Not Another Starsky Death Story

Set during SR, between the time Hutch gets the call and the time he rushes down the hall. Starsky pays a little visit to Heaven and is disappointed with what he finds.

Not really a death story.

Inspired by Kaye and Susan and Nik’s death drabbles/stories on Me and Thee, and Marion’s wonderful three word prompts.

When it came right down to it, he thought, really genuinely expected, there’d be nothing. Or, maybe, Nothing—a great big void filled with Nothingness like all that black stuff he saw between the stars at night.

He was mildly disconcerted to discover he was wrong.

But if there wasn’t nothing—or Nothing—then at the very least, there should have been a tunnel. Some gauzy, pinkish, pulsating memory of the First Trip, the one down the birth canal, with the bright light of Not Nothing at the end.

And maybe a bunch of beautiful angels, all blond(e), flying around polishing their halos and strumming harps. He thought he could live with that. Or not-live, as the case may be.

And, of course, all those loving ancestors who had Gone Before, waiting to welcome him Home.

All the books said there was a tunnel, and light, and angels, and happy dead relatives, and by damn, if he was going to be wrong about the Nothing thing, he wanted his tunnel as a consolation prize. If they had consolation prizes on those stupid game shows, he figured the Afterlife should have them, too.

He was wrong again.

No tunnel.

No bright light.

No choirs of angels.

No beaming dead loved ones waiting to welcome him Home.

Instead, what lay before him in all its pitiful splendor was a busted up, rusted out hulk. Of a car. And not just any car, but a Volkswagen Beetle which had seen better days around the time that the first Model T was rolling off the assembly line.

If the ‘being dead’ kit had come with a set of working lungs, he would have laughed at the irony.

‘I have been to Heaven, and it’s made by Volkswagen.’

All those times he’d made fun of Hutch’s beaters, and damned if Blondie hadn’t gotten the last laugh after all. Probably better that he didn’t know it yet, and Starsky wasn’t planning on telling him any time soon. Just one more thing for his partner to lord over him.

What were those lyrics? ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. He’d have to find a way to let Joni know she was more right than she guessed on that one.

He’d have to find a way to speak to the Management first, though. He thought he could deal with Heaven being a beat up Beetle, but he really didn’t want to spend eternity dealing with this agonizing pain he was feeling.

His guts were on fire, and it wasn’t the kind of fire that came after downing two double-beef and jalapeño burritos. No, this was the kind where you felt like some demented version of Julia Childs had carved your innards up with a chain saw, poured some rocksalt in the cavity, dumped about ten gallons of high octane in there, stirred, and lit a match.

Starsky flambé, and damn did it hurt.

Trying to take his mind off the agony in his guts, he tuned in to the feelings from his hips to his ankles. Those sensations weren’t much better. Oh, sure, his lower body certainly hurt less, and he’d take that any day of Eternity, but it felt as if someone had dunked his favorite Levi’s in ice-cold sewer water and dragged him back into them.

In the general discomfort scale, there were few things more irritating than wet pants. He figured the Management would have gotten rid of that particular irritation, but he seemed to be wrong about that as well.

Maybe whoever was Up There—Up Here?—didn’t’ get the memos. Didn’t he have a staff for that kind of thing? How hard could organizing stuff like that be? Hell, get Hutch up here, and everything’d be perfect within a week.

Man couldn’t keep a clean house or car for shit, but give him a whole mess of paperwork to organize and watch out.

Hutch.

Shit.

This death stuff wasn’t going as he’d hoped. No Nothing. No tunnel. No light, or angels, or family. No last words or dying declarations of love or promises to meet again on the other side in fifty years or so.

No head kisses or hand holding or thigh clutching. No weepy eyes. No outright weeping.

Nothing but “Starsky! Get down!”

That had been the sum total of all those happily ever after fantasies. And, as always, he hadn’t listened, and this was the end result of that selective deafness.

Burning belly, wet pants and a rusty Volkswagen Beetle.

The sum total of his life and, it seemed, his death as well.

Hell, all he needed was a wall clock melting in a tree branch hanging over a toxic waste dump, and he could provide the inspiration for a Salvador Dali painting. Not that that freak needed any more inspiration, God knew, but it was the principle of the thing, really.

Then he wondered if maybe he wasn’t dead yet, and instead the countdown cocktail they’d injected into him was causing him to hallucinate all this…this…disappointing shit.

It would certainly explain the continuing pain, and maybe even the wet pants sensation. He wasn’t too sure about the VW, because really, who would hallucinate a Volkswagen, for crying out loud?

Well, maybe Hutch would, cause for Blondie, the doggier the car, the more he loved it. Put him in the afterlife with a busted up, rusted out VW Beetle, and he’d be in seventh heaven. And eighth and ninth and tenth as well, if there was such a thing.

Did heaven have floors, like office buildings did? And if so, how’d you get to them? He didn’t think he had any wings, so flying was pretty much out, and feeling as he was, walking was pretty much out as well.

He wished he’d studied up on teleportation when he’d had the chance.

Ah well. Just one more regret in a death full of ’em, and didn’t that just beat all?

But come on.

A Volkswagen?

So…maybe this was Hutch’s idea of paradise instead of his? If so, he could understand the mixup. They’d been confused so many times in life, he wouldn’t put it past the Management to think they got Hutch when they’d really gotten Starsky instead.

That thought, for some odd reason, warmed him all the way to his toes, wet jeans and all.

Even the pain in his belly started to fade, and that was a damn good thing since he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take it before finding the complaint department and treating them to a Starsky Rage. Not quite as effective as the Hutchinson Snit, but good enough for what he wanted. Though he wasn’t quite sure how one played Bad Cop to a Supreme Being, but he figured he do what he did best and make it up as he went along.

But somehow, some way, the pain was fading quickly, and as he looked, the beat up VW did a neat disappearing trick, all super slow motion like it appreciated its audience and wanted to leave him in awe.

When the Bug disappeared completely, so did his vision. It was as if someone had wrapped a pink scarf around his eyes and most of the rest of his face as well.

And for the first time since he’d become Aware, he could literally feel his own heart beating. Except that it wasn’t really beating. No, it seemed to be taking a page out of his partner’s book and stuttering its way along inside his chest. Now he wasn’t a doctor, but he didn’t think that a heart was supposed to stutter. Beat, certainly. Gallop? Sometimes. Flutter, occasionally.

Stuttering, though. That had to be something bad.

Stutter-stutter-stutter-stutterstutterstutterstutt——————– ————–

All was silent now. Deathly silent. Deadly silent. The silence of the grave or the tomb or the morgue.

That pink-scarf feeling was still across his vision and face, and he felt as if his body was floating upwards. He wondered if hitting the ceiling would hurt or if he’d just float right on through it, going up and up and up and up until up was down and he was….wherever it was he was supposed to be going.

As he prepared to find out, he heard a sound. Not voices, no. He knew they’d found him already and were trying to make his meat work again and he wanted to tell them that he’d already vacated the premises for a destination unknown—’Starsky has left the stage’ sounded pretty good to him.

That sound was getting louder. First a loud—scratch that—very loud ‘bang!’, followed by loud, rapid staccato noises that could only be his partner’s big shoes slapping leather over the hospital corridors toward his room.

More than the sounds, though, was this all encompassing Need. It filled every single centimeter of the room, every single molecule of air in the room, surrounding him with this tethering blanket that was entirely too smothering and more than a little scary.

It’s one thing to know how much someone loves you and needs you. It’s another thing entirely to Know those same things.

‘I’m sorry, buddy. I want to stay. God knows I do, but….’

Don’t go!

‘Don’t you think I’d stay if I could? Don’t you think I’d give up everything to be with you, babe? I just don’t’ think it’s up to me anymore.’

Don’t go! Starsky, please! Don’t leave me! Don’t you leave me! Don’t leave me! Don’t go, damnit!

‘Aw, Hutch. Babe. I wanna stay. So much. It’s just…I’m so damn tired, babe. So tired. My spirit’s more than willin’, sweetheart, but my body…well, you can see that for yourself. I gotta let go, partner. And, even worse, I gotta let you go.’

No! Starsky, don’t you dare! Don’t you leave me, you hear me? Whatever God wants you for, I need you more. You hear that, God? You hear that, you cheap, tinhorn dictator? You can’t have him! He’s mine!

‘Aw, Hutch. Please, babe, don’t do this to yourself. Not for me. I ain’t worth it.’

David Michael Starsky, you made a promise to me, and you’ve never gone back on a promise you’ve made to me in your whole life. Well, partner, I’m not gonna let you do it now, either. So you better keep that promise you made to me and start living again or you don’t want to know what it is I’m gonna do to you if you don’t.

‘You’re right about that, Blondie. I’m shiverin’ here just thinkin’ about the possibilities. But—I don’t got a say in these things, Hutch. I wish I did, but it just don’t work that way.’

Then again, maybe it did, cause he felt the most gawdawful pain shootin’ thought his chest and heart like he’d touched a live wire and had a gazillion volts flowin’ through him. His body, which he was finally able to feel again, arched up like he was havin’ the granddaddy of all seizures, and damned if, once he’d relaxed, he couldn’t feel his heart begin galloping along in his chest again.

Well.

Shit.

Then all the pain came back all at once, and he thought he screamed to whoever was in Charge up there that he’d changed my mind.

Looked like souls had a major buyer beware-no return policy, cause no one listened and the pain just got worse. The cool hand on his brow— Hutch’s hand—made it damp down some and if it wasn’t exactly bearable, he thought maybe he could live through it…for now.

And then he made it my first goal to stay alive long enough to tell Hutch what Heaven really was and let him know that even the Powers that Be got the two of them mixed up.

I’m Starsky, He’s Hutch on a cosmic scale, and if that wasn’t good for a laugh or two, there was no justice in this world.

He figured dying to the sight of the blond blintz love of his life all shining and happy and laughing would be his own personal heaven, and he’d go through all the pain he needed to just to get to that place.

Let Hutch deal with the damn Volkswagen and the wet pants. Add a couple plants and he’d settle in for eternity.

As for Starsky, he’d just come visiting and wind up staying for however long that eternity was. He just hoped that the next time he visited, his heaven would be Hutch, and the Torino.

FIN