A Clue towards a missing person...

T-Dawg was reading up on all of the celebrity gossip on Daily Planet and watching all the porn he could before the Cellphone company turned off service to the lost phone that he had found. Clearly it belonged to some rich white girl, but he found it by the road outside the haunted Mini-Mart outside of town and had brought it to the outhouse here at the park to charge.

“God, I wish I could tiddy fuck that Cat,” T-Dawg muttered looking at the MILF’s picture on the screen.

“Lust like that is beyond a mere sin, but a Deadly Sin,” came a growl from behind T-Dawg.

Shit, T-Dawg knew he had problems, he would black out at times even when not doing ****… but he couldn’t stand the religious nutzos going all, ‘you are going to burn in hell!’ He turned and was ready to tell the man behind him to fuck off when he stopped and looked the figure up and down.

“Aaaaaaazz…..” T-Dawg stammered before the Black and Crimson figure reached out and slammed him into the wall of the bathrooms with his black and gold trimmed armored glove.

“I am the Angel Azrael,” the figure said, “Now where did you get that phone?”

“I found it, I found it, it was on the ground…” T-Dawg shouted in a blind panic.

“Where did you find it?” Azrael asked, the voice conveying the menace that the expressionless helmet couldn’t.

“It was on the ground, by the storm drain…” T-Dawg said.

“Where?” Azreal pulled the man closer while tightening his grip on T-Dawg’s throat.

T-Dawg could see the many micro cameras built into the face of the helmet and swore he could here them refocusing to look into his soul… Azrael loosened his grip.

“Where is that storm drain you mentioned?” Azrael asked.

“Parking lot of the Haunted Mini-Mart, the one on the outside of the Old Cobble-Port Industrial Park off the Interstate a few miles to the west of here, outside of town,” T-Dawg spelled it all out, not wanting to be hurt any more, “To the north east corner by that hill.”

Azrael let go of T-Dawg, gently fixed the collar of his jacket.

“Now,” Azrael said in a calm and gentle voice, “If you sure that is absolutely correct and that you are not lying to us?”

“Yes Sir! That is the truth and the whole truth!” T-Dawg said ignoring the urine running down his leg.

“Good, now in about ten minutes, the police will be here,” Azrael said, “You will tell them exactly where you found the phone and then after you tell them where the phone came from you will ask for a lawyer and a shower.”

“Yes sir!”

“And If I find out that you didn’t follow my instructions…” Azrael turned to leave but held up one hand and a sword blade sprang out like he was a comic book character and then caught on fire.

T-Dawg passed out.

*

It was a charnel house… all around him were bodies in various states of decay and dismemberment. These had once been people, humans with lives to live… now they were the gross relics of a serial killer. It was clear from the spray paint on the walls of the underground bunker, this was the work of the Joker. If the missing girl was here, then she was already gone and all he could do was look for enough of the corpse to identify her for the family.

The noise of a voice came from further in. It was a person begging and then the sound of a gunshot. Azrael was not shaken, he slowly moved to look in the doorway. It was a TV hooked up to a bunch of speakers to make it loud and imitate an echo inside the room.

“Well Officer Nosey,” Joker said from the TV, “It seems you found my little writing room where I test my ‘new material’ for the bats… Too bad I can’t let you share… Ta-Ta…”

Azrael saw the Det-cord leaving the control unit under the TV and going into the hole cut in the drywall behind it… He knew too late the whole place was rigged to blow and that the explosive rope was already lit.

*

“Hello poor child, don’t try to move,” the soft woman’s voice spoke up.

“Hello Jean-Paul,” another woman’s voice spoke, “We have been watching you for a long time now.”

“Jean-Paul, my wayward son,” another woman’s voice came but somehow it almost sounded if she was speaking to him in English and French at the same time, “I wish we could have helped you sooner…”

Jean-Paul tried to open his eyes, but was **** to squint from the brilliant white light all around him. There was an urge to cover his eyes with his hand but couldn’t move it. A pain went up and down his body where the arm he tried to move was.

“Yeah, don’t try to move child,” the soft woman’s voice repeated.

Jean-Paul felt soft hands over his eyes softening the blinding light. Slowly she pulled it back and the woman became clear to see. She was a brown haired woman dressed in colonial garb.

“Who are you?” Jean-Paul begged, “Where am I?”

“You know the old cartoon image of the person at the edge of a cloud standing in front of a gate with Saint Peter standing before them with a clipboard to see if they were a good boy or not?” the other woman that spoke English said as she came into view, “Well we are in an office in a nice little cloud off to the side before you get to that point where souls not ready for that final threshold can have an intervention.”

The woman was in her forties, with black hair, wearing what looked like a French Army uniform from their Vietnam war with a cigarette in her hand.

“Sarah Williams, I use to be a nurse in the US Army during World War Two, I was executed at a base outside of Hanoi by Vietnamese Communists for the three sins of being an American, a Catholic and a French Army Nurse at the time,” the woman waved her cigarette around like a pointer.

“I am sorry…” Jean-Paul said.

A third woman came closer, she was dressed like a nobleman from the 1400’s painting.

“I am Joan…” the woman started in both French and English.

“Joan of Arc, patron Saint of France and the Divine Harold of King Charles,” Jean-Paul said.

The woman smiled and curtsied slightly.

“And this is Erica Smith,” Sarah pointed at the woman dressed in colonial period dress, “A mid-wife executed by the natives for teaching their woman about Christ.”

The other woman smiled at her. Some distance behind the martyrs were two more figures, a man in white robes and a woman in white robes as well.

“Am I dead?” Jean-Paul asked.

“Mostly,” Erica said, “Your heart and brains have yet to stop working, but as of right now, your body is beyond repair.”

“Why Am I here?” Jean-Paul said.

“Because, you aren’t suppose to be here, not yet, and not like this,” Sarah said.

“The Heretic Cult implanted you with a man-made demon,” Erica said, “You were supposed to be a healer, a doctor… not a killer.”

“You were meant to be a protector,” Joan Of Arc said, “In thirty years, you are suppose to die protecting a children’s ward from masked killers… Something that will never happen now.”

“What does that mean? Am I stuck here talking to you until I flatline?” Jean-Paul asked.

“No, this is an eternity in between time,” Erica said, “We can chat for hours and the second hand will not have moved an angel’s breath.”

“You see, you are here, and not standing before Saint Peter because HE has a new plan for you,” Sarah said dropping the cigarette and stomping it out, “And I mean the all upper-case HE, upstairs.”

“What is His plan?” Jean-Paul asked realizing who they were speaking of.

“Well first we separate you from your demon,” Sarah said pointing at Jean-Paul’s shoulder.

Jean-Paul looked to the side and saw the two inch tall head sticking out of his shoulder. It was a grotesque snapping thing that looked like a flesh crafted monster version of his Azrael helmet. He was reminded of the old Peter Jackson movies Tim, Stephanie and Dick insisted on showing him in their attempts to socialize and rehabilitate Jean-Paul into the Bat-Family. The bottom two sets of red horizontal lines formed the ‘lips’ with the black area in between them becoming triangular razor-sharp teeth to knaw and knash at the world around it.

“That’s Azrael? Get it off! Get it off of me!” Jean-Paul panicked.

“You two will be getting a divorce,” Sarah said, “No mater what option you pick.”

“And what options are there?” Jean-Paul tried to back his head away from the miniature Azrael head.

“A century or purgatory,” Erica said, “Or go back as a part of her…”

“Her?” Jean-Paul asked.

The woman in the white robes started walking forward.

“So, what will you chose?” Joan of Arc asked.