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| Photo By Stewart Chambers |
Jessica Bergman, 28, was going to have an unusually nasty
tumble down three flights of stairs very shortly. She had just clocked out at work, and was
hurrying to get her things together and get the hell out of the office so she
could, with any luck, be just a tiny bit ahead of the rush hour traffic. She worked the night shift in a medical
billing office, temporarily, as she hunted for a better job that was actually in
her field: forensic psychology.
At the moment, however, there didn’t seem to be a lot of full-time
openings for forensic psychologists in San Diego.
She was working at an office in Chula Vista, but she
actually lived near downtown San Diego with five of her girlfriends in a two bedroom
apartment. Working a night shift in the
suburbs and living downtown meant that she had to deal with the morning
commute, only she was trying to get home and go to sleep.
It was a royal drag.
Death, Andi and Philip arrived outside the office where Jessica
worked, just as she was picking up her purse and heading for the exit.
“Wait here, please, you two,” Death said as she hustled
towards the building. Andi followed her.
“I’m coming with,” she said.
Philip, with every ounce of disgust he could cram into his
voice, said, “What’s wrong with you? You
want to watch someone die?”
This stopped Andi in her tracks.
“It’s not like I enjoy it,” Andi said. “It just seems wrong to be here and look the
other way while someone dies.”
“Don’t you think people might want a little privacy?”
“Don’t you think people might need a little support?”
The argument escalated from there. Andi may have, at one point, called Philip a
poopy-head. When she got really angry,
she had a tendency to use childish language.
Death, meanwhile, had hurried inside and stationed herself
at the top of the bottom of the stairs.
She had her notebook and stopwatch out, and the stopwatch was ticking
down Jessica’s final seconds already.
They had just barely made it in time.
Sloppy, and stressful.
She heard, about three floors up, a stairwell door slam
against the wall as someone hurried through it.
Death marked off an item on her list, and listened attentively as
Jessica rushed down the stairs. One
flight, then two.
Then a gasp and the sounds of a body tumbling down the
stair. It sounded like Jessica had
almost managed to get her feet under her, but stumbled and fell down the next
flight of stairs as well.
Falling down the third flight of stairs was just bad
luck. Inertia had bounced her off the
wall and then gravity did the rest.
Jessica’s battered body came to rest just a couple feet away from where
Death stood.
“Well,” Jessica’s soul said, while looking down at her body,
“I guess I don’t have to worry about rush hour today. Go me!”
She didn’t actually sound very enthusiastic about this
outcome.
“No, you don’t,” Death said to her. “Would you come with me Jessica?”
“Sure, why not?” Jessica said.
Death led her away from the stairwell, and towards the
building’s exit.
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised that death doesn’t
involved a light at the end of a tunnel, or, like, my dead family members
waiting to greet me or something,” Jessica said.
“Well, you’ll get to see the light shortly. I couldn’t tell you about any family members
waiting for you, though. At the moment,
we just have to go and get the others,” Death said. She sounded a little apologetic.
“What others? Who are
we getting?” Jessica said.
“Andi and Philip.
They’re dead too,” Death said. “They’ve
been waiting outside.”
The two of them stepped outside, and saw Andi and Philip
turn to see them. Death led Jessica over
to them.
“So you two have been waiting here while I died?” Jessica
said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Philip said.
“So, what, like I’m an inconvenience? The skinny bitch here had something to attend
to, and you weren’t interested enough to come inside?” Jessica said.
Death was somewhat offended, but Andi spoke first.
She said, to Philip, “See, I told you.”
“Hey it’s not my job to go watch people die. Can we get on with this? The looming unknown is starting to get to
me. A lot,” Philip said.
“Oh, well, you poor baby.
Sorry my death kept you from a pressing appointment,” Jessica said.
Death rolled her eyes, then caught herself and felt mildly
ashamed.
“Andi, can I trust you to stay here for just a couple
minutes? No running off, please,” Death
said.
“Um, sure, I guess,” Andi said. She was a little puzzled.
Death turned to Philip and Jessica. She stretched out her hands.
“Would both of you take my hands, please?” Death said.
Andi was watching intently, and expected the two of them to
argue with Death. Instead, the both
seemed to realize they were being silly, calmed down, and took Death’s hands. The three of them vanished. Andi was a little disappointed with the lack
of spectacle. They didn’t fade into
transparency. There wasn’t a flash of
light or anything. It was just as if they had never even been there.
She stood outside the office building where Jessica had
worked, and wondered how long she would be there before Death returned. She wondered a little bit about what Death
had said about going mad during an eternity of solitude. She was curious about how long it would take
for the madness to kick in. There were,
after all, a couple people she wouldn’t mind haunting. Just to teach them a thing or two.
Andi had just barely started to maybe consider wandering off
and having a little fun before going to the Great Beyond when Death reappeared.
So much for that.
Death pulled her phone out of her cloak, and checked when
the next appointment was. She had eight
minutes. She was relieved, that meant
she’d have time to bring Andi to the other side, and go get her motorcycle again
before the next collection.
Her motorcycle.
In all the rushing around, she’d forgotten which collection
she’d left it at. Crap. She suspected she’d left it at Andi’s
dorm. That made the most sense. It was possible it was at Philip’s house,
though.
Andi had waited patiently for a minute or so while Death
stood there, apparently lost in thought.
“So what’s next?” Andi asked Death, when she couldn’t stand
it any longer it.
Death blinked a few times, shook her head, and looked at
Andi.
“Next,” Death said, “I bring you to the other side. Then I go get my motorcycle, which I think I
left outside your dorms, and then I go collect Arthur Quimbly.”
Andi got excited.
“You have a motorcycle?” she said. “That is so cool!”
“Oh, yeah, I do. Um. Thanks,”
Death said. She reached out to Andi, and
said, “Take my hand, please.”
Andi ignored this and said, “Can I see it?”
“My hand? Yes, it’s right in front of you. Are you unable to see it?”
“No, your motorcycle,” Andi said.
Death was stunned. No
one had ever asked her that before. Of
course, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t told very many people that
she had a motorcycle in the first place.
She wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, so she said the first thing that
comes to mind.
“Sure, I guess,” Death said.
“Cool!” Andi said.
She was grinning widely now.
Death was a little puzzled that anyone would care that she
had a motorcycle. And she wasn’t sure
why she’d agreed to Andi’s request, but it probably couldn’t hurt anything, so
she decided to just roll with it.
“Take my hand please,” Death said. “I think I left it outside your dorm.”
Andi took Death’s hand, and almost instantly they were back
outside her dorm. Andi looked around at
the building and snow-covered ground around the dorm, and was amazed at how
something that had been so ordinary just a little while ago already seemed old
and kind of foreign.
She noticed the snow-covered grounds again. Something seemed funny about it. It would come to her, though, she was sure.
“Here it is, just where I left it,” Death said.
Parked next to the building, barely out of the way of the
foot traffic in and out of the dorm (none of which, by the way, so much as
realized there even was a motorcycle to walk around) was the longest, lowest,
most black, most spectacularly shiny shiny motorcycle Andi had ever seen. She wondered if the metal wasn’t chrome but
polished silver, then decided that was just impossible.
“Wow,” Andi said. “That’s
pretty.”
The snow reflected light up onto the bike from
underneath. It almost seemed to glow.
The snow.
Suddenly Andi realized what was weird. She looked around at the snow some more, and
then at herself. She was wearing the
jeans and t-shirt she’d been wearing when she died.
“Shouldn’t we be cold?
And don’t you freeze riding that in the winter?” she said.
Death smiled. “The
temperature doesn’t really matter when you’re dead. And the cold doesn’t really bother me. It’s not like I ride real far in the cold
anyway.”
Gears were still turning in Andi’s head. She had another thought.
“Was it your motorcycle I kept hearing but not seeing over
the last couple of months?” Andi said.
Death was shocked again.
“Well,” Death said, “I guess it could have been. But people don’t usually hear me or see me or
really notice me at all. It’s kind of my
thing, not being noticed.”
“But I noticed you in that coffee shop,” Andi said.
“Well, I was getting coffee that time,” Death began, but
Andi interrupted her before she could finish.
“Did anyone else notice you in there?”
“Well, no,” Death admitted.
Andi looked a little freaked out. “So I’ve been hearing you riding around
collecting people…”
“I guess it’s possible,” Death said.
Death’s phone beeped at her.
It was time to get to the next collection. She checked the time, and saw she still had
three minutes. She should be able to
bring Andi over, and get back to make the collection, though she’d probably
have to come back, again, for her bike.
“Well, Andi, this has been fun, but I need to get you to the
other side. My next collection is a
nasty car wreck, and I don’t want you to have to watch it. I’ve got to collect eight people this time.”
Andi’s brain was still running at full speed.
“Eight? Wow. That’s a
lot. How do you do that? I mean, you can
only bring two people over at a time, right?”
Death wasn’t expecting that question, and answered before
thinking about it. She should have just
grabbed Andi and hustled to the gateway.
“No, I can bring as many people as I need to,” Death said.
“So why did you make me wait while you brought Philip and
Jessica over?” Andi asked.
“I… don’t know,” Death said.
Her phone beeped at her again. She needed to get to the next collection
immediately.
“Crap. You’re going
to have to come with me for this. You know,
you really don’t have to watch,” Death said.
