And just like that, successful businessman Blake Walters died, just a moment ago. Blake was certain he was done for. He knew it! He didn't know when, but knew without a doubt that cancer would take he and his large ego out. But life has a funny way of working itself out doesn't it? To his and a ballroom full of his peers' surprise Blake, mid-toast chokes, on a peppermint, and dies. Here one moment, gone the next. That's how life works out, right? No. Not this time. Not Blake's seventh time.

The 7th Time

By J. Codes

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 J. Codes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4670-5284-9

Chapter One

THE SIXTH TIME

I-at-the-time, "Blake Walters," had died, just a moment ago. It wasn't my first time dying. But it was Blake's. Blake Walters had finally been taken out at the ripe age of 43. It may seem peculiar that I am referring to myself, Blake Walters, in the third person, but, I assure you, everything will all make sense to you soon. I am trying to make sense of it all myself, since it just happened a moment ago, I believe. They say that there's no sense of time here in any case, so I actually don't know for sure how long I've been so dreadfully confused. But I will tell you what little I can from what I can surmise about all of this. Supposedly, none of us mortals (ha! mortals) are supposed to be aware let alone know of any of this—at all.

Like I said, I, Blake Walters, had just died. I died while attending yet another benefit gala I was sponsoring. I didn't even know what the benefit was. I didn't care. I just signed checks; I paid other people to care. So there I was, giving my toast, the one I like to make at parties, about prosperity and securing wealth and all that other bullocks I half-heartedly believe. You know, the usual, the crowd-pleaser.

But anyhow, there I am with everyone's attention hanging on my each and every word. As I held my glass outstretched toward the crowd, I looked out, thinking about how often I had delivered the same as always bloody speech and fumbled through the same words and how everyone would just gobble it up. The same shit. I was always too lazy to fix things that weren't broken; what's the point in that?

Perhaps it was cockiness that killed me. I'd always been an arrogant lad. But why did I have to go out this way—of all the fucking ways to die, why did this have to be mine?

Although initially I had a problem with the idea, I became comfortable with going out to cancer-it was an acceptable way to pass. In fact, I was almost sure that the cancer diagnosis had done me in. But no, I couldn't go to cancer. No. Instead, God decides to allow a peppermint—yes, a tiny red and white peppermint—to take down the Blake Walters. I'm sure all of my enemies and friends, got a real kick out of that one.

I was in cutlery—the number-one distributor in the U.K. and abroad. I had a wife (my second) and three children. Two girls and a bastardly faggot, I dare not say "son." I myself was a blue-eyed Jew who had made his way into London at a young age. I always felt rather bad in not claiming my mother's heritage. But I was better off for it; my father told me so. My father was a British man.

My circumstances became privileged at a young age. There were a few years when my family (my mother, father, my brother "Leroy", and my older sister) experienced considerable hardship. When we attempted to escape Poland and somehow pilgrimage back to my father's home isle, my mother, along with my sister, was seized and raped or murdered (I'm not sure). My brother Leroy also died along the way during our way back to Britain. To say the least, it wasn't a good trip. I've tried to forget about it, but the memories haunted me till my very last day.

My father and I relocated to London, where I remember my father being rich and successful. That's where life began for me. Success was all that ever mattered. I was now an only child, with no mother, and although I supposedly had had "brothers and sisters" it didn't feel like it. The only things I possessed of my dead mother, my sister, and Leroy were my memories, which I attempted to block—they were just too painful for such a young lad to weather. After a while, I began not to miss them—anymore. I guess my rudimentary effort at repression worked, because I soon began to forget them and their faces.

In time, I could only remember that I always used to look up to my brother Leroy, and that's why I named the eldest and only male of my offspring "Leroy Jr."—or Leroy for short. When we were settling on Leroy's name his mother initially objected the addition of the suffix 'Jr.', since he in fact was not a 'Jr.' by definition. It was unorthodox, but I kept the Jr. to his name to pay a unique homage to my brother. I'm actually not quite sure if Leroy was my brother's actual name—I'm not sure about my own name for that matter. I recall a faint memory of my brother and I being called by different names in our youth, perhaps in Yiddish? I believe my father gave us new names during our fatal escape. I couldn't remember any other names, not my mother or sister's, so Leroy and Blake had to suffice. The short-lived name of 'Leroy' was all I had left to connect me to a cloudy past I was happy to let go of.

Leroy Jr., who himself turned out to be a faggot, is off at reform school—until he can get that fixed. I sent him there so my brother's name wouldn't be defiled—or let alone my own. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't raised in the most perfect of environments myself, and I have seen some pretty perverse things in my day, but my father would never have stood for having a faggot for a son, and I shan't either.

Anyhow, enough of that bollocks. As a young lad I was always taken care of. I got what I wanted, and I didn't have to share since I had neither brothers nor sisters. But I wasn't lonely, since all the other children in the neighborhood wanted to play with my toys and trinkets, all of which were so far superior to those of my peers. In sum, I was always popular and well-liked.

My father was never around much, but it was fine, as I remained satisfied; I rather enjoyed being so well provided for. We believed ours was a healthy distance. Money was no doubt a mutually recognized buffer between our having an actually substantial father-son relationship, but like I said: I rather enjoyed being so well provided for.

Throughout my adolescence I saw less and less of Father. I saw more of him from the occasional sighting of some random fox wearing one of his dress shirts and some undergarments, always in some odd location, like rummaging through our pantry and asking me if we had any pickles or the like. Seeing his clothes, I would think of him, but I probably wouldn't see him in the flesh for a few days more. Looking back, I believe my dad would like to find sex before he went off on business trips. As a traveling businessman myself, I can understand that. Or I rather, I could understand it, then.

(Apologies. I'm just getting used to speaking of myself in past tense.)

When my father would return from his travels, it would always be a joyous occasion. We would do a day or so of bonding, which normally involved me returning home weighed down with gadgets and gizmos. The scheduled visits, the gifts—no matter how much or how little of a surprise they were, how simple or how lavish, or supposedly sentimental (I'm sure a majority of my birthday gifts were purchased by his assistant) were nice, but unnecessary. As I grew older I realized how routine spending time with my father had become: after a while, there was no heart behind our time together. A hand-drawn smiley face on a blank check would have felt warmer. Even our once-coveted father-son relationship became 'just business' to my father, like everything else in his life. When he passed, I inherited his business.

I was most definitely blessed in the inheritance of my...