Chapter Eighteen

Photo By ZepFanMan

Andi looked around and wondered where the hell she had gotten to this time.  It was cold.  There were trees.  And nearby she could see the coast, though again, she wasn’t sure which one she was looking at.  It was an overcast day, so she couldn’t even use the sun to try to orient herself a little bit.

It was a little disorienting after being in the desert only seconds earlier and attempting to move to a cactus, not an ocean, but she wasn’t as freaked out as she had been the first time.  Death had found her pretty darned quickly the last time, so she just stayed put and trusted that Death would show up soon to collect her, and then they’d try again.

In the meantime, she figured she might as well take a look around.  There were a couple people walking along the coast.  She couldn’t really hear their conversation, but little snatches came through.  She thought she heard one of them say, “ayuh.”

Am I in Maine? she thought.

Then she heard Death next to her.

“How did you end up in Maine?” Death said.  She sounded amused, but still supportive.

“I have no idea, I…” Andi started to say, but Death interrupted her again.

“Sorry, kiddo, we’ve got an immediate collection.  I didn’t want to leave you stranded, but we need to go,” Death said.

Andi felt it as they stepped away from where they had been standing, before she could even respond to what Death had said. 

When they stopped, Andi saw they were in front of a Bakery. 

“Well, let’s see what’s gone horribly wrong,” Death said.  She sounded irritated.

The two of them walked into the bakery.  Standing at the counter was an enormous, muscular man in black leather clothing.  He looked a bit irritated.  Andi recognized him as the man who had been outside the burning bar in the desert.

Death sounded tired and annoyed when she said, “Hey Ares.”

Ares turned around, and smiled broadly, “Hey! Hi Death! What brings you here?”

Death gave Ares her best how stupid do you think I am? look. 

“I assume you brought me here,” Death said.

Ares looked completely surprised.  “Well, I guess that’s fair, but I’m just here trying to get a birthday cake.”

Death didn’t say anything, she just walked behind the counter and in to the back of bakery.  Andi followed her.

Hanging from a length of extension cord tied over an exposed pipe running along the ceiling was the baker, John Connely, 52.  His soul stood nearby, looking troubled.

Ares had followed them into the back of the bakery, unnoticed.  Andi started a bit when he spoke.

“Well, shit.  I guess I won’t be getting a birthday cake here.  This place was the best, too,” Ares said.

Death turned on him.

“Why the hell did you hang the baker, Ares?  I wish you could keep your temper reigned in a little bit when it’s, you know, not actually a war,” Death said.

Ares put his hands up, palms open, towards Death.

“This wasn’t me.  Besides, an electrical cord hanging isn’t my style, you know that,” Ares said.  “It would have taken a lot to get me pissed off enough to kill this baker.  Seriously, you can’t get a better cake in this town.”

John Connely’s soul quietly watched this discussion with an extremely puzzled expression on his face.

Andi also looked puzzled.  Something seemed familiar about this guy, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She flipped through her notes a little bit, and realized that John Connely’s was one of the deaths she had been given to plan.

All that work, flushed away by a baker with a bad attitude and an extension cord.  It made her a little angry.

John hadn’t been paying attention to Andi, he was listening to Ares instead.  John said, “Really, you think my cakes are the best?”

Ares turned to John and said in a very dismissive way, “they were the best, asshole. Why did you have to off yourself today?”

Over the last couple of seconds, Andi’s temper had started to get the best of her.  Planning a death was a ton of work.  She’d had to consider everything about him, and figure out how to orchestrate a series of events leading to his demise. 

She scowled and said, perhaps a little louder than was strictly needed, “Why did you have to off yourself at all?”

“Well, I don’t really see how that’s any of your business,” John said in reply.

Andi hadn’t realized that one could actually see red, until she did exactly that just then.

“It’s my business because I spent a fucking ton of time planning out your death and you had to go and make all that work irrelevant by hanging yourself with an extension cord.  It was a great death I’d had planned out for you too.  It was going to have everything, a little surprise, a little action, lots of gore.  You would have been amazed.  But now you’ve just made it so no one will ever use this building as a bakery again and that’s it.  Whoop de doo.  Jerk,” Andi said.

“Gee, I hadn’t thought about that.  Not many people are going to want to run a bakery here again, are then?” John said.

“Of course you hadn’t thought about it.  Did you think about anything?” Andi said.  “No, you just decided you couldn’t handle how hard your life was anymore and decided to quit like a big… quitting… poopy-head.”

Ares was watching this all unfold with no small amount of amusement.  Death was wondering if she should try to calm Andi down, but then thought about how much suicides pissed her off as well, so she kept her mouth shut.

“And the worst part is that I…” John had started to say.

“Realized that the only problem you couldn’t fix was that you’d just hung yourself?  I’ve heard that before, it’s not that profound,” Andi said.  “Hindsight isn’t worth much when you’ve just taken away any chance you had of ever at least making changes for the better.”

“I’d think you could be a little sympathetic,” John said, starting to get defensive.

“It’s too late for that too, stink-face,” Andi said.  “You know what, just shut up.  Take my hand, we’re crossing over.”

“I’m not sure…” John said.

Andi grabbed him by the ear, “I am.  Let’s go.”

Andi stepped out of the world, dragging John along with her.  The gateway appeared after a moment, and John said, “Is this the gateway to Hell?”

Andi said, “I don’t know, but you probably should have considered that before you killed yourself, huh?  In you go.”

Andi gave him a firm push through the gateway.

When she got back to the bakery, Death and Ares were both looking at her, kind of dumbfounded.

“Your intern there has a hell of a temper,” Ares said to Death.

“Yeah, I guess,” Death said.  To Andi she said, “I don’t think I’ve seen this side of you before, Andi.”

Andi blushed, no longer full of fury.

“Sorry, I guess that kind of caught me by surprise too,” Andi said.

“Well, I can’t blame you for being angry. You’ve seen how much it pisses me off,” Death said.

Ares glanced at a clock on the wall, and said, “well, it look like it’s time for me to split.  I need to go try to find another bakery that can whip up a birthday cake worth eating.”

Andi said, “What do you need a birthday cake for, anyway?  Aren’t you a god of war?”

“I don’t see what the one has to do with the other.  I’m going to a birthday party, and I need a cake.  What do you think I need a birthday cake for?” Ares said.

“I guess it just seems kind of funny, a god of war, buying a birthday cake,” Andi said.

“What? So I can’t enjoy birthday cake just because I’m a god of war?  You know what? Whatever, I’m out of here.  See you later, Death,” Ares said.  He promptly vanished.

Andi was quiet for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“That seemed a little abrupt,” she said to Death.

“Well, you did just tell him that there was something funny about him buying a birthday cake.   And Ares isn’t known for being a particularly good sport,” Death said.  “He’s razed entire villages for less.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Andi said.

“Not at all.  Guess who had to collect all the souls after an unexpected village bonfire.  Several times,” Death said.

“Whoa,” Andi said. 

“Yeah,” Death said. 

She checked the time, and saw they had just a few minutes until the next collection.  It looked like it should be another easy, straightforward collection.  An industrial accident.

“Come on,” Death said, “We’ve got work to do.  I’ll let you sit this one out and just watch while you calm down a bit.  I know how annoying suicides are.”

“OK, cool, thanks,” Andi said.

A few moments later they were standing outside a factory, by the loading docks.  There were trucks coming and going, and several forklifts rushing back and forth, loading and unloading trailers.

Jeff Goldman, twenty four, was looking forward to the end of his shift.  He had two days off, and was ready to get his weekend started.  Just another hour and he’d be out of there.

Death and Andi stood by, unnoticed as always, watching as Jeff finished talking with his supervisor and the driver of the truck, determining where everything he was going to load off the truck needed to go.

A few minutes later, he had his forklift running and was hauling pallets loaded with various raw materials out of the trailer and into the warehouse.  This was fine for several trips, but as the truck was unloaded, the issue of the brakes not being set became a big problem.

Jeff drove the forklift into the trailer to grab another load, but didn’t notice that the inertia of the forklift had caused the truck and trailer to roll forward about ten feet.  And, unfortunately for Jeff, no one else noticed it either, except for Death and Andi.

When Jeff had lifted another pallet in the trailer, he backed rapidly out of the trailer.  Ordinarily, he’d just end up in the warehouse, turn, and take the pallet to wherever he was supposed to take it.

But this time, instead of a loading dock, at the end of the trailer was a five foot drop.  Jeff didn’t even notice the drop until six thousand pounds of forklift had toppled out of the back of the truck.  And, unfortunately for Jeff, he was what broke the fall between the forklift and the ground.

The forklift suffered minimal damage, but the same couldn’t be said for Jeff.  He suffered about as much damage as you might expect.

“Aw, shit,” Jeff’s soul said as he looked down on his remains.  “It was almost the weekend.  I can’t believe I got sloppy enough to not check the brakes on that truck before I unloaded it.  Damn it.”

“People make mistakes,” Death said kindly.  “Would you come with me?”

“And I had a whole case of beer in the fridge and a bag of weed at home waiting for me.  I was so ready for this weekend,” Jeff said.

“Well, that is unfortunate, but it was your time,” Death said.  “Would you take my hand?”

Death’s phone rang then.  Jeff seemed content to lament his bag of weed for a while longer, so she checked it.

Another immediate collection?  Death’s mood took a sudden turn for the worse.  She grimaced.

“Can you hang around and bring this guy over when he’s ready?  I just got another immediate collection,” Death said.

“Another one?  Jeez.  OK, sure, I’ll take care of it,” Andi said.

“Great, I’ll be back,” Death said, and with that, she was gone.

Jeff was pacing back and forth, glancing at the wreckage now and then, and watching his former co-workers alternately hustling and trying to help, freaking out, and just standing in shock.

“There’s not much you can do here,” Andi said.  “Why don’t you come with me?”

Jeff ignored her, and started chastising himself again.

Great, Andi thought. A suicide, and now a guy who wants to beat himself up over an accident.  

And she wondered what the deal was with yet another immediate collection.  Had someone gotten themselves smote?  Or was it another suicide?  She was a little embarrassed about how angry she’d gotten at the suicide they’d just had to collect.  Now she really understood why Death had been so pissy at the suicides they’d collected previously.

Andi got a little lost in thought.  When she snapped out of it, she realized that Jeff had gone missing.  She had absolutely no idea where he’d wandered off to, but the fact was, he wasn’t standing with her anymore.

“Oh shit,” Andi said.

She ran to the other side of the truck, up into the warehouse, to the far side of the parking lot.  Jeff was nowhere to be seen.  She wasn’t exactly sure what to do.  She knew Death would be displeased.  On the other hand, even if he was kind of annoying, Andi didn’t wish a slow descent into eternal madness on him.  He hadn’t done anything that bad.

But Death was going to be cranky if she’d just collected a suicide.  It was a dilemma.

And it was one she didn’t have time to ponder, because that’s when Death showed up.  She didn’t look especially cheerful.

“So Ares killed a different baker,” Death said.  “Apparently Ares wanted something in the way of a Yule log for a birthday cake, and this guy refused to make one, and told him to come back in December.  The good news is, I managed to catch Ares before he’d gone all out rampage and killed everyone the baker had ever known.”

Andi said, “He’s done that?”

“More times than I like to think about.  Anyway.  Are we done here?” Death said.

Andi swallowed hard.  The right thing to do was to try and prevent eternal torment because she’d screwed up.  But she knew it wasn’t going to go over well.  She steeled herself as well as she could, and spoke.

“Jeff seems to have wandered off, and now I can’t find him,” Andi said.

Death stared blankly at Andi.

“I’ve searched for him,” Andi said quickly, “as best I could.  I really have no idea where he ran off to, though.”

Death tightened her lips, and exhaled through her nose.

“OK, well, we’d better find him.  I’d better find him.  You stay here, I’ll be right back,” Death said.  She vanished.

Andi felt pretty certain that she was going to get herself escorted to the gateway for sure this time.  She considered running off herself, and seeing how long she might be able to elude Death, but then she realized that doing so might just make Death even harder on her when she finally caught up.  So she stayed where she way.

After a few minutes, Death appeared again.

“He went home,” Death said.  “That’s usually where they go.  Home or their favorite place.  He’s squared away now.”

“OK, good, I’m glad,” Andi said.

Death seemed to be figuring out how to say something.  Andi stayed quiet and waited.

“So, Andi, that was kind of a huge mistake there.  You have got a tremendous amount of responsibility when it’s your job to bring a soul to the next world.  People are not meant to stay here after Death.  It’s extremely bad for them, mostly.  They have no purpose any more, and they have to watch eternity pass.  Letting them get away is dooming them to torment.  So, you can’t let them wander off,” Death said.

She continued, “I have to be honest with you, Andi, my trust in you is shaken.  I can’t keep giving you more responsibility if you make mistakes like this.  Do you understand?”

Andi nodded.

“OK,” Death said.  “Well, let’s keep moving.  People aren’t going to stop dying just because we need a break.”