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| Photo by Jon Bunting |
Death and Andi arrived in one of the less-reputable parts of
Miami, Florida. A deal for black market, unpasteurized cheeses and milk was about
to go bad.
Mike Hamilton, 27, was the owner and operator of a food
truck that specialized in the finest whole, organic, environmentally friendly
foods available prepared fresh and handed directly to their customers.
Strictly speaking, using unpasteurized milk and cheese in
his dishes wasn’t legal. However, a
couple of large payments and the occasional box of all natural cookies under
the table, so to speak, to the local food inspector kept him from looking too closely
at where Mike’s dairy products were coming from. And it’s not like anyone had gotten sick
eating his food.
Frank Evans, 46, was a dairy farmer. He didn’t really care about “all natural”, or
“environmentally friendly.” Organic
sold, and what’s more, he could sell raw milk to the loonies who wanted it for
four times as much as he could sell pasteurized milk.
Frank kept his off the books business very, very low
key. The FDA didn’t have a sense of
humor, and it was tough making a living as a dairy farmer otherwise.
And now this little shit was making noise about the price
Frank was charging and threatening to report him. Which meant he was threatening his family’s
source of income. Which meant he was
threatening his family.
Death and Andi appeared, unnoticed, next to the garage door
of the commercial kitchen Mike ran his food truck operation from.
Death took out her stopwatch and started it, and traced down
the list on her clipboard to the present moment.
“So, what can I do to help?” Andi said. She was already imagining herself looking imposing
and otherworldly in a cloak like Death’s, collecting the recently deceased and
bringing them to their final destination.
Death was intently watching the two men as they argued. The argument was getting heated now, and was
going to come to blows any second.
“You can see about finding us some lunch. Something fried, please. Or meaty.
Fried and meaty will work,” she said, without looking away.
“That’s it?” Andi said, disappointed. Go and get lunch? It was a long way from shepherding the dead.
Death glanced over at Andi, briefly, and said “You
volunteered to help out, getting lunch will help. Oh, I want something salty. Whatever you do, make sure there are French
fries.”
Death turned her attention back to the two men. Frank was yelling in Mike’s face now.
Andi looked around at where they were. It was a pretty gritty, industrial looking
area. Run down. Dirty.
There were two guys within twenty feet of her who were about to try
killing one another about milk and cheese, and she assumed they were probably
not the worst of the neighbors in the area.
“You want me to wander off by myself, here?” Andi said. “This looks like where murderers go to get
murdered.”
“It’d be great if you could bring some extra ketchup with
you,” Death said. She was starting to
look a little distracted, but she was doing her best to keep track of the
action unfolding in front of her, making sure everything went according to
plan.
Mike had given Frank a hard shove, and Frank came back with
a free-wheeling swing at Mike’s jaw.
“Can it wait until we’re somewhere safer?” Andi said.
Death turned to Andi and said, spitting each word, “No, it
can’t wait. It’s been two years, six
months and twelve days since I had a bite to eat, and it’s been a solid week
since I’ve even had a cup of coffee. Go
and find me something fatty and salty and whatever it is, don’t come back
without it.”
“But,” Andi said. She was going to argue, but decided
against it when she saw how intense Death looked all of a sudden.
“I am more hungry than you have ever been or will ever
be. You offered to help me out, so
please do so for now by bringing me some lunch,” Death said.
“OK, OK…” Andi said.
She turned to walk away in search of something deep fried, and Death
turned back to see that Frank’s soul was standing there next to her.
“What the hell?” Death said before she could catch herself.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Frank’s soul said. “Who are you?”
Andi had stopped walking and turned to see what was going
on.
Death was rapidly looking over her notes. At the top of the page, the name of the
person to be collected was Mike, not Frank.
Death grimaced.
“What just happened?” Death asked Frank.
“Well, that little fucker shoved me and I tripped over that
ledge over there. Hit my head on the
building, I think. Now I’m here.”
Death nodded and looked at her notes. Mike was supposed to have been shot. Great.
“Will you excuse me for a second?” Death asked Frank. “I need to talk to my assistant for a second.”
She rushed over to where Andi was standing. Andi was staring at Death, wide-eyed. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened,
but she knew it couldn’t be good.
“The wrong person just died, Andi,” Death said, very
quietly. Quiet or not, it was clear to
Andi that Death was not amused.
“Well, that’s…” Andi had started to say, but Death
interrupted her.
“The wrong person died because I was distracted when I was
trying to do my job. Now, I’m going to
have to deliver a soul, whose death I put a good deal of planning into, by the
way, and come up with a new plan for the guy who was supposed to die,” Death
said.
“Geez, I…” Andi said.
“So, just so we’re clear, when I ask you to do something, then
within reason I expect you to do it, not argue, and definitely not to distract
me when I’m working. And, by the way, you’re
dead, so being in a bad part of town shouldn’t concern you too much. Are we clear?”
Andi was close to tears.
She nodded.
“Good. I’ll be right
back,” Death said. “Then we’re going to
head to the next collection, and from there I expect you to find some lunch.”
Andi watched as Death walked back over to Frank, and asked
him to accompany her. The two of them
disappeared.
She hadn’t realized that Death actually had a hand in making
sure a person’s passing went correctly.
She’d kind of assumed the plan was laid out, and that things more or
less just happened according to the plan.
She was also a little stunned at how angry Death had
gotten. Things must have gone even worse
than she’d realized.
A few moments later, Death reappeared, alone. She appeared to be much calmer now.
“OK,” Death said. “Well, there’s not much we can do here
now. Let’s move along to the next
collection, which is in…”
Death checked the details in the notes in her phone.
“Oklahoma City, Missouri.
In five minutes. Ready?” Death
said.
Andi took a deep breath, and said, “Ready.”
Seconds later, the two of them stood outside of a house in,
presumably, Oklahoma City, Missouri.
“OK, you get to work on finding something to eat. I’ll take care of the collection,” Death
said. “Something tells me there’s probably some kind of hamburger joint about
one mile that way.” Death pointed to the East.
“How much time until the
time?” Andi asked.
Death checked the time on her phone. “Four minutes,
roughly. Why?”
“Just a thought, if you drop me off closer to a place with
food, you won’t have to wait for me as I try to walk a mile and then return. That’ll take me close to an hour.” Andi said.
Death considered this for a moment.
“Good point,” Death said.
She checked the time again. Three
and a half minutes. There was time for
her to bring Andi to a restaurant and then get back here with a couple minutes
to spare. “OK, let’s do this.”
Seconds later, Andi and Death stood outside the entrance to
a McDonald’s.
“Get a couple of apple pies while you’re at it,” Death
said. “I’ll be back.”
With that, Death vanished and Andi was alone outside of a
McDonalds, apparently somewhere in Oklahoma City.
“Well, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me this is
how I was going to end up,” Andi said to herself. She turned and walked to the entrance to
McDonald’s.
When she reached for the door, she discovered a new
challenge that hadn’t occurred to her before: she was a ghost, and therefore
couldn’t open the door.
Andi tried several times to grab the handle of the door,
with the same result each time. Her hand
just passed through the handle. She
could feel it as the handle slipped through her fingers and palm, but she
couldn’t actually grab the handle.
She stood, stumped, with her hands on her hips. Given how the morning had gone, Andi really
didn’t want to have to explain to Death that she hadn’t managed to get lunch
because she was unable to open the door to the restaurant.
Andi tried to grab the handle again, really focusing on
hanging on to the handle this time. Her
hand passed through once more, but she had a small revelation: she could just
walk through the door.
She reached out, experimentally, and pushed her hand against
the glass of the door. Her hand slipped
through the glass easily, and so she pushed her arm through up to the
elbow. Apparently she could just walk
through the door. Great!
Andi stepped through the door, then stopped and gasped when
was all the way through it. The door had
felt infinitely more real than anything she had ever felt before. It was unnerving. She didn’t really care to have that
particular experience again, though she also suspected she was going to have to
get used to it as part of helping out Death.
She got in line, and waited patiently for her turn to
order.
A woman who had to be close to 80 cut in line ahead of
her. Andi was extremely irritated, but
decided to let it slide, since the woman, after all, was a senior citizen.
Then a young man stepped in line in front of her, behind the
old woman.
“Hey!” Andi protested, but it didn’t do any good. She tried to tap him on the shoulder but, of
course, was not able to. The young man
shivered and looked around uncomfortably, before going back to trying to decide
what he wanted to order.
Getting lunch was turning out to be a lot more challenging
that Andi had thought it would be. She had
another thought then, and checked her pockets.
No money.
So, if she were somehow able to get to the front of the
line, at the moment, the cashier wouldn’t notice her, she wouldn’t be able to
pay, and she wouldn’t be able to carry the food anyway. She was in a pickle.
Just then, Death appeared next to her.
“Wow, was there a long line?
I figured you’d have at least ordered by now,” Death said.
Andi looked at Death to try and figure out if Death was
screwing with her or not. If she was,
Death had a hell of a poker face, Andi decided.
“No, the line keeps growing, and I keep ending up at the end
of it because no one can see me. Also, I
can’t open doors. And I have no money,”
Andi said. She hadn’t realized how
completely frustrated she was until she heard her voice shaking. She wasn’t used to being unable to figure out
how to deal with a situation, and it bothered her. A lot.
“Oh,” Death said. “I
hadn’t thought of that. You’re going to
have to learn how to be physical. Hmm. I’m
going to have to think about this.”
She looked longingly at the menu board, and then her phone
beeped. Another collection was due.
“Well, we’ll figure out a way for you to learn,” Death
said. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
