherry-flavored syrup and industrial floor cleaner. The linoleum was cold and sticky beneath his palms. Fluorescent lights hummed aggressively overhead, and a tinny pop song drilled into his ears from a cheap radio. A bell chimed cheerfully as a trucker in a greasy hat walked out the door.

He was in the Circle K on Palmdale Road.

He scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against ribs that felt bruised but were inexplicably whole. He frantically patted down his chest, his hands searching for the gaping, fatal wound. There was nothing. Not a tear in his faded band t-shirt, not a drop of blood. It was as if it had never happened.

“Subsection 4, paragraph C,” he whispered, the words catching in his throat. The Post-Termination Reintegration Protocol. It was real. The crazy, bureaucratic son of a bitch had been telling the truth.

“You good, man?”

Eddie looked up. The night shift clerk, a young woman with dark, tired eyes and a tattoo of a constellation on her wrist, was leaning on the counter. She regarded him with an expression of profound boredom, as if men materializing out of thin air on her floor was a nightly occurrence.

“I… uh… slipped,” Eddie stammered, pulling himself together.

She nodded slowly, her gaze lingering on him for a moment too long. “Yeah. A lot of that going around.” She went back to wiping down the counter.

His mind was a frantic mess of confusion, terror, and a growing, simmering anger. He had died. He was sure of it. And that… thing was still out there. He stormed out of the Circle K, ignoring the clerk’s unsettlingly calm gaze, and found his Ranger parked perfectly in a spot near the air pump. The keys were in his pocket.

The drive back to the site was a blur of adrenaline and disbelief. Everything was exactly as he’d left it. The tire iron lay in the dust next to the tree, which stood as silent and impassive as ever.

“Okay, round two,” he snarled, glaring at the plant. Brute force was a bust. The thing was too fast, and it controlled the ground. He needed to think smarter. Fire. Monsters hated fire.

He rummaged in the bed of his truck, finding a bundle of oily rags he used for checking the oil and a Zippo lighter. He stuffed the rags into an empty beer bottle he found rolling around on the floor mats—a makeshift Molotov cocktail. It wasn't elegant, but it would burn.

This time, he didn’t charge in. He stayed wide, circling, looking for an opening. The tree remained still. He flicked the Zippo open, the familiar clink a small comfort. He lit the rag, the flame catching with a greasy whoosh.

He cocked his arm back and threw.

The bottle sailed through the air in a perfect arc, aimed for the base of the trunk. But it never got there. As the fiery projectile reached the apex of its flight, the Joshua Tree’s spiny leaves trembled. With a sound like a thousand whips cracking at once, dozens of needle-sharp spines detached from the branches and shot through the air. They weren’t just falling; they were launched, a volley of organic darts.

They hit the bottle in mid-air, shattering the glass. Flaming gasoline rained down harmlessly on the sand. A second volley, faster and thicker, was already heading for him.

Eddie tried to turn and run, but it was too late. The spines struck him like a shotgun blast. A hundred points of fire erupted all over his arms, his legs, his chest. But it wasn't the impact that killed him. It was what was on them. An immediate, paralyzing numbness spread from every wound. His lungs seized, refusing to draw breath. His legs buckled, and he crashed to the dirt, his muscles locked and useless.

He lay there, completely paralyzed, staring up at the impassive, twisted form of his killer as the world faded to a pinprick of black for the second time in less than an hour.

---

The cherry slushie machine whirred. The pop song was even more annoying this time. Eddie lay on the sticky floor, the phantom paralysis still tingling in his limbs.

He pushed himself up, his body screaming with a fatigue that was more than physical. It was existential. The clerk was still there, this time restocking bags of chips. She glanced at him, then at a cup of water she had already placed on the counter.

“Looked like you needed it,” she said, her voice flat.

He ignored her, his mind locked in a furious loop. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive. He was a bug hitting a cosmic zapper, and Mort was the one who had to sweep up the mess. The thought was infuriating.

He drove back, the setting sun painting the desert in shades of orange and blood. He was done trying to be a hero. He was done trying to be smart. Brute force was useless. Cleverness was useless. The damn plant was playing by a different set of rules.

But as he pulled up to the site for the third time, he remembered something. In those last, agonizing seconds of his second death, as he lay on the ground, his gaze had fallen on the base of the tree. Among the tangled, woody roots, he’d seen it: a flash of darkness that wasn’t shadow. A sliver of something that looked like black glass, half-buried in the soil.

A new plan formed, born of pure, stubborn desperation. He wasn’t going to fight it. He wasn’t going to kill it. He was going to rob it.

He left the Ranger’s engine running, the driver’s side door flung wide open. This was going to be a snatch-and-grab. He took a deep breath and sprinted.

He didn’t run at the trunk. He ran for the spot. The desert floor trembled beneath his feet, the tree sensing his intent. He dove, hitting the ground hard and skidding on the gravel, ignoring the sting of a dozen scrapes.

His fingers clawed at the dirt, searching for the object he’d seen. The roots were already moving, thick and fast, coiling around his ankles, his legs, pulling him back. They were like living chains, immensely strong.

He felt it. A sharp, cold edge.

He closed his hand around it just as a massive root, thick as a telephone pole, slammed down, wrapping around his torso and neck with crushing force. The air exploded from his lungs. His vision flared with stars. The pressure was unbelievable, turning the world into a cacophony of cracking bone and roaring blood.

But as the darkness took him for the third and final time, his fist was clenched tight around his prize.

He came to on the Circle K floor, gasping, clawing at a throat that felt like it had been crushed. The clerk just sighed and turned up the radio. But this time was different. The raw, desperate victory pulsed in his clenched hand. He slowly, painfully, opened his fingers.

Lying in his palm, slick with his own spectral dust, was a sharp, wicked-looking shard of obsidian. It was cool to the touch, and its glassy black surface seemed to swallow the fluorescent light above, reflecting nothing.

He had died three times. He had learned his lesson. But he hadn't come back empty-handed. He had proof. And the paperwork for this was going to be hell.