 |
| Photo by TheArches |
It was ten thirty eight in the morning on Saturday, December twenty eighth, and Hugh Slattery, 74, was about to die of a massive heart attack while watching TV. Death started her stopwatch, and glanced at the notes on her list. It looked pretty straightforward: heart attack, then dead. In about a minute and a half.
Hugh was sitting in the middle of a somewhat tattered yellow sofa. The upholstery looked kind of like velvet, with a floral pattern. The place looked as though there had once been a woman living with him, although it was apparent that it had been some time since whoever the woman was had been in this room. Death glanced at her notes. Widower, was next to Hugh’s name. That explained the pile of car parts on oil-stained newspaper spread across the coffee table.
The volume on the television was way up. Hugh was watching professional wrestling. The announcer was talking a mile a minute, and Hugh was sitting on the very edge of the couch, gesticulating and shouting at the TV. He really seemed to hate one of the wrestlers in the current match.
“Oh come on Ref! How did you miss that? The son of a bitch didn’t even…” Hugh fell silent as the action on the screen continued.
Thumping and booming noises came from the TV, and Death heard the announcer groan and say “oh, what a hit!”
“Yeah! Take that you smarmy bastard!” Hugh said.
He was beginning to get red in the face. Death checked off an item on her list.
Her stomach growled, and she did her best not to think about when the last time she ate was. Of course, trying not to think about it only made it impossible to not think about her last meal. The last time she ate was two years, four months and seventeen days ago. She’d had exactly enough time to eat an order of French fries from MacDonald’s before she had been called to another appointment. Incidentally, all the images of Death as a skeleton? Sure, it was partly the whole spooky, “specter of mortality” thing, but also, she was just incredibly skinny from hardly ever getting to eat. If she wasn’t, you know, Death, people would probably be disturbed by just how skinny she was.
Death thought about lunch a lot.
She refocused on the task at hand, and checked her stopwatch and list. She expected Hugh to start feeling a bit of pain in his left arm any second.
Right on cue, Hugh started to rub his left arm, still shouting and carrying on about what a vile, motherless bastard the villain in the current match was. Death was kind of impressed with just how passionate Hugh was about professional wrestling. She’d been mildly amused by it the couple of times she’d caught a bit, but never really got worked up the way he was at the moment.
Death alternated between watching Hugh and her stopwatch. He was starting to look pretty uncomfortable, though he was still more upset about the wrestling than the pain that was apparently spreading from his arm to his chest now.
“What on Earth did I eat?” was the last thing Hugh said before the heart attack hit him full force and he fell over, backwards, onto the couch, clutching at his chest.
Seconds later, Hugh’s soul stood in the room with Death. He looked at his body on the couch and said, “Well, at least it was quick.”
Then he seemed to remember himself, and turned back to face the TV again. He hadn’t even given Death a second look. She was a little taken aback. No one had ever ignored her in favor of pro wrestling before.
Well, not that she could remember.
Death cleared her throat, which didn’t have the desired effect since the TV was loud enough that she couldn’t be heard over it. She took a deep breath then, and walked across the room to stand next to Hugh.
She turned so she was facing him directly, and said, “Would you take my hand and come with me, Hugh?”
Hugh ignored her entirely, instead he bobbed and weaved along as he watched the wrestlers. Death had to restrain an urge to just grab him by the ear and yank him out of the world, but she knew that everyone dealt with their own death in a unique way, and she tried her best to be patient with all of them.
So she calmly stepped in between Hugh and the TV, and repeated her request.
“What? Get out of the way, you skinny broad. This is a world championship bout! I’ve got to see what happens,” Hugh said, as he leaned to try and peer around her.
“The outcome of the bout doesn’t really concern you anymore,” Death said, as gently as she could manage. “You need to come with me now.”
She held out her hand to Hugh.
Hugh responded by grimacing and taking a couple of steps to one side so he could see the TV.
On the one hand, Death found she kind of admired his complete lack of fear of her. It takes some serious moxie to be rude to Death. Sometimes people were happy to see her. Sometimes they even recognized her from their last go around, if they had been reincarnated. But there was always a measure of respect and awe. Not many people were dismissive and even annoyed with her.
On the other hand, she had a job to do, and she really was hoping she’d have time to grab a bite to eat between this collection and the next one. She was confident there was a Philly cheesesteak with her name on it out there, and she didn’t want to keep it waiting.
And either way, she wasn’t about to be ignored in favor of professional wrestling.
She stepped in front of Hugh again, held out her hand, and said, “Please take my hand, Hugh,” firmly.
“Piss off, I want to see this,” Hugh said.
Death had already been close to losing her patience, but she might have attempted to be tactful if her phone had not rang to alert her to her next appointment just then. She glanced at the phone and saw she had a minute and a half before she was due to collect Augusta Evans. She grimaced.
“OK, I tried to be nice,” Death said to Hugh, who didn’t seem to notice her. She grabbed his ear, hard, and said, “You’re coming with me, and you are going to behave.”
The two of them vanished then. Death didn’t have time to drop him off, he was going to have to come along to the next collection. It was annoying.
Seconds later, the two of the materialized – not that anyone noticed them – on the side of an interstate in Kansas.
“Is this the afterlife?” Hugh asked, finally starting to sound a bit respectful.
“Not unless you don’t behave,” Death said. “I’m going to let you go. I’d suggest you stay close, and keep out of the way.”
In just a few seconds, Augusta Evans was going to have a blowout, lose control of her car, and swerve into the path of a semi-truck.
Death started her stopwatch, and said to Hugh, “You might not want to watch this.”
Very shortly, a small red car had it’s right front tire blow out. The car swerved back and forth across the lanes a couple of times, before getting plowed into by a Peterbilt that had not even had time to hit the brakes.
Augusta appeared next to Hugh and Death on the side of the interstate. Death checked off a last item on her list, and stopped her stopwatch.
“Am I dead?” Augusta asked.
“Yes,” Death said. She reached out to Augusta. “Would you take my hand?”
Augusta appeared confused for a moment, looking at Hugh and Death, and she hesitated.
“I’d recommend just doing as she says,” Hugh said. “She’s kind of impatient.”
“I am not,” Death said. “You were rude.”
“This isn’t exactly what I expected the afterlife to be like,” Augusta said. She appeared more than a little bewildered.
“Welcome to the club, sweetheart,” Hugh said. “I was just trying to see the outcome of the title bout between The Mortician and Beautiful Ray, then I died, and now I’m on the side of a freeway in… Where the hell are we, anyway?”
“Kansas,” Death said, in spite of herself. She didn’t really feel like conversing, she just wanted to get these two to the other side and try to have a bite to eat.
“Kansas?” Hugh said. “Huh.”
Augusta hadn’t said another word yet. Death had stashed away her stopwatch and her pen, and reached out to the both of them.
“Would you take my hands, please,” she said.
Hugh took her hand, and said to Augusta, “you might as well, otherwise she’s likely to just grab you and drag you along anyway.”
Augusta hesitantly took Death’s hand. Death smiled gently at her.
The three of them stepped out of the world, and waited in the dark.
“So how many times have people made some kind of crack along the lines of not being in Kansas anymore when you bring them here?” Hugh asked Death.
“I lost count,” Death said.
Seconds later, the doorway appeared and opened.
“You first, Hugh,” Death said.
Hugh stepped up to the doorway, but stopped and turned back. He asked Augusta, “Before I go, you didn’t happen to hear the outcome of the bout, did you?”
