Free The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm Page A

damn traumatic. But when he decided it was time to flee, my sympathy evaporated.
      I had to give it to him – for a big guy, the man could move. He rolled away from me, the sheet falling from him as his feet hit the floor on the far side of the slab. He got halfway to the door before his limbs gave out on him. It's always that way with a fledgling meat-suit – it takes a while for the body to acquiesce to your commands. And never more so than your first time out, which is why I didn't even bother giving chase.
      The big man hit the tiles with a fwap , and I was on him in seconds. I rolled him over with a nudge of my shoe, and slapped the look of blind panic from his face. 
      " ¿Habla ingles? " I asked him, but he just let out a wail of confusion and panic.
      " ¿Habla ingles? " I repeated. " ¿Como te llamas? "
      He blurted out a couple nonsense syllables as he struggled with his unfamiliar meat-suit. Then he squinched his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it. I cocked my hand back to slap him a second time. It seemed to do the trick. He grabbed my wrist with one sausage-fingered hand to still the coming blow, and, anger glinting in his eyes, he finally found his voice. 
      "Listen, asshole, I don't speak Mexican, so slapping me ain't gonna help! You try that shit again, you're liable to lose your fucking hand, comprende ?" 
      I stared at him a second, dumbfounded. "You speak English?"
      "That a trick question? Yeah, dipshit – I speak English."
      "I'm guessing your name isn't Pablo Varela then, huh?" 
      "Wow, a gold star for the good guesser."
      "So who the hell are you?" 
      "Why the fuck should I tell you ?"
      I plunged my free hand into his chest and gave his soul a twist. The big man's face contorted in fear and pain, and reflexively, he released my wrist from his grasp.
      "'Cause I'm the guy who rescued you from oblivion – and if you don't start talking, I'm the guy who'll send you back ."
      "Jesus, dude – that fucking hurts. You try that voodoo shit again, I'm gonna break your fucking face." 
      Sure, his words were plenty tough, but they were betrayed by the frightened look in his eyes. 
      "Really? That's the way you wanna play it? Me, I'd prefer to keep this all friendly-like, but you want to play the bad-ass, be my guest – we'll see how far it gets you."
      I drove my fingers into his chest once more. This time, he tried to fight, but it wasn't any use – with his soul held tight inside my fist, his borrowed body wouldn't listen. Once his thrashing died down, I let him go. He collapsed back onto the tiles, sweating and exhausted.
      "Gio," he said, sucking wind. "My name is Gio." 
      At that, I deflated a little. I don't know what I was hoping for – some kind of clue, I guess, as to what Danny was up to – but the name meant nothing to me. "Tell me, Gio," I said, sighing, "you got a last name?"
      "Gio is my last name. My first name's Francis, but nobody calls me that but my mother."
      Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. "Gio," I said. "As in, short for Giordano?"
      "That's right," he said, eyeing me with sudden suspicion. "How the hell'd you know that?" 
      I thought back to my meeting with Danny, to the sob-story he'd spun about his missing soul. "The bloke was a mob enforcer out of Vegas by the name of Giordano," he'd said. "Only now his soul is missing. Stolen right out from under me." But that wasn't exactly true, now, was it? Turns out, Danny had Giordano's soul the whole time. Which meant the whole fucking meeting was nothing but an elaborate bait-and-switch. He must've figured that when I buried Giordano's soul, his Deliverants would be appeased, and he could go about his merry way with his stolen Varela, leaving me to twist in the wind. But why? What in the hell could he possibly want with Varela's soul? And more importantly, how the hell was I going to get it back? 
      "Hey, buddy," Gio said, "you still