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| Photo By Tim Sepulveda |
Andi had found that being dead, and constantly rushing from
collection to collection, had done funny things to her sense of time. No matter how hard she tried, and she had
spent more than a few spare moments counting it out on her fingers, she just
didn’t know how long it had been since she had gone to Death’s apartment to get
her clipboard and stopwatch. Making
things a little more complicated was that they weren’t only working in the
United States, or even the northern hemisphere, exclusively. Summertime in Germany was wintertime in New
Zealand.
She was, however, certain that it had been several weeks,
possibly a couple of months. Although
she wasn’t hungry in the same way Death was, she was starting to miss the act
of eating and tasting, not to mention having the leisure time to do something
like sitting and eating an entire meal.
And since Death had decided to train her in on doing
collections, she hadn’t had a lot of spare time to go and try to get something
for both of them to eat. When there was
time, the two of them would go, only to be interrupted, disturbed, or otherwise
prevented from enjoying a bite to eat.
At first, Andi had been simply doing her best to follow
along with Death’s carefully mapped out plans for each passing, keeping track
of the notes and the time passing. She
had discovered that Death made it look very easy to run a collection. It was not.
Andi had learned that Death did not, in fact, just passively
watch as people’s deaths played out before her.
She was an active participant, guiding forces and events to their
conclusion.
“But what about free will?
Are you saying people are destined to meet a certain end, and you make
that end happen? Couldn’t they do something and save themselves?” Andi had
asked her.
“I try not to let free will get me down,” Death said,
smiling. “People’s endings aren’t
certain until they’ve happened and their soul is standing there waiting to
cross over. They can always made
different choices. There have been a
couple of times… Well, anyway, most of the time, people stay true to choices
they’ve already made. They just walk the
paths they’ve laid out for themselves.
The art in what I do, and the art I’m trying to teach you, is finding
and orchestrating the perfect end for that person, based on who they already
are.”
“So if someone has a eureka moment, they can avoid a
particular ending?” Andi said.
“Sometimes,” Death said.
“Although, most people have a time when they’re supposed to pass. So if they get lucky and dodge a bullet, so
to speak, it just means I have to think on my feet a little bit.”
“How do you know who has a specific time and who can keep
going until the next time you cross paths? And who, exactly, determines the
time someone is supposed to pass,” Andi asked.
She was getting more confused by the minute.
“Well, for people with a specific time, I just know. You’ll get the hang of that. But I don’t know how the time is
determined. That part, the how, isn’t my
job, I just know when,” Death said.
“Aren’t you curious, though?” Andi said.
Death laughed.
“Curiosity for those who have time to stop and be curious,”
Death said. “But yes, sometimes I wonder,
just like I wonder what might be on the other side of the gateway. When it is time for me to know these things,
I will know.”
“You’re remarkably tolerant of ambiguity for someone whose existence
revolves around plotting specific events in minute detail,” Andi said.
Death didn’t reply.
Since then, Andi had been more and more active in the
collections. Death had sat down with her
after one collection, and gone over the checklist for the next passing.
“So, look here, what has to happen for the bus to run a red
light?” Death said.
“Well, you’ve already got that listed. The driver has to be distracted by a guy in a
Statue of Liberty costume chasing down another guy in a banana suit who was
trying to work on the same corner,” Andi said.
“And what could go wrong with that?” Death said.
“I don’t know, seems pretty distracting to me,” Andi said.
“Well, how about this item here, where a pedestrian is
waiting to cross the street? Might that
have an impact?” Death said.
Andi thought about the impact that a pedestrian could have
on whether or not a bus driver was distracted by two business mascots having a
turf war. She wasn’t sure what the
pedestrian had to do with anything.
“I don’t know. What
does the pedestrian have to two with the two other guys?” Andi said.
“Well, she’s going to be waiting to cross the street,
right?” Death said.
“Yeah, right,” Andi said.
She had no idea where Death was going with this.
“Think she pushed the button to get a walk signal?” Death
said.
“Well, yeah, I guess she would. Oh, that’s on the list here…” Andi said. She was still baffled.
“What would happen if she pushed the button thirty seconds
later?” Death said.
Andi thought about it for a second. The light would probably change a little
later. She still wasn’t sure what it had
to do with the two guys distracting the bus driver.
“Well, I guess the light would change at a different time,”
Andi said.
“You’re getting warmer,” Death said.
Andi thought hard. If
the light changed to red thirty seconds later, what?
Then it occurred to her.
The bus driver wouldn’t end up running a red light, he’d pass through
while the light was still green, or at worst, yellow. The person being collected, another
pedestrian, wouldn’t step into the street in front of a bus that had a green
light.
Death saw Andi’s expression as she came to the realization
of how significant the woman waiting to cross the street was.
“So, what do we need to make sure happens?” Death said.
“We need to make sure the woman crossing the street hits the
crosswalk button at the right time,” Andi said.
Death smiled, and said, “You’re getting it.”
“OK,” Andi said. “So
what can we do about that?”
“Well, we can influence her a little bit. We can guide and suggest, in a manner of
speaking. So we might suggest to her
that she ignore her cell phone when it starts ringing, because she has places
to be and the phone can wait. If she
stops or slows down to dig her phone out of her purse, that could be enough of
a delay to really muck everything else up.”
It had taken Andi a while to get how exactly guiding and
suggesting worked, but she had, slowly, learned how to turn her will into a
force that could actually influence events.
Death had, little by little, allowed Andi to orchestrate
more and more of the collections. She
had taught Andi how to step out of the world, and how to bring a soul with her.
She’d been there, giving little pointers the entire
time. A couple of the souls being
collected had actually taken quite a bit of interest in the mechanics of the
job. Others had been annoyed at having
to deal with a trainee.
Today, Death had determined that Andi was ready to run the
show on one of the collections. In six
minutes they were due to collect one Oscar Williams, 58.
“OK, I think you’re ready to do this,” Death told Andi. “You’re in charge of the whole collection
this time, I’m just going to stand back and stay out of your way.”
“OK,” Andi said.
She felt more than a little bit intimidated. It was a lot of responsibility, and she
didn’t want to screw things up. Also,
knowing that Death was there to coach her and help guide things if they went
awry at the previous collections had done a lot to keep her calm. Suddenly, she felt like a bundle of nerves.
Death’s motorcycle rolled to a stop outside of Oscar’s
house. The two of them dismounted, and
Andi looked at Death hoping for a bit of guidance.
“After you,” Death said, and gestured towards the house.
Andi turned and led the way up the sidewalk. The two of them entered Oscar’s house. Music was playing, it sounded like disco,
down in the basement. Andi and Death
went downstairs and found Oscar dancing with his wife to the Bee Gee’s.
How sweet, was
Andi’s first thought. Her next thought
was, is this on the checklist?
Andi glanced at the checklist, and started her stopwatch
when Oscar lowered his wife into a low dip.
She expected her level of anxiety to lower a bit as she
worked, but instead it stayed high. It
might even have been getting worse. She
wanted to be sure she got this right.
One of the items on the checklist was that Oscar was going
to start showboating, Saturday Night
Fever style. However, after the end
of the current song, he started to turn towards one of the chairs. He was going to sit down.
Not good, not good,
ok, what do I do? Andi thought. She
noticed Oscar’s wife looked a little bit disappointed, and decided she could
work with that a little bit, and get him riled up into wanting to dance, and
show off even.
She reached out with her will, suggesting to Oscar’s wife
that teasing him gently might get him motivated to keep dancing rather than
sitting down. Just make him feel a
little competitive and playful and keep him moving.
“Oh, come on, keep dancing with me you lazy old pussy,”
Oscar’s wife said. “All you do any more
is sit. Three minutes of dancing and
you’re spent. Though, I wish I could get
three whole minutes out of you in bed. I
can’t even remember the last time that happened…”
“What?” Andi
said. That was not a bit of gentle
teasing at all.
“What?” Oscar
said, turning back to face his wife again.
“God forbid I rest for a second.
This happens every fucking time we have a nice moment, Cindy. Every. Fucking. Time. We almost get along for five minutes, and you
turn into a hateful bitch.”
“See? Now I get the truth out of you. You never wanted to dance with me in the
first place. I don’t know why I even
bother with you!” Cindy said.
Andi looked frantically between her checklist and the scene
playing out in front of her. This was
not in the plan. She tried her best,
focusing as hard as she could, on getting the two to laugh, reconcile and
resume dancing, but to no avail.
They were outright shouting at each other now. Oscar was getting rather red in the face as
Cindy hurled insults and accusations at him.
Finally, he grimaced, and said, “You know what? I have
enough of this bullshit. I’m done. We’re through. Pack your shit and go stay
with your mom, I’ll ship the rest of it to you.”
“What?” Cindy
said, even louder than their argument had been already.
Holy crap, this isn’t
right at all. Andi thought. She started panicking, trying to think of
something, anything, to get things sort of back on track.
“You heard me,” Oscar said.
“Get out.”
“Fuck you I’ll get out,” Cindy said. She snatched a heavy crystal tea light candle
holder, shaped like a golf ball, off an end table and threw it as hard as she
could at Oscar. It struck him in the
nose, and there was a sickening crunching sound as it impacted.
That is not what killed Oscar.
What killed Oscar was reeling backwards and tripping over
the ottoman they had pushed out of the way in order to dance. He fell over it, and hit the back of his head
on the brick surrounding the fireplace. Oscar
slumped to the floor and died, as a song by Earth, Wind and Fire played on the
stereo.
Andi was frustrated, and embarrassed, and shocked all at
once. Oscar was supposed to die of a
heart attack, not blunt trauma to the head.
It was probably because of how badly things had gone wrong that she was
somewhat short with Oscar’s soul when it appeared next to her.
“Damn it, that didn’t work out at all right,” Andi said to
Oscar. Then she caught herself, “Sorry,
sorry. Come with me, please.”
Andi grabbed his hand, and they stepped out of the world.
Death followed, still observing.
The gateway appeared, and Oscar asked, “Are these the gates
to Heaven? Do I get to see my grandpa?”
“I don’t know,” Andi said, a little more abruptly that she’d
meant to. “That’s where you need to go,
though.”
Oscar looked troubled, but walked through the gateway. Andi looked at her checklist and checked off
that one, final item. At least that part
had gone right.
Death walked over to where Andi stood in the darkness. The look on her face said, We both know that didn’t go quite right, but
I don’t want to make you feel any worse.
“Well… at least the
right person ended up dead this time,” Death said. “Sometimes things don’t go the way they were
intended too. That’s OK. But your bedside manner leaves a little bit
to be desired, Andi. People should feel,
ideally, like you’re rescuing them. You’re
the hero, come to release them and help them move on. You’re the friend helping them get through a
challenging time. You are not the
annoyed DMV employee who is going to have to come back and deal with fifty more
identical assholes tomorrow.”
“But,” Death continued, “other than that, you did a good job. Come on, on to the next one.”
