It was the morning of the spring equinox, a Friday. Guido’s room grew dim. As total darkness filled his room, a light appeared. It was not the sun. His apartment faced west. The light beckoned Guido: “Come in, come in.” He sensed that his life was being drawn slowly towards the light–a warm, soft and tempting light. The light eased his fears.

Then his heart stopped.

At once the warm welcoming light faded. He saw shapes, shadows surrounding him, restless souls left to wander an empty, skyless world. Murmurs and desperate sighs drifted without purpose like cigarette smoke in a closed room.  The shapeless sounds surrounded Guido, brushing against him–pickpockets on a crowded street lifting the life out of his soul’s shallow pockets.

As Guido drifted away from the light, the moaning around him increased and the warmth waned. He was in the realm of fire and ice–a cold blue flame not warm enough to thaw the ice. He felt chilled to the core of his being. The moaning around him turned into a desolate wail. He was afraid.  His spirit began to shrink in the soul-eating cold. Guido felt his sense of self merge into the faint figures floating near him–another life-hungry shadow, his soul’s pockets picked clean.

***

Guido was very surprised when he opened his eyes. He was even more surprised that he was in a hospital. The room was warm. The EMT’s had been efficient. The emergency room doctors had performed their miracle. He was back from the dead.

As soon as he got out of the hospital, Guido walked to the nearest Catholic Church. He confessed to the priest, “Father, I have sinned.” Guido meant it this time. In his haste he forgot to ask for forgiveness.

Guido the Enforcer enrolled in the witness protection program in return for ratting on his bosses, treachery being the lowest level of transgression in Hell, and the highest form of offence in a mobster’s life.  The witness protection program is its own form of purgatory—a paranoid silence that holds no hope of paradise—offering only a few extra breaths in the desert sun before revenge or a weak heart would take him. The next time there would be no welcoming light.

***

Guido’s next and last heart attack would send him straight to the bottom of Hell, to the coldest and farthest point away from the sun, to the frozen black night of traitors.  He would have plenty of company.