"Hey, Great Job Killing Me!"

Seated at my dining room table, I take inventory of the junk I've collected and given some value. I get the sensation I'll always be sixteen. In front of me, a tablet of lined paper. My wife bought several of these yellow pads for me awhile back, so I'd always have something around to write on when the big ideas came. I have a black pen, and I'm comfortable. The house is silent, because my family is on the moon. Or at Epcot. Maybe the beach.

I'm there to have an interview. A character from an unfinished book will appear in a few seconds, and he will have some questions for me. I guess I may have some answers. He exists in limbo now, in a rewrite of my very first book about working in a Florida resort hotel. The rewrite is much better than the original, because this time I tried having a plot. His name is Paul. And not to drop any major Beatles' references, but he is dead.

Paul was killed in a car accident on SR 535 in Kissimmee, Florida in the middle of a hurricane (that has yet to receive a name). In the story, it is believed that his car was tampered with and his death was less of an accident and more of, you know…on purpose. The leads of the story try to figure out what exactly happened to Paul.

It’s a comedy.

Paul appears in the seat my wife usually sits in when we eat together. He is 59, white, blue-eyed and named "Paul" because I needed him to be handsome, like Paul Newman. In the first version of my book, he was a sexually confused redneck named Rudy. Now he's a womanizer sitting in my wife's chair. And he's alive.

"I have only one real question for you, James."

"That's what I'm here for." I say.

"Why am I dead? I mean…why me? I never hurt a soul. I was in three fights my entire life."

"It's not personal, man." I try to look for an answer that will placate the corpse in front of me. "I needed something to happen this time. The first draft was observational shit. Nothing happened. At least this time I made you cool. You were, like, a ladies man."

"A dead ladies' man." he says.

"Yeah."

"Well, who did it?"

"Who did what?"

"Who killed me! What the hell do think I would ask next?"

"Sorry," I tell Paul. "I thought you were going to ask one question."

"I lied. Kill me. Again."

I scratch my pad with my pen. The thing is, I think I know who killed him. It was a pretty decent little plot device. The problem was I couldn't get the comedy right. The book was more about the guys who worked at the hotel. The backdrop was the fun: all the tourists and management, tricks they used to make money, screwing each other over. The death just added a little drama to keep things moving.

I tell him something: "It's between two guys. Neither one you know, but you wronged them in some way. Is that enough?"

He winces as if his eyes sting. Paul pushes his hand through his sandy gray hair and gives an expression of disappointment. Like when your drunk friend promises 'this is the last time', or when you say you won't swear in front your kids anymore. I think for a moment he will give me a better idea for the plot device. I actually have my pen ready. But instead he says:

"Why can't you kill me?"

I ask: "Why can't I kill you?"

"Yes."

"What? I did! You die in the middle of the fifth chapter. I can show you."

"No," he says. "It's not done. You haven't written it. I'm dead, but there's no ending. The beginning is hardly there, either."

"So? I'll get to it. I have a ton of stuff going on, man."

"That's not it, and you know it," Paul says. It is his first smile. I think I made him too much like Paul Newman. I immediately think of Butch Cassidy.

"I know what you're going to say"

"Tell me." Paul smiles again.

I tell him: "I don't like to kill people. I don't write anything where anyone dies because it's…mean or something."

He was right. I can't pull the trigger. I can't draw the sword. I'm too nice on the page. There's sex in there. Plenty of arguing and love and friendship and maybe a little ass-kicking…but I haven't killed anyone.

"Yeah. You'll never really kill me off until you finish the book, James. Or is it Jim?"

"Flip a coin, Paul."

Just then, something even more ludicrous happens. Through the door to my garage, (where the dog would usually be but he is on Jupiter) steps a six-foot stick figure with a cape. When I write "stick figure" I mean a stick figure. Drawn in pencil from circular head to flat feet, he takes a chair at the table between Paul and me. Within a couple seconds I know who he is. He was a part of the poorly drawn comic strips I used to draw with my friend in the fifth grade. The comic books are long gone, but I remember the contents vividly. Two superheroes, each in three-panel comics (a la Bloom County) and my guy was named—

"Captain Courageous", he said. This statement is made even more peculiar because the Captain has no face. I paid a little more attention in English class than in art class.

"Jimbo," Paul says. "Remember what you used to do to this guy?"

"I'll tell you what he did," the Captain says. "On every single page, I was cut in half, my limbs severed off, my cape set on fire, plummeting me to my death." He raises his stick arms in some show of frustration.

"My favorite adventure was swallowing a live grenade disguised as an apple. Then…you remember what happened, man?"

I giggle in a rush of nostalgia and stupidity. "Your ass exploded."

"You're damn right my ass exploded! You put me through all that 43 times and you can't kill this one truck-driving goober? Just once?!" The Captain would look furious if he possessed the facial features to do so.

"I see your point. It's all just in my head anyway, right?"

Paul stands up in his cigarette-themed T-shirt and extends his hand to me. He flashes that movie star smile and said: "So, how about you get back to that story right now. How about you get in there, sit down and kill me right."

"Consider it done," I say.

The lights dim, the characters disappear and the only sounds heard are the clicks of a keyboard and the squeak of my chair.

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