Shark sat in the geriatric chair looking out of the window of his room. In the background on his boom box Pink Floyd played "The Wall." He looked down at his hands that used to make a guitar scream with the best of them. They were bent from arthritis and covered with age spots. His long gray hair hung in a neat braid down his back.

  "Hell, at least I still have my hair," he said defiantly to the aide who was making his bed.

  "Honey, I have some of your records. You made love to a guitar and what came out was orgasmic!" Lissie exclaimed as she fluffed the pillows. "Nobody's going to forget you who knows their rock 'n' roll."

  "My hands are useless to me, Lissie. Just look at them!"

  Lissie walked over to Shark and took his hands gently in hers.

  "These hands have made music that made people happy, but what you did really came out of your heart and soul."

  Shark pulled his hands away. He didn't want sympathy, he wanted to be young again with his music and his band. He and Les J. were the only two still alive and Les J. was lost in the maze of Alzheimer's. Shark thought that it was an awful way to go out of the world. No memories, no music, nothing familiar. Crack Jack did it right, he thought. He didn't wait for the creeping hands of time to rob him of his abilities, his memories or his defiant nature. Nope. When age started eating away at him, he took his gun, his guitar and his acid and went up into the mountains and killed himself. Just like Crack to go out during an acid trip. Shark wondered if it made it better for him, going to the other side while tripping. He couldn't help but laugh.

  "What's so funny, Shark?" Lizzie asked as she finished making the bed.

  "I was just thinking about Crack. Man, he was his own man till the end. No getting old, no nursing homes, no pain. He want out blazing."

  Lizzie just shook her head. She worried about Shark when he got into one of his funks. They had become more frequent during the past few months.

  "I'd miss you if you were gone," she said.

  "Hell, baby, one less old fart to clean up after. Don't bullshit a bullshitter."

  "Can I get you anything before I go, Shark" Lissie asked as she gathered up the linens she had replaced.

  "Yeah. Get me a ticket out of here. I don’t want to die in this place. I want to go back to the ocean, taste the salt in the air and remember."

  Lissie looked at Shark bent forward in his chair and for a moment she could see the young man that he used to be, talented, defiant and full of fire. It was a shame that he had to spend his last years in this forlorn place.

  She went over to Shark and bent and kissed the top of his head.

  "I’ll think about it. I promise."

  "Don’t mess with my head, baby. It’s bad enough that I’m stuck in this decrepit body.’

  "I’m not playing, Shark. Let me think on it."

  Lissie started walking out of the room then stopped and turned around.

  "You know I love you, Shark, don’t you?"

  Shark’s head shot up when she said it. That voice, that inflection! But, it couldn’t be. No, he wouldn’t let his mind drag him around with illusions brought on by aging brain circuits.

  "Sure, baby, they all used to say that."

  "Shark, why won’t you see me as I am, who I really am?"

  "Angel’s dead. I held her in my arms when she died. You sound like her and sometimes I see her in you, but I’m not that crazy to believe it. She’d be close to my age, now. What, you’re like 30? No, no, you’re just getting off on messing with my head."

  "You’ll see, Shark, " Lissie said as she left the room.

  That night Shark’s sleep was filled with vivid nightmares that combined loving images of Angel, the only woman whom he had ever loved with more than his body and with images of Lissie transforming herself into bizarre imitations of his Angel. At one point in the nightmare, Lissie and Angel merged forming a being that had eyes shimmering with icy coldness.

  He didn’t leave his bed in the morning as he usually did.

  "Good morning, Shark," Lissie bubbled when she brought his breakfast tray with eggs, toast and a chunky chocolate macadamia cookie that she had conned from the dietician’s aid into his room. It always had been Shark’s favorite treat. "Why are you still in bed?"

  Shark couldn’t bring himself to look at her, afraid that she would transform before his eyes.

  "I couldn’t sleep," he murmured as he looked out the window.

  "I’m so sorry, Baby. It was the dreams, wasn’t it?"

  A chill ran through Shark’s body. How could she know?

  "Let’s get you out of bed and we can talk," she said taking charge. Shark acquiesced to her and when he was sitting in the chair, she sat across from him on the corner of the bed.

  "Shark, that night after I died in your arms and you left the clinic, something happened. I won’t beat around the bush. You always hated that, didn’t you? You were always a straight shooter."

  Angel would always say that to him. He was always brutally honest.

  "I am Angel and I did die that night, baby. I had even started my journey to some crossing that I knew I had to reach, but I was pulled back to this life. I was forced back by a man who said he could give me immortality. All I had to do in payment was be his meal ticket. He needed my blood on occasion to keep himself alive."

  Shark started to tremble. Angel had sold her soul for what? An endless life on earth?

  "No, no, honey, you don’t understand. I’m not a vampire. I couldn’t do what he does to stay alive. I keep him from killing as often. I’m like his own personal blood bank. If you agree to allow him to take a little of your blood once in a while, you can be young again. Your pains will go away, and you will rejuvenate! You can play the guitar again. Start another band! Just think, honey!"

  Shark looked away from the monster that his Angel had become. What a fool she was! Everyone who had ever meant anything to Shark was either dead or in the throes of Alzheimer’s Disease.

  "I don’t want to live forever, not like that. You sold out, Angel and for what?" he spat out feeling sick to his stomach. His chest hurt like hell as his heart pounded in his chest in an off rythmn beat.

  "We can be together forever, baby!"

  Shark clutched at his chest. His breathing had become difficult and the pain shooting down his left arm felt like fire.

  "Please, Shark, you have to tell me you want this or it can’t happen! Please, don’t leave me alone here!" Angel shouted.

  He kept shaking his head no.

  Soon, the emergency team shot into the room. They worked on Shark trying to get his heart to start again, but it was for naught. He was dead.

  Angel collapsed to her knees in the corner of the room sobbing. What would she do now? Shark was gone, all her family and friends had all passed on. All that was left was the dark eyed man who saw her as nothing more than his ticket to continuance.

  As she watched, she became very calm asthe team prepared Shark’s body to be brought downstairs. An icy glaze came over her eyes as her mind concocted an idea.

  When the team had finished with Shark’s remains, one of them said that he would transport the body downstairs. Angel spoke up.

  "He was my friend. Let me take him down to the morgue."

  Everyone was agreeable as she wheeled his body to the elevator.

  No one would have to know that Shark refused. No one would ever know,  she mused,  as she punched the dark eyed one’s number into her cell.

  "Yes, he agreed. You better get over her quickly."

  Angel smiled a self satisfied smile and as the elevator door slowly closed, there was a cold glint in her eye that looked strangely like a sliver of ice.