Fifteen Seconds in a Blackout

Detective Ray Castellano woke up in the same pew for the seventieth time, the smell of incense thick as Boston fog in February and twice as persistent. The funeral program crackled in his sweaty palm: Francis Xavier Murphy, 1943-2024, Beloved Father and Grandfather.

Seventy times. He'd died more often than a Red Sox playoff run.

The priest's voice droned over the congregation like static from his patrol car radio. Ray's eyes drifted to the altar where seven votive candles flickered in their brass holders. Everything identical except—the third candle from the left was maybe a millimeter shorter than yesterday's loop. A detail so minute that only someone who'd been staring at the same scene for seventy iterations would notice.

Except for that one candle. Such a tiny difference that anyone else would chalk it up to imagination, but Ray had been a detective long enough to trust the details that nagged at him.

"We gather today to celebrate the life of Frank Murphy," Father Kowalski intoned, same cadence, same pause for effect. Ray could mouth the words now.

The congregation stirred. Ray knew exactly when Mrs. Henderson would sniffle (now), when his wife Sarah would reach for his hand (three seconds), when little Tommy Murphy would start fidgeting (any moment). Like clockwork. Like evidence at a crime scene—everything in its place, every detail mattering.

Ray had been working Homicide for twelve years at District D-4 in the South End. He knew patterns. He knew when something was off.

The service was breaking up. Time to move to the graveside. Ray had made it this far exactly forty-seven times before getting shot. Twenty-three times he'd died in the church—twice during the opening prayer when he'd tried to tackle the priest. The other twenty-three times, he'd bought it somewhere between the church doors and the cemetery gates.

Ray's biggest act of faith these days was wearing the same lucky socks during every Sox game—red wool with tiny green shamrocks that Sarah had bought him as a joke, now so threadbare you could see his toes through the holes.

"You got fifteen seconds in a blackout," Frank used to say when Ray complained about power outages in their neighborhood. "Fifteen seconds to check your connections, find the problem, restore the power. After that, people start to panic." Frank had been talking about electrical emergencies, but he'd look at Ray with those knowing eyes, like he was talking about something else entirely.

"Ray?" Sarah squeezed his arm. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

If only she knew. Seventy ghosts, all of them himself, all of them bleeding out in different locations around this same miserable loop.

"Fine," he lied, same as always. "Just thinking about Frank."

True enough. He'd been thinking about Frank Murphy for seventy iterations, wondering if the old bastard was watching this cosmic train wreck from wherever good Catholic electricians went when they died.

The congregation filed out, Ray scanning faces he now knew by heart. Mrs. Kowalski with her hearing aid whistling. The Murphy brothers arguing over who drove Dad to his last doctor's appointment. Sarah's cousin Michelle chain-smoking behind the rectory.

Ray's fingers found the heavy silver crucifix in his jacket pocket—Frank's last gift to him, pressed into his hands the day before the old man died. "For protection," Frank had wheezed, grinning at Ray's obvious discomfort. "Cost me extra to get Jesus on there. Cheapest bastard in Southie, but I paid for the good stuff this time."

The crucifix was solid sterling silver, but the corpus—the figure of Christ—was made from some kind of dense metal that Frank had insisted was "the real deal." Ray had never bothered to ask what that meant. Now he kept slipping it under his chair whenever no one was looking, the same way he avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks during playoff season.

Sarah had insisted he bring it today. "Dad would want you to wear it," she'd said, and Ray hadn't had the heart to tell her he'd been carrying it every day since Frank died, just not wearing it. Wearing it felt like admitting something he wasn't ready to admit.

Ray's hand drifted to his off-duty piece, a snub-nose .38 tucked against his ribs. Fat lot of good it had done him sixty-nine times running. He couldn't shoot what he couldn't see coming.

But tonight would be different. He could feel it in the way the candle wax had shifted, in the almost imperceptible change that marked time still moving forward. Seventy loops. Seventy chances to learn that some problems required you to trust someone else to have your back.

Ray pulled the crucifix from his pocket, feeling its weight in his palm. Frank's generous heart wrapped in cheapskate practicality—sterling silver cross with whatever mystery metal Frank had splurged on for the corpus. Ray slipped the chain over his head for the first time since Frank had given it to him.

Screw the Red Sox. Some things were more important than superstition.

The processional formed outside St. Bartholomew's, pallbearers hoisting Frank's casket. Ray had liked the old bastard, even if Frank thought cops were only slightly more trustworthy than politicians.

"Remember when Dad tried to fix our garbage disposal?" Sarah whispered, falling into step beside Ray. "Swore he could do it without shutting off the power?"

"Lit up the whole block," Ray finished. Same conversation, every loop. Sarah would smile now, remembering her father's embarrassed grin when the lights came back on. Then she'd get that far-away look, the one that meant she was thinking about all the things Frank would never fix again.

Ray had stopped engaging with these scripted moments around loop forty. What was the point? Everyone would say their lines, hit their marks, and he'd end up bleeding out before snapping awake in that same pew.

The procession wound through Southie toward Mount Calvary Cemetery, past the projects where Ray had worked his first domestic violence calls, past Dorgan's Pub where Frank used to hold court every Friday after work.

Ray's radio crackled—force of habit, he'd clipped it to his belt even though he was off duty. "All units, we have a 10-54 at the corner of Broadway and D Street."

Possible dead body. Ray's hands twitched toward the radio before he caught himself. Not his call. Not his district. Not his problem.

Except everything was his problem now, stuck in this cosmic feedback loop like a scratched record that kept skipping back to the same refrain.

The cemetery gates came into view, iron scrollwork spelling out "Mount Calvary" in letters that had weathered a century of Boston winters. This was as far as he'd made it last time. Ray's shoulders tensed, waiting for the impact.

Nothing.

They passed through the gates. Still nothing.

The grave site sat on a small hill overlooking the harbor, Frank's plot next to his wife Margaret. The funeral director had set up chairs for the family, the casket positioned over the open grave.

Ray positioned himself where he could watch the crowd and the tree line beyond. If the shooter was out there, Ray would spot him this time. Had to. He was running out of candles and patience, and Sarah was running out of husband. She'd already buried her father once today—she shouldn't have to bury Ray too.

That's what kept him going through seventy deaths. Not solving the case, but the look on Sarah's face every time he died in front of her. The way she screamed his name, tried to stop the bleeding, blamed herself for asking him to come.

Nobody got to hurt his wife on his watch. Not even death.

Father Kowalski cleared his throat. "Friends, we gather here not in sorrow, but in celebration of a life well-lived."

Same opening. Ray tuned out the priest and focused on the faces around him. Sarah wiping her eyes with a tissue that was already soaked through. Her brother Mike shifting his weight from foot to foot. The Murphy grandkids fidgeting in their uncomfortable clothes.

Normal people doing normal grief things.

"Frank was a man who understood that faith isn't about having all the answers," the priest continued. "It's about asking the right questions."

Ray had plenty of questions. Like why he kept reliving this day. Like who wanted him dead. Like whether the Red Sox were going to choke in the playoffs again this year, assuming he lived long enough to find out.

He'd given up praying around the time he started working Homicide. Hard to believe in a benevolent God when you spent your days photographing what people did to each other. But Frank had never given up, not even when Margaret got sick, not even when the cancer came back. Even when Ray had stopped going to mass, Frank would slip him prayer cards and talk about forgiveness like it was something you practiced, not something you earned.

"Seventy times seven," Frank used to say, quoting something from Sunday school. "That's how many times you forgive someone. Means you never stop trying."

Movement in his peripheral vision. Ray's head snapped left, scanning the oak trees that bordered the cemetery. Nothing but shadows and squirrels.

Father Kowalski was winding up. "Frank Murphy was a builder, a fixer, a man who understood that the most important connections aren't the ones you can see."

The priest nodded to Sarah, who stepped forward with a handful of dirt. This was it—the moment when everything usually went sideways. Ray's hand moved to his weapon, fingers finding the familiar grip of his .38.

Sarah let the soil fall onto the casket with a sound like rain on a roof. "Goodbye, Dad."

Mike followed, then the grandkids, each taking their turn at the graveside. Ray kept scanning, kept waiting.

Still nothing.

Maybe this was it. Maybe he'd finally broken free of whatever cosmic lesson had been playing with his life for seventy iterations. Maybe—

The crack of a rifle split the morning air.

Ray spun toward the sound, saw the muzzle flash from behind a granite monument fifty yards away. The shooter was prone, camouflaged, using what looked like a high-velocity rifle with a scope. The kind of setup that got more lethal with distance—the bullet would tumble and fragment on impact from this range, designed to cause maximum damage.

Time slowed, the way it always did in the moment before everything went to hell. Ray could see the bullet's path, could calculate the angle, could see exactly where it would hit.

His wife.

Sarah, who'd never hurt anyone in her life, who still left cookies for the mailman at Christmas, who cried during insurance commercials if they had dogs in them. Sarah, who'd married a cop despite knowing it meant living with the constant fear that someday a stranger with a gun would make her a widow.

This was that someday.

Ray's hand was already moving toward his .38, but he could see the math. High-velocity round, fifty-yard trajectory, designed to tumble and tear apart anything it hit. Sarah was going to die while he watched. Again.

Unless.

Ray dove sideways, wrapping Sarah in his arms, pulling her down behind the open grave as the bullet whined overhead. They tumbled together, rolling across the grass, and for one perfect moment Ray thought he'd beaten the cosmic house rules.

Then the second shot came.

This one didn't miss.

But Ray was moving toward the shooter now, closing the distance, and that changed everything. The bullet that would have tumbled and fragmented at fifty yards hit him clean at thirty—still carrying lethal velocity but flying straight and true instead of breaking apart.

The impact punched through Ray's chest just below the collarbone, but instead of the devastating wound he'd expected, the bullet struck something solid. Frank's crucifix, worn openly for the first time in months, took the hit dead center.

Fifteen seconds in a blackout. Ray had taken seventy loops, but maybe that was exactly how long he'd needed to check his connections.

The silver cross bent under the impact, but the dense metal corpus—whatever the hell Frank had "paid extra" for—caught the bullet like it was designed for exactly this moment. The force spun Ray around, sent him stumbling backward into empty air.

Into Frank's grave.

The fall lasted forever and no time at all. Ray's vision tunneled, his hearing muffled, and that familiar darkness crept in from the edges. The same darkness he'd seen sixty-nine times before, the same slow fade to black that meant waking up in that pew for round seventy-one.

Except this time felt different.

This time, he'd saved Sarah first.

Ray hit the bottom of the grave, landing hard on the polished wood of Frank's casket, but instead of the usual peaceful drift into unconsciousness, he felt pain. Sharp, immediate, very much alive pain.

His lungs were working. His heart was beating. Blood was flowing, but not flowing out.

Above him, faces appeared at the edge of the grave, staring down at him with shocked expressions. Sarah's face, streaked with dirt and tears but beautifully, miraculously alive. Mike's face, pale with confusion. Father Kowalski's face, probably wondering if this counted as a resurrection or just really bad funeral etiquette.

"Jesus Christ," Ray muttered, trying to sit up. The words came out as a prayer instead of a curse.

"Ray!" Sarah's voice, panicked but present. Real. Not the echo of memory he'd been hearing for seventy loops. "Are you hurt?"

"Define hurt," Ray said, then started laughing because what else could you do when you'd just survived your seventieth death by landing on your father-in-law's casket like some kind of demented circus act?

"Ray, this isn't funny," Sarah said, but he could hear the relief in her voice.

"No," Ray agreed, still chuckling. "It's not funny. It's a miracle."

The word surprised him as it came out of his mouth. He hadn't used that word seriously in years, not since he'd started working Homicide and seeing what people did to each other in the name of everything and nothing.

"Can someone get me out of here?" Ray called up. "I've got a crime scene to process."

"Stay put, Ray," came a voice from above. Detective Lisa Santos from his own district, working security for the funeral. "EMTs are en route. And the ME's going to want to talk to you about disturbing his future client."

Ray looked down at the casket he was standing on, imagining Frank's reaction to having a cop crash his funeral. The old bastard would probably find it hilarious.

"Sorry, Frank," Ray said quietly. "I'll make it up to you."

"Shooter down! Requesting backup!" Santos called out, professional and calm.

Sirens wailed in the distance, probably from the Dunkin' Donuts on Dorchester Avenue where half his department spent their off hours.

Ray looked down at his chest, expecting to see blood. Instead, he saw Frank's crucifix, bent nearly in half but still hanging around his neck. The silver cross was mangled, but the corpus was gone—the dense metal figure of Christ had absorbed the bullet's impact completely, probably saving Ray's life and definitely ruining Frank's carefully chosen upgrade.

The old bastard had paid extra for ballistic-grade metal and never told him. Typical Frank—generous to a fault but too cheap to spring for the explanation.

The EMTs arrived with a ladder, and Ray climbed out under his own power, his chest aching but his head clear. The world looked different somehow—sharper, more present than it had since this nightmare began.

As the EMTs checked his vitals and the crime scene techs started their work, Ray caught sight of the cemetery's chapel in the distance. Seven votive candles flickered in the windows, the third one from the left burning just a little shorter than the rest, marking time's passage in the smallest possible increments.

Seventy loops to learn what Frank had tried to teach him in fifteen seconds. Some people needed longer to find the problem, restore the power. But even patience had limits—Ray could feel that truth in the way the candle had been counting down, millimeter by millimeter, toward some final moment when the lights would either come back on or go out forever.

Ray looked at Sarah, who was watching him with an expression he hadn't seen in years—pride mixed with exasperation, love mixed with disbelief.

"So," she said, taking his hand as the EMTs finished their examination. "Ready to go home?"

Ray squeezed her fingers, feeling the warmth of her skin, the reality of her presence. No loop. No reset. Just the two of them, still standing, still breathing, still married after twenty-two years of his job and her patience and all the small miracles that kept people together.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm ready."

They walked away from the cemetery together, leaving Frank to his eternal rest and the crime scene techs to their methodical work. Ray didn't look back at the grave or the chapel or the candles burning in the windows.

He'd seen enough of yesterday. Today was finally moving forward, one millimeter of melted wax at a time.

Behind them, the sun climbed higher in the June sky, casting long shadows across the headstones and monuments, warming the faces of everyone who had come to say goodbye to Francis Xavier Murphy—electrician, father, man of faith, and unwitting teacher of one cop's hardest lesson.

Ray touched the bent crucifix in his pocket, feeling the rough edges where the bullet had deformed the silver cross. Frank's last gift had saved his life, but the corpus was gone—blown clean off, probably embedded in a tree somewhere behind the cemetery.

Ray Castellano walked into the summer morning, his wife's hand in his, a bent crucifix in his pocket, and maybe, just maybe, the Red Sox would finally have a decent season this year.