Jonathan P. Davis
No one escapes from Life, Inc. – not even Death.
Foreign thoughts and feelings have begun invading the Stabilizer, Life, Inc.’s Senior Death Agent in the Department of Darkness, Mortal Division. Some remind him of the heart he used to own—and the man he used to be.
Detecting his quiet struggle, Senior Management acts swiftly to ensure his highly sensitive position cannot be compromised by an awakening conscience.
With his scheduled retirement drawing near, the Stabilizer aims to right himself, but office politics, affection for a woman, and knowledge of the Boss’s “Big Mistake” compound his problems until he must flee to find his own way home.
Fear, anger, frustration, and defiance of the “System” fuel a dizzying flight from skewed justice toward a grand finale that none save one could have imagined.
Jonathan P. Davis is a published author and an award-winning business and marketing freelance writer. He is also a songwriter and musician.
His first book, Stephen King’s America (Bowling Green Popular Press, 1994), explored the recurring American themes in popular author Stephen King’s novels and short stories. King authorized the project and gave Davis exclusive access to his safekept manuscripts for the research.
Davis has also ghost-written a horror-fiction story for teenagers. Life, Inc. is his first published full-length original novel.
An Agent never forgot what the Optometrist looked like. Not ever.
It swam slowly and unevenly toward him, drifting, drifting, patient, patient, putt-putting along by a tiny propeller on the back of its perversely oblong head.
The head bothered him. A lot. He could describe it only as a zeppelin-like balloon floating vertically over a stick-figure body of bamboo-like reeds. A thin string, its neck, attached the head to the body. A ribbon of silky but tough red tissue flapped and floated from the end of each appendage in relaxed and care-free waves.
Two silver dollar–sized punctures in the center of the balloon gave it a nose. Above the nose, two strobing red reflectors, much like those on a child’s bike wheels, served as its eyes. And near the bottom of the balloon, what looked like two vertical, clacking, rotten egg–yellow piano keys (pincers?) suggested it had a mouth.
Around and atop the “head,” a polished platinum band supported two spindly, jointed prongs that protruded from the center of the forehead like silver spider’s legs and ended in glowing, pulsating bulbs.
Newwww. Yu muy zit new.
The chair issued a command by reclining itself. The Stabilizer climbed into it, and restraints clamped over his arms, legs, neck, and waist. The bulbs at the ends of the Optometrist’s head prongs then flashed on, blinding him yet again.
New, new. Uvuryteeng's geweeng zu bee owekey.
He thought his eyes might melt in their sockets; his closed eyelids may as well have been tissue paper over a flame.
Idz ben zum tam zins yoov ben zu zee ze duktor, yez?
The Optometrist came even closer. The bulbs threw shadows against the inside of his head and swept high-powered beams over his heart’s deepest, darkest corners; it had already begun hunting for hidden thoughts and sins.
