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| Photo by Andy Franklin |
Death was on high alert now.
Taking care of the souls on the cruise ship had been relatively easy,
compared to the mess in the stadium. She
wanted her bike back, and she wanted to stop whoever had decided to start
killing everyone. And, somewhere in the
back of her head, was a desire for pie.
However, Death did have her priorities straight: Order, justice, then
pie.
Death’s phone beeped at her, and she was dismayed to see it
was an immediate collection. She was
also mildly relieved that it was only one soul that needed to be collected,
rather than hundreds or thousands. One
soul was pretty easy to deal with.
However, if this Robert Svenson guy was a suicide, she was
going to tear his frickin’ head off. On
the upside, it looked like he lived pretty close to the Bump & Grind. She
might be able to go and get a cup of coffee, if she had a spare minute
afterwards.
Moments later, Death was outside Robert Svenson’s
apartment. She went inside, expecting to
find a suicide pacing around and looking forlorn and confused. Instead, she found the soul of an enormous
man, dressed in black with skulls printed on his shirt, with a shaved head, and
incongruously dainty wire-framed glasses, reading a battered copy of The Illiad. Something about him seemed familiar. What was it, though?
Robert happened to look up, and noticed Death. He calmly marked his place in his book, and
then said, “Hi. Who are you?”
“I’m Death. Are you Robert Svenson?” Death said.
“Rob, yes, that’s me.
So you’re Death. Andi said you’re
pretty cool the first time she visited me,” Rob said.
Oh, of course,
Death thought. This was the friend Andi was visiting.
No wonder he seems familiar.
“I have to be honest,” Rob said, “I was settling in for a
long eternity here. I’d been expecting a
bright light, or a tunnel, or, I dunno, the Raiderettes or something, but
nothing happened, so I figured I’d get caught up on some of the things I’ve
been wanting to read.”
“How long have you been waiting?” Death said. “And did I see you holding a book? How did you figure that out?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Rob
said. “It took me a couple of tries to
get the hang of picking up a book, but I figured it out. I’d guess I’ve been here for a few hours,
maybe half a day. I’d sat waiting for
someone to come and get me, but no one did, so I decided I might as well use
the time for something.”
Death was impressed.
“Hang on, half a day?” she said. Her phone had just alerted her to his death,
and said it was an immediate collection.
She hoped her phone wasn’t getting behind now.
“Yeah, Andi came and killed me earlier, then wandered off
saying something about rescuing people,” Rob said.
He was going to continue talking, but Death interrupted him.
“Hang on, did you say Andi killed you?” Death said.
“Yeah, and she thought I’d be happy about it too. Then when I wasn’t she left in a huff. No apology or anything. Just weird, I didn’t ever think she was like
that before. Man, I guess you never really
know who people are going to grow up to be, huh?” Rob said.
Death looked at Rob, and said, “You weren’t supposed to die
yet, either. You were going to live a
long life. Hang on. She thought you were going to be happy about
it?”
“Yeah, she wanted me to help her kill, like, everyone. She said something about rescuing everybody,
and a whole new way. Andi went off the
deep end, I’d say,” Rob said.
“Things are a lot worse than I realized,” Death said, mainly
to herself. She took a breath to say
something else to Rob, when her phone rang.
She took it out, looked at it with a slightly puzzled expression, and
answered it.
***
Ares was in a bar and was, as usual, spoiling for a fight. Actually, the place he was in billed itself
as a sports pub, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The joint looked a little like an Irish pub,
in that it had lots of dark wood and a staggering array of beers on tap. And the menu featured beef stew, along with
fish and chips. However, it also had
enormous televisions covering almost every vertical surface, and the waitresses
were all wearing “kilts” that were less of a kilt and more of a bikini
bottom. The place must have been able to
hold close to five hundred people, and there were at least three hundred people
present.
Just about the right number for a good, proper bar brawl.
Ares had been working his way through the pub, visiting the
tables, and getting the people sitting at each of them riled up about sports,
politics, money, whatever it took. At
the moment, the place was bubbling with tension. Ares noticed the bartender and the waitresses
had all disappeared. It was just going
to take a final irritant to push the crowd into a collective rage, and then the
fight would start.
Ares could barely contain his excitement. He heard a motorcycle rumbling outside, and
turned to see if the motorcycle had delivered the final ingredient to make his
bar brawl recipe complete.
He was extremely surprised when he saw that, rather than a
mean-looking biker, a cute little college-aged girl walked in. He was extra surprised when he realized that
he recognized her, and that she was Death’s apprentice.
He had his phone out and was calling Death to see if she
knew that Andi was not in Death’s apartment the way she was supposed to be, but
in fact at a bar. And apparently on a
motorcycle.
As soon as Death answered her phone, Ares started talking.
“Death, it’s Ares.
Did you know your little intern just walked into the bar I’m in? Isn’t she supposed to be…”
Ares trailed off, because suddenly everyone in the bar
dropped dead around him.
“God damn it!” Ares shouted, into the phone by
accident. “She just killed
everyone! I’ve been in here for a couple
hours working this crowd and she just killed all of them! What a fucking waste of my time.”
He continued, but Death wasn’t listening. He didn’t notice the line had gone dead.
Andi had noticed him, however. A large, muscular man in black leathers who
is shouting curses really stands out in a bar full of people, all of whom are
dead except for him.
“Shit,” she muttered, and hurried outside.
***
Death had hung up the phone as soon as Ares had said Andi
was in the same bar he was in. She
looked at Rob, and decided that he might be useful to have along.
“Andi has been spotted.
I need to go stop her. Are you
going to come with?” Death said.
Rob considered it for about half a second before deciding
that tagging along with Death to catch the woman who had killed him sounded a
lot better than re-reading The Illiad.
“I’m in,” he said.
Just then, Death’s phone started going off in her pocket,
again. She didn’t even bother to look at
it this time, she knew what had happened.
She grabbed Rob’s hand and said, “Let’s go.”
***
Ares was still standing in the middle of the bar shouting
about what a god damned inconvenience Andi had caused him when Death and Rob
arrived. Death took a look around at the
room full of irritated souls, but didn’t see Andi.
She did see the bright daylight streaming through the exit
door as it closed, however. Death sprinted
through the bar, threw the door open, and stormed outside. In the bright daylight, she saw Andi looking
back at her, frantically trying to get on the bike and get the kickstand
up. Death was on her in a fraction of a
second, holding Andi firmly by the hair.
Distracted by the pain, Andi let go of the handlebars to try
and pull Death’s hand out of her hair.
She tried to step away, but Death held fast.
Trying to step away had, however, gotten Andi far enough off
of Death’s bike that it fell over on to its side, making a racket that made
Death’s heart sink.
She pulled sharply up on Andi’s hair, lifting her off the
ground until her feet dangled in the air.
“I was upset with you before,” Death said, “but now I am
really, really pissed off.”
Death noticed Ares and Rob watching out of the corner of her
eye, but paid them no mind. She stepped
out of the world, and held Andi up off her feet until the gateway
appeared. Andi kicked and thrashed and
protested, but it really had no effect.
“You know,” Death said, “I’m not really one for the cruel,
divine punishments. I’ve never cursed
someone to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill just to watch it tumble
back down again. That kind of thing isn’t
my style.”
The gateway appeared and opened before them then.
“It’s not my
style,” Death said, “but you have pissed off a lot of other gods, and some of
them aren’t quite as nice as me.”
Andi had still been thrashing and protesting, but suddenly
got very quiet.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she said.
Death smiled her gentle smile, and said, “I really couldn’t
say.”
She threw Andi through the open door. It shut quickly behind her, and Death stood
alone in the dark.
She thought quietly for a moment, then seemed to come to a
conclusion, and smiled.
“I want a steak, and French fries,” Death said. “And a beer.”
She stepped back into the world, and saw that Ares and Rob
had righted her bike again. They
appeared to be examining the side it fell on, and were pointing at it now and
then.
“Hey Death,” Ares said.
He looked concerned. “Well, the
good news is that your bike didn’t get beat up too badly. You can see a few scratches here and
there. I bet Hep can fix that up for
you, no problem.”
Death smiled, and said, “Excuse me a minute, I have to get
all of the former patrons of this bar to the other side. Stick around for a few, will you, both of you?”
Ares and Rob looked at each other. Ares said, “Sure, no sweat.”
Death gathered the souls inside, who were still pretty
pissed off about everything they had been pissed off about before they’d died,
and brought them to the gateway. When
she was done with that, she went back to where Ares and Rob were.
She checked her phone, and was absolutely thrilled to
discover that she had an hour and a half until her next collection. She wasn’t sure how that could have happened,
but decided not to think about it too hard and just enjoy it instead.
“So, Rob, sorry to say it, but I can’t really do much to
help you. But, I’m impressed that you’ve
figured out how to interact with the physical world again so quickly. You know, there’s a lot of other cool stuff I
could teach you. Because of Andi’s
little stunts there are a bunch of souls out there that still need to be found
and delivered, and I can’t do that and keep up with my regular, scheduled work.
Want to tag along for a while and help me out?” Death said.
Rob didn’t even think about it before saying, “Sure, that
sounds great. When do we get started?”
“Soon,” Death said.
She turned to Ares.
“I think you offered to buy me dinner,” she said, and
smiled.
The End.
Final word count: 50,498! I've had comments disabled for the month, but if you would like to, you can leave a comment below. Thanks for reading along!
