Dead People

By Douglas Rappaport

Everything changed when the Stringfellows arrived on Earth and restarted the world. The bad news is that the aliens randomly chose which people to bring back to life. No rhyme or reason. From across time. The good and the bad. To take care of the more evil of these unfortunate returns, the Stringfellows have tasked certain humans with the new occupation of assassin. Following a unique and mysterious point system, the ultimate reward for their bloody work is the chance to bring back a person of their choosing. Crass and blunt, hitman Mild McMahon only wants to bring back one person: his mother. But to do this he'll have to kill some of the worst people in history. Given assignments by his talking dog and forced to team up with an unlikely assassin with a near addiction to breath mints, Mild must hunt down a murderers' row of notorious killers and hope he still has time for coffee.



Praise for Douglas Rappaport's Reckoner:

"Reckoner is a deftly crafted coming-of-age story... A truly compelling read from cover to cover..."
- Midwest Book Review
"It's a novel very relative to our times, not only for younger readers approximately the same age, and of a similar mindset to Miles', for instance, but for any contemporary readers aware of the serious situations so many people are dealing with today."
- John Pahl, fiction editor for Dunes Review 
"[A] very touching story filled with lonely characters all in search of the same two things: love of self and love of others."
- Viga Boland, Readers' Favorite
"Time and again, as they read Reckoner, readers will recognize themselves tuning out what is going on in their immediate vicinity while their minds meander into other times, places and spaces... and the trip is fascinating!"
- Vianvi.com

DOUGLAS RAPPAPORT was originally a classically trained violinist and composer, having studied as a young man at various conservatories in the U.S. and abroad. During his college years, Douglas studied under Erick Friedman, the famed protégé of Jascha Heifetz, and after graduate work at Yale University, went on to U.S.C. where he received an Advanced Studies degree in Film and Television Scoring. He also studied at Goldsmiths College (part of the University of London), Guildhall, and London International Film School, amongst others.

Concerning Douglas Rappaport's 2003 debut novel, One Day the Weatherman, Absolutewrite.com wrote: "Rappaport's work is very detail-oriented and his writing is extremely descriptive; it makes for incredible realism."

His third novel Reckoner received numerous positive reviews including the Midwest Book Review and the Booklife Prize 2020. Douglas's short fiction has also earned several distinctions including an invitation to the exclusive Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Viking Dog
• Release date: Feb 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201400743

Book preview

Praise for Douglas Rappaport’s Reckoner:

"Reckoner is a deftly crafted coming-of-age story . . . A truly compelling read from cover to cover . . ."

- Midwest Book Review

It's a novel very relative to our times, not only for younger readers approximately the same age, and of a similar mindset to Miles’, for instance, but for any contemporary readers aware of the serious situations so many people are dealing with today.

- John Pahl, fiction editor for Dunes Review

[A] very touching story filled with lonely characters all in search of the same two things: love of self and love of others. 

- Viga Boland, Readers’ Favorite

"Time and again, as they read Reckoner, readers will recognize themselves tuning out what is going on in their immediate vicinity while their minds meander into other times, places and spaces . . . and the trip is fascinating!"

- Vianvi.com

Dead

People

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Douglas Rappaport

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Also by Douglas Rappaport

One Day the Weatherman

Victim of Circumstance

Reckoner

DEAD PEOPLE

DOUGLAS RAPPAPORT

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VIKING DOG

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

DEAD PEOPLE

Copyright 2021 by Douglas Rappaport

All rights reserved.

Published by Viking Dog, LLC

Los Angeles, CA

Cover Art designed by Viking Dog, LLC

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First Edition November 2021

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VIKINGDOGENTERTAINMENT.COM

For Nadia, my Soothie

and

Greta, my Sockratease

This is a dude who, 700 years ago, totally ravaged China, and who, we were told, 2 hours ago, totally ravaged Oshman’s Sporting Goods.                        

- Ted Theodore Logan

I re-invented my image so many times that I’m in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.

- David Bowie

Sirhan Sirhan

1944-2023

4 Points

Prologue

Sirhan Sirhan was in the kitchen and he didn’t seem to know why.

It was right after midnight and I had just sneezed. Sirhan Sirhan said nothing, and I don’t trust people who don’t say Bless you after you sneeze. I mean, what kind of person does that? Well, I guess Sirhan Sirhan for one. No manners whatsoever . . . although, in his defense, maybe my flashing bracelet distracted him.

The other thing going against Sirhan was the fact that we were at a Denny’s and not the Ambassador Hotel. The world was recreated a second time and we still had Denny’s. Go figure. I guess memory fucks with us sometimes. You mean to be somewhere—like the assassination of a presidential candidate—and you end up being somewhere else.

The manager was about to throw Sirhan and me out of the restaurant, and for good reason. Sirhan was holding a gun, which qualified as a serious concern. Plus, he was standing in the kitchen, which was obviously only for employees, and employees shouldn’t be carrying guns. Like I said, I had just sneezed, which was something else you try not to do in a kitchen, especially near Moons Over My Hammy or a Grand Slamwich (when you bring back Denny’s, I guess you have to bring back the signature dishes, too).

Sirhan’s other issue, besides not being at the Ambassador Hotel? No Robert Kennedy. And I don’t mean he was somewhere else. Well, he was somewhere else. He was dead . . . again. He’d died the day before in London. Hit by one of those big red buses they have there, having looked the wrong way—the American way­—when he was crossing the street. I guess Sirhan Shitface didn’t get the message. Not that it mattered, being Bobby K. wasn’t at the right place either . . . or the wrong place (for him at least). Good for him, though. Getting shot at a Denny’s was far worse than getting flattened by a double-decker. Who wants to get shot at a Denny’s? Gross.

That was the thing. The Stringfellows—the aliens who came to Earth after we’d destroyed ourselves—had brought everyone back. Well, almost everyone—as much everyone as they could. But they couldn’t guarantee the same thing happening again, for good or bad (so much for fate). Not that Bob would have wanted to be killed again. Of course not. But he was a Kennedy, and as a Kennedy he had just about repeated the same life as before. He’d been a politician again, even running for president a second time. I mean, fuck, if Denny’s was back then Robert Kennedy had to be, too. And even though Sirhan may not have known exactly why he had to kill Robert Kennedy again this time around, he just knew he had to. It was in his blood. And he wasn’t in the business of wearing bracelets that detected bad people, as he was one of them (by comparison, I had a flashing bracelet).

Robert’s brother, though—the more famous one—wasn’t even brought back by the Stringfellows, which was a good thing. Random but good. Likely saved him a hole in the head. But that also meant that the good stuff JFK did when he was alive wouldn’t happen this time around. Or maybe Lincoln, who was brought back, wouldn’t have freed the slaves again. Not that there were slaves this time; besides which, Lincoln might not even be president this go around. JFK, though, if he’d been brought back, for sure would have been president again. Like I said, he was a Kennedy. As for Lincoln, maybe the poor fucker was currently selling insurance in Kentucky. God bless him if he was (if that made him happy).

And me? No one was trying to second guess my fate—not that I even remember what I might have done the first time around . . . if it was the first time. I get the spinnies like everyone else, I guess, but that didn’t necessarily mean my déjà vu was for real. I could have just had food poisoning or something. That was a common reason for wrong spinnies. What I’m trying to say is, you can’t trust your memories. Maybe I had a Grand Slamwich before, maybe I didn’t. Maybe there wasn’t even a Grand Slamwich the first time, or the last time, or whenever the fuck . . .

Don’t swear so much, my mother used to say. That’s what low-class people do, and you’re not low-class.

Maybe so, mom, but you didn’t imagine that I’d be a hitman when I grew up, did you? Shit, I didn’t even imagine that. I thought I’d be a piano tuner or something . . . not that I even knew how to tune a piano. Was there money in that? Hell if I knew. There was barely money in being a hitman nowadays, which was why I mostly went for targets like Sirhan Sirhan. I was somewhat famous for being the guy who blew away James Earl Ray and Dan White. But these guys were 4-pointers. The 8-pointers like Idi Amin and Hitler were big time. Anyway, I guess there was money in history repeating itself, which it somehow seemed to do, even if it didn’t get all the details right the next time around, like which kitchen Bob got shot in. All the same, that’s why I was at Denny’s in the middle of the night . . . although a Grand Slam did sound sort of good.

What I wasn’t expecting, even with the whole history repeating itself, was spotting Rosey Grier—former football player and RFK’s bodyguard—at the Denny’s, too. Of course, I had only noticed him because I was also a former football player. Same team as a matter of fact—the Rams—though we didn’t play at the same time. He was on the Giants before that. Plus, I played for the Rams when they were in St. Louis. And my career got cut short due to too many concussions. Banged my head a few too many times, I guess. Both of us, Rosey and I, played on the line, though I was an offensive tackle and he was a defensive one. And now the two of us were at RFK’s assassination part two; the one difference being I wasn’t there the first time like he was. Although, by the look on his face, I don’t think he knew what the fuck he was doing at Denny’s—a statement that could probably be said of most diners at such an establishment in the middle of the night.

Bless you, Grier said as he busted through the revolving door of the kitchen, knocking Sirhan to the ground and disarming him at the same time. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought the same thing as the manager probably did, which was that Grier was a cop and not actually a former NFL star who imagined Sirhan was a QB stuck in the pocket. (Rosey may not have been a cop, but at least the dude was polite.)

Should I call you a backup? the Denny’s manager asked Rosey, and pretty calmly, I must say, for someone who had an armed asshole in his kitchen in the middle of the night.

Backup? Rosey replied, pinning Sirhan to the dirty floor at the same time. Why the fuck would I need a backup?

Well, the manager said, with the guns and all, I don’t want anyone getting shot . . . especially me.

What do you mean guns plural? Rosey asked. This mother fucker have another gun somewhere?

That was when Rosey and I realized Dainis the Anus was there. Of course, there was little chance Rosey knew Dainis (not that I could imagine at least); likewise, Rosey wouldn’t have known that Dainis’ nickname was Anus. But I chuckled at the idea of Rosey calling Dainis that, especially coming from a celebrity like him. Boy, did Dainis hate that nickname. He deserved it, though. He was an anus. Most definitely. I mean, the guy wore a suit all the time, and I mean all the time, including now. Who the fuck did that? He was probably reborn near 70, though he acted like he was 40. Who the hell was he trying to impress at this point? And why was I not trying to impress anyone? Especially myself—reborn 40 something but acting like 70—with my daily uniform being the exact opposite . . . shorts and a t-shirt. On top of which, Dainis had bad nerve pain in his hands and wore black compression gloves most of the time. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without the gloves, which made me wonder if he ever washed them. Then again, knowing him, he probably had like 30 pairs, all black.

And Rosey, evidently, shared my viewpoint on Dainis. Who the fuck are you? he said to him, staring up from the floor at the suited asshole, who had his gun still trained on the two of them, though mostly on Sirhan.

Mild McMahon? Is that you, 92? Rosey said, forgetting Dainis for the moment, calling out my nickname and my former jersey number. What are you doing here?

What’s going on? Sirhan interrupted, surprising at least me and Dainis, if not Rosey and the manager as well. I mean, even if his spinnies were foggy, did he really not know what the hell was going on?

Is this really worth your time, Anus? I said, nodding at Rosey first so he didn’t think I was ignoring him. He’s a 3-pointer at most, I added, though I knew, and Dainis knew, that Sirhan was most definitely a 4-pointer (which still wasn’t worth his time). I just wanted to aggravate the guy even more. It was always worth it.

Poor Rosey, though. He wasn’t expecting what happened next, nor was Sirhan for that matter. But after Dainis pulled the trigger, practically blowing Sirhan’s head clean off, the blood spatter on Rosey was unbelievable. I mean the poor fucker was completely covered with blood and brain matter. I was almost expecting Rosey to kill Dainis at that point. And the Holy fuck! that came out of Rosey’s mouth was almost louder than the sound of the kill shot on Sirhan.

Points are points, Dainis said to me, completely ignoring what he’d done to poor Rosey, and Rosey probably wanting to punch a hole through Dainis’ chest.

Dainis tossed a few tic tacs into his mouth and made that annoying sucking sound that was practically his trademark. That was for your mother, he added.

This caught me off guard, as bringing back my mother was a benchmark I wasn’t yet close to achieving—if I was adding up my GS points correctly—unless I took out some 8-pointers soon like Stalin or Mussolini. (Although I had heard a rumor that some teenage kids from San Marino had taken out the latter just the other day. They supposedly even threw rocks at him—a commemorative gesture, I guess, acknowledging the first time he got killed. Not to mention, he was reborn around the same age as the kids who allegedly killed him this time around. He hadn’t even done anything yet—that I knew of, at least. It must suck, though, to know you’re going to grow up to become an evil asshole, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, that is, if you let fate run its course.)

I was distracted, both by the mentioning of my mother and the fact that the Denny’s manager was practically screaming over the phone at the police that they get there . . . as soon as fucking possible, to quote the poor guy. I was so preoccupied then that I didn’t fully hear what Dainis said next as he pointed out the revolving door of the kitchen, which was at full swing now due to the fact that Rosey had run out, most likely heading toward the bathroom to wash Sirhan Sirhan off of his face.

I didn’t even bother to say What? once I noticed my father sitting at one of the tables near the back. Most of the customers had left or were in the process of leaving by the time I came out, no doubt because of the gunshot, which had probably spooked a fair amount of them, especially if there were any pointers who happened to be around. My father, however, was happily enjoying the last bites of his French toast, even amidst the pleadings of the young woman who was sitting across from him, begging for them to leave the restaurant.

I didn’t recognize the woman but, then again, I hardly ever knew any of the strange women who frequently accompanied my father, this lifetime or the last. I guess I couldn’t really blame him this time around, especially considering the fact that my mother hadn’t been brought back by the Stringfellows. Plus, he looked younger now—younger than even me—which was weird. Still, it was odd for me to see him with another woman out in the open like that, and even more unusual to see that he seemed unaffected about what was going on around him, especially considering what I learned a few seconds later.

I noticed that Dainis was taking his gun out again, so I picked up my speed to catch up to him. No! I screamed. What the fuck are you doing?

My father looked up then and noticed us coming toward him, but before I could say another word, I became aware of something else. My bracelet was flashing again.

Part I

David Berkowitz

(Son of Sam)

1953-2025

6 Points

- 1 -

Unhappy Meal

It all started with a dog, Sockratease, who did relish socks but not so much philosophy. And yes, I was one of those owners, the kind that spells their pet’s name in a cute but obvious way. So when I shouted at him outside my apartment building for eating grass or kicking too much dirt when he was done taking a crap, or both, I assumed most people who heard me figured I meant Socrates. It was like a girl I had dated after college who had named her cat Mao Zedong but spelled it Meow Zedong. No one, save me and some various unsuspecting strangers, ever knew the difference, and those few only because she liked to explain it to people who, by the way, never asked in the first place. And I don’t imagine the resulting laugh that followed was ever because the listener thought it was cute. It was more because they probably thought she was a little nutso. So, I guess, if anyone ever found out how I spelled my dog’s name, they would probably think the same of me—and they would probably be right.

Mao Zedong, by the way, wasn’t on the kill list, though if he had been brought back, definitely would have been. You see, not everyone was brought back when the Stringfellows first arrived. When they came to Earth twenty years ago, the planet was basically a dead, desolate place with no living organisms except maybe some scientific stuff like bacteria or some shit. I don’t know. I want to say amoebas, but I have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, nor what an amoeba actually is specifically. I just figured there may have been something still floating in the muck that could be considered living by some scientist or whatnot.

What I’m trying to say is that no fuckin’ human being was alive—and no animals, no mammals, nothing with a heartbeat. That stupid global warming thing that had affected the Earth when I was alive the first time eventually got us all. That and overpopulation, of course—the latter being the main reason the Stringfellows didn’t bring back everything. I mean, there was something like 100 billion people who had ever lived on the Earth, and that was way too many people to bring back all at once (although why they chose to bring back even a single one of us was really the most important question).

So, they just randomly brought back a certain amount, and in certain stages, including mammals and animals and whatever the fuck else they decided to reincarnate. Plus, they healed the planet from what we had done to it. All that being said, I had always thought it might be cool to live with the dinosaurs, but even the Stringfellows thought they might take up too much room if they brought them back with us (although they did reawaken some smaller ones that basically looked like oversized lizards). And as for us, the humans, I guess it was just sort of random—no real logic as to who or what they brought back. There was (so far) Teddie but no Franklin, Lincoln but no Grant, Dylan but no Bruce, no Spielberg or Scorsese (for the moment) but Almodóvar and Kubrick. Steven Tyler but no Jagger—no Stones at all actually, not even Keith Richards—no Elvis or Sinatra, just old Leonard Cohen and the Doobie Brothers. Oh, and speaking of old people, Bernie Sanders, who, by the way, came back much younger and was elected president. (His VP was Tom Arnold, the actor who was formerly with Roseanne, who was also back.)

And then there were the bad people—killers and egomaniacs, dictators and rapists. There was Hitler and Mussolini, like I mentioned, and Stalin and Franco; but (so far) no Hussein or Gaddafi, no Pinochet or Duvalier, Manson or Bundy; but there was O.J. and Dahmer (the former who got away with murder again), Trump (Donald Sr. and Eric), and Kim Jong-II again (no Jong-un . . . yet), and so forth. I could go on forever and I don’t even know the full list. No one really does, especially since new people and things are born in various stages. That’s why some of us choose to wear the bracelets. They never lie, although they don’t tell you how many points the person is. That intel comes to me in a different way, through my dog, but I’ll save that for later.

I guess the Stringfellows don’t want to promote murder necessarily but give us the message, Yeah, this person is bad, and this new world could probably do without them. And bad could mean they inappropriately touch girls. In other words, it wasn’t always homicide or genocide that made the bracelet go off. You see what I mean? It was just a fluke who was brought back. No rhyme or reason. So, I guess I was considered one of the fortunate ones who at least had one parent brought back. Others might not have had any returning family members; it was just luck of the draw.

And then there was the discrepancy of who they brought back at what stage in their life. I guess the Stringfellows originally wanted to bring back everyone from birth, but that meant we would all be the same age, growing up at the same time. Then they flirted with bringing back everyone at the age in which they died, but that intention got us way too many old people. So they finally decided to just continue the randomness and bring back everyone, or some of us I mean, at various ages. I was brought back in my mid-20’s, right during that period of life when you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing even though you think you do. It’s that awful time of life when reality smacks you upside the head, when ego meets truth and your mom or dad’s checks are no longer cashable.

Here’s the thing, though. If you wanted to bring someone back who wasn’t back, you could if you had a certain amount of GS points. Good Samaritan points were unofficially made up of kill points and karma points. Kill points were the best, but you could also, allegedly, get points for doing something nice for someone, as long as it was genuine—though neither myself nor anyone I personally knew had ever been awarded karma points. I guess all the people I knew, including myself, were just assholes. Or maybe the karma point thing was just a rumor. No one really knows for certain I don’t think, so I just stick to kill points—whatever I can get to bring her back.

*   *   *

So, you might want to sit down for this. Sockratease is my handler. Sockratease can talk, and in a British accent, no less. I don’t know why the Stringfellows did this, but after they completed the global reincarnation thing, the animals could talk—or at least a good portion of them—and I imagined it was because they were all previously human (the ones who spoke). Why some of us had come back as animals, I had no idea. I didn’t know if it was a karma thing from their previous life, if it was punishment or they were being rewarded. I guess it could be either depending on who you talked to.

It was a little weird, though, that some spoke. There were incidents of dogs attacking a human both physically and vocally—and by vocally, I don’t mean barking. They would call you names and then beat the shit out of you. But those were the bad dogs. Most of them, to my knowledge, were good. I guess like before, it was all about how the human owners raised them. But as for the rest of the animal kingdom, I had seen videos on Facebook—yes, even that was back, and it was actually worse than before if you can believe it—of lions completely going off on an unlucky hunter or zebra or tourist or whatnot by insulting the victim first before eating them. It was actually sort of funny to be honest. It was like witnessing Dr. Doolittle on acid, or watching a version of the movie no one ever intended you to see. You’d be walking down the street and a fuckin’ dog might say hi to you or even beg to you like a homeless bum. Hey, you got any bones, motherfucker? and so forth. But again, those were allegedly the nicer ones, as they hardly ever attacked you physically.

Anyway, back to Sockratease. I didn’t own a version of Sockratease in a previous life—yes, most of us could remember our previous life (in bits and pieces at least)—and it wasn’t considered weird this time to remember. (So Shirley MacLaine, had she been brought back, would have been welcome.) I had dogs, sure, and even some cats, but none named Sockratease, and none that could talk, that I know of, I should say. Call it what you want—luck? instinct?—Sockratease found me, and even though I thought his name was a little stupid, since he could talk, he insisted on keeping it. I guess, at the end of the day, you could call your dog whatever the hell you wanted, even if they were previously human and could talk—I had wanted to call him Stan—but since I immediately liked the little guy, I let him have his way. That was one of the positives of adulthood. On most things, you could do whatever the fuck you wanted; and sure, some things had consequences, but who the fuck cared? Really? You’re going to die one day anyway . . . at least, that was how it worked last time. It was hard to know for sure—with the Stringfellows and their ability to reincarnate dead things, anything was possible . . . well, almost anything.

And I—even though I might just be an asshole—think what I’m about to tell you is actually a good thing. Women can’t get pregnant anymore. And I’m not going to shock you and say . . . but men can! No one can, or should I say, nothing can—dolphin, cat, or horny teenage girl—and, like