His legs felt heavier by the second and urged him to give up but if he looked back he would succ.u.mb because seeing them again, whatever they were, would break his resolve.

As Martin raced down King Street he recalled his last sighting of his hunters only minutes before and how inconspicuous they had looked in their bland, pale colored T-shirts and nerdy shorts.

A casual observer would have thought nothing of them, but then a casual observer wouldn't have realized they weren't-right. He hoped that his recent glance back at them would be the last time he would see them - the terror that it wouldn't be kept him going.

Freewheeling down another steep gradient, distancing himself still further, he then leapt up the steps of the Central Station railway bridge in the heart of the town, taking then two at a time in order to finish this agonizing pursuit.

While running on the bridge, he looked up at the sky and saw one of the most beautiful sunsets he had ever witnessed. The sun was a brilliant blood red and the almost cloudless sky around it was an explosion of purples, deep crimson, and oranges all merging together.

As he ran, with his paisley tie flapping wildly and his white shirt sticking to him through perspiration, he supposed that, if this was to be the last sunset he would ever see, it would be the finest.

Soon the bridge was out of sight and he was running towards home. Despite a deep centered reservation about doing so, Martin glanced over his shoulder and was more relieved than he could ever hope to express when he didn't see anyone giving chase.

After a chase that seemed endless, he got to the apartment block he called home.

Standing with his back to the door so that he could keep watch, he searched frantically in his pockets for his keys. He discovered them in the front left pocket of his trousers and, within seconds, he fell inside and lay on the cold stone hallway. Despite his aching limbs he forced himself to get up and go to his apartment because he would only be safe when he was inside. Battling exhaustion, Martin crawled up the stairs to his front door.

After kicking the door shut he lay in the cooling dark. His exhaustion was all-consuming and he found he had neither the will, nor the strength to get up; therefore he made only a cursory attempt at resistance as he slipped into unconsciousness on the floor.

The lamp by the sofa in the corner of the room went on and, although Martin did his best not to scream, he let out a little yelp. A surge in adrenaline compensated for his lack of energy.

Martin scrambled to his feet expecting to see the Big Man sitting on his sofa with his pearl handled revolver in his hand, waiting to kill him. But it wasn't the Big Man who was sitting on the sofa, it was someone very different.

She sat at the end of his white velour sofa leaning forward and holding one of his few remaining gla.s.ses in her hand. On the coffee table in front of her sat a large bottle of champagne. The glare given off by the lamp to her right combined with the eerily deeply colored sky reflected off her skin, creating a combination of shades and light that any cinematographer would have been very proud of. She tilted her half empty champagne gla.s.s back and forth in her hand and then she raised her head to look straight at Martin.

It was now that, for the first time, Martin saw her clearly, since before half of her face had been submerged in shadow but now the light shone against her countenance and gave it a strange orange tint. His visitor's peroxide blonde hair ran the length of her perfectly curved neck but stopped just short of her shoulders while her crystalline green eyes glistened and shimmered in the light of the setting sun.

Mesmerized, Martin let his gaze slip over her face much like the shadows had done only moments before and all the time he wondered if he had lost his mind. Her distinctively raised eyebrows arched even higher and then her full blooded red lips parted as she released a heart stopping smile. As that smile widened to reveal those perfect pearly whites, Martin could only wonder what the h.e.l.l was going on. Then, just before she spoke that trademark mole on the curve of her right cheek moved in tandem with her smile.

"So, are you just going to sit there looking dumb? Or are you going to say something?" said Marilyn Monroe as she raised her champagne gla.s.s to her mouth and a lock of hair flopped over her left eye.

Martin was struck dumb. He wondered if this was a hallucination he was experiencing due to the effects or exhaustion or, perhaps, it was the delayed effects of the many drugs he had ingested.

Then a more reasonable explanation resurfaced and he took a kind of rea.s.surance in knowing he had finally gone crazy. It gave him hope that, when the Big Man's minions caught him, and there was no doubt that was what they were, he wouldn't notice the pain as much. Could it just be a dream, he wondered? Then his delusions received a blow.

"What are you looking at me like that for? I'm not a dream, well...not in that sense, and I'm not a hallucination. I'm Marilyn, hmm?"

"Marilyn?! What the h.e.l.l? How did you get here?" Martin asked, bemused and with all thoughts of the ordeal he had experienced being shunted unwillingly from his brain.

"Yeah, yeah I know. Let's just say that a mutual acquaintance sent me. Found yourself some trouble, sugar?" She asked in that bright, airy and enthusiastic tone she always seemed to use.

Should he start talking to this ghost, hallucination or whatever it was? Then a thought occurred to him; even if he was just hallucinating, and she wasn't a ghost, hadn't he always dreamed of meeting Marilyn Monroe? And wasn't this just one of the most amazing visions he had ever had?

"I got in with the wrong people, Marilyn. Now they've come looking for me," Martin explained. But instead of feeling strange, he felt at ease...and he was glad he had someone to talk to, to confess to.

"Go on," replied Marilyn as she took another sip, gazing out of the window so that her face was now illuminated by a mauve glow.

Martin knew the s.h.i.t was about to hit the fan the instant the dealer had hit him with the King of Hearts. He needed no worse than a nine and almost at the moment the dealer had turned the card face up, two burly men had each taken an arm and unceremoniously dragged him from the table. They hadn't needed to tell him to come quietly.

A couple of minutes later he was at the door of the Big Man's office. He felt a chill in his bladder. Maybe if he p.i.s.sed his pants while he begged for his life, the Big Man might show him some mercy. He might just get out of this with a couple broken legs.

That seemed less likely when the thugs bundled him into the office and the first thing he saw was another heavy dragging the limp body of a 'client' by his arm out a back entrance. The man was whimpering and his face was bloodied mush...but at least he wasn't dead.

The office was a shrine to the arcane. There were ancient looking books stacked everywhere, a gold pentangle on the right wall, and a cabinet full of jars containing everything from a monkey's paw to a shrunken head and a silver skull. Martin's legs went from under him but the thugs held him up easily. They were deceptively strong, and their hands felt strange on his skin, cold and claw-like.

"I offered you way out of your debt, spotted you a marker to be retrieved at a later date, and gave you an unlimited credit line in my club." The Big Man was wearing a grey pinstripe suit, near to bursting at the seams. His was a well-earned moniker. He took his sungla.s.ses off, unnecessary in the gloom of his office, to reveal bright red eyes.

"This is that later date." The Big Man smiled and his teeth were all sharp points.

Martin turned to the thugs holding his arms and saw the same features. The ensuing moments contained much high pitched begging and pleading on Martin's part until he hit upon an idea that had, temporarily at least, prolonged his life.

"Oh G.o.d! I gotta p.i.s.s. Please let me take a p.i.s.s. I don't want to die with p.i.s.s all over my pants. Please! Give me that. Oh G.o.d, at least give me that," Martin pleaded in a voice that sounded pathetic even to him.

The Big Man looked dubiously, pursed his lips in a 'what harm can it do,' gesture and waved a hand to direct Martin to a mahogany door by the cabinet of jars.

The private bathroom was nice, well decorated. The kind of thing you would expect in the office of the manager of an upscale casino. And it had a ventilation window with a latch.

"Money," Marilyn said thoughtfully. "I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful."

Martin let his feelings of deja vu slip. By now he had become composed enough to pull himself over the floor to the coffee table and take a drink of champagne straight from the bottle.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know. There's nothing I can do anymore. I've no money and I've nowhere else to go. I can only keep running. Those that I owe have made it clear that they will not accept monetary recompense. I owe them something else. I'm dead the minute they find me, maybe worse."

"I think I know what you could do. I know what could make you a winner. I know how you could be better than them..."

"How?" Martin pleaded with tears beginning to well.

"You're going to die, aren't you? So why give them the satisfaction of killing you?"

Martin's addled brain couldn't cope with the implications of what Marilyn said but from somewhere deep inside, some place important, he felt compelled to hear her out.

Martin looked at the empty champagne bottle in his hand and was relieved when Marilyn leaned over the arm of the sofa and pulled out another bottle from what he a.s.sumed must be her handbag. Somewhat shakily she poured herself another gla.s.s before handing the bottle to Martin who wiped his sleeve across his face and then began gulping.

After he decided he'd had enough for the moment, he wondered about her last suggestion. Looking into her lucid, sharp eyes from his own tear blurred ones he asked: "You'll know. Is that the way? There's something I've always wanted to ask you Marilyn; why did you do it?"

"Oh! I see you're not one of these conspiracy theorists. I've heard a lot of those. I liked the one about it being the CIA the best though. Imagine all that fuss over little old me. Why did I do it? Maybe it was because sometimes I thought it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know yourself. But it's too late now, and I'm thinking it's too late for you too."

Martin had known for some time that there was only one way out of this. He had neither the will or the initiative, nor the money, to go doing things like trying to change his ident.i.ty or running to foreign places.

Marilyn reached over the arm of the sofa again and this time pulled out a small jar of pills. She struggled to open the lid with her slim, elegant fingers and manicured but unpolished nails until finally it clicked open and she emptied two pills into her left hand, knocked them back and washed them down with another sip of champagne.

He knew she was right but he wondered if he had what it took-he wondered if anybody really had what it took-or if they just stepped over the edge in a blur of emotions and hoped to come out on the other side.

"What are those?" He enquired.

"Barbituates."

"You're right, Marilyn...," he continued, "about me not having a choice left, but it's so d.a.m.n hard," and at this, Martin found he had a lump in his throat. "I don't want to give them the satisfaction. How should I do it? How should I end it? With those pills? An overdose, just like you?" Martin pleaded.

"I suppose you could and that way you would just slip away without really even knowing it."

"Marilyn, why didn't you leave a note?"

She hesitated and then she ran one of those elegant hands through her thick blonde hair before answering. "I don't know. I mean people are all messed up when they do that sort of thing and I guess I was the same. Part of me still wonders if all I meant to do was to knock myself out for the night but I don't know, I can't remember. People do strange things when their lives are about to end. I mean, do you know how many people actually take their gla.s.ses off before they kill themselves?"

"You still haven't really told me why you did it."

"Yes. Yes I have. I told you I don't know why. Think of it like this; maybe it's because people always put me down. For example if I play a stupid girl and ask a stupid question I've got to follow it through. What am I supposed to do, look intelligent? People always thought that was me up there. Maybe I was tired of being known as the girl with the shape."

Martin was struck again with a powerful sense of deja-vu and it was then he realized where he had seen her dress before. It had been the one she had worn in 'The Seven Year Itch'.

As he reached over to the coffee table for the bottle he wondered if ghosts simply appeared the way they were most remembered. That would explain why Marilyn wore that white dress and perhaps even some of the things she said. Yet again Martin found himself agreeing with her when he considered that people did do strange things before they die. What he was doing now was strange; he was talking to a ghost and he supposed that anyone else who came into the room would not be able to see her but that wouldn't matter because he would be dead before that happened.

"At least if I drown myself then I could see my life flash before me," he replied as Marilyn fidgeted uncomfortably at the thought of a closing windpipe.

"Is it worth repeating?"

"I could see where I made my mistakes, but then I don't think it would last long enough for me to pick out them all..."

"I know it's hard, but you've got to find the courage. I did."

Martin sobbed as tears began to trickle down his cheeks; "No! No! No! I can't do this. G.o.d help me. I don't know if I can do it."

Outside, the last remnants of the purple glow from the setting sun had turned to the deep black of the night sky and the only light came from the lamp by the side of the sofa.

"If you commit suicide, don't you go to h.e.l.l? There must be another way." Martin suggested as the first seed of doubt was planted.

"No! You don't go to h.e.l.l. Don't be ridiculous. It's your only chance, Martin. Do it before they get you. Do it before they win," Marilyn pleaded.

"I can't, Marilyn. I just can't risk going to h.e.l.l. How do I know I won't? I can't face this. Suicide is a mortal sin."

"I know a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I do know of another way. Yes, there is another way, Martin, but you'll have to trust me, trust me with your soul. All I need is a kiss."

Martin gazed into her eyes and, outside, he heard a car pull up. When he looked out of the window he saw it was a black Toyota corolla and as two men dressed in summer casuals stepped out and made their way to his block, fear replaced his dread.

"Oh my G.o.d they've found me! They've found me! I'm not ready to die. I can't do it."

"You must."

"A kiss?"

"Just a kiss."

As he moved towards her he realized that, perhaps, he had wanted this all along.

"Just touch my lips with yours and you soul will be saved," Marilyn promised. Outside he heard approaching footsteps but his concentration was fixed as he moved his gaze from her lips to her beauty spot and into her hypnotic bright eyes. Then, just before their lips touched, he paused.

"Norma Jean?" he questioned.

"Please; call me Marilyn," she replied and then he stopped.

Martin backed up swiftly, turned and walked towards the door.

"Next time," came a voice from behind him as he neared the door and it wasn't Marilyn's airy tone but more of a hiss. When Martin glanced back over his shoulder Marilyn was no longer there but instead something squatted in her place.

Its small scaly legs were bent at the knees while its talon feet dug into the sofa as did the claws on its reptilian arms. It had ma.s.sive wings, the sharp points at the base of which dug into the carpet beneath where its feet rested. Beside each of its twitching, pointed ears was a horn exactly like the one on its snout-like nose. Its razor sharp teeth protruded in perfect symmetry from its grinning mouth and its green eyes with slit pupils gave Martin another knowing glance.

"I don't think so." Martin replied and walked out of the doorway into the hall contemplating how well the hideous had imitated the beautiful, only to be let down by something as simple as the eyes.

Moments later two gunshots rang out in the night sky and Martin had finally been dealt a winning hand.

Back to TOC.

Normally, Halfway Houses and Rehabilitation Centers start out rough-'kicking cold', scrubbing toilets, re-learning 'people skills', baring your soul to addicts even scarier than yourself-and then get better.

Not in Carole Gill's world, though.

Big House.

By Carole Gill.

Addicts 'r us, messed up losers-you know the kind: c.o.keheads, overeaters, serious self harmers, suicide groupies, s.e.x addicts-each of them so completely f.u.c.ked up they finally end up in a kind of terminal rehab center-which is what this place was.

Yes, the Big House gave such places free reign to run them as they saw fit. They were, after all, evaluation centers to review the clients' varying addictions and to best access what the next step was. That was what Executive Management said; what they did, however, was another matter.

Joe knew. He had taken the job happily, ages ago...but now he found his second thoughts had third, fourth and fifth thoughts.

But there was worse, there always is.

Joe sighed. He was Director, Houseman, whatever anyone wanted to call it-that was okay with him. In truth, he ran the place-this waystation, recovery home, haven, care facility.

Actually, he thought of it as 'losers 'r us.' The place where the lost, the hopeless, the monumentally f.u.c.ked up finally end up-in short it was the repository for addicts. He ran the men's section.

He saw the new batch arrive in the van nicknamed Pegasus. Someone with a misplaced sense of humor named it that because if that horse flew, these poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were now to be grounded for an indeterminate time (to say the least).

As always, Joe welcomed them: "We are going to sort you out-to evaluate you and send you on your way. It's not so bad...you'll see."