Holy Rollers - Winking At Death

Chapter Twenty Five

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:45:00 +0000

Mr. B. told Thomas that he should really try to sleep, but Thomas was unable to even lie still for more than a minute at a stretch. So, instead, he’d spent most of the night watching as Mr. B. turned a van full of stuff into a bomb powerful enough, apparently, to take out the Golden Gate Bridge.

Bomb-making, it turned out, was not terribly exciting to watch. At least, not until the realization that if something went wrong they’d be blown into tiny little fragments before they knew what had happened.

Upon further reflection, when it came to dying, Thomas thought perhaps fast and messy might not be the worst way to go.

At some point exhaustion and boredom overtook him, and he fell asleep sitting up in a folding chair. He had uneasy dreams about vaguely unpleasant things happening to him.

He woke up when Mr. B. poked him in the shoulder, not unkindly, and asked him if he wanted some coffee. He declined, and wandered over to a window. The sun had come up, and it looked like it was going to be a nice day.

At least, apart from the whole road trip in a van-bomb thing.

His neck and back were killing him. He made a mental note to try and avoid sleeping in a folding chair ever again.

When turned away from the window, Mr. B. was waiting next to him with a cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin.

“Here,” Mr. B. said. “I think you probably are going to want both of these.”

Thomas took the coffee and aspirin, and used one to wash down the other.

“Ordinarily, I’d ask where you were headed,” Mr. B said. He’d apparently resumed fiddling with his toaster after he was done building the bomb, and was once again poking at the toaster’s innards with a screwdriver. “But I suspect I don’t want to know about it. At all.”

Mr. B. looked up at Thomas to make sure his last two words had sunk in.

“I hear you, loud and clear,” Thomas said. “Hell, I wouldn’t want to know where I’m going.”

Mr. B. said nothing, and continued working on his toaster. When Thomas had finished his coffee, he stretched a bit, then held out his hand to Mr. B.

“I guess I might as well get on my way. I figure I’ve got about a six hour drive today. See you around,” Thomas said.

Mr. B. took his hand and shook it. “I hope you don’t. I’m hesitant to say good luck, but I hope things work out well for you. Good bye, Thomas.”

“Good bye, Mr. B.”

The realization that he wasn’t just climbing into a van, but a bomb as well, terrified Thomas. He worried about what might happen should he be rear-ended on his way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

His conscience was screaming at him to stop what he was doing. The best thing to do would be to just blow it off and let Eris do what she was going to do. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop the van and, for example, start hitchhiking east. He couldn’t bear the idea of his family getting killed when he could do something, even a bad something, to stop it.

He stopped at a truck stop diner to have some breakfast before he’d been on the road for too long. The waitress took one look at him, and said “I’ll get you some coffee right away,” just after she’d shown him to a table. She had a ton of energy, and seemed like the kind of person who was enthusiastic about everything she encountered. He felt more tired than he’d ever felt in his life. What he really wanted to do was leave the van in a field somewhere and find a place to curl up and sleep for a week or so.

“This weather is the bomb, isn’t it?” she said to him when she brought his cup of coffee.

Thomas jumped a bit, and said, “Sorry, what?”

“This weather. It’s perfect!” the waitress said.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess it’s pretty good,” Thomas said. He ordered, and tried to calm down. It was a wasted effort.

When his food arrived, he ate his breakfast with little enthusiasm. He barely even tasted it. As much as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of a way out of his situation. He wished he had just thrown the binder Eris has left him away. Or, hell, just left it where it was, to rot on the porch until the weather claimed it.

He paid his bill and left. Soon he was headed north towards San Francisco once more.

***

Death stood along the side of a lonely northbound highway in California. She had her stopwatch and her notepad ready. All she had to do now was wait for the guest of honor to arrive. She expected him practically any minute.

***

Thomas had been driving for a few hours, and if he’d been in the middle of nowhere before, he was in a place even more remote now. He hadn’t seen another car on the road for probably twenty minutes.

He fiddled with the radio a bit, but couldn’t find anything he really wanted to listen to, so he just left it on the station that seemed the most likely to play some AC/DC.

When he looked up again, he saw someone standing on the side of the road, far ahead. There was a low, black motorcycle parked nearby, and whoever it was up there was dressed all in black. As he got closer and closer, he realized the biker was a woman.

When he was about fifty feet away, he saw she was simply standing there, looking directly at him. Calm, direct and unmistakable. She had a clipboard. It was Death, come to collect him.

“Oh thank God,” Thomas said to himself as the van rushed past her. A few seconds later, a loose wire in the detonator Mr. B. had built caused a spark, and the explosives ignited. The van exploded in an orange and black fireball that would have singed any nearby trees. Thankfully, he was in an open plain. The bits of the van that survived the explosion rolled off the road, in a couple of different directions, before coming to a stop.

Thomas’s remains would not be identified because, frankly, there weren’t many. Dental records aren’t especially useful when all the detectives could find was one flawless tooth. His family and friends would not mourn him, because they thought he was already dead. But that would be in the coming days.

Right now, Thomas’s soul stood next to Death on the side of the road. He smiled at her in an embarrassed kind of way.

“Hi. I’m Thomas Swinton,” he said.

“I know,” Death said. She smiled at him, and asked him to take her hand.

He did.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Thomas asked.

“No. I just got to blow you up. We’re good.”

***

After dropping Thomas off at the gateway, Death decided it would be an excellent idea to visit Ares and see if he might know how to find Eris.

She arrived at Ares’s house to find him in the living room, keeping an eye on Eris, who he’d handcuffed to a chair. Eris seemed rather thrilled until she noticed Death.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Eris demanded. Ares ignored her.

“Hey Death!” Ares said. “Hep and Scroat will be back in just a minute. They went to get beer.”

“Great!” Death said. “So, uh, I see you’ve got Eris handcuffed to a chair.”

“Yeah!” Ares said, “Hep and Scroat caught her skulking around while they were guarding that lady and her kid. Somehow they managed to catch her...”

Ares paused and asked Eris, “How exactly did they catch you again?”

“Fuck you,” Eris said.

Ares continued talking to Death. “Yeah, they caught her somehow or other, and figured they’d bring her here so we could all keep an eye on her. Man, was I shocked when Hep, Scroat and Eris showed up in my living room, apparently having a group hug. Then Hep collapsed groaning about his head, and Scroat was left to wrestle Eris. She was winning, too, until I stepped in to help him out.”

“Wow, sounds like things have been exciting around here,” Death said.

“Nah. Not any more than usual,” Ares said. “What have you been up to?”

“Well, I just caught Thomas Swinton driving a van full of explosives, so I blew him up,” Death said.

Eris slumped in her chair a bit.

Ares, looked disappointed. “You blew him up? And you didn’t invite me?”

“Sorry. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing. Weird that he’d never done anything like that before, yet somehow he decided to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge for no real reason.”

“That is weird,” Ares said. “But, you know... People.”

“He told me he was coerced in to it. He was actually relieved I caught him, if you can believe it.”

“Crazy,” Ares said. He looked like he was losing interest in the story already.

Hep and Scroat came into the house then, carrying a couple cases of beer.

“Hi Death!” Hep said. “You want a beer?”

“No, thanks. I actually came to see if you guys could help me track down Eris, but, well, here she is.”

“Yeah!” Hep said. “It was nuts! We were watching Sandy and Junior and Eris just kind of showed up looking ticked off. I don’t think she even realized she was standing right next to us. So we grabbed her, and then we thought Ares might know how to keep her subdued so we came here.”

“Awesome,” Death said.

“Yeah, I know,” Hep said.

“So...” Ares said.

“So?” Death said.

“Well, what do you want to do about Eris? I mean, she made a hell of a mess of things for you. If I was you, I’d probably want to kill her, her family,”

Death interrupted, “And anyone who looked at you funny along the way, yeah. No, I don’t think I’ll kill her. I figured out that this was all over you, Ares. Eris seems to be a little jealous of me.”

Eris spat on the floor.

“Now, that’s just fucking rude,” Scroat said. “Don’t you have any class?”

Ares tried to pretend he had no idea what Death was talking about.

“So, I think I’m just going to make her invisible. To you.” Death said.

“Wait, what? No! Wait!” Eris said, shortly before vanishing.

“Why can’t I see her?” Hep said.

“Consider it a favor to all of us,” Death said. “She’s hidden from us, and she won’t be able to bother us again. Well, not until she figures it out.”

Ares looked a little freaked out. “So, uh, is she still here in my house, only invisible?”

“Nope,” Death said. “I sent her to North Dakota. She should have a good time there.”

“So what now?” Hep said.

“I don’t know,” Death said.

“Want to get a pizza?” Ares said.

Death looked at him, and said, “You keep talking like that and I might just fall for you.”

Ares smiled and said, “You know what? Let’s just be friends.”

The End.

[Author's note: Woo hoo! 50,273 words in one month. Catch you next November, all you Holy Rollers.]

Chapter Twenty Four

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:23:00 +0000

The inside of the shed was pretty well appointed, though function had definitely won out over aesthetics. There was a bed with a grey wool blanket, a kitchen area, a closet Thomas assumed housed a toilet, and a workbench that obviously doubled as a dinner table.

The man who apparently lived here had given him a cup of coffee, and otherwise hadn’t said a word. He was tinkering with something on his workbench. Thomas didn’t recognize it, but it looked like it had a lot of levers and springs inside. He hoped it was just a clock.

“So,” Thomas said after several minutes of silence, “how do you know Eris?”

“I don’t,” the man said. “A colleague of mine told me you were coming, what you were bringing, and what you need.”

“OK,” Thomas said, and was quiet for a few more minutes. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he said, “So have you got a name?”

“Not for you,” the guy said. “But, I guess, you can call me Mr. B.”

“OK, Mr. B.” Thomas said. “Why all the secrecy?”

Mr. B. stopped what he was doing and looked Thomas in the eyes. Although he looked like he’d been living a rough life for a while, he did not look stupid. Whatever he was wrapped up in, this guy was clearly the brains of the operation.

“Too many questions, Thomas,” Mr. B. said. “I don’t want to know a damn thing about you, and I don’t want you to know about me. There aren’t many peaceable uses for a fertilizer bomb in the back of a cargo van, you know. Assuming you survive whatever it is you’re going to do, I don’t want you to have any information about me, because I assume, if you survive, you aren’t going to evade capture for long. The United States government takes large improvised explosions very seriously, you know.”

“OK,” Thomas said. “So, why are you helping me out?”

“Because I have no choice. I assume you’re in the same situation.”

Mr. B. went back to his tinkering.

“So, what are you working on there?” Thomas asked.

“My toaster,” Mr. B. said. “Hasn’t worked right since I bought it. So I’m fixing it.”

A toaster, Thomas thought. Of course. I should have known. What else would a mad bomb builder be working on in his shed?

“Can I give you a hand in any way?” Thomas asked.

“No,” Mr. B said. He looked at Thomas again. “I’ve got it under control, and I suspect you think righty is loosey.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

Thomas didn’t know what this guy was talking about, but he did know when he’d been insulted. He hoped he wasn’t going to have to wait around too long.

“So, want me to bring in the stuff I got at Radio Shack? You can get started on it, maybe?”

Mr. B kept working on his toaster.

“No. We’re not going out to the van again for a good while. You’re here, visiting, and I’m working on my toaster. It’s best to assume, you see, that we’re being watched. And bringing a windowless van to a run down shed in the middle of nowhere is kind of suspicious behavior.”

He saw Thomas take a breath to say something, and held up a finger to keep him from doing so.

“Meeting here wasn’t my idea. Some other poor bastard presumably had no choice in loaning us his cabin. If it was up to me, we would have taken over the utility room in a parking garage in the middle of a city. No one would even look twice at your van there. Stupid. I tried to argue, but no one ever takes the advice of the person they’re in the middle of ordering around.”

“So, what, you think there’s cops out there watching us?”

“Cops, Feds, NSA... someone is probably watching us. Heard any planes go by lately? If not, that’s a good sign they’re right outside.”

Thomas wasn’t sure if he’d heard any planes, helicopters or an M1 Abrams for that matter. He was fairly sure, however, that this guy was more than a little crazy. Smart, obviously, but also crazy.

He heard some rustling outside and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Mr. B. laughed out loud.

“Calm down Thomas. That’s not them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because when they’re coming to get you, you don’t hear them until they’ve got a foot planted on the back of your neck.”

“Oh. That’s reassuring.”

***

Death had been having an unusually slow day. It gave her plenty of time to think. She’d called Hep to see how things had gone with protecting the Naughty Gnostic’s family from Eris.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy,” Hep said. “There was a fire, a couple of car crashes, even a tornado. That one was pretty unexpected. Some guy tried to mug us. I’d say the worst part was having to ride the bus, though. Man, I hate buses. They’re just too claustrophobic.”

“Wow,” Death said. “Sounds like a wild ride. How have things been since then?”

“Pretty quiet, actually. All the chaos just abruptly stopped. One minute we couldn’t drop our guard for a second, and the next minute everything was just normal, business as usual, you know?”

So either everything was back to normal, or what had been chaos had just become the new normal.

Since that seemed to be under control, she got off the phone and turned her mind to the issue of Eris. Eris was helping Thomas.

But why? She and Eris had never been best friends, but then, they never really got in each other’s hair before either. What could she possibly be gaining from keeping some random asshole alive? It just seemed so... petty.

Petty.

A little light flickered on in Death’s mind. It seemed petty because it was petty. She’d crossed Eris somehow. But what could it have been? She hadn’t even seen Eris until she bumped into Ares that one time...

Ares.

Eris was jealous.

Death suddenly wished she could just call Eris and explain that she had no interest in Ares, but had to admit that might be a little hard for her to buy. Especially since he’d given her his motorcycle.

OK, so Thomas was a pawn to aggravate her, as revenge for Ares’s interest in her. That kind of made sense, in a crazy kind of way. But how had she managed to teach Thomas how to hide from her? That kind of magic was way beyond the average random asshole, and almost never worked even for experts who had spent years studying it. The usual result was a very visible, very dead, magician with a very surprised look on his face.

It had to be something simple. Most people were simple. Hell, simplicity is what kept people from seeing her most of the time. She’d heard about a study done at some university, where volunteers were asked to watch a video and count the number of times the people in the video passed several basketballs to one another. In the middle of the action, a person in a gorilla suit strutted into the middle of the screen, waved at the camera, and strutted back off camera.

No one ever saw the person in a gorilla suit on the first viewing. Some people didn’t see it until it was specifically pointed out, even after telling them to look for the person in gorilla suit. The effect was called perceptual blindness.

It wasn’t because they were stupid. It was because they just really, really weren’t expecting to see a person in a gorilla suit. Simple things escape complicated minds.

People didn’t expect to see Death going about her business so, for the most part, they didn’t. And on those supremely rare occasions when someone did see her, they could point and scream all they wanted, and still no one else would see her. And it was simply because they weren’t expecting so see Death, incarnate, there to collect the newly dead.

Another little light turned on in Death’s mind. Sleight of hand was a lot simpler than magic. Making a quarter travel through space from one hand to another by magic was very, very difficult. Throwing it too fast to see was a piece of cake.

A third light turned on, and started flashing brightly in Death’s mind.

Thomas had used some kind of stage magic to vanish the first time, and since then had been staying precisely where she wouldn’t expect to find him.

With that, she knew exactly where Thomas was. All she had to do now was arrange a few things, and she’d have his Death all wrapped up by lunchtime tomorrow. She could practically see him, sitting in a shed in the middle of nowhere, building a...

Wait.

What on Earth was he doing building a bomb? Although she couldn’t see it, she knew about the van. She new about the fertilizer and the other bomb makings. She knew about the ex-Army demolitions expert helping him turn a van and a bunch of fertilizer and fuel into a bomb.

And she knew he was going to have to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Oh, shit,” Death said. It looked like Eris needed a little extra Chaos-rush on top of all the petty revenge. She was going to have to get involved before Thomas was able to finish his mission. A freshly fed Eris would be a heck of a lot harder to put back in her place that she would be right now, subsisting on the day to day chaos of modern life.

She had to stop this right now.

Chapter Twenty Three

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:14:00 +0000

Thomas hadn’t been feeling so great before Eris told him he had to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, however, his mood was abysmal. If he had stopped to think about it, he would have been forced to admit that he probably couldn’t feel much worse.

At least, not until after he’d blown up the bridge. So it was still possible to feel worse. But not much worse.

In the back of his mind, a train of thought about the greater good was running around and around. If she was going to kill his family, he couldn’t do much about it, and that would be better for the world than for him to kill a whole bunch of people he didn’t even know, just because some goddess was feeling petty and vengeful. He was certain he’d read some story, at some point, about a drawbridge operator, his trapped son, and a train, and that the story somehow applied to his situation.

On the other hand, they were his family, and he couldn’t stand by and let something bad happen to them.

As such, he’d taken the binder Eris had given him, read through it, and set about gathering the bomb making materials she’d arranged for him to pick up. She’d provided a map, and even step by step directions for how to gather everything. And the first item on the list, a cargo van, was only a mile away.

Thomas half-remembered a lyric he’d heard about the road to Hell being paved with least resistance.

He’d driven to the address provided, and parked. The van was waiting for him, with the keys in a little magnetic box hidden under the right rear rocker panel. The van was white, windowless and otherwise nondescript. It looked like every other white cargo van on the road.

Thomas unlocked it and climbed in to the driver’s seat. The back of the van was empty, and immaculately clean. He put the key in the ignition, and the engine leapt to life, as though it had been waiting for him to show up.

He checked his binder to see where he was supposed to go next. Apparently it was a nursery just about ten miles north of where he was. There was a pallet of fertilizer waiting for him there.

He wondered where he’d gone wrong in life to end up in the situation he was in: driving a van to pick up supplies to make a fertilizer bomb. It was like a bad movie plot.

The van shifted into gear with an affirmative clunk, and Thomas pulled out of the parking spot. A few minutes later, he was accelerating easily on to the freeway and heading north.

The nursery appeared to be closed. Long closed, actually. The only building still standing looked like it wouldn’t be for long, and there weren’t many plants to be seen. There were a few pots here and there, but the plants in them looked to be weeds, not flowers.

All the same, Thomas drove around to the back side of the building, and there he found the pallet of fertilizer, as promised. There wasn’t anyone around, so he guessed he was going to have to load the van himself. He backed the van up to the pallet, and jumped out. On top of the bags of fertilizer was a pair of brand new leather work gloves.

Well, that’s a relief, he thought. At least I won’t have to tear my hands up.

Thomas opened the back doors of the van, and started heaving bags of fertilizer in. None of it seemed quiet real. He couldn’t quite make himself believe that he was going to make a bomb out of the fertilizer he was tossing around.

About half of the pallet was loaded in to the van when Thomas heard the crunching of tires rolling on gravel. He looked up to see a police car approaching.

Oh shit, Thomas thought. I’m not going to blow up a bridge, I’m going to go to jail for a very long time.I

He thought about that possibility for a couple seconds, and then thought, What a relief.

The police officer parked his car, and sat inside for a moment. Thomas realized he was probably running the license place of the van, and hoped it wasn’t stolen. Then he remembered he was going to jail anyway, and figured stealing a van probably had less of a sentence than trying to build a bomb to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

Since he was going to get arrested any second anyway, he tossed the bag of fertilizer he was carrying in to the back of the van (that’s another two years, I bet, he thought.), and took off the work gloves he was wearing.

The door of the police car swung open, and the officer stepped out and looked at Thomas. He shut the door of his car, and walked over.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the officer said. His name tag said “Billen”.

“Good afternoon, officer,” Thomas said. He wondered if a swarm of officers were going to charge out of the nearby woods to subdue and arrest him.

“What are you doing here today?” Officer Billen said in a conversational tone, looking at the bags of fertilizer.

Thomas considered telling him outright he was getting ready to build a bomb, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His self-preservation instincts wouldn’t let him mouth off and admit to what he was doing all at the same time.

“Just loading up some fertilizer, sir,” Thomas said.

The officer seemed like he would really rather be somewhere else instead of standing there talking to Thomas.

“I wouldn’t expect to find any fertilizer here,” Officer Billen said, still trying to do his job, despite his inexplicable discomfort with talking to Thomas. “This place has been closed for years.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is. This is just where my boss told me to come and pick up a bunch of fertilizer. I wasn’t expecting to find any when I pulled up and saw how run down it was here.”

“So your boss sent you to pick this up? Are you a farmer?”

“Nope, but my boss is,” Thomas said. Any second, a swarming S.W.A.T. team was going to appear out of nowhere and arrest him, Thomas suspected. He wished they’d hurry up and just do it already.

“Well, I guess that works for me. We got a call about a suspicious person out here, but you don’t seem too suspicious to me. You have a good day,” Officer Billen said.

“Thanks, you too, sir,” Thomas said. He watched in amazement as the cop walked away, got back in to his car, and drove off. For a minute, he suspected it was a trap, but when the S.W.A.T. team failed to emerge and arrest him, he realized that nothing was going to happen. Damn it.

He’d gotten away with a lot of stuff since he was supposed to die, but he’d never had a cop notice him doing something as blatantly suspicious as what he was doing right then, and wouldn’t have expected a cop to walk away so easily.

Frankly, it made him feel a bit rejected.

He put the gloves back on, and continued loading fertilizer into the truck until the pallet was empty. Then, since he wasn’t sure if he should leave it there or what, he threw the pallet into the back of the van as well. If he didn’t need it, maybe he could use the wood to have a bonfire.

Thomas closed the back doors of the van, looked around to see if anyone had been watching him, maybe a S.W.A.T. team waiting for just the right moment, and finally got in to the van and started it. He took a look at the binder, and saw that up next he needed to go to a chemical company of some sort and purchase a few hundred gallons of methanol.

The instructions didn’t specify how he was supposed to carry that much of a volatile liquid, but he assumed it would become clear by the time he needed to know.

He pulled out of the nursery’s driveway on to the main drag, and started driving towards the chemical company, some twenty miles further north.

It was five minutes before the customer service desk closed for the day when Thomas arrived at Arriba Chemical Company. The woman behind the desk, her name tag said “Susan,” seemed less than thrilled to see him.

“Can I help you?” Susan asked in her least helpful voice.

“I’m here to pick up some Methanol,” Thomas said.

“I hope you’ve got an order waiting, because it’s a little late for us to be pumping methanol for a walk up.”

Thomas looked at his notes, and saw that there was indeed an order for ethanol, for one Eris Limited Liability Corporation. He gave her the order number, which she typed in to her computer.

“Have you got a truck that can carry a three hundred gallon tank?” Susan asked.

“Well, I’ve got my van out there,” Thomas said. “Will that do?”

“I hope you’ve got strong springs,” Susan said. “I’ll have one of the guys roll it out on a forklift for you.”

Thomas went back to his van and hopped into the back to make room for what sounded like an enormous tank. He hoped there would be room in there. Then he remembered that he should probably hope there wasn’t room for the tank in the van. That would delay things quite a bit.

He heard a forklift roll up next to the van, so he poked his head out. The forklift was carrying a tank that looked smaller than what he was expecting.

“I’m just making room for that tank in here,” he said to the forklift driver.

“Do you need a hand?” the forklift driver said. He was eager to be done for the day, and he was going to be done for the day once this guy was loaded up and out of his hair. The sooner that happened, the sooner he’d have a delicious beer.

“Nah, I’m good,” Thomas said, but the forklift driver had already shut down his forklift and climbed down. He poked his head into Thomas’s van to see what was in there already.

“Whoa, that’s a lot of fertilizer you’ve got there. Are you making a bomb or something?” the forklift driver said in a good-natured way.

Thomas went pale, and scrambled to think of something to say. The forklift driver saw this.

“Whoa, easy fella,” he said. “I’m just messing with you. I know how much you farmers love your sprint car racing.”

Thomas smiled, weakly, and laughed. “Yeah, for the sprint car. Best to get all the heavy lifting out of the way on one trip, you know?”

The forklift driver picked up a back of fertilizer and stacked it on top of the others.

“You know,” he said, grabbing another bag, “I used to do a bit of sprint car racing myself. I got out of it because I couldn’t afford a new engine when the old one died. Blew a piston right through the goddamned cylinder head, up and out through the wing. Can you believe that?”

“Whoa,” Thomas said. Sprint cars sounded like risky business.

“Yeah, total drag. I’ve still got the chassis in my pole barn. If you know anyone that might be interested in buying it, have them give me a call.”

“Sure thing,” Thomas said.

“So what kind of carburetor are you running?”

“The one that came on the engine?” Thomas said, hoping he was roughly correct.

“Not having a winning season then, huh? Well, a bit of practice is always good. One thing I always wanted to try was one of them coffee can carburetors. I was never able to get one to work, though. Thought maybe you’d had better luck.”

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing,” Thomas said.

“Well, maybe that’s why it didn’t work,” the forklift driver said, and winked at him.

The bags of fertilizer were all stacked to the roof of the van now. The forklift driver hopped out the back of the van.

“Let’s get this tank loaded in there, and then I’m going to get me a frosty cold one,” he said.

He climbed up in to the forklift again and started it. Five minutes later, the tank was secured in the back of Thomas’s van, which apparently had strong enough springs to support the tank and all the fertilizer after all, and Thomas was ready to continue on his way.

“Hey, you have fun blowing some shit up!” the forklift driver called, and then waved as he drove his forklift back in to the warehouse.

Thomas’s heart leapt up in to his throat before he realized the guy was just messing with him. He waved back, and started the van.

According to the information in his binder, the next stop was a Radio Shack, fifteen miles away.

Thomas tried to remember the last time he’d even been in a Radio Shack. He was pretty sure it had been back when they still sold their own brand of computers. Then he remembered he’d stopped in one a couple years ago, very briefly, to see if they had anything in the way of a remote controlled truck that would appeal to a ten year old cousin of his. He never found out about the truck, because the doofus working had been so insistent on trying to sell him a cell phone and a credit card that he never even made it more than ten feet in to the store. The guy hadn’t even noticed that Thomas had asked about a remote controlled toy, much less offered any information about one.

Damn it, I’m really not in the mood to deal with a desperate phone salesman, Thomas thought.

The directions Eris had provided led him to a brand new strip mall that already looked kind of run down. There was a soft-serve ice cream place of some sort, a nail and waxing salon, a check cashing store, and the Radio Shack.

He parked the van, and went inside the Radio Shack. It looked just the way he remembered Radio Shack - poorly stocked shelves and employees that looked like they didn’t know what any of this stuff did, and they were bothered he’d interrupted their attempt to set a new world record for vacant staring.

“Hi, can I help you find something?” one of the employees asked, barely opening his mouth enough to speak.

“I need, uh,” Thomas looked at his shopping list, and barely understood what anything meant. “Uh. I need some of these components,” he said, and held out the list to the employee.

The employee glanced down at the list, took a deep breath, and led Thomas over to a set of drawers in the far corner of the store. “All our components are in here. Holler if you need anything.”

Thomas really didn’t have any idea what he was looking at, but tried to match up the list with the product details on the packaging. He, slowly, gathered almost all of the pieces he needed.

“Hey,” Thomas said, “Do you know what a solderless breadboard is?”

The employee who’d helped him earlier sighed, Thomas could hear him from across the store, and made his way over to where Thomas was standing.

“Pick one of these three,” he said, and pointed at a few boxes with pictures of what looked like high tech, white plastic cribbage boards.

Thomas wasn’t sure what the difference was, so he got the biggest one. That wrapped up his list, so far as he could tell. He checked everything over, then again in order to be sure he wouldn’t have to come back, and brought all of his stuff up to the register.

When he set everything down on the counter, the employee looked at him as though he’d dropped his pants and crapped on his front lawn. He looked over the components Thomas had picked out, then at Thomas.

“So,” he said, “You building a bomb?”

Thomas nearly did drop his pants and shit.

“Huh? No!” Thomas said, before he noticed the other employee was snickering.

“Making a bomb. Good one,” Employee #2 said.

“Easy, Killer, I’m just messing with you a bit. What does this stuff do, anyway?” Employee #1 said.

“Funny,” Thomas said, and faked a smile. “Just a personal project.”

“OK, don’t tell me,” Employee #1 said, as he scanned each item in to the register. When he was done, he said, “That’ll be eighty dollars.”

“That can’t be right,” Thomas said, looking at the pile of components. Apart from the cribbage board thing, nothing looked like it should have cost more than a dollar.

The employee sighed loudly and turned the register’s monitor so Thomas could see it.

“Look for yourself. Everything is there. It’s all correct,” he said.

Thomas looked, and wondered what the deal was with these resistor things that they were worth twenty dollars for one hundred of them. Must be some kind of low grade unobtanium, he thought.

“Fine,” Thomas said, and got out his wallet. He paid for the parts, and was relieved when the employee didn’t ask him if he would be interested in a fantastic deal on a cell phone or credit card.

He left the store, and heard one of the employees mumble, “have a nice day,” just as the door was closing.

Thomas got in to the van, tossed the Radio Shack bag on to the passenger seat, and looked to see where the last stop for the day was. It looked like it was a residential address, somewhere out in the sticks, about thirty miles away.

Thomas checked his fuel level, and decided it might be an excellent idea to top up the van, and maybe grab a snack and some coffee for the ride. There was a gas station just a couple blocks away, so he stopped there.

The woman working inside had the friendliest face he’d seen all day.

“Are you doing OK?” she asked him as he paid for his beef jerky, twinkies and coffee.

“Huh?” Thomas said. “Oh, yeah, doing great.”

“You’re not looking to hot,” she said. Thomas looked at her and saw nothing but sympathy in her eyes. “You be sure to stop and get some rest tonight. It’s not safe to drive when you’re sleepy.”

“OK, I will,” Thomas said. “Thanks.”

He definitely felt ready to sleep, for a long, long time. He’d like to just go to bed right then, and maybe wake up sometime around two o’clock in the afternoon the following Monday. It had been kind of a crazy day.

He got in to the van, and set off for the last stop for the day.

Thirty miles later, he arrived at what looked like a home-built shed with a satellite dish and a 55 gallon drum of fuel oil plumbed in to the side. A man in worn, but sharply pressed and starched, clothes came out of the shed and watched him as he parked the van.

Thomas hopped out of the van. Before he could introduce himself, the apparent shed-dweller said, “Are you Thomas?”

“Yes, who are you?”

“And this is the van?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

“OK, come inside. I’ve got some coffee going, if you’re interested.”

Chapter Twenty Two

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:47:00 +0000

Thomas was siting at a picnic table in a park, eating a sandwich and reading a book, trying to enjoy the day. Enjoying the day had become a bit more difficult since Eris had shown up and declared him to be in debt to her. He’d been reduced to just waiting for her to show up and explain how he was going to have to repay her for the favor of showing him how to hide from Death.

Avoiding dying wasn’t so great when the people he talked to all seemed as though they couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He was afraid for his family and friends, if Eris decided to mess with them, but he hadn’t actually talked to any of them in weeks. Months, really.

“Hey buddy, why the long face?” Eris said from the other side of the picnic table. Thomas jumped, and looked up quickly.

“I was just wondering when you were going to show up again,” Thomas said.

“And here I am. How convenient!” Eris said.

“Very convenient, yes,” Thomas said. He set down his book and the half of sandwich he was holding. “So. What do you want me to do?”

Eris looked offended, “What, do you think I’m just visiting in order to ask for favors?”

Thomas looked at her, for a moment, then down at the table. “So are you here just to torment me for a while?”

“You have a very dim view of me,” Eris said. “I thought we were going to be pals. I guess I’ll have to turn the charm up a bit. Now that you mention it, though, I have come up with a way for you to repay that favor I did for you.”

Thomas took a deep breath. He suspected whatever it was, the favor was not going to be something he wanted to do, or would feel good about doing.

“OK. What is it?” Thomas said.

“I want you to build a bomb and blow up the Golden Gate bridge,” Eris said, as though she were asking him to go pick up some ice cream from the corner store.

Thomas gasped, then choked a bit. When he’d regained his composure, he said, “You’re joking!”

“Nope. I’m completely serious. And you know what the consequences will be if you don’t do it.”

“Why on Earth do you want me to do that? What good is it going to do?”

“Good?” Eris said, and laughed. “It’s not going to do any good. It’s going to cause complete chaos. It’ll disrupt thousands of people’s lives, which will cause even more chaos to spread out as those people react to it, and so on. The sheer idea of it is kind of turning me on already.”

Thomas shuddered a bit at the idea.

“That’s it? You’re not advancing a cause, you’re just fucking things up for everyone?”

“Yep. Goddess of Chaos, remember? And you owe me a favor, so you might want to get to work on this.”

“I don’t want to do that. It’ll kill hundreds of people! It’ll keep killing people afterwards too, since ambulances won’t be able to get to them.”

“Yeah! That’s a bonus!” Eris said.

“I can’t do that! It’s just wrong,” Thomas said.

“You cheating Death and disrupting the natural order of things is also just wrong, but that didn’t stop you. And you don’t have a choice. Do it, or I kill your family.”

“Isn’t there something else I can do? Maybe clean your apartment? That’s gotta be a chore, huh?”

Eris glared at him, “What are you implying?”

“Um. Nothing. Just saying cleaning is a lot of work.”

“My home is perfectly clean, and that’s hardly repaying the favor I did you. You get to live forever now. I think that’s worth more than a hasty tidying of my house.”

“It’s hardly living. Everyone I meet is repulsed by me. This is a half life.”

“Are you sure people are repulsed by you now more than they were before? I mean, you’re hardly the most appealing person I’ve met.”

“Look, I can’t blow up the Golden Gate bridge!”

“Sure you can. You just build a bomb, put it where I tell you, and BOOM, no more bridge. It’s totally do-able.”

Thomas ran a hand over his face, and scratched at his cheek. “I mean, I can’t blow up the bridge and live with myself.”

“Well, that’s fine. But if you doing, your family isn’t going to be able to live with you either. They won’t be able to live at all, really.”

“Look, even if I wanted to do this, which I don’t, I couldn’t do it because I don’t know how to build a bomb.”

Eris produced another three ring binder and set it in front of him.

“Now you do,” She said. “I’ve even arranged things so all you have to do is pick up the raw materials you need. All the details are there in the binder.”

“I’m not touching that,” Thomas said. “I’ll end up owing you another favor.”

“OK,” Eris said. “You don’t have to use the information I’ve provided for you, you can find your own way to make a bomb, source the materials, and blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. But the end result is that you are going to blow up that bridge either way.

“Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

Eris paused and thought for a minute.

“You could blow up the London bridge instead.”

“What? How is that any better?” Thomas said.

“You didn’t say anything about not blowing up the London bridge. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.”

“OK. Is there anything I can do that doesn’t involve blowing something up and killing a lot of people.”

“What fun would that be?” Eris asked.

“It would be better than the alternative,” Thomas said.

“I see,” Eris said. She thought for a minute, staring at Thomas the entire time.

“You know what? I can’t think of a darn thing that isn’t blowing up a bridge. Now if I was you, I’d take those instructions there and make things easy on myself. Because that bridge needs to blow up in two days, and that’s not much time to get bomb-making materials together in the kind of quantities I”m talking about. And this binder,” Eris tapped the new binder on the picnic table,” well, this binder will be a much easier favor to repay than the other one was.”

“Oh yeah?” Thomas asked. “How much easier?”

“Oh, way easier. You might just have to blow up a car somewhere. Car bombs create a lot of chaos too.”

“I don’t want to blow anything up! Why does every favor you do for me require me to blow something up?”

“Because I like it when things blow up,” Eris said. “And it’s better that a bridge and a car blow up than, say, the house you grew up during Sunday dinner. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You really suck,” Thomas said.

“I think you’ll learn to love me in time,” Eris said. “Well, I’ve got to run. Why don’t you just hang on to this binder. Take a look through it. Then when you’ve decided you’d rather blow up the bridge than watch your family suffer and die in a freak ham dinner explosion, you’ll be ahead of the curve in figuring out how to demolish that bridge.”

Eris vanished, leaving Thomas with his book, sandwich, and a new binder he really didn’t want.

“Well, shit,” Thomas said, as he picked up the binder Eris had left.

Chapter Twenty One

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:40:00 +0000

It was a beautiful day. The temperature was perfect, and the sky was sunny and clear. Just like every other day in Los Angeles - that’s why Ares loved living in L.A.

And, since it was a beautiful day and there wasn’t anyone who needed immediate killing, Ares was in the garage tinkering with his 1965 Ford Falcon station wagon. Today he was trying to track down an annoying rattle he heard coming from the right rear side of the car when he was accelerating hard, and when he went over speed bumps.

He assumed it was just a loose bolt somewhere, but which one? He had the tailgate open and was laying on his stomach trying to tighten the bolts that hold the rear seat in place when he heard a voice behind him.

“Whatcha doing?” Eris said.

Ares sighed. Of course she’d show up when he was working on his car. If Eris knew anything, he suspected, it was how to show up at exactly the wrong time.

“Trying to fix a rattle. What’s going on?” Ares said. He kept working on the car. He was having a tough time reaching one of the bolts. Every time he thought he’d gotten the wrench on it, he’d try to tighten it and instead the wrench would slip free. He wished he could kill that frickin’ bolt.

“Nothing much, just wanted to stop by and chat,” Eris said. She wandered in to the garage, and Ares could hear her digging through the stuff on his shelves.

“What on Earth do you need this for?” Ares heard her say.

He was still fighting with the same bolt, and said, rather sharply, “I have no idea, because I can’t see what it is. It’s probably important though, so please put it back.”

Ares heard something hit the floor, and the sound of several little pieces skittering off to different corners of the garage to hide until he’d given up on finding them and bought replacements.

“Oops,” Eris said, and giggled.

Ares set down his wrench and climbed out of the back of the station wagon.

“OK, are you done breaking my stuff now? I’d wager you’ve got something on your mind. So spill it.”

Eris stopped looking cute, and her features turned hard.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what? What could I have possibly done to you?”

“If you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you.”

“Great! Then the conversation is over and I can get back to work on my car. Nice talking to you,” Ares said.

“Oh, right, so you can go back to mooning over Death,” Eris said. She grabbed something else off the shelf without looking at it and dropped it. It landed with an expensive sounding CRUNCH.

“Jeez, I was saving that,” Ares said. “And what’s your problem with Death? Yeah, I like her. So what? It’s not like you and I are an item. It shouldn’t bother you in the least.”

“She doesn’t deserve you! She’s not good enough. And I have to watch you going on and on about her. Do you know how much that hurts?”

Ares was a bit surprised by this.

“Wait, I hurt you by having feelings for Death?”

“Yes. Duh. I want you to have feelings for me.”

“Sorry. I don’t,” Ares said. He knew he was now treading on extremely thin ice, and knew himself well enough to be aware he was much better on the battlefield than in an argument. Words weren’t his friends.

Eris’s eyes began to tear up. Ares realized the ice was even thinner than he’d thought. There went the afternoon.

“You’re an asshole,” Eris said. “Damn it, I’ve sat around, listening to you talk about cars and who you think deserves killing. I’ve arranged some nice chaotic events for you to go nuts and kill all kinds of people, and all I get in return is to watch you chasing after some skinny bitch in black leather.”

“Look, I thought we were just friends,” Ares said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’d expect you to think, idiot,” Eris said. “Next you’re going to tell me that you just don’t see me that way.”

“Well, I don’t. You’re an awesome friend, but I’m not looking for that kind of relationship.

“With me, you mean. You don’t want that kind of relationship with me. But you want to give Death another kind of bone every night. Asshole.”

Ares tried to come up with something he could say to calm her down a bit. Having an enraged chaos goddess hanging out in his garage made him a bit nervous.

“Look, why don’t we go inside and have some tea and calm things down a little bit,” Ares said.

“What? Worried about your precious car? Fuck, even your car is more important to you than me.”

“Hey, come on, you’re my friend,” Ares said. The car was totally more important to him.

“Your friend? Yeah, about that, how come you’re out helping out Death and working against me?”

It took a second for Ares to process that craziness.

“Sorry, how was helping Death working against you? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re out there with those other two goons, trying to catch Thomas for Death. And he’s mine.”

“You’re the one who’s been helping Thomas out? What the hell is up with that?”

“Yeah it’s me. Everything is always going so perfectly for Death. When are things going to go perfectly for me? Huh? So I thought I’d throw a little bit of chaos her way and make things a little more interesting for everyone.”

“Wow, I can’t believe you,” Ares said. “You know she’s going to be super pissed off when she figures out what’s going on.”

“Oh, are you going to go and tattle on me like a little schoolboy trying to get teacher to like him?”

“I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell her. You know her work is massively important. What point would anything have if not for Death? There’d be no reason to even get off the couch. Shoot, couches probably wouldn’t have even been invented, there’d just be a few people laying around in a swamp, too full of ennui to even screw and propagate their species,” Ares said.

“Yeah, well, she’s a bitch, and you’d better not tell her, because I can make things very uncomfortable for you,” Eris said.

“What, by coming in to my garage and breaking more stuff? Harassing me when I’m trying to buy groceries?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Ares,” Eris said.

“I’m doing my best not to. You’re being crazy, though, so I suspect asking you how your day is going would be fucking with you, according to you.”

“I don’t have to take this,” Eris said.

“You sure don’t,” Ares said. “You could take a hike instead, and come back when you’re done being a psycho. Could you find a way to meet your need for chaos without involving me for a while? I bet there’s an elementary school nearby, why don’t you go give the kindergartners a conch shell and see if you can make them go Lord of the Flies on their teacher?”

Eris pulled something that turned out to be a four-barrel Holley carburetor off Ares shelf and threw it across the garage.

“Fuck you!” she yelled.

“Aw, come on. Do you know how much those things cost? It’s not like I’ve got a steady cash flow.”

“I wish you cared about me as much as you cared about that stupid thing,” Eris said, and sulked.

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t throw my shit around in my garage and break expensive stuff you didn’t pay for. I’d be a lot more likely to have warm fuzzy feelings for someone who acted halfway reasonable.”

“Oh, like Death? Because she’s so reasonable. She won’t even let someone get away now and then without divine intervention.”

“OK, so now you’re mad at Death because she does her job? I’ve never heard that one before.”

“Don’t tell me what to think!”

“I didn’t...”

“God this is pointless, I should leave,” Eris said.

Ares brightened a bit. He might be able to get back to work after all. Unfortunately for him, Eris noticed.

“You want me to leave. You son of a bitch, you don’t care about anyone but yourself. What about me, huh? I do everything I can for you, and this is how you treat me?”

Fuck, Ares thought. Is this ever going to be over?

“I don’t want you to leave,” Ares lied. “I just want you to calm down a bit so we can discuss this rationally.”

“I am calm, Ares. I am perfectly calm. You’re just a huge asshole.”

“You know, calling me names makes it hard for me to hear what you’re saying,” Ares said.

“Oh, where’d you pick up that little bit of manipulative bullshit. If it’s hard for you to hear me, maybe I should just be louder.”

“Well, if that’s going to speed this up, go ahead and yell all you want! I’ve got better things to do that try to keep you calm. Especially when you come over here all pissed off about a bunch of petty bull shit!”

“Petty bull shit? My feelings are petty bull shit? I’ll show you petty bull shit!”

Eris grabbed a wrench from Ares’s work bench and broke out the side window of the station wagon. Ares threw his hands up in the air and let them drop again.

“Aw, for fuck’s sake,” Ares said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“How’s that for petty bull shit, asshole?”

“It’s great. Really, just great. Would you get out of here now? Come back when you’re done playing the psycho jealous girlfriend. I’ve got to clean up a bunch of glass now.”

“I knew you cared about that car more than me,” Eris said.

“You’re god damned right. Go!” Ares said.

“Some day you’re going to realize what you missed out on,” Eris said, and vanished.

“No doubt,” Ares said, surveying the damage to his garage. Fixing the rattle was now at the bottom of his list of priorities. He sighed and grabbed a broom to clean up all the glass.

Death. Eris was the one behind the whole mess with Thomas. Ares figured Death might want to know that, but he didn’t know how to get ahold of her. He figured he’d better give Hep a call and see if he could pass on the message. Cleaning up the garage would have to wait a bit.

Chapter Twenty

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:59:00 +0000

Death had left Hep and Scroat camped out in front of Steve the Naughty Gnostic’s family home with the strict instructions that nothing was to happen to the family sleeping peacefully inside.

They had been standing outside for roughly two hours, making idle conversation, when Hep noticed that something smelled like it was burning.

“Hey, do you smell that?” Hep said to Scroat.

Scroat took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah, smells like something is on fire.”

“I think it might be a good time to take a stroll around the house and yard,” Hep said.

There was no indication of anything out of the ordinary in the front of the house. Around back, however, they were able to clearly see the drapes in one of the rooms were on fire. There didn’t seem to be a smoke detector going off inside.

“Shit!” Hep said. “We’ve got to get them out of there!”

He and Scroat hustled to the back door of the house, and found it locked. Hep never went far from home without his favorite hammer, however, and it was a matter of seconds before they’d broken in to the house. It wasn’t too smokey inside, yet, but that would be just a matter of seconds.

They quickly found the bedroom Steve’s widow was sleeping in.

“Hey, wake up! Fire!” Hep yelled. Steve’s wife woke up, and had a gun pointed at Hep within seconds.

“Who the fuck are you?” she screamed. “Get the fuck out of my house!”

“I’m Hep. Your house is on fire. You need to get out! Is there anyone else in here?”

Steve’s widow could smell the smoke, and lowered the gun a bit.

“My son is sleeping in the other bedroom,” She said.

Scroat ran down the hall to the only other closed door and opened it. Smoke poured out in to the hall.

Of course the kid would be in the room that’s on fire, he thought.

Scroat ducked down and yelled, “Hey, kid! Wake up. You gotta get out of here!”

“Huh?” said the sleeping teenager. “Who’s that? What’s going on?”

“Your fucking room is on fire. You gotta get out of here,” Scroat said.

“Uh, OK,” the kid said.

The smoke was thick enough that he had to crawl out of his room. Hep and the kid’s mom were in the hallway.

“Outside, now!” Hep said. The four of them didn’t waste any time getting out of the house.

Within minutes, they could see flames in the windows in the front of the house. Steve’s widow was at a neighbor’s house, pounding on the front door. Hep, Scroat and Steve’s son stood watching as the fire grew in intensity.

“You know,” Steve’s son said. “It might now be the worst idea to cross the street. I’ve heard the windows can blow out once the fire gets hot enough.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Scroat said.

The three of them narrowly avoided getting hit by a speeding car on their way across the street.

“Man, some night you’re having,” Hep said to the kid.

One of the neighbors whose front door Steve’s wife was pounding on finally turned on some lights and came to the door.

“Our house is on fire! Call the fire department!” Steve’s wife said as soon as the door was open.

The neighbor, who was barely awake, had looked annoyed as he’d opened the door, but now looked worried. He said, “OK!” and left the door open as he hustled away to call 911. Steve’s wife left the neighbor’s house and went to regroup with her son and the two strangers who’d apparently saved their lives.

She gave her son a hug, and the four of them stood and watched the house as it burned.

“So, who, exactly, are you guys, and how did you notice our house was on fire?”

Hep glanced at Scroat, then looked at Steve’s widow and said, “I’m called Hep, and this is Scroat. We smelled the smoke and saw some of your curtains on fire.”

“OK. What were you doing outside my house at this time of the night?”

“A friend of your late husband asked us to keep an eye on you. She thought you might be in some danger.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, you know your husband was mixed up with some unsavory characters. Turns out one of them might have bad intentions. We’re here to see that she doesn’t act on them.”

“She? Who’s this she? And who is the other she? Was that son of a bitch fooling around on me?”

“No. Well, not that I know about. Not with the woman in question, anyhow. And I can guarantee you just don’t even want to know who it is. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

Steve’s widow looked at him, suspicious, and said, “uh huh.”

Hep shrugged. “So, have you two got names?”

“I’m Sandy, this is Junior.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Hep said.

One of the front windows of Sandy’s house blew out, and flames roared out and licked at the eaves. They could hear sirens in the distance.

“They’re not going to get here in time to save a damned thing, are they?” Sandy said, mostly to herself.

No one answered.

A fire truck came rushing down the street towards them, and came to an abrupt halt in front of Sandy’s house. Firefighters streamed out of the truck, and hustled to get out the house and other equipment.

One of them ran over to Hep, Scroat, Sandy and Junior, and asked, “Is there anyone still inside the house?”

“No, every one is out,” Sandy said.

“OK,” the firefighter said. He ran back to the truck and assisted with getting the gear set up. One of the firefighters was working on attaching the firehose to a nearby fire hydrant.

“I just can’t believe this,” Sandy said. She sounded close to tears. “Our whole life was in there. The only things I had left of Steve’s were in there, and now they’re gone.”

Hep didn’t know what to say. The best he could come up with was, “I’m sorry.”

Everyone, including the firefighters, jumped back when something in the attached garage exploded. Whatever it was blew a gaping hole in the garage door. Within seconds, flames were shooting out of that hole as well. The firefighters shouted orders to one another. Little by little, the neighbors began to come out of their houses to watch what was happening.

Suddenly, the ground began to shake under their feet.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Scroat said, rather loudly.

“It’s an earthquake!” Hep said.

Sandy’s house began to fall in to itself, but there wasn’t time to watch that. The shaking became more violent, and streetlights starting to fall. Hep and Scroat were just able to pull Sandy and Junior out of the way of one of them. The firefighters yelling became a lot more anxious.

The ground continued to shake, and once more the four of them barely got out of the way in time as a nearby tree toppled over. Soon after that, the earthquake stopped, as suddenly as it had started. The firefighters manning the fire hose lost their grip on the hose during the quake, and it flipped and flopped wildly around, spraying water in every direction.

“Shut it off, shut it off!” one of the firefighters yelled.

Another firefighter was able to shut off the water before anything was damaged. The firefighters who were supposed to be manning the hose grabbed on to it again, and gave the OK to start the water back up.

“This is just madness,” Sandy said as she regained her footing.

Hep was about to say, “I know what you mean,” when another car came tearing down the street, seemingly out of nowhere, and slammed in to the back of the firetruck. The firetruck sustained little damage, but the car was utterly destroy.

A few of the firefighters had diverted their attention away from the burning house to the smashed up car, and were running over to see if they could help anyone trapped inside when the car’s gas tank exploded into flames as well.

“Holy fucking balls!” Scroat yelled, as he shielded his face from the heat of the burning car.

“You know,” Hep said, “this seems like a really good time to get the hell out of here.”

“I think you might be on to something,” Sandy said.

The four of them started to walk down the street, even as the neighbors got closer and closer to get a better view of what was going on. The firefighter’s shouts were getting more urgent by the second, it seemed.

“Man, this has been an unlucky sort of night,” Junior said.

“You’ve got that right,” Hep said. “Unluckiest night you’ll probably ever have.”

Scroat’s ears perked up a bit at a strange sound in the distance.

“Hey,” he said to Sandy, “are there train tracks nearby?”

“No, why?” Sandy asked.

“Listen,” Scroat said.

“What do you hear?” Hep said.

“Shut the fuck up and listen, man,” Scroat said, urgently.

Sure enough, something sounded like a train roaring by. But it was getting louder. And it seemed like the wind was starting to pick up.

Hep strained to see where the sound was coming from, but all he could see was darkness in the distance. Until he saw stray pieces of lumber, mailboxes and a tree go flying by further down the street.

“Oh my god it’s a tornado,” Hep said. “Hit the ditch!”

The four of them scrambled in to the ditch, which was the best protection available right then.

Hep said, “Sorry to get personal,” and laid down on top of Sandy.

“You’re on your own, bud,” Scroat said to Junior.

The roaring got louder and louder, and they could hear things cracking and crashing about them. The wind grew and grew in intensity, and Hep began to worry that they might actually get sucked up by the tornado and thrown to who knows where.

Although the seconds seemed like hours, the tornado passed by relatively quickly. Hep peeked up from the ditch, and saw that Sandy’s neighborhood was pretty well destroyed. Her house, in particular, was utterly ruined. There was a wet, smoking husk where the burning house had been a few minutes ago.

The firefighters shouting had now reached a full panic, as they tried to account for everyone and make sure no one had been injured.

“I didn’t know we even got tornados in Los Angeles,” Junior said.

“Everywhere gets tornados eventually kid,” Hep said. Especially if you piss off the wrong deity, he thought, but did not say.

The four of them clambered out of the ditch and surveyed the damage. There was really very little left of Sandy and Junior’s house. The neighboring houses were also damaged, but not nearly to the same extent. The firefighters were still hosing down what was left of their house, along with the car that had rear-ended the firetruck.

“What a crazy night,” Sandy said.

“Yeah, I bet you won’t forget this one for a while,” Hep said.

“I hope it doesn’t get any more interesting,” Scroat said.

Scroat had no sooner finished speaking than it started to hail. Ping pong ball sized chunks of ice pelted the four of them, as they ran for cover. They wound up standing underneath the roof over someone’s porch, watching as it hailed ever harder.

“This is the craziest weather!”

Hep thought, Keep telling yourself that. I’m not going to be the one to tell you a goddess of chaos is out for your blood.

Eventually, the hail stopped. The four of them tentatively stepped out from under their shelter, and looked up at the sky to see if anything else was about to go wrong.

“OK, we need to find you two a place to stay for the night,” Hep said. “Have you got any friends we can call?”

“No one that will be able to answer the phone,” Sandy said. “It’s three in the morning. They’re all going to be either passed out, or just sleeping so hard a nuclear war wouldn’t wake them up.”

“OK,” Hep said. “So let’s try to find you two a motel to stay in until you can figure out something better.”

They had been walking down the sidewalk for about twenty minutes when a bus came rolling by. Hep could see a bus stop sign just a half a block ahead.

“Run for it,” Hep said. “Let’s get on that bus!”

Scroat, Sandy and Junior all ran as fast as they could to catch the bus. Hep also hustled, but wasn’t able to keep up due to his bad legs. Scroat reached the bus stop first, and waved frantically to get the bus driver’s attention. He pulled the bus over and stopped to pick them up.

Hep reached them just as Scroat had dug out enough change to pay the fare for himself, Sandy and Junior. The bus driver eyed Sandy and Junior, who were still in their pajamas, and Scroat, who was wearing his leather jacket and black jeans.

“Is everything OK?” the bus driver asked Sandy. “Do you need help?”

“Nothing is OK,” Sandy said, “But I don’t need help right now, thanks.”

Hep scrounged in his pockets for the change he needed to pay his bus fare, and joined the other three where they were sitting. For the time being, it seemed they had the bus to themselves.

The four of them rode in silence. Junior started to nod off. Hep and Sandy were both watching intently for signs of a reasonably OK motel to spend the rest of the night in.

A few blocks later, a car slammed in to the bus. The bus driver slammed on the brakes, and called back to the four of them, “Are you all OK?”

“Yep!” Hep called back.

“God damned drunk drivers,” the bus driver said, as he got off the bus to see who had run in to him. On his way out of the bus, he hit the switch to open the back door.

“You can get off if you want to,” the bus driver said. “I’m not going to be able to drive this bus any further until we get this all sorted out. Do you want me to radio for another bus?”

Hep, Scroat, Sandy and Junior all looked at each other.

“Seems like we’re not much safer in a bus,” Sandy said, quietly, to Hep.

“I hear you,” Hep said. He turned and called to the driver, “Nah, it’s OK. We’ll walk from here.”

The four of them got off the bus, and started walking. They could hear the bus driver and the driver of the car that had hit the bus yelling at each other about whose fault it was. The driver of the car was certain that the bus driver had run a red light, while the bus driver was certain the other driver had been the one to run the light.

They didn’t seem to be in the best neighborhood. The buildings were run down, and the street was in rough shape.

“I’m not sure we want to be walking here,” Scroat said.

“Aw come on, who’s going to mess with us?” Hep said. “I don’t even see anyone around.”

“Yeah, no one around, so if someone decides to send another trick after us, we’ll be hosed.”

“We’ll be hosed anyway. If we’d waited for another bus, we would have just been stationary targets.”

“You know,” Sandy said, “You’re not really doing much for my confidence levels here guys.”

“That’s because we seem to be completely fucked. OW!” Scroat said. Hep had elbowed him in the ribs.

“Can you try not to panic the two people we’re supposed to be protecting?”

“Hey, I’m just telling the truth and you know it.”

“Well, why don’t you keep the truth to yourself for awhile,” Hep said.

The two of them stopped arguing just in time to look ahead and see a man in a tattered jean jacket approaching them.

“Hey, guys, you got any spare change?” the stranger said.

“Sorry, freah out,” Hep said as they kept walking.

The stranger kept pace with them. “How about a light then?”

“Sorry, buddy, I don’t smoke,” Hep said.

“That’s just a crying shame,” the stranger said. He pulled a beat up looking revolver out of the pocket of his jacket. “I guess I’m going to have to ask for your wallets then.”

“Son of a bitch,” Scroat mumbled.

“I think you need to find someone else to bother,” Hep said, quietly, to the stranger with the gun.

“And I think you need to stop talking and give me your wallet before I introduce you to my good friend Remington.”

“OK, man, just trying to be reasonable,” Hep said, and reached behind himself. Just over his back pocket, his favorite hammer was tucked in to his belt.

“You’re sure you want this, then?” Hep said.

“Are you crazy man? I’ve got a gun. Make with the fucking wallet already.”

“OK, then,” Hep said. Almost too fast to see, he swung the hammer around at arm’s length, and slammed it into the would be robber’s head. The stranger dropped like a bag of sand. His gun skittered across the sidewalk.

Scroat picked it up, unloaded it, and dropped in his pocket. He dropped the ammo in another pocket.

“Is... uh, is he going to be OK?” Junior asked as he looked at the unconscious man on the ground.

“I dunno. Maybe,” Hep said. “But you know, he should have known better than to stick a gun in a mug this ugly. Nothing good was going to come from it.”

“Should we call him an ambulance or something?”

“Nah, we’ll let someone else deal with that. I was just defending myself, after all. He’ll probably just wake up with a really bad headache.”

Hep was reasonably certain this was the case only because he hadn’t seen Death around, and if he’d killed the guy, she would have been along to collect his soul.

After a couple miles, they found a Motel Six. Maybe not the nicest accommodations, but better than sleeping on the sidewalk.

Inside, the clerk looked like he was supremely annoyed to have to deal with clients at this hour when he could have been watching pay-per-view porn on his boss’s dime.

“Yeah?” the clerk said.

“We’d like a room for these two,” Hep said, and gestured towards Sandy and Junior.

“Where are you two going to be then?” the clerk said, while looking at Hep and Scroat.

“What business is that of yours?” Hep asked.

“It’s my business in the ‘do I need to call the police about a couple of pimps or other kind of lowlifes’ kind of way,” the clerk said. He sounded extremely bored.

“We’re going to go back home,” Hep lied. “These two are having a bit of a crisis, and we’re just helping out some friends in need.”

“OK then,” the clerk said. “It’ll be thirty six dollars for the rest of the night. Are they going to need more than one night?”

“Man, I hope not,” Hep said.

“OK then. Thirty six bucks please.”

Hep pulled out his wallet and found he only had a twenty dollar bill.

“Hey, man, have you got sixteen bucks on you?” he asked Scroat.

“Fuck,” Scroat said. He dug out his wallet, and discovered, by coincidence, that he had exactly sixteen dollars. He took the cash out and handed it to Hep.

“Here you go,” he said.

Hep handed the cash to the clerk. The clerk gave him a key, and explained how to get to the room.

Hep and Scroat walked with Sandy and Junior to the room they were assigned, and stopped outside the door.

“OK, you should be alright here for the rest of the night. We’ll be close by. If something weird happens, just start screaming, we’ll be there in no time.”

“OK. Thanks, I think. Good night,” Sandy said. She and Junior went inside.

Hep and Scroat picked out a nice spot on the curb to sit and keep watch for the rest of the night.

Chapter Nineteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:45:00 +0000

The three remaining ghosts of Naughty Gnostics had gathered in the parking lot of a grocery store. They’d been having meetings, of a sort, weekly since things had gone downhill, as they called it. It was nearly midnight.

“Where’s Chuck?” was the first thing any of them said.

“He must have gotten himself caught, Steve,” another one said.

“That’s no good,” said the third.

“You know, this is kind of starting to suck. How did we end up being servants to some crazy bitch god? I think we need to tell her off and go back about our own business,” Steve said.

“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Steve.”

“Why’s that James? You scared of a little girl now?”

“No, I’m scared of what a god might do to my family.”

Steve turned and looked at the other Naughty Gnostic. “How about you Dan? Are you going to let her keep walking all over us?”

Dan said, “Aren’t you worried about what she might do to your family? They don’t deserve to be dragged in to this mess.”

“They won’t be. We can take her,” Steve said.

A voice came from behind Steve then. A woman’s voice. “Are you sure about that?”

Eris seized Steve by the hair and pulled him, backwards, towards her.

“I think I’m going to have to arrange another meeting between you and Death. Pity about your family, too.”

Steve struggled, without effect, against Eris. She spoke to the other two.

“I’d suggest you two get back to work.”

She vanished with Steve.

“Whoa,” Dan said.

“Yeah,” James said. “That can’t be any good at all.”

“And now there’s only the two of us,” Dan said.

“We’re fucked,” James said.

***

Death had arrived at the scene of another passing about five minutes early. John Farborn, 52, was going to lose control of his Porsche coming around a curve, crash through the barrier at the side of the road and fall fifteen feet down in to the ocean, where he would drown when he found himself unable to get out of the car.

At least, that’s what she was expecting to happen. She’d find out for sure if things were going to work out that way in a few minutes.

There wasn’t much traffic on the road, but an occasional car rushed past as she waited. The drivers didn’t notice her.

Any second now, a red Porsche would come charging in to the curve, only to crash.

Before that could happen, though, Eris appeared, still clutching Steve the Naughty Gnostic’s hair.

Death was so surprised by this that all she said was, “Oh.”

Behind Eris, she could see headlights and hear the engine of a sports car working hard approaching. Within seconds, she was going to have get to work and collect the driver’s soul, and here was Eris, out of nowhere. What a day.

The driver of the Porsche saw Eris standing on the side of the road, and hit his brakes hard, getting his speed down to an entirely reasonable and prudent thirty miles per hour. He didn’t notice Death, or Steve. He negotiated the curve with no trouble, and continued on his merry way. Death, Eris and the Naughty Gnostic could hear the Porsche’s engine rev as soon as the car had made it through the turn, then the sound quickly faded away.

Damn it, Death thought. It’s always something. I can’t just do my job, I’ve got to contend with crazy fuckers doing their best to screw things up for me.

Eris said, “Here, I think this belongs to you. I thought you might want him.”

She shoved him forward, towards Death.

“Ow!” Steve said. He was still struggling against Eris’s hand, trying to get her to let go.

“Um. Thanks,” Death said. “I’ve been looking for him. You haven’t seen any of his buddies around, have you? I’d like to get them to the gateway too.”

“Nope, I haven’t seen any others,” Eris said. “I just saw this one ghost running around, and thought you might like to get him to wherever he’s supposed to go. Speaking of which, I need to go. Want to take him?”

“Sure, uh, thanks, Eris,” Death said. She held out her hand to Steve and said, “Would you mind coming with me instead of running off this time?”

Steve took her hand, and Eris let go of his hair.

“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to him,” she said. “He’s been talking crazy since I grabbed him. Gotta run, bye.”

Eris vanished again, leaving Death and Steve on the side of the road.

“That was weird,” Death said to herself.

Steve didn’t say anything.

“So, Steve, old buddy, old pal, how have you been since I saw you last? Have you stayed busy? Looks like you got yourself mixed up with Eris. How did that work out for you?”

“I can’t believe she brought me to you. That just seems, well, crazy,” Steve said.

“You can’t expect a goddess of chaos to be logical and rational, now can you?” Death said. “Of course, why would you expect her to do anything else? Did you, perhaps, have some kind of relationship with her?”

Steve said nothing.

“Because, you know, it would be of great interest to me if you did. And if any of your friends are still, shall we say, in a relationship of some sort with her. I might be able to help them out, you know.”

Steve continued to say nothing.

“I’ve heard she likes to blackmail people in to doing what she wants. You know, it’s got to be hard to blackmail a ghost, though. I mean, how can you threaten a ghost?”

They were both quiet for a minute, then Death said, “Oh, I bet she could threaten to harm your loved ones. Was that it?”

Steve looked down and didn’t say anything.

“Because, if I were able to help out anyone you know who’s, you know, still alive, I would probably need a little notice so I can gather some assistance.”

Steve took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah, she threatened to kill my family if I didn’t do what she told me to do.”

“What has she been telling you to do?” Death said.

“Weird little errands. Go get this. Watch this place for a while. That kind of stuff.”

“Are your two other friends still working for her?”

Steve seemed surprised for a minute, then said, “Yeah. She cornered all of us shortly after we ran from the bar, promised to help us out if we worked with her, and then started threatening to hurt our families if we didn’t do what she said.”

“Do you know anything about a guy named Thomas?”

“Not really, just that we were supposed to protect him from you and anyone who was trying to help you. But we visited our brothers who are stil, you know, alive, to get them to handle that part.”

“Good enough,” Death said. “Now, just tell me where I can find your family, and I’ll see to it that no harm comes to them.”

***

Hep and Scroat were sleeping in front of the TV when Death arrived at their trailer. The TV was tuned to a motorcycle race. Apparently, it wasn’t a very exciting one.

Death cleared her throat.

“Fuck off,” Scroat mumbled, and turned a bit to get more comfortable.

“Hey, Hep,” Death said. Hep didn’t wake up.

“Hey, Hep, wake up,” Death said, a little louder. He didn’t even stir.

“HEY HEP!” Death shouted.

“Grah?” Hep said. He lifted his head off the back of the couch, and tried to focus on whoever was talking to him.

“What the fuck?” Scroat said. He bolted upright in his chair, and took a few seconds before he spotted Death standing in the middle of the room.

“Fuck, Death, you really need to learn to knock,” Scroat said.

“Shut up Scroat. I’ve found out some important information, and I need a little help from the two of you.”

She looked around, and asked, “Where’s Ares?”

“At home sleeping, probably,” Hep said. “What did you find out, and what kind of help do you need?”

“I found out Eris is the one who’s been sending the Naughty Gnostics around to spy on us, and she’s been protecting Thomas as well.”

“Whoa,” Scroat said. “I’m not sure I want to tangle with her. Things always get too complicated.”

“You’re already involved, Scroat,” Hep said.

“Damn it!”

“So what do you need us to do?” Hep said. “Because I think getting to Eris is going to be a little trickier than showing up when she’s not expecting it and grabbing her. She thrives on that kind of shit. And she’s much, much better at causing chaos than we are. She could probably out-chaos Ares if she needed to. He’s just violent.”

“No, I don’t need you to go after Eris. I need you to protect the family of the Naughty Gnostic I just brought to the gateway. It seems Eris has been blackmailing those ghosts in to doing her bidding,” Death said. “That’s why I was hoping Ares was here. He’s good at fighting people off.”

“Hey, we’re pretty tough too, you know,” Scroat said.

“I just like to hedge my bets,” Death said.

“And aren’t Ares and Eris friends?” Hep said. “Seems like she’s always hanging around him, lately.”

“I’ve gotten the impression he’s not so keen on her,” Death said. “Anyway, you two will do just fine. Come on, we need to get to this guy’s family before chaos does.”

“Is this within riding distance?” Hep asked.

“There’s no time for that, and no.” Death said. “Take my hands and I’ll bring you there.”

Hep and Scroat took her hands, and moments later found themselves in front of a run down, rambler-style home. The plants in the yard were in rough shape, and the house looked like it could use a coat of paint.

“Nice place. I’m sure the family we’re supposed to be protecting is just charming,” Scroat said.

“I gave him my word,” Death said. “Don’t make me motivate you.”

Chapter Eighteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 07:14:00 +0000

Hep, Scroat and Ares were supremely bored. They’d tried playing gin, had tinkered with their vehicles, and had, briefly, tried to brainstorm ways to get to this Thomas guy, who seemed to have someone watching over him.

The best they could come up with was agreeing they should figure out who was protecting him, and try to figure out why.

This brilliant bit of detective work made the three of them supremely thirsty, and so, they’d gone to a bar and spent the previous six hours drinking. The bar had been having an average day until they showed up. Now they’d sold out of most of the beers they had on tap, and one of the bar employees had been sent to buy more kegs before they were out of bottled beer as well.

“Man, what are we even doing? We could be out on the road somewhere,” Hep said, “instead of waiting around for another errand from Death. I think we’d have the exact same chance of catching him while on a road trip as we do trying to figure out where he might be hiding out, and where he might show up next.”

“Fucking A,” Scroat said.

“I dunno,” Ares said. “I don’t mind helping Death out.”

Scroat gave Ares a bloodshot stare, “Are you saying you don’t have something better you could be doing with your time?”

“Well, I guess there might be other stuff I could do, but, I dunno, I like helping her.”

“Sorry, say that again?” Scroat said. “Since when did you like helping anyone? I mean, apart from helping separate their head from their neck. Why the sudden interest in Death?”

“Hey, I don’t have to explain myself,” Ares said.

“Uh oh,” Scroat said.

“What?” Hep said.

Scroat leaned over to Hep and stage whispered, “Ares wants to get it on with Death!”

Hep nearly choked on his beer, and said, “What?”

“Ares and Death/sitting in a tree/F-U-C-K-I-N...”

Scroat did not manage to finish, as Ares had punched him hard enough to knock him off his chair.

“OW!” Scroat said from the floor. He kept talking as he got up. “Man, why did you have to hit me in the ear. Fuck. You really need to work on your sense of humor.”

The bartender shouted over at them, “Hey, no roughhousing in the bar. You want to wrassle, take it outside.”

Ares seemed unusually interested in his drink. After a moment, he said to Scroat, “You shouldn’t talk about Death like that.”

Scroat’s eyes went wide. “Oh, fuck, so it’s true. I was right. You want to make little war babies with Death.”

Ares didn’t say anything.

“OK,” Hep said. “Well, that’s a little unusual for you, but, hey, there’s a special someone for everyone, right?”

“God, she’s so skinny. You know you’re likely to get injured if you ever fuck her, right?” Scroat said.

Ares glared at Scroat, who stopped talking, but clearly had several more choice quips at the ready. They drank in silence for a few minutes.

“You know she’s on the run, like, all the time, right?” Scroat said. “I mean, it’ll have to be a quickie every time you two want to have sex.”

Ares stared at Scroat, and said “Am I going to have to kill you in order to get a day or two of peace?”

For a god, this was not as bad of a threat as it would be to a mortal. If a god in corporeal form, as the three of them were right then, died, he or she would just wake up wherever his or her origin was. In Scroat’s case, that would be the Australian bush country. The last time he’d died, he’d only had to hike for a couple hours before he found a road and caught a ride, but prior to that, he’d occasionally had to hike through the bush for days before finding signs of civilization. It was about twenty four hours of travel back to the United States, by plane, after he’d managed to get to the airport, so getting killed was still a bit of a hassle.

“Easy killer,” Scroat said. “There’s no need to send me back home, and there’s some people there I’d really rather avoid. I’ve owed one guy ten bucks for about a hundred years now. I’d hate to bump in to him with no cash on me.”

“Just watch your god damned mouth,” Ares said.

“Can’t do it, sorry.” Scroat said.

Hep saw something out of the corner of his eye, and turned to look. He wasn’t expecting to actually see anything of interest, but in his drunkenness he wasn’t able to ignore whatever it was either.

He caught the briefest of glimpses of what looked like one of those Naughty Gnostic goons slipping out the door. He sighed. Now he was going to have to investigate. He was too drunk for these shenanigans.

“Hey you two,” Hep said to Scroat and Ares, “I think we’ve got one of our Naughty Gnostic friends keeping an eye on us. We should probably go see what he’s up to, huh?”

“Fuck!” Scroat said. “Why does the action have to wait until we’re drunk? Couldn’t he have spied on us when we were playing gin? Then we wouldn’t have had to interrupt our precious drinking time.”

“Yep, it’s a real pain in the ass,” Hep said. He got up from the table, and staggered a bit. “Let’s go.”

Scroat and Ares got up, a bit wobbly, and the three of them staggered towards the bar’s front door.

“Hey! You guys are coming back, right?” the bartender shouted at them. As of right then, their tab was staggering, and he wasn’t about to let anyone walk away from a bill that size, even if two of them did resemble pro-wrestlers.

“Yep, just got to see to a thing outside,” Hep said.

“I don’t need to call the police, do I?” the bartender said.

“Nope. Send another round of drinks to our table, would you? I anticipate we’ll be thirsty when we get back,” Hep said.

The three of them went outside and looked around to see if there was any sign of the guy who was spying on them.

Scroat saw someone in a biker vest duck around a corner.

“There he is,” Scroat said, and pointed.

The three of them staggered as quickly as they could to the corner Scroat had pointed to. Hep was relieved to discover the Naughty Gnostic had gone down a dead end alley. It didn’t take much to get winded after consuming enough alcohol to paralyze the entire population of the state.

The Naughty Gnostic had reached the end of the alley and turned to face them. He was looking more than a little worried for himself.

“Hey buddy,” Ares said, “How’s it hanging?”

“I’m not afraid of you!” the Naughty Gnostic said.

“Well that’s good. I’m not afraid of you either. Between you and me though, if I was you, I might be a bit afraid of my pals Hep and Scroat here. Hep’s got kind of a vicious temper, and Scroat, well, he’s just a crazy asshole. Best to stay out of their way, you know what I mean?”

The Naughty Gnostic didn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” Hep said, “We’re not all that interested in roughing you up tonight. We just want to know what you’re doing here.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the Naughty Gnostic said.

Hep smiled, and said, “I said we’re not interested in roughing you up. Not that we won’t rough you up if we have to.”

He reached to grab the biker, and his hand passed through him. He was a ghost. He grabbed again, and caught hold of him.

“OK, you’re a ghost. So maybe we can’t hurt you. We can still make things kind of unpleasant. So, why not just tell us why you were spying on us?”

“I wasn’t spying on you. Not all of you. Just him,” the Naughty Gnostic said and gestured at Ares.

“That’s interesting,” Ares said. “Who, exactly, has you spying on me?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? Don’t trust me?”

“Because she threatened to kill my family if I told.”

“She?” Ares said, suddenly very interested. “It’s a she?”

“Oh fuck,” the Naughty Gnostic said. “Look, I’ve said too much. Whoever it is threatened to kill my family and friends if I didn’t do what she said, and she said she’d kill them extra, whatever that means, if I told you what was going on.”

“Well that’s interesting,” Ares said.

“Real interesting,” Hep said. “Think we should believe him?”

“Are you fucking nuts?” Scroat said. “If he said the sky was blue, I’d go outside and check for myself.”

“Please, man, I don’t want to be watching you, but I’m scared for my family. They didn’t do anything to get wrapped up in this.”

“Why don’t you tell us who’s threatening you. Maybe we can help you out,” Hep said.

“What are you talking about?” Ares said.

“Yeah, Hep, what the fuck are you talking about? Why should we help out some guy who’s been spying on us?” Scroat said.

“I’m guessing we’ve got an interest in whoever is bossing this idiot around,” Hep said.

The Naughty Gnostic was shaking his head, “I can’t tell you. You can’t help me. She’s too quick. Sometimes I think she’s got someone else keeping an eye on me to make sure I’m doing what she told me to. Just let me go, and I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

Hep sighed. “That’s not going to work. I’m sure you’ll try to stay out of our way, but let’s be honest here, whoever this is has been threatening to kill your nearest and dearest. Something tells me if she tells you to get in our way, you’ll say ‘yes ma’am!’ and end up right here in our way again. Damn it. Now we’re going to have to keep an eye on you on top of everything else.”

Scroat coughed. “Hey, uh, Hep, how do you propose we keep an eye on him?”

“I guess we’ll just have to trap him in a room in our trailer until this all passes over.”

“Aw, come on. Why do we have to keep this fucker at our place?”

“Do you know a better place?”

“How about anywhere that isn’t our home? We could rent a storage locker and leave him there with a stack of magazines.”

“Yeah, how are we going to keep an eye on him?”

“They’ve got security cameras.”

“That’s not going to do us much good if his boss comes and springs him, now is it?”

Ares suddenly brightened a bit. “Hey, what if we called Death? She could bring him to the other side.”

Hep blinked, and smiled a bit.

“Now that’s some fucking thinking right there,” Scroat said. “Who knew you weren’t a complete idiot?”

“I have my moments,” Ares said. “Anyone know how to get ahold of her?”

“Yeah, I’ve got her phone number,” Hep said. He fished his phone out of his pocket with his free hand and tossed it to Ares.

Moments later, Death appeared in the alley with them. She looked at Ares, Hep and Scroat, and then the Naughty Gnostic.

“So, I gather things haven’t exactly been going your way since you ran off, huh?” Death said to him. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. There’s a reason ghosts are rare, you know. It’s because being a ghost sucks.”

“Please, she’s threatened to kill my family,” the Naughty Gnostic said.

“She, whoever she is, won’t kill your family for this. It’s not your fault.”

“Between you and me,” he said, “she didn’t seem like the type who went for rational thought. She seemed more like the killing everyone because it’s kind of fun for her sort.”

“I think you’re worried about things that won’t happen,” Death said. She held out her hand to the Naughty Gnostic. “Take my hand. I suggest you come willingly. I’ve been trying to track you and the rest of your buddies down for a while, and I’m not really in the mood to play games. These three might not be able to do much to you, but I assure you, I can make your journey to the afterlife very, very uncomfortable.”

The Naughty Gnostic glanced at Hep, Scroat and Ares, who were all looking back at him in a less than reassuring way, and decided taking his chances with Death would be better than getting locked in a spare room for an unspecified length of time. He took Death’s hand, and the two of them vanished.

“So,” Scroat said. “That was interesting. Should we go back inside and see how our drinks are doing?”

“Yes, I think so,” Hep said.

“Sounds like a fine plan to me,” Ares said.

“Man, I don’t know what we would have done with a ghost taking up a spare room in our trailer,” Hep said. “There’s barely enough room in there as it is.”

Back inside the bar, a fresh round of drinks was waiting for them. Before long they were laughing and carrying on, and had mostly forgotten about their encounter with the ghostly biker.

A while later, Death joined them at their table.

“So,” she said by way of greeting, “did you get any information out of that guy?”

“What guy?” Scroat asked.

Death rolled her eyes, and spoke very slowly as she said, “The guy you three grabbed in the alleyway out there. Ghost. Naughty Gnostic. Pain in the ass. Remember?”

“We didn’t learn anything, except that whoever his boss is is apparently a woman, and that she’s threatened to kill his family if he screwed up.”

“Really?” Death said. “That’s the second one of those guys who’s said that someone was going to kill his family if he didn’t do what he was told.”

“Seems like a crazy kind of thing to threaten a ghost with,” Ares said. “You kill their family, everyone gets reunited. Could be a win-win kind of deal.”

“I think you’re being too pragmatic there, Ares,” Hep said. “Most people wouldn’t like for their families to be killed because of their actions. That’s the kind of thing that makes people feel pretty bad, actually.”

“Well, I’ve never understood people, for the most part, anyway. Mostly, I just like killing them. Talk about blowing off some steam. There’s nothing like a good bloodletting to clear the head.”

“And that’s what we like about you, Ares,” Hep said. “But most of us aren’t so much in to the killing people, unless it’s unavoidable.”

“Are you saying I could have avoided killing the people I did?” Ares asked. He sounded offended by the very idea.

“Well, you get a little overly enthusiastic now and then, I think,” Hep said, trying to be tactful.

“Whatever. Some people just need killing, and I’m the man to do it,” Ares said. He noticed his glass was empty. “Excuse me, I’m going to get another drink.”

He got up and walked a crooked line to the bar.

Death said to Hep and Scroat, “So who would want to spy on Ares and me enough to threaten to kill the families of a bunch of ghosts?”

“You’ve got me,” Hep said. “I’m not interested enough in what Ares does to threaten to write a sternly worded letter to someone who failed to keep me up to date.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine worrying about Ares enough to have someone watch him. And it’s not like he’s discrete in any way. When Ares does something, everyone knows, whether they want to or not,” Scroat said.

“Hmm,” Death said. Her phone beeped. She took it out of her pocket and looked at it. “Crap. Gotta run. See you guys later.”

“Later,” Hep and Scroat said.

Ares came back to their table a few minutes later, with a beer for him, and a rum and Coke for Death.

“Hey, where did she go?” Ares said.

“Duty called, told her she was needed immediately,” Hep said.

“Just think, man,” Scroat said. “If you were to have a relationship with her, this would be it right here. You standing there looking dumb, holding a drink for someone who left because she had something more important to attend to.”

“Shut up, Scroat,” Ares said.

“Just saying,” Scroat said.

“And I’m just saying shut the Hell up, would you?” Ares said.

“OK, man, no need to get all testy. I’m just joking around a bit.” Scroat said.

The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, before resuming an earlier discussion about the merits and weaknesses of superchargers as compared to turbochargers. Seemingly minutes later, the bartender was turning on the lights and insisting they pay their immense bar tab. He was going to have to spend the following day driving all over town with a van to restock the bar, and by God, he wasn’t going to do it without get paid.

It took longer than the bartender would have liked for the three of them to settle up, but eventually they did, and staggered their way out of the bar. When he was done doing the math, he realized he’d gotten more money in one tip from them than he usually did in an entire week.

He hoped they’d come back soon.

Chapter Seventeen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:42:00 +0000

Thomas’s main focus when he fled from the two apparent ambushes was to simply get as far away as he could as quickly as he could. As a result, he ended up in a part of town he wasn’t particularly familiar with. There weren’t too many people around, and it seemed safe enough, so he decided to pull over and try to regroup a bit before he drove any further.

There wasn’t, so far as he could tell, anyone he could call for support. No one except this Eris character, and he wasn’t certain she was really the best person to rely on.

He’d last visited his friends two months prior, and it hadn’t been a fun visit. Everyone had been shocked to see him, then over just a few minutes grew extremely uncomfortable, and they all made excuses to leave as soon as they could.

At least he hadn’t had to pay for the pizza.

He tried visiting his parents, which was even worse, about a month ago. His mother wept when she first saw him, and his father hugged him as though he hadn’t seen him for years. But again, within minutes, they grew quiet, then seemed disturbed, and finally his father, quietly, asked him to leave.

Thomas felt desperately lonely. He’d occasionally manage to have a conversation with a stranger, for a minute or two, but there wasn’t anyone he could turn to for real conversations, or real help.

He leaned back in his seat and sighed. There had to be a way to connect with people. Otherwise, what’s the point of living? He could just stop hiding, pay Death a visit while she was working, and be done with the whole mess.

Which was actually starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

“Hey buddy, why are you looking so glum?” said a female voice in the car with him.

He jumped slightly, then turned and saw Eris in the passenger seat again.

“Just kind of a crazy day. Trying to process it all,” Thomas said.

“Great, wasn’t it?”

“Sorry, what? Great? Not really. There’s apparently a couple of bikers after me.”

“Yeah! It’s exciting as hell! Never a dull moment when you’ve got a bunch of gods chasing after you!”

“Wait, what? They’re gods? Oh, I’m so very, very fucked,” Thomas said. He hadn’t signed up for this kind of fun.

“Yeah! Gods! Chasing you around and making a huge mess of things! You couldn’t pay to have this much fun.”

“I guess it’s not really my kind of fun. I think I might have gotten myself in way over my head. I didn’t think I was going to be getting chased by gods for Pete’s sake,” Thomas said.

He was starting to work himself in to a good panic about his situation. There weren’t supposed to be consequences like this from avoiding death. He was supposed to be having a good time being not dead. That was it. Instead, a couple of gods, biker gods at that, were apparently eager to get ahold of him. He assumed that at this point, dying was probably the least of his concerns.

He could not die. And that might be worse.

Eris lit a cigarette before she said anything.

“Well, what did you think was going to happen when you cheated Death? I mean, she is rules and regulations all the way. Seems pretty obvious to me that she’d be trying to catch you. I’d suggest you embrace the chaos and enjoy yourself,” Eris said.

She looked over at him, and apparently didn’t like what she saw.

“OK, I see that look on your face. That look says to me that you’re thinking it might be a great time to stop hiding from Death and just let her take you. Well I’m having way too much fun to let something as insignificant as you muck it all up. So you listen very closely to this. You are going to avoid Death at all costs, or I’m going to arrange for your family and friends to have premature meetings with her. Get it?”

Thomas swallowed, and felt as though his heart had dropped down through his feet and in to the ground, where it was immediately crushed in a cave in.

“I am so fucked,” he said softly, to himself.

Eris took a drag from her cigarette and said, “Good, so we’re clear. Now, I’ve got some other stuff to do, so you’re going to lay low until I decide what you’re going to do next. I think there’s been enough excitement to keep Death jumping at shadows for a little while, so we shouldn’t even need to see her for a few days.”

She tossed her cigarette out the window, turned, and poked Thomas in the shoulder.

“Don’t forget, you screw with me, your family is as good as dead. See you later,” she said, and vanished.

Thomas had stopped working himself in to a panic, and instead leapt straight to full-bore freak out.

***

Death had pretty much given up on eating any time soon. She’d also given up on her schedule. She brought her notes with her, but the chances of things going even remotely by her plans were slim. Currently, her method of operation was to hang out where ever she cared to, until her phone beeped to alert her to a new Death.

This strategy drove her up the wall, but was better than following her detailed plans only to have the guest of honor fail to show up, and then have her phone beep to tell her someone was actually dying somewhere on the other side of the world.

All the same, she brought her notes with her, just to evaluate how badly things had gone wrong. So far, she was at one in four for deaths going more or less according to plan. Her phone would ring, she’d arrive, check the notes, and improvise as necessary. She hoped things wouldn’t get too much more chaotic before they found Thomas and restored the order she’d worked so hard to create. Each death required a significant amount of planning, and she hated seeing all that work going to waste. Painstakingly orchestrating a series of events leading up to a perfect end to a person’s life, only to see them get hit by a bus or something stupid like that, really didn’t do much for her sense of pride in her work.

Her phone beeped. She looked at the display and saw Claude Litteman, 24, head injury.

Well, she thought, this promises to be a good time. Head injuries weren’t especially interesting, most times. Usually it was a slam, bang, done kind of deal. Or, she’d arrive just in time for someone who’d been in a coma for a good while to finally give up the ghost. Either way, they weren’t especially engrossing, and she really, really wanted to be distracted by work for a little bit.

She arrived to find Claude setting up a table saw. It was apparent that Claude wasn’t an expert on table saws. The blade was dirty, the fence was crooked, and it was safe to assume the blade was dull.

Claude turned the saw on, all the same, and then lined up his piece of stock against the fence. He began feeding the wood in to the saw, and even Death could tell it didn’t sound quite right. Claude pressed on.

Before he could even tell what had happened, the tablesaw kicked the piece of wood back at him. The shock of being hit by a piece of high velocity wood threw Claude off balance, and he toppled over backwards, where his head met a metal fuel can.

“So, is someone going to turn that off?” Claude’s ghost asked Death. He gestured towards the still-running saw.

“I imagine someone will shut it off around the same time someone notices you’re dead,” Death said. She held out her hand. “Would you come with me?”

Claude held up one finger, and said, “Wait. What, exactly, just happened to me?”

“You got hit by a flying piece of wood, fell over backwards, hit your head on a can of gasoline and apparently scrambled your brains well enough to kill you. A pretty straightforward death, I’d say.”

“Straightforward? I’m too young for this though. I was supposed to live to be eighty and die having sex with someone much younger.”

Death rolled her eyes. She understood that death came as a shock sometimes, but didn’t really care to hang around and discuss it when she could be out tracking down Thomas before he caused some serious trouble.

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you that you aren’t going to die that way. You’re already dead from a head injury. Now, would you take my hand?”

“I guess,” Claude said. “But I think this totally sucks.”

Every one is a critic, Death thought. “Take my hand,” she said.

Claude took her hand, and they stepped out of this world.

After she had brought Claude to the gateway, Death had a bit of time to sit and think. What she thought was, At least that one was relatively simple. I didn’t have to chase him down, throw a cement truck at him, or anything. I gotta stay focused on the positive. If I’m lucky, the next one will also go smoothly.

She wondered how long it would be until Thomas showed up at another Death and gave her a smug smile, or left another present for her on her motorcycle. With any luck at all, he would get over-confident and get close enough for her to grab. Then it would just be a matter of waiting for everything he’d inadvertently screwed up to correct itself. Really, it would probably only take a few weeks for most of the deaths to get back with the program. There’d still be a bit of clean up here and there, but nothing that a hundred years or so wouldn’t clear up.

Her phone beeped at her. Time for another death. She sighed, and whisked herself on to the next client.

Chapter Sixteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:04:00 +0000

Hep and Scroat were playing gin. So far, they’d been playing for about six hours, and there wasn’t an end in sight. Picking up cards, laying down cards. It was a good way to pass the time. Both of them were supremely bored, but neither had an idea for anything to do, besides going for a long ride, so they continued dealing new hands.

Death appeared just after Hep had won a hand. Her arrival was warmly received.

“Didn’t we fucking ask you to call before you show up? What if I hadn’t had any pants on?” Scroat said.

“Then you probably would have been embarrassed when I started pointing and giggling. Good thing you had your pants on,” Death said.

“So did you want to play cards with us, or have you got a reason for this visit?” Hep said.

“Well, as much fun as it looks like you’re having, I’m going to have to pass on the card game. However, if you’re interested, I may have some stuff for you to take care of.”

“Really? What have you got?” Hep asked. He kicked a chair away from the table for Death to sit and join them.

“I’ve discovered this Thomas guy has been trying to interfere with upcoming deaths. I’ve fed him a bit of information about a few deaths that are going to happen in your neck of the woods over the next few days. If you guys are willing, you could stake them out and maybe grab Thomas when he’s not expecting it.”

“I don’t know,” Scroat said, “our last stake out didn’t work out too well.”

Hep coughed, then said, “Yeah, but now we know where we went wrong. This time, we can just grab him instead of freaking out his mom. And it’s got to be more fun than sitting here playing gin for hours on end. I think I’m getting new callouses from shuffling the cards.”

“You’ve got me there,” Scroat said.

“Cool,” Death said. She laid a folder with her notes on the table. “All the details you need should be in here. Names, addresses, times of death, and so on. I figure Thomas is probably going to try and warn them in order of death.”

“And you don’t think he’s just going to call them to warn them?” Scroat said.

“Well, would you take someone seriously if they called you on the phone and tried to warn you about their upcoming death? I expect most of the people he warns in person don’t take him seriously. If he were to call, I expect most of them would have forgotten about the conversation by the time they’d hung up the phone.”

“OK, good point.”

“I’m sure you guys will manage to grab him at the first person’s home,” Death said. Her phone beeped at her. “Time to go again. Good luck!”

She vanished.

Hep got up from the table. “Well, this should be straight forward enough. Hang out, keep watch, grab guy. Piece of cake. I’m going to go get myself presentable, and then we should roll on over to the first place on the list.”

He had just made it into the hallway that led to his bedroom when someone knocked on the front door of the trailer.

“Were you expecting anyone?” Hep asked Scroat.

“Nope.”

Hep went to the front door and opened it. He was rather surprised to see Ares standing outside.

“Ares! I wasn’t expecting to see you. What’s going on?”

“I’m just trying to avoid Eris. I can’t seem to get away from her lately. I figured this would be about the last place she’d even think to look for me.”

Hep felt his stomach lurch. “Man, don’t you bring Eris around here. I don’t need to deal with that kind of trouble.”

“I told you, I came here because she wouldn’t think to look for me here. Besides, I’m just here to visit, not to stay.”

“So what did you do to piss her off?” Scroat said.

“Nothing. I think she’s got a crush on me,” Ares said. “Too bad she’s not really my type.”

He walked over to the kitchen table where Scroat was still sitting and sat down.

“So what are you guys up to?”

“Well, to be honest, we were just on our way out,” Hep said.

“Where are you going?”

“To stake out some person’s house and try to grab a troublemaker that might drop by.”

“Some person? Why are you interested in ‘some person’?”

“We’re doing a favor for Death” Hep said.

Ares perked up immediately. Here was a chance to score some brownie points with Death.

“Oh yeah? Do you need a hand?”

Hep was a little distrustful of Ares’ enthusiasm. “We’re not going to kill anyone. We’re just going to try and catch a guy who’s been giving Death a bit of trouble. She can deal with him however she sees fit, but we’re going to deliver him unharmed.”

“OK, taking him alive, I can handle that,” Ares said.

“Since when?” Scroat said.

“Shut the hell up, Scroat,” Ares said.

“As long as you are sure you can manage this without killing anyone, even someone who really deserves it, I guess you can help out,” Hep said. “Then we can be in two places at once. It’ll give us an even better chance of catching him.”

“Sounds good. Where are we going, and who is this guy I’m looking for?”

Hep handed Ares one of the sheets with Death’s notes about an upcoming death.

“The guy we’re looking for is named Thomas Swinton. He’s pretty unremarkable. A khakis and polo shirt type. He’s figured out a way to evade Death. We were able to see him, though, no problem, so he might only be hidden from Death.”

“How did he figure that out? Unremarkable people aren’t usually the ones who uncover that kind of knowledge,” Ares said. “Usually, it’s someone who really knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird. Maybe he just looks normal,” Hep said.

“Or maybe someone is helping him out for some reason,” Scroat said. “There might be someone out there with ulterior motives.”

“Such as?” Hep said.

“Maybe someone wants to keep Death distracted, so they’ve got Thomas out causing a ruckus, while they do whatever the fuck it is they want.”

“Sneaky,” Ares said. “I’ve never thought of not killing someone as a method of distraction.”

“It would explain how some random asshole came by the knowledge he needed to keep dodging Death, too,” Hep said. “It might pay to be alert to any strangeness while we’re staking these places out. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out who was behind this mess as well.”

“I don’t know,” Scroat said. “If I had some guy causing a diversion, I’d probably want him causing a diversion pretty far away from me.”

“OK, we’ll keep our eyes open, and not expect too much,” Hep said. “Ares, you’ve got the address and other info you need there. Let’s get out there and catch us a Thomas.”

***

Hep and Scroat parked a half-block down the street from Maurice Clementhall’s house. Scroat’s bike, as far as anyone needed to know, was having an electrical problem again.

Maurice, 42, was apparently going to drown tomorrow, according to the notes Death provided. That meant Thomas was going to have to warn Maurice soon, because it would be too late before long.

The neighborhood Maurice lived in seemed pretty nice. Maurice lived in an older neighborhood in Phoenix. The houses looked like they’d been built back in the 1940’s, maybe earlier, and there were large trees growing in everyone’s yard. Large trees are a rarity in most. They provided a good amount of shade, so it was actually a fairly cozy neighborhood to stake out.

No one seemed to notice the two bikers working on the side of the road in their neighborhood all afternoon. Well, almost no one.

Eris watched Hep and Scroat through binoculars from a parked car further down the street. She expected Thomas to show up any minute, and when he did, she planned to make things a little interesting to keep Hep and Scroat occupied until Thomas was done visiting with Maurice.

Later in the afternoon, a nondescript white Japanese sedan pulled in to Maurice’s driveway. Hep and Scroat watched as discretely as they could manage. A young man in khaki pants and a polo shirt got out of the car. It was Thomas.

Hep and Scroat set down their tools immediately, and started walking toward Maurice’s house, and Thomas.

Nearby, there was a series of loud cracking noises. Hep turned to see what was causing the racket, just in time to see one of the old trees starting to fall towards them.

“Look out!” he shouted. Just in time, too. He and Scroat jumped back out of the way of the falling tree.

Remarkably, Thomas did not turn to see what the matter was. He rang Maurice’s doorbell, and took a step back from the door.

The tree crashed to the ground just a few feet in front of Hep and Scroat. A nearby car broke it’s fall. Seconds later, the car’s alarm started to go off.

Thomas did notice that racket. He turned and saw two bikers brushing themselves off on the far side of the fallen tree. They looked like what his mom had told him the guys in his apartment had looked like. One big guy with bad legs, one smaller guy that looked irritating.

Maurice opened his front door. “Yes?” he said.

“Uh,” Thomas’s mind was too occupied with the potentially dangerous bikers for him to recall why he was there. “Um. Hang on.”

He took a deep breath, and got a brief mental glimpse of what he was doing there. Maurice was going to die tomorrow.

“Uh, You’re going to die soon. Be careful. Sorry, gotta run,” Thomas said. He bolted for his car.

Maurice watched, mildly irritated, as Thomas scrabbled his way into his own car, started it, and tore out of his driveway.

“Darn missionaries keep getting more aggressive, and more annoying,” he said as he turned and went back in to his house.

Hep and Scroat had just made their way around the tree in time to see Thomas’s car spinning it’s front wheels as he sped around a corner and drove out of sight.

“Well, fuck.” Scroat said.

***

To be honest, Ares has always had more of a siege personality than a stakeout personality. As such, he had parked his highly customized 1965 Ford Falcon station wagon, custom plate BTTLWGN, at the end of Anthony White’s driveway, and stood leaning against the front fender, waiting for Thomas to show up. He’d glanced at Death’s notes, and learned that Anthony was going to die from a freak accident at a car wash in roughly 36 hours.

He figured this should all be simple enough. Just wait for Thomas to show up, grab him, call Death, and every one gets a beer. It was a shame he wasn’t going to get to kill anyone, but then, there was always the possibility that Death would let him do the honors if he did a really good job catching Thomas. The guy was going to have to end up dead somehow.

And now that he thought about it, the guy had to end up dead somehow. Why the hell not kill him? Taking prisoners is a lot of work. Usually they struggle and try to escape and generally make the rest of your day a total pain in the ass. They complain about the conditions you keep them in. He’d never had a dead guy try to run away before.

Well, there was one time, but Ares was fairly sure that the cause of that little mess was just a last hurrah by the recently-deceased nervous system. Anyway, he didn’t get far.

So it was decided. Thomas would arrive, Thomas would be assisted off this mortal coil by Ares, and then everyone would get beers for a job well done. It was a perfect plan. This was all, of course, assuming Hep and Scroat didn’t catch Thomas, which would be kind of a drag.

Since Ares was not one for stealth, he was unlikely to notice it if someone else was being sneaky. After all, eventually the sneaky one would have to do something overt, and then it was a simple matter of taking them apart and putting them back together wrong.

As such, he didn’t realize he was being watched. That is to say, he didn’t realize he was being watched by anyone who wasn’t openly watching him. Anthony, for example, had been checking on Ares from various windows of his house at five minute intervals. The other neighbors had also been checking on him.

A ways down the road, however, Eris was hidden, and watching his every move. She was deeply hurt that Ares would be there, helping Death out instead of spending his time with her. And just because she was crazy about him didn’t mean she was about to let him ruin her fun. She was fully prepared to launch chaos at him from several directions if necessary.

Around six o’clock in the evening, a nondescript white Japanese sedan turned on to Anthony’s street. Ares failed to notice this development, because Hep and Scroat had come racing up on their motorcycles at that moment as well.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” Ares said, as Hep and Scroat parked and hurried over to him. Before they were able to say anything, there were police sirens blaring from down the street. Several patrol cars came charging towards them, and screeched to a halt. Ares, Hep and Scroat stared at the police cars, dumbfounded, for several seconds. Which is when twenty Naughty Gnostics in their war colors came roaring in to the neighborhood on their motorcycles.

Thomas saw the chaos brewing ahead, and made the first right turn he could. Anthony was just going to be on his own, this time.

“Damn, guys,” Ares said to Hep and Scroat, “What did you bring all these assholes for?”

“We didn’t. We came to tell you someone had tried to drop a tree on us when we were trying to catch Thomas,” Hep said.

The Naughty Gnostics had dismounted, and were stomping their way towards Hep, Ares and Scroat. The police were shouting, without effect, at the Gnostics to stop where they were.

“So this is probably my tree, is what you’re saying?” Ares said.

“Yeah, probably,” Hep said.

Ares smiled in his special, unhinged way. “And here I thought it was going to be a boring day. This is perfect.”

The Naughty Gnostics had lined up across from Ares, Hep and Scroat, and were doing their best to look intimidating. The effect would have been quite powerful on most people.

“Aw, look at you guys,” Ares said. “Trying to look all scary, just like real warriors. You’re so cute! Here, let me give you a lesson in looking scary.”

Since he was standing slightly in front of Hep and Scroat, they were unable to appreciate Ares’ war face. However, the cops all drew their weapons, and the Gnostics looked like they would break break rank and run if their pants weren’t suddenly full of something.

Ares strode towards the Gnostics, arms out, with his hands balled in to fists.

“So which of you pretty boys wants to go first?” Ares said. A few of the Gnostics ran at him, while most of the others backed away. Ares caught the first of the Gnostics by the hair, and lifted him clean off the ground. The others who had charged at him came up short and stared.

“Check this out,” he said, and punched clean through the guy’s chest.

At this point, the cops were yelling into their radios about bringing in the National Guard.

Ares pulled his hand back out, dropped the corpse of the Gnostic, and said, “Who’s next? Don’t be shy! There’s plenty to go around! Hey, it just occurred to me that I could work you guys like a puppet if I didn’t punch all the way through. Any volunteers? Don’t make me ask twice.”

By this point, even the meanest of the Naughty Gnostics had decided the better part of valor was knowing when to run screaming like a little girl, and that the time to run was right now.

Death appeared then, obviously annoyed. She saw the ghost of the newly-dead Gnostic, and seized him by the collar. “I’m not letting another one of you guys get away.”

Then she stared at Ares, Hep and Scroat. “What. The. Fuck? All you had to do was be here and grab the guy. How hard is that?”

Hep and Scroat looked at each other. Hep said, “I think someone set us up. We were just sitting here waiting, then all these people showed up.”

The police at this point were yelling commands and advancing with their guns.

“You know, I hate to kill cops that haven’t done anything to deserve it,” Ares said. “I’m going to split before I get tempted.”

He vanished, leaving Hep, Scroat and Death (who was still unseen by the police) behind.

Death rolled her eyes, and said, “This is going to get way too complicated if I leave you guys here.”

She held out her free hand to Hep and Scroat and said, “Take it already.”

Hep and Scroat shrugged, and did. The four of them vanished.

The cops, who had seen just about enough crazy shit in the last three minutes, took several minutes to evaluate the situation, before deciding they could lower their weapons and return to their cars. The paperwork for this was going to be completely impossible.

Death kept a firm grip on the Naughty Gnostic until the gateway had arrived. She looked at him and said, “You guys have been way too much of a pain in my ass lately,” then shoved him through the gateway, leaving her in the darkness with Hep and Scroat.

“I think we’re going back to your place to have a little chat,” Death said.

In the blink of an eye, they were in Hep and Scroat’s trailer.

“So, can you explain to me how Ares got involved in all of this?” Death said.

“Well, he showed up because he said Eris was bugging him, and then he offered to help out. I figured we could be in two places as the same time that way, so I gave him the notes for that guy whose house we were at,” Hep said.

Death turned to look at Scroat. He spoke before she did.

“What? That’s exactly what happened. The fucker showed up, offered to help, cocked things up, and bailed.”

“So why were you there?” Death asked.

“Someone tried to drop a fucking tree on us,” Scroat said. “In the commotion, Thomas got away. We went to give Ares some back up.”

“Who tried to drop a tree on you?”

“No idea.”

“Damn it,” Death said. “What do you think the chances are that Thomas is going to keep trying to warn people?”

“Well, I’d guess they’re pretty slim,” Hep said. “On the other hand, he did run away before witnessing Ares. So if he’s dumb and persistent, he might keep trying. Should we stake out the next place on the list?”

Death thought for a minute, and said, “No. If someone managed to sabotage you at both places, I suspect they’ll find a way to sabotage you at the next place. And a gang of bikers with a side order of police intervention is a pretty big step up from knocking over a tree. I’d guess something really ugly would happen at the next place.”

“OK, so what do we do next?” Hep asked.

“I don’t know,” Death said.

She knew Thomas wanted to warn people. She knew he could see her, though she couldn’t see him unless he wanted to be seen. Then she smiled a little bit.

Sometimes he wanted to be seen. He was following her around and popping up at deaths in order to watch, or whatever it was he got out of it. Maybe she just needed some reinforcements when she was tending to deaths. If they were careful, he might even get cocky enough to let himself get caught.

Chapter Fifteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:46:00 +0000

[Note from the author: Hi there. I'm trying to get caught up and was burning the midnight oil a bit this evening. I started falling asleep while still typing, so if anything near the end of this chapter is too bizarre to make sense, well, I hope it's amusing at the least. It's all part of the excitement of high-speed, unedited fiction creation, right? Going to sleep now. Nighty night.]

[Follow up note: Looks like it was mostly OK, except for getting a character name confused. Fixed it, so you if didn't trip over it earlier, you won't now.]

After several fruitless attempts, Death had managed to carve out fifteen minutes to herself where she could go back to her apartment and try to get her notes sorted out. The first thing to take care of would be to get her notes out of her desk and somewhere very secure. Maybe a safety deposit box at a major bank. Or, maybe somewhere more secure than that. It probably depended on who was trying to get at her notes. If it was Thomas, a bank vault would probably be more than sufficient. If it was someone else, someone divine, a bank vault probably wouldn’t even slow him or her down.

Death decided it would be better to be safe than sorry. Luckily, there was a place she knew on the other side that no one could find. Not many could get to the other side without her assistance or permission anyhow.

Death had her drawer open, and she was pulling out files and binders and ancient, bound tomes when she had a thought. If whoever had tried to break in came back and succeeded in breaking in to her desk, they’d think it was pretty odd if they found nothing but an empty drawer and a few paperclips scattered about. It might give her a strategic advantage to leave a bit of information, information she could keep track of, out and available to any would-be thieves.

She had a pretty good idea of where any information that was stolen would go: Thomas. He was the only person, or being, she was aware of that had any reason to even be slightly interested in her work. So if she fed him a bit of information, maybe she’d be able to catch him out. He couldn’t be alert all the time. Eventually he was going to goof, and then she’d be able to nab him.

She cleared out her desk of any information that had actual relevance, as well as any items that had any significant sentimental value. She didn’t care to give Thomas any souvenirs. Death carefully packed away the older books. Without her work, she was nothing.

It occurred to Death that Hep and Scroat might still be able to help out with the Thomas situation. Since he’d been showing up at deaths here and there, perhaps it would be beneficial to have some muscle at a few deaths. Just in case he showed up to watch. She could give Hep and Scroat a few deaths to attend in their stomping grounds, and if Thomas showed up, they could grab him while he was watching all the action, or flirting with her, or whatever the hell it was he got out of watching her do her job.

Death decided she would leave a folder with notes on a few upcoming deaths in Hep and Scroat’s vicinity on her desktop. She also left a few folders worth of notes about deaths past - though nothing old enough to be cherished - in her desk drawer. Then who ever broke in would feel like they got something of value and, assuming they were following along, would show up at some of the upcoming deaths. Then Hep and Scroat would just have to grab whoever it was, she assumed it was Thomas, and wait for Death to appear and deliver whatever justice was coming to him or her.

***

Thomas was feeling bored and a bit agitated, and nowadays, when he was feeling bored and agitated, he flipped through the binder of Death’s secrets. It was pretty much the only distraction he had in his car, his mobile office since the incident at his house, apart from the radio. He wasn’t usually looking for anything in particular. Something would usually pop out at him, and he’d stay distracted thinking about whatever it was for a while. Sometimes it was a detail about a death, or perhaps a location. Whatever it was, usually, it kept him occupied just long enough to forget he was bored and agitated.

What he found while flipping through the binder this time would keep him from being bored for quite a while.

He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it for so long, but in the back of the binder was a note card. It read, If you need something, call me. Eris.

The handwriting was rather sloppy, but distinctly female. There didn’t seem to be a phone number or anything useful like that. Kind of a tease, this Eris.

“How the hell do I call her?” Thomas said to himself. He flipped the note card over a few times, just in case he had somehow missed a vital bit of information on the other side of the card. He hadn’t. He held it up to the light, in case there was a watermark. He thought about holding it over his lighter to see if invisible ink would become visible. Thomas had heard you could do something like that with lemon juice. Then he suspected that holding a note card over an open flame might not be the best way to preserve the integrity of the paper.

“OK, Eris, how the fuck am I supposed to call you?” Thomas said, and tossed the note card on to the dashboard of his car.

A voice from the seat next to him said, “Like that, though you should mind your manners. I am a god, you know.”

Had the window on his side of the car been open, it is likely that Thomas would have leapt clean through it and hit the ground already running. The window was closed, however, so instead Thomas smacked his head against it and landed right back in his seat, with a sore head.

“Ow,” is what he said in reply to Eris.

“Not the brightest, are you dear?” Eris said.

Thomas stopped rubbing the sore spot on his head and turned to see who, exactly, had shown up in his car. The woman in the seat next to him was disheveled. Her clothes didn’t quite match, and didn’t quite fit. Her hair was dark and looked as thought she’d just gotten out of bed and hadn’t had time to comb it. For the last two hundred years. Frankly, he would have expected a bit more from a god.

Her eyes, however, her eyes were clever. Thomas was certain that he would come out the loser in a battle of wits with this woman, despite her inability to dress.

“Are you Eris?” Thomas asked.

She rolled her eyes, and looked out the window on her side of the car for a moment.

“You called me, remember?” Eris said. “Do a lot of goddesses you weren’t expecting regularly appear in your car? If so, you’re either very lucky, or in a world of hurt.”

“Uh, no. No other goddesses have visited me lately. Ever, really.”

Eris took out a pack of Lucky Strikes, unfiltered, and shook one out. “Have you got a light?,” she asked.

“Sure,” Thomas said. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and held it out to her. Eris looked at it, then at Thomas as though he’d lost his mind.

“Light my cigarette for me, then,” she said. She put the cigarette between her lips, and stared at Thomas expectantly.

“Oh. Of course,” Thomas said. He fumbled with the lighter slightly, and finally managed to spark a light. He held it up to Eris’s cigarette and she took a long drag, then exhaled, blowing the smoke up, where it met with the headliner of Thomas’s car. She rolled down her window, then turned to Thomas and held out her pack of cigarettes.

“Want one?” Eris said. “It might calm your nerves a bit.”

“Uh, sure,” Thomas said. He’d never smoked before, but now was as good a time as any to start. He fumbled a cigarette out of the pack, stuck it between his lips, put the lighter to it and took a huge drag. He immediately did his best impression of a person attempting to cough their way to freedom from gout. Eris laughed, delighted.

Once Thomas had, more or less, gotten his composure back, he asked Eris, “So you’re the one who left this notebook for me?”

Eris smiled a crooked smile, and said, “Obviously.”

“Why?” Thomas asked. “I mean, why give this info out. Why give it to me, of all people? So far as I can tell, I’m just some random asshole.”

“Random assholes do big things, now and then,” Eris said. “Why not you? You were alive, and about to not be alive. I could have found someone else. Would you have preferred it if I’d found someone else? Because, believe me, I can arrange for you to be dead lickety split. I know a guy who would literally kill you sooner than look at you. Well, assuming he’d pick up the phone.”

Thomas wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that last part of what Eris had said, but he was completely clear on the part where she’d threatened to make him dead. Still, he couldn’t help asking for a bit of clarification.

“No, No, I’m enjoying not being dead, thanks. Feel free to keep me from dying any time. I guess what I’m really wondering about is, why give me this information at all?”

Eris took another drag from her cigarette, and exhaled slowly. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“Well, uh, you’re named Eris. You’re a goddess. What else do I need to know?”

“Oh, there’s a lot more to know, when you’re dealing with gods, Thomas. For example, what am I a goddess of? That’s kind of an important thing to know, you know, if you’re going to be calling on gods. Believe me, there are some gods out there that you really don’t want to meet, unless you really need to meet them. And if you’ve reached that point, you’re fucked either way.”

Thomas had absolutely no idea what kind of goddess Eris was. He suddenly hoped she was a goddess of puppies and kisses, though judging from her appearance, it was likely that she wasn’t. He could hope for a goddess of cat-ladies, though. That would probably be reasonably safe.

“You know,” Thomas said, “It didn’t even occur to me that you might be a goddess until you mentioned it just now. So, uh, if I can ask... what kind of goddess are you?”

Eris smiled in a way that was neither comforting, nor kind. Thomas suddenly wished two things. One, that he hadn’t asked that question, and two, that she would stop smiling that way. Her smile was the smile of utter madness.

“Oh, Thomas,” Eris said. ”Thomas you may need to be more careful when you pick up strange binders and use the information in them without thinking about it.”

She took another drag off her cigarette. “I am a goddess of chaos, Thomas. And as of the moment when you slipped away from Death, you owe me a favor.”

It had been a long time since Thomas had set foot in a church, and an even longer time since he’d attended any kind of bible study, but he was fairly certain that owing favors to pagan goddesses of chaos was one of those behaviors that put a fella on the Naughty list.

“OK, so what do you want me to do?” Thomas asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that question.

Eris sighed, and took a drag from her cigarette. “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I’m trying to make things difficult for Death, you know. And so far you’re doing a lovely job of that on your own. But when it’s time for you to repay the favor, I’ll let you know.”

I’m fucked, Thomas thought.

“So,” Eris said, “You called me here. What do you want?”

Thomas wasn’t sure he should actually ask for something. After all, then he’d owe her several favors. On the other hand, he was a bit bored.

“I wonder if you can give me some more of Death’s notes,” Thomas said. “I’ve already called everyone I had a note for, and now I don’t have anyone else to warn.”

“You called them?” Eris said. “Like on the phone? Pointless. It’s pointless trying to warn most people about anything, but it’s extra pointless warning them by phone. You’ve got to get in their face. But, if you’re out of things to do, maybe we can find something to keep you occupied for the time being.”

Despite his best efforts to maintain a poker face, Thomas winced. Keeping him occupied sounded strangely like coercing him in to doing things he didn’t want to do. Eris noticed his wince.

“Come on, this will be fun. We’re going to break in to Death’s apartment and see if we can’t steal some more of her notes. It will be fun!”

On the one hand, Thomas wasn’t sure that breaking in to Death’s apartment and stealing her papers was the best way to stay low profile and unnoticed by Death. On the other hand, he was reasonably certain that making a goddess of chaos angry would result in something far worse than getting noticed and caught by Death. Also, he had to admit to himself, he was rather curious about where Death lived. There was just something fascinating about her, about watching her work.

“OK, I’m in,” Thomas said.

“Let’s go then,” Eris said. She snapped her fingers, and the two of them vanished from Thomas’s car.

Seconds later, Thomas was stunned to find himself, and Eris, standing in a rather plain apartment. The furniture was bland, the walls were all a sensible and easy to maintain white. Apart from the dust that indicated whoever lived there didn’t actually spend much time in the apartment, it might have been anyone’s residence.

“Let’s break in to her desk and see what we can find,” Eris said to Thomas. “This way.”

Thomas followed Eris down a short hallway to a bedroom. In one corner stood a modestly-sized desk with a computer on it and a couple of drawers. On of them looked like it locked, and as though someone had already tried to break in to it.

“Whoa, I hope we’re not too late,” he said.

“Nah. That was me,” Eris said, gesturing towards the scratches. “I didn’t have any tools with me, and thought I’d be able to just pull it open. This time I brought a crowbar.”

Eris pulled the crowbar seemingly out of nowhere, and went over to the desk. She jammed the tip of the crowbar in between the drawer and the desk, and pried with all her might. The cheap lock that had come with the desk couldn’t resist that much strain, and broke easily.

Eris laughed, and pulled the drawer the rest of the way open.

She rifled through the contents of the drawer for a minute or two, cursing under her breath. Finally she stood up straight, and turned to face Thomas.

She said, “Death must have known we were coming. There isn’t anything of value in that drawer.

Thomas pointed then, and said, “What about that folder on her desktop? Let’s check that out.”

Eris looked at the folder, and laughed to herself. She couldn’t believe that Miss A place for everything and everything thing in its place could have been so lazy as to leave her notes just sitting out. It was all too easy.

She tossed the notes to Thomas, and said “Here. I’ll catch you around.”

She vanished.

Thomas stood holding the folder Death had left, not exactly sure of what he should do next.

Just then, there was a knock on the door of the apartment. Thomas could hear keys jingling, then the rattle of the lock opening, and the squeak of under-used hinges.

“Now, this is one of our most basic apartments. I think you’ll find, however, that it’s a very nice space. Very adaptable,” a voice said from the front door.

Thomas wondered if there was a place he could hide. All there was in the room he was in, however, was a desk and a closet. It was safe enough to assume that a prospective renter would want to see the interior of the closets. He decided to go on the offensive.

Thomas steeled himself, and went out to where the voices were coming from.

“As you know, we’re quite close to an excellent Elementary School. The local ladies also play cards regularly, if you like that sort of thing,” the voice said.

James stepped in to the room where the landlord and prospective tenants stood, gawking at the apartment.

“Hi there,” He said.

The landlord jumped, and said, “Who the hell are you, pal?”

Thomas hesitated for the tiniest fraction of a second, and said “A guest of my friend who lives here. She said I could stay as long as I liked, as long as I kept the place presentable.”

“Hmm,” the landlord said. “She didn’t mention any guests. Usually she does. Well, do you mind if I show these prospective tenants around?”

“No, I guess that doesn’t bother me too much. I’ll stay out of your way,” Thomas said. As soon as they went in to one of the other rooms, Thomas decided, he was going to quickly and quietly split.

“I appreciate it,” the landlord said. He led the new prospects through the front door, and down the hall to the master bedroom.

Thomas heard him say, “I think you’ll find that these apartments have all the space you need to decorate however you’d like. There’s lots of room for entertaining.”

Thomas slipped as quietly as he could out the front door. By the time the landlord was done showing the new tenants around, Thomas had already discovered that the nearby bus stop served several busses that didn’t go even remotely close to where he wanted to be. Oh well, at least he’d escaped unscathed with a few more of Death’s notes.

Chapter Fourteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:44:00 +0000

Over the previous week, things had gone downhill for Death. Currently she was averaging about 50% for people actually showing up for their deaths. She’d been able to hunt down several of them and finish the job, but there were a few more wandering around out there somewhere, annoyingly alive.

She had just dropped off a soul, and turned over the page on her notepad, to discover a blank page. Odd. She didn’t usually leave blank pages in her notes. Accidents happen though. She flipped the page.

The next page was also blank. As was the next, and the next. The rest of her notebook was blank.

“Oh shit,” Death said.

She was going to have to rely on her phone to notify her of each death, moments before the death happened, until she was able to get back to her apartment and make new copies of her notes. Things were going to be chaotic for a while.

Speaking of chaos, her phone rang to alert her to a new death. It looked like she had one minute until Brendan Pearson died of a heart attack.

***

Thomas had managed to get in touch with everyone in the copies of Death’s notes that he had. He’d visited the people he was able to get to in person. Everyone else had gotten a phone call.

A lot of people he’d called had dismissed him as either a telemarketer or a prank-caller and hung up on him. So he sent those people letters. One way or another, they’d all gotten the word.

He was, so far as he could figure, a hero.

Of course, now that he’d finished that project, he was going to have to find something else to keep his time occupied.

***

Hep and Scroat were in a rough bar, drinking enough to paralyze most of the other patrons. When Death appeared at their table, it took the two of them a moment to notice she was there.

“So there I was, elbow deep in this guy’s sister, and,” Scroat said before he noticed Death. “Oh. Hey, you missed the first half of the story, I’d better start over. So there was this guy back home and...”

“I didn’t come to hear about the time you screwed some guy’s sister,” Death said, interrupting him.

“Actually, I was telling the story about the time I got kidnapped and held for ransom, only no one would pay the ransom. I’ve got so many stories about fucking a guy’s sister that they aren’t even interesting anymore. Now, the times I fucked some guy’s mom, those are interesting stories. This one time...”

Death interrupted him again. “Yeah, look Scroat, I don’t have time to hear it today. Raincheck?”

“If you’re lucky. So if you’re not here to hang out, what the fuck do you want?” Scroat said. “Hep and I, after all, are having a serious philosophical debate, and I’m worried we might lose our trains of thought if we get interrupted for too long.”

“So what are you here to talk to us about?” Hep said. “ We’re kind of tore up right now. We weren’t really expecting you today. Not that we mind a visit, but, you know, we can’t be at your beck and call all the time.”

“Right, I don’t expect you to be. Look, this is kind of urgent. Is there anything we can do to search for Thomas? He’s interfering in other people’s deaths now.”

Hep and Scroat stared at her.

“Um, I don’t know exactly what you expect us to suggest,” Hep said. “I’m a builder, not a detective. Have you got any more information we can go off of?”

“No,” Death said. She brightened a bit, “Could you go and collect souls for me while I search for Thomas?”

Hep and Scroat looked at each other, and burst out laughing. Death watched, bemused, until they’d gathered their composure enough to speak.

“Did you forget what happened the last time we stood in for you? It was kind of a total disaster,” Hep said. “I can’t travel like you do unless I’m willing to suffer a massive hangover each time, which kind of gets in the way, and Scroat can’t travel by thought at all. Our bikes are only so fast, you know.”

“Right, OK,” Death said. “Look, my notes have all gone blank, and I’m never going to know when I’m going to get called again until I go back to my apartment and find my master copies to create a new deck of notes.”

“I’d suggest you go do that rather than sit here talking to us,” Hep said. “If you can think of something we can do to help, give us a call.”

Death had to admit to herself that Hep had a point.

“OK, you’re probably right. I’ve got to run. I’ll talk to you soon,” Death said, and vanished.

Hep and Scroat sat in silence for a moment.

“So, where was I?” Scroat said.

“Elbow deep in some guy’s sister.” Hep said.

***

Death had just gotten in to her apartment when her phone beeped at her, alerting her to another death she had to see to. Adrian M. Clark, 19, was about to meet the business end of a combine harvester. She had four minutes this time.

She decided she could spare a moment to make sure her notes were still in order. She went to her desk, and saw that someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to break in to the drawer where she kept her original copies. There were ugly scratched gouged in to the wood around the lock, but the lock itself was undamaged and still keeping her secrets safe. Equal measures of anger and horror swept over her.

It would be very, very bad if the wrong person got access to her private files. There were things in there that only she was meant to know.

Her phone beeped at her again. Two minutes to go. She was going to have to see to this death, then hustle back and re-secure her documents.

Chapter Thirteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:57:00 +0000

Ever since he’d heard about the two strange guys that broke into his house but didn’t steal anything, or even make much of a mess, Thomas had been on the road. It’s hard to catch a moving target, and he was anything but ready to be caught. He was still having a hell of a good time.

He’d discovered that people no longer noticed him, unless he got right in their face to talk to them. Even then, whoever he was talking to usually developed a strong urge to get away from him.

Which meant he could do, more or less, whatever the heck he wanted.

Unfortunately, the thrill of getting away with misbehavior wore off pretty quickly. He’d stolen a lot of stuff, peeked in windows, once lurked in a women’s locker rooms, messed with people by rearranging their belongings while they were looking away, and discovered that it really wasn’t all that entertaining, even the first time.

The last time he checked, his employer was still sending him paychecks, despite not having been in to the office in weeks. So when he was so inclined, he paid for whatever products and services he wanted. Most of the time, though, he just grabbed what he needed or wanted and walked off with it.

Since then, he’d developed a bit of an obsession with Death. How was she able to get around so quickly? Did she actually play a role in the deaths, or just wait to collect the souls? And where did she get that motorcycle.

He’d used the copies of her notes to go and watch her in action a few times. Well, several times. He’d let her see him once, but she didn’t react favorably, so he decided it might be best not to do that again for a while.

In the meantime, he’d righted a few wrongs done to him, and otherwise spent a lot of time driving around without a real goal or destination.

Until the other day, when he’d decided it would be interesting to try and warn people who were about to die in preventable ways. There wasn’t much point telling someone who was going to die from cancer the exact time they were going to die. However, the people who were going to die in accidents or from violence might like to know about it beforehand.

He’d already warned a construction worker who was going to fall on to a bunch of rebar. The day after that guy was supposed to die, he’d checked all the newspapers in that city for word about a guy dying in a gruesome rebar related accident. There hadn’t been anything about him, so Thomas assumed he’d gotten away unharmed.

He’d saved a life. Now that was success!

He decided it would be an excellent plan to try and clue in as many of the other deaths he had documentation for.

Today, he was going to talk to Darryl Andersen, 29, broken neck. It looked like Darryl was going to crash his motorcycle, alone, and slam head first into a tree.

Maybe it would be good for Darryl to stay home today, or consider taking the bus instead of riding. Sometimes the conditions just aren’t right for riding.

Thomas checked his watch, and realized he needed to get a move on if he was going to catch up with Darryl before he hopped on his bike and went to meet his fate. He got into his car immediately, and took off. He checked his watch again, then Darryl’s address. It was going to be a close call.

Darryl lived in a mobile home park. He had just locked the door to his RV, and was walking over to his motorcycle when Thomas pulled up at the end of the gravel that served as his driveway. Darryl barely noticed that a car had stopped nearby.

He was fiddling a bit with the bike when Thomas walked up.

“Hi, could I talk to you for a minute?” Thomas said.

“I’m not interested and I’m on my way out, if you don’t mind,” Darryl said, without looking up from what he was doing.

“I’m not selling anything, and I won’t waste much of your time. There’s just something I need to tell you,” Thomas said.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“You’re going to die today.”

Darryl looked up. “What? Is this some kind of helmet awareness thing? Man, I don’t have time for this. Go away.”

“No, I mean you’re really going to die today. You’re going to lose control of your bike on a right-hand turn at Fillmore and Extension, and tumble head first into a tree. You’ll break your neck and die.”

“You’re sick, man. Take a hike.”

“I’m not sick. I’m not even going to try to talk you into wearing a helmet. Just, don’t ride today. You can make up for lost mileage tomorrow.”

Something in Thomas’s tone of voice made Darryl stop what he was doing and think for a moment.

“How the hell could you even know that?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Just don’t ride today.”

“Just today?”

“Just today,” Thomas said.

“Well, dammit if I’m not superstitious. OK. I won’t ride today. Now, is there anything else you need? Because if not, I’ve got things to do.”

“That was it. Have yourself a good time living through the day.”

“Uh huh.”

Thomas got back into his car and drove off. He figured out how to get to the location of Darryl’s now-averted death, and drove there. After he’d scoped it out, he parked his car a few blocks away and walked back to the scene. Now all he had to do was wait and see if Death would show up.

About five minutes before the time specified in Death’s notes, he heard a motorcycle’s engine rumbling, getting closer. He was momentarily worried that Darryl hadn’t taken his advice. When Death rolled into view, then pulled over and stopped on the far side of the road, Thomas breathed a sigh of relief.

This should be interesting, he thought.

***

Death pulled over and stopped about twenty feet away from where the wreckage from Darryl Andersen’s crash would likely end up. She got off her bike, and stretched a bit before getting out her clipboard and stop watch. At the appointed time, she started her stop watch, and paid attention as a few cars drove by, and a few kids crossed the street.

To Death’s surprise, Darryl did not show up at the right time. She waited a few minutes longer, still watching attentively, before cursing under her breath and stopping her stop watch.

“Son of a bitch!” she said to herself.

How could this happen again so soon? she wondered. Someone’s fucking with me, I know it. They’re not going to like it when I find out who they are. Now I’ve got to track this guy down and see to it that he dies too.

She checked the time.

And I’ve only got fifteen minutes, she thought.

She got back on her bike, started it, then focussed on finding Darryl, where ever he was right then. It took a minute, but she was able to sense where he was. She put her bike in gear and roared off to catch up with Darryl.

***

Thomas watched Death ride away, and was filled with excitement. Woo hoo, another one saved! he thought.

***

Since he wasn’t going to be riding that day, Darryl decided it would be a fine day to take the RV and wash it. He was not aware of it, but Death had pulled in and parked nearby just a few minutes after he’d gotten the RV parked in the washing stall. She watched him as he searched his pockets for dollar bills to change for wash tokens. Still unnoticed, she watched as he pressure washed the RV.

Once Darryl was satisfied that his RV was clean enough, he climbed back in and fired up the engine. He pulled his RV out of the wash stall, and out into the street. The car wash was right on an intersection. The light was against him, so he stopped.

Death, as always, watched and waited.

The light changed, and Daryl slowly accelerated into the intersection. He didn’t see the cement truck barreling towards the intersection without slowing. He’d almost made it through the intersection when the cement truck slammed into the back end of his RV at forty five miles per hour. It managed to hit the rear axle of the RV, so rather than tear clean through, it spun the RV halfway around, and tipped it over.

Darryl could hear gas rushing somewhere behind him. That was a hell of a propane leak by the sound of it. She struggled to get out of his seatbelt, but it was impossible to work the latch with the seatbelt supporting so much of his weight. Something sparked, and the RV turned into a fireball.

The driver of the cement truck had not been injured, and was hurrying towards the RV to see if he could help when it burst into flames. He leapt backwards and fell. He was screaming curse words, but appeared OK otherwise.

Sometimes a cement truck is a very handy thing, Death thought. She saw Darryl’s soul standing near the wreck, watching his RV burn. She stood up and walked over to Darryl’s soul.

He looked at her and said, “Man, I was supposed to die on my bike today. Some guy told me to just not ride today and I’d be fine. Now look at this fine mess.”

Death had been extending her hand to Darryl, but put it down when she heard what he’d said.

“Sorry, did you say someone told you not to ride today?”

“Yeah, some guy come up to me this morning, said I was going to crash at Fillmore and Extension, break my neck and die. He said if I didn’t ride today, I’d be fine.”

“Who was this guy?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even really remember what he looked like. I thought he was a salesman or handing out Chick tracts or something when he first started talking to me.”

“And he told you that you were going to break your neck and Fillmore and Extension?”

“Yep.”

“Interesting.”

“I guess. So, what happens now? Who’s going to clean this mess up? Aw, fuck. I had some stuff in the RV I really would have liked for my brother to have.”

“That’s not for you to worry about anymore,” Death said. She reached out her hand and said, “Would you walk with me?”

When she got back to her bike, she was very concerned. She was fairly certain that Thomas was the one who’d clued in Darryl, even though she didn’t have any proof. It was bad enough that the guy had figured out a way to hide from her. Did he have to interfere with her work as well?

Chapter Twelve

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:11:00 +0000

Death was in Los Angeles again, with a whole hour to herself before the next death. She could spend some time trying to track down a few of the missing Naughty Gnostics, if she wanted.

But then, they’d decided to run off on their own, and the fact of the matter was, she had a serious craving for a taco. Or a bacon cheeseburger. Whichever she came across first. The Naughty Gnostics could linger a while longer.

She rolled to a stop at an intersection, and realized she was faced with a difficult and important decision.

One one side of the road was a burger joint. On the other side, tacos. She decided it was a taco kind of day, and turned in to the taco shop’s parking lot.

She was stunned, when she got inside, to see Ares and Eris were already there, seated at a table. Ares looked decidedly uncomfortable, while Eris seemed to be having the time of her life. At least, until she saw Death. Ares noticed a sudden chill coming from the general Eris area, and looked around to see Death. He brightened up immediately.

“Hey! What are the odds of running in to you here?”

“Yeah, what a coincidence,” Death said. So much for a quick and painless lunch.

“You’ve got to join us!” Ares said. Eris looked at him in a way that would kill mere mortals, but Ares didn’t notice.

“Well, I don’t want to interrupt you. I was just going to grab something quick and keep moving,” Death said.

“Nonsense! Come sit with us,” Ares said. He stood up and pulled out a chair for her.

Death sat down and did her best to ignore the way Eris was staring at her. She wasn’t sure what Eris’s problem was. She was, however, sure that she didn’t care to find out. It wasn’t that she had a problem with Eris, but constant chaos wasn’t really her style.

“So I’ve been having the weirdest thing happen over the last several days,” Ares said, apparently oblivious to the cold war going on at his table. “I was walking down the street the other day, and I saw this guy, and I was just certain that he should have been killed already.”

“How is that weird? Don’t you think everyone should have been killed already?”

“Not at all. Mostly I think that people need to be killed. There’s a subtle difference there.”

Death wasn’t so sure. “OK, if you say so. So how is that a weird experience, anyhow?”

“Well, if it had happened just once, I’d just think it was an odd day and ignore it. But there have been three or four people I’ve seen on the street that really seemed like they should have been dead already.”

“I see,” Death said. That was troubling. She wondered if Thomas was already having that widespread of an effect. She really needed to find him before things got out of hand.

“Yeah, it was the craziest thing.”

“So why didn’t you just kill them,” Eris said to Ares.

“Well, they didn’t do anything to deserve it, apart from being there. I mean, I can’t just kill people all willy-nilly.”

Death wondered if it would be impolite to point out that killing people all willy-nilly was almost exactly what Ares did all the time. She decided it would be best to keep her mouth shut.

“Fair enough. I’m sure they’ll cause plenty of trouble while they’re still walking around, and that’s fine with me,” Eris said.

Just then the waiter arrived with their food. It smelled delicious.

Death was about to take a bite, when she saw one of the Naughty Gnostics staring through a nearby window at them. Shit.

Just before she could say “Hey, I think we’ve got company,” the front door burst open and a bunch of very much still alive Naughty Gnostics came in.

“Hey, it’s those bikers that keyed my car,” Ares said. “And now they’re spoiling my lunch. That’s just great.” He slammed his hands down on the table. “What is it with you assholes?”

One of the Naughty Gnostics, apparently the leader, stepped forward and pointed at Ares.

“You killed several of our brothers, and we can’t let that stand,” he said.

Ares grinned widely, and stood up. “You’d better watch where you point that finger. You’re likely to lose it.”

Eris’ eyes twinkled. Death put her head in her hands. How come her lunches always got interrupted like this?

One of the Naughty Gnostics charged at Ares, who caught him easily and slammed him down on top of the table. Crushing all of the food, Death noticed. She looked at her watch, and realized she needed to get moving to take care of the next Death.

“Well, I’ve got to be running,” she said. “I’ll catch you two later.”

Eris said nothing, just looked blankly at her. Ares, however, looked disappointed and said, “Aw, you’re going to miss all the fun again.”

“Maybe next time,” Death said. “See you later.”

***

According to her notes, the next appointment was the death of John Statler, 48, Construction Accident. Death arrived at the scene. She stood near the base of a new office building under construction. There was a great deal of rebar sticking up out of the concrete nearby. Assuming everything went to plan, in two minutes John was going to fall from two stories up and impale himself on the rebar.

No one noticed her waiting there. She could hear the workers shouting to each other, along with the hammering and noise of power tools common to any construction site. Soon, it was fifteen seconds to showtime. Death looked up to where John was supposed to fall from, and counted down.

She’d reached negative thirty before coming to the conclusion that something wasn’t right. After another minute with no sign of John, she decided it was time to go looking for him.

Upstairs, she wandered through the floor he was supposed to be working on, but there wasn’t a sign of him anywhere. She checked the other floors before she decided it might be good to ask and see if anyone knew where John was.

She allowed herself to be seen, and the first thing she heard was “Hey, you can’t be in here without a hard hat, lady!”

She turned to see who the voice belonged to. It was another man who looked to be about fifty, with steel grey hair. Death guessed he was in a position of some authority.

“Sorry, I’m just looking for John Statler. Have you seen him?”

“No, John didn’t come in today. I think he’s home sick. Now you’ve got to get out of here. This is a dangerous place, and you don’t even have a hard hat on.”

“OK,” Death said pleasantly. “Thanks, have a nice day.”

Where the hell is he, Death thought. I showed up, couldn’t he do me a favor and not stand me up? Now I’ve got to go find him, make sure he passes, and get that all wrapped up before the next client.

Since the man she’d talked to said he thought John was at home, sick with something, Death decided that visiting John’s house would be an excellent start.

Death arrived at John’s house moments later. She let herself in, and wandered through the house looking for John.

She found him on the couch, watching TV. She was trying to come up with a death that could visit John on the couch, when he got up and started walking toward the kitchen. Death followed behind him.

John dug around in the fridge for a bit, and pulled out most of the makings for a sandwich, and a bunch of grapes.

Choking, easy, Death thought. John went back to the couch with his sandwich and grapes. He tossed one of the grapes in the air, and caught it in his mouth. Unfortunately, it lodged itself in his throat.

John looked puzzled for a moment, then worried. He tried pounding on his chest to knock the grape loose, with no luck. He was starting to change colors. He got up off of the couch, and hustled to the kitchen again, where he threw himself, gut first, at the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The back of the chair was driven into his stomach, and the grape came flying out of his mouth. He immediately started gasping for air, and fell to sit on the floor as he got his composure back.

Rats, Death thought.

After he’d calmed down, he went back to the couch and ate his sandwich, without much joy. When he’d finished eating, and the show he was watching was over, he put on his shoes and went to get in his car. Death, naturally, followed along. He started the car and pulled out on to the street. Death rode shotgun.

As they approached a busy intersection, one of the front tires on John’s car blew out. He lost control almost immediately, and the car spun into traffic. Miraculously, none of the other cars hit it. It came to a reasonably safe stop on the far side of the intersection.

“Man, I’m having some kind of day,” John said to himself.

Tell me about it, Death thought.

John put the spare on, narrowly escaping being run over four times, and drove back home after picking up a carton of cigarettes.

Once there, he decided a shower would be just the thing to soothe his jangled nerves. He started the water running, and when it was hot, got in to the shower. Death was getting fed up. She looked around the bathroom, noticed the hair dryer, plugged it in, turned it on, and tossed it into the shower with John.

The power in the bathroom went out, seconds before John collapsed in the shower. His ghost looked a bit freaked out.

“I guess it was my day, huh?”

“Sure was. Let’s go,” Death said, and held out her hand to him.

Chapter Eleven

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:50:00 +0000

Nachos. A huge cheesy platter of nachos. Or pizza. Pizza would do. Hell, a cheeseburger from MacDonald’s would work. With a chocolate shake.

Death was feeling a bit stressed out. And a lot hungry. If she could find a decent buffet, and had the time, it was likely they’d run out of comfort foods before she ran out of room.

An epic feast would help her focus and prioritize. Having to worry about ghost spies, and a person who’d figured out how to hide from her, and who now knew that he needed to hide extra well, was too much to ask of someone who hadn’t eaten in such a long time.

A jar of peanut butter and a spoon would do the trick. Maybe a blue raspberry twin pop?

Instead of acquiring something so wondrous, however, she needed to attend to another death.

Joan Winford, 43, was going to die in a car accident on the freeway on her way home from work. It was a pretty routine death. As routine as deaths get, anyhow.

Death stood in the breakdown lane. Traffic roared past as she watched and waited for Joan to come along.

She was grateful for Hep & Scroat’s willingness to lend a hand in finding Thomas, but also disappointed that they hadn’t nabbed him when they’d had the chance. She wasn’t especially interested in how he was evading her, except as a means to the end of catching him. If she could get her hands on him, it wouldn’t matter in the least how he’d been hiding.

Although it might be interesting to know how he’d figured out a way to hide from her. She suspected he hadn’t just figured it out on his own. She also had no idea who would get involved in something like that. Death would be the first to admit she wasn’t especially popular among other deities, but that was just because she didn’t have time to socialize often. She wasn’t aware of any particular enemies who would be motivated enough to screw with her work. The importance and value of her job was acknowledged by everyone, so far as she was aware.

She was startled out of her daydream by a massive BOOM, followed by the continuous blaring of two car horns. She checked her notes and watch. Joan was right on time, at least.

As traffic ground to a halt, blocked by the two cars and various car bits strewn across the roadway, Death noticed there were two souls looking around in shock. She checked her notes again. She was only expecting Joan Winford, no one else.

“Hey, you two, come over here,” Death called. The two souls both followed her order, still too stunned to question her. Joan matched the description in Death’s notes - business attire, brown hair, gaping head wound - but the other person was a mystery. He looked to be about thirty, dressed in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt.

“OK, Joan, I was expecting you,” Death said. She turned and looked at the other soul. “You weren’t part of the plan, though. Who are you, fella?”

“Jim Sherman,” he said. “Part of what plan?”

“The plan for Joan’s death. You weren’t supposed to die right now.”

“How do you know?”

“Hi, I’m Death, nice to meet you,” Death said. “So were you riding with Joan?”

“Nope. I’ve never seen her before in my life?”

“So you were driving the other car?”

“Nope. Hitchhiking. Looks to me like the guy I was riding with is a little banged up, but otherwise fine.”

The extra death was a troubling development. From the looks of his body, which was missing a few vital pieces, Death wasn’t going to be able to swing a Near Death Experience for Jim.

Just then, she had the feeling of being watched. She looked up, and saw Thomas across the road, staring at her. He contorted his face into an enormous, cheesy smile, and waved at her. Then he disappeared again.

“Hey!” Death said. She took a couple of steps to try and chase Thomas before remembering that it was unlikely she’d be able to catch someone she couldn’t see.

“I think I know that guy,” Jim said.

Death turned around quickly. “You know him? How?”

“He looked kind of like a guy that dated my sister for a few months,” Jim said. “In fact, she and I were out picking up some furniture for her new apartment when we bumped into him last week. It was kind of weird, actually.”

“Could you explain how it was weird?” Death said. Jim felt a little uncomfortable with Death’s sudden, intense, interest in what he was saying.

“I don’t know. It was just awkward and uncomfortable.”

“Like, bumping in to an asshole ex awkward?”

“No. Like... Like bumping in to someone who you’d heard had died.”

Death considered this for a minute before she spoke again.

“So,” Death said. “Where are you hitchhiking to?”

“Back to Austin.”

“Where are you coming from?”

“Santa Fe. That’s where my sister’s new apartment is. She’d promised me a ride home, but she got all weird after we bumped into that Thomas guy. By the time we’d dropped off her furniture she was screaming mad, and I guess I said the wrong thing. She told me to find my own way home, and here I am. It’s been slow going.”

“Wow. What did you say to cause her to bail on giving you a ride home?”

“I think it was, ‘have you got any beer?’ It might have been, ‘Man, that was a heavy chair,’ though.” He shrugged.

“Is she usually so sensitive?”

“No, it was really weird. She hardly ever freaks out, in fact. If there is ever a disaster involving naughty monkeys with pliers and a lot of mud, I’d want her to be on the scene handling things. Hey, what are you doing?”

Death was writing on her notepad, naughty monkeys with pliers. When she was done, she said, “Making a note for later. So it’s unlikely your sister just blew up for no reason, or because she didn’t want to give you a ride. Interesting.”

“I guess. So are we going to stand on the side of the road here much longer?”

“No,” Death said. She held out her hands to Joan and Jim, and smiled. “Would you take my hands?”

While waiting for the gateway to appear, Joan asked, “Was this crash the fault of that guy who appeared?”

Death thought for a moment, and said, “No, you were slated to die in a car crash right when you did. I think he was responsible for Jim being where he was, though. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not.”

The gateway arrived and its doors opened.

“Well, in you go,” Death said to both of them. “Good bye.”

Jim and Joan walked through the gateway and vanished.

The scary thing about that whole mess, Death thought, is wondering if Thomas set Jim up, or if that was just coincidence. And how does he know where I am? No one should know that unless I happen to tell them. It might be time to visit Hep and Scroat and see if they’ve found anything.

***

Hep and Scroat had been having a hell of a time tracking Thomas down. After the debacle of his mother walking in when they were searching his house, Thomas hadn’t been back home. At least, not any time they’d been by. They’d rolled by, incognito in a borrowed car, to see if he was around. If so, they’d planned to discretely break down the front door and grab him before he could run.

Unfortunately, he had yet to be home. He was also not to be found at his mother’s house. His mother, incidentally, was still staying at home. Hep was worried she’d noticed them rolling by her house, but if she had, she didn’t give any indication.

Death had been able to give them the names of a few of Thomas’s friends, and Hep and Scroat found themselves reduced to knocking on doors asking about him. It hadn’t gone well so far.

They hadn’t been able to find one of the friends. The last address they’d been able to find for him was an apartment in a pretty big complex. Hep and Scroat had managed to catch a door and sneak in behind another resident, three times, only to finally bump into one of the guy’s neighbors and find out he’d moved out several months prior.

Another one of his friends had opened the door, looked at them both, and said “Not interested,” and shut the door before either Hep or Scroat could speak. They knocked again several times, but he didn’t open the door again.

“That’s just fucking rude, man,” Scroat grumbled as they walked away.

“Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t mistake the two of us for Mormons or salesmen. Would you?”

“Definitely not. Well, not me. You’ve got the squeaky clean aura of a man with painfully repressed sexual urges and a strong desire to make the world a better place by distributing high quality vacuums to those most in need of cleanliness.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Hep said.

“I already have, twice today and I’m about due for a third performance.”

They tried visiting that friend several times, with no luck.

It seemed they were going to have better luck when they visited the third friend on the list. He opened his front door and said, “Hello,” to the two of them.

“Hi, we were wondering if we could talk to you about Thomas Swinton?” Hep said.

“Whoa, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Yeah, what do you want to know?”

“Well, I guess, when was the last time you saw him?” Hep said.

The guy leaned against the door frame and looked like he was thinking hard.

“Sorry, this is weird, but, what did you just ask me?”

Hep and Scroat glanced at each other. Hep wondered if this fellow might be a little high. He didn’t look like he was screwing with them.

“When was the last time you saw Thomas Swinton?”

“Isn’t he dead?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Hep said. “Last I heard, he’s still well and kicking.”

“Oh. That’s good. I thought I’d heard he was dead. Maybe it was someone else.”

“Could be,” Hep said. He suspected this guy didn’t know anything. “So you guys weren’t especially good friends?”

“What? Hell, man, we were best buds.”

“So do you know where we might find him?”

The guy stared blankly at Hep. “Dude. I... I can’t remember what you just asked me?”

Hep raised an eyebrow. “Where can we find him?”

“Find who?” The guy looked entirely befuddled.

“Thomas Swinton.”

“Isn’t he dead?”

Hep took a deep breath, and reached to shake the guy’s hand.

“Hey, we sure appreciate your time. I’m hope we didn’t bother you too much. Have a great day,” Hep said.

The guy seemed to come out of his daze. He shook Hep’s hand and smiled.

“Hey, yeah, you too. See you around.” The guy went inside and shut the door.

Hep and Scroat walked back down the street and stood by their bikes talking.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Scroat asked. “Did he catch retarded somehow?”

“I don’t know. That was just weird. I’d expect a best bud to know whether his friend was alive or not. Maybe he was high.”

“Maybe he was brain damaged,” Scroat said.

“Or that. Let’s go home,” Hep said.

***

Hep and Scroat were relaxing in their trailer when Death appeared in the middle of the room.

“What the fuck? Don’t you know how to use a god-damned telephone? It’s rude to just barge in to someone’s home unannounced.”

“Shut up, Scroat,” Death said.

Hep set down his book on rotary engine maintenance and looked up at Death.

“Have a seat. What brings you to our humble home, Death?” He asked.

Death sat on the couch, and said, “I was wondering if you’d found anything about Thomas.”

“If we had, we would have fucking called you. That’s what people who want to get in touch with each other do nowadays,” Scroat said.

Hep rolled his eyes, and said “Don’t mind him. He’s just cranky because the liquor store was out of PBR.”

“Hey, that’s just inexcusable and you know it.”

“You could have gotten High Life instead. It’s just as good.”

“It is not.”

“Anyway,” Hep said, “no, we weren’t able to track him down or get any useful information about him. The one guy we managed to talk to seemed really out of it, so we left.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” Death said.

“What now?” Hep said.

“That the guy was out of it. On a subconscious level, people know that Thomas is supposed to be dead. Except somehow he isn’t. It causes a cognitive dissonance. So people who seem him or hear about him with usually either ignore it, or get kind of confused and space out rather than try to figure out what’s happening.”

“So this guy wssn’t high?”

“Well, he might have been. But I suspect that was the least of his problems, when it comes to this topic.”

“So how are we going to find this guy, if no one can bear to even think about him?” Hep asked.

“We’ll have to figure out what it is he wants, and be there waiting for him when he goest to try and get it.”

Chapter Ten

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 05:07:00 +0000

Hep and Scroat had been across the street from Thomas’s place, “fixing an electrical issue,” on Scroat’s bike for the better part of the afternoon before Thomas left. No one had bothered them, yet, but if someone stopped by, they had an answer ready. The plan was to go into his house, snoop around and see if there was anything there that might explain how he’d been evading Death.

“Finally,” Hep said. “I can only loosen and tighten the same bolt so many times before I start to feel entirely ridiculous.”

“You’d think he didn’t have a fucking job,” Scroat said.

They put the seat and side covers back on Scroat’s bike in roughly thirty seconds, and crossed the street. When the reached Thomas’s front door, Hep pulled a set of lock picks out of his jacket. Hep’s godly powers didn’t extend to commanding the lock to open, but he was unusually gifted with mechanical things. Picking the lock took him less time than it had to get the lock picks out of his pocket.

Hep smiled at Scroat as he put the picks back in his pocket and said, “Would you look at that? He left door open for us even though he didn’t know we were going to drop by! I’m sure he’d want us to go inside and make ourselves at home.”

“I bet he’d also want us to help ourselves to his beer,” Scroat said. “And it would be rude to refuse his hospitality.”

The two of them walked into Thomas’s house. It was a decent place, with old furniture and some spectacularly bad art on the walls. There was no beer in the fridge.

They’d gone through most of the house and were nosing their way through Thomas’s bedroom when they heard someone come in the front door.

A woman’s voice called, “Thomas, are you home?”

“Shit!” Scroat whispered.

“SH!” Hep whispered back. “Stay quiet, don’t move.”

“Thomas? Your front door was unlocked and I saw the light on so I just came in. Where are you?”

Hep and Scroat could hear footsteps wandering through the house.

“Thomas?” Then, “Darned kid left his door unlocked. Brilliant plan in this neighborhood.”

There were more footsteps, and then Hep and Scroat heard the front door open and close again. Silence fell over the house.

They both let out a deep breath.

“Wow. Good thing she didn’t come back here,” Hep said.

“Yeah, that would have been kind of fucked up. ‘Oh, uh, howdy ma’am. Don’t mind us, lurking in this here bedroom.’ It would have made the day just a little more complicated,” Scroat said.

“I don’t think there’s anything we’re looking for in here. Let’s split.”

“Right behind you.”

The two of them had almost reached the front door when a woman, presumably the same one, walked in through the front door. She appeared very surprised to see the two of them. Hep guessed that this was Thomas’s mom.

“Shit!” Scroat said.

“Uh, Howdy,” Hep said.

“Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

“We’re plumbers. Thomas had a problem with the toilet in his master bathroom. It was making weird squeaky noises when he flushed. It’s better now, we were just clearing out.” Hep said.

Scroat, for his part, tried to look innocent. He failed.

Thomas’s mother took a deep breath and screamed, then turned and ran out the open door. Hep and Scroat stood and watched as she ran up the street, still screaming.

“Well, that’s probably going to fuck things up a bit,” Scroat said.

“Wouldn’t you know his mom would walk in on us,” Hep said.

The two of them left Thomas’s house as casually as they could. There wasn’t a mob of neighbors outside with baseball bats waiting for them. Surburbia.

When they were a few miles away, Hep and Scroat pulled off the road into a gas station to figure out their next move.

“We should probably get ahold of Death and let her know about that little fiasco. I expect Thomas is about to get a whole lot more cautious,” Hep said.

“Unless he’s a complete idiot. Which is totally possible,” Scroat said.

Hep found a payphone, and called Death. She didn’t answer, so he just left her a message telling her they needed to talk to her.

Just after he finished buying a couple of sodas and walked back to the bikes, Death appeared.

“I’ve got ten minutes. What’s up?” Death said.

Hep said, “Well, we waited around this Thomas guy’s house until he left and...”

Death interrupted him. “Hang on, you waited until he left?”

“Right.”

“So you saw him leave.”

“Well, we had to be sure we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“Did it, perhaps, occur to you that there might have been something better you could have done instead of rummaging through his house.

Hep paused for a moment, then said, “You know, maybe we should have just grabbed him when he came outside.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Death said. “But since you didn’t, what did you learn?”

“Just that Thomas’s mom has some fucking pipes on her,” Scroat said.

“Sorry?”

“We were interrupted by his mom,” Hep said. “She ran screaming from the house after she saw us.”

“I see,” Death said. “That’s not going to make anything easier.”

“Yeah, that’s what Scroat said earlier,” Hep said. Death glared at him.

“So, did you find anything that would give us a clue as to what he’s up to, or what his intentions are?”

“Nope. There wasn’t so much as a magic eight ball in his house,” Hep said. “Maybe he suspected we’d drop by.”

“Awesome. So we don’t have any additional info, and all we know for sure is that now he knows we’re looking for him.”

“That’s about it.”

“Great,” Death said. She checked her watch. “And I’ve got to go. Next time you see him, just grab him, OK? Otherwise, keep your eyes and ears open.”

She vanished.

Hep and Scroat looked at each other.

“Beer?” Hep said.

“Beer,” Scroat said.

Chapter Nine

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 03:44:00 +0000

Robert Stein, 26, was going to be shot and killed in a liquor store robbery in a relatively nice part of Los Angeles. Death checked her notes, and saw that Robert had four minutes and forty eight seconds left to live.

She waited in the liquor store in a spot with a fairly good view of the cash register, which is where the shooting would occur.

There was a chinese buffet a little further down the road. If she had enough time after this, she planned on stopping by there to get some discount priced egg rolls, sweet and sour pork and fried rice to go.

Robert stood behind the register. He looked like a man who was counting the minutes until he could leave. He didn’t notice Death watching him.

The robber (meth lab explosion) walked in to the store two minutes later. He was wearing a ratty jean jacket and a stocking cap.

“Welcome to Angel’s Liquor,” Robert said, without much enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” the robber said. He wandered to the back of the store.

A woman who looked to be about sixty seven (cirrhosis) came to the counter with a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey.

“How are you doing today, Mrs. Stevens?” Robert said.

“Same as yesterday, Robert,” Mrs. Stevens said.

“Anything else for you today?”

“Just this.”

Robert put the bottle of Canadian Club in a bag and handed it to Mrs. Stephens. He wished her a good day. As soon as she’d left the building, he resumed leaning against the back of the counter and looking supremely bored.

The robber came up to the register with his hands in the pocket of his jean jacket.

“What can I do for you, man?” Robert asked.

The robber pulled a small pistol out of the pocket of his jacket and said, “Give me all the money in the register.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” Robert said, as he opened the till. “You know, man, we’ve got cameras trained on the register, and we don’t keep more than a hundred bucks in here at a time.”

“Just give me the money, asshole,” the robber said. He looked extremely agitated.

“Yeah yeah. You want a bag for that? You know we’ve got cameras outside too. We’ve got pictures of your face and we’re gonna know which way you went.”

As the two of them continued bickering, Death was distracted by something she’d spotted out of the corner of her eye. Just outside was one of the missing deceased Naughty Gnostics. He had obviously seen her and was doing his best to avoid being noticed. Which, incidentally, made him more noticeable to Death than if he’d just continued going about his business.

“Here,” Robert said as he handed the robber a paper bag full of cash. “Spend it quick, and hope the cops catch you before the owner’s boys do. He doesn’t like it when other people take his money much.”

“Shut the fuck up, man. I think you forgot which one of us has the gun here.”

“Nah, I’ve just been robbed by your type before. You’re too much of a pussy to actually shoot. Better run on out of town now, before the boss’s crew can find you. I’d guess you’re going to have about thirty minutes after I’ve called them.”

Death was still paying more attention to the Naughty Gnostic that was trying to hide than the robbery going on in front of her, so she jumped a little bit when the gunshots started.

Robert was shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the forehead. His body fell forward and slumped over the register.

“Shit. I guess I called that one wrong,” Robert’s soul said.

“I guess so,” Death said. “Wait there just a second.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m dead and I’ve got to stay here in this fucking store?”

“If you like you can come with me, but hurry up,” Death said. She was already headed for the entrance of the store. She went through the door without opening it, turned the corner and grabbed a very surprised Naughty Gnostic by the collar.

“Hey pal, how’s the afterlife treating you?” Death said.

“I wasn’t spying on you, I swear” the ghost said.

Robert’s soul stood just behind her, watching all this with a mixture of shock and delight. Death grabbed the Gnostic with her other hand and well.

“OK. I hadn’t asked. Why would you think I’d think you were spying on me as opposed to just avoiding me?”

“Um. No reason. I was just avoiding you. I used to peek in windows sometimes, it was just an old habit is all.”

Death gave the Gnostic a hard shake.

“Bull. Why are you spying on me? And before you answer, I suggest you consider how long I’ve been doing this job, and how much practice I might have inspiring cooperation in uncooperative souls.”

The Gnostic swallowed and stammered slightly when he said, “OK, I’ve been keeping an eye out for you. Someone told me to, I don’t know who. I couldn’t see who it was. They said I needed to see what you were up to and report back, or they’d hurt my family.”

“Well, I guess you’re going to have to assume they were bluffing, because you’re coming with me now.”

“Where are you going to take me?”

“To the afterlife, like I was originally. It’s my job, remember?”

“No!” the Gnostic said. He started flailing and trying to get free of Death’s grip, with no success. “I gotta protect my people.”

“Your people are going to be fine. There’s no reason to kill them if you’ve been brought to the afterlife.”

“No! They said no matter what, if I failed they’d hurt everyone I knew. I can’t go with you!” He struggled all the harder. Death held tight to his collar with one hand. The gnostic hit and pulled and pried as hard as he could at her arm with no effect.

Death quickly became fed up with this and, quick as a striking snake, let go of his collar and seized him by the nose.

“Anyone who’d want to spy on me would know that going after your family after I’ve collected you and brought you to the other side is a waste of effort. Now, either way you’re going to come along with me. I can either walk you with a firm grip on your jacket, or I can drag you along by your nose. Your choice.”

The Gnostic continued to struggle against her. “OK, by the nose it is.”

She turned to Robert and held out her free hand. “Would you walk with me as well?”

Robert looked at the Gnostic’s ineffectual struggle, and decided amicability was the best option. “Sure, why not?”

He took her hand, and the three of them stepped out of this world.

The gateway appeared after a few moments, and Death heaved the Naughty Gnostic through it the moment it opened. He protested the entire way, until his protests were abruptly cut off.

“Is his family really going to be safe?” Robert asked.

“Yes, they’ll be fine. It’s kind of an empty threat to make to a ghost anyway. Killing off someone’s family is something you do to make an example of them. Who’s going to pay attention to the example when the person who screwed up was already dead? It would be pointless.”

“That’s a relief,” Robert said. “What now?”

“Now you step through the gateway and go on to whatever awaits you.”

Chapter Eight

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:16:00 +0000

When Thomas gave Death the slip, he figured life would go on pretty much the same as it always had. Apart from a little extra work making sure Death didn’t catch up with him, life should have just continued. He’d go to work, date, eat... live a normal life.

Life, however, had gotten weird.

Things were more or less normal for the first couple of days. He’d gotten an odd look here and there. It seemed like he had to repeat himself more than usual. Then he started getting a lot of odd looks. People didn’t notice him speaking until he’d gotten right in front of them.

His co-workers didn’t seem to notice if he was there or not after a couple of weeks. After a month, they really didn’t notice. He failed to show up at all for several and didn’t even get a phone call asking where he was. Oddly enough, he did continue to receive a paycheck.

Thomas’s job wasn’t exactly his passion, so he decided to see how long he could get away with not showing up before the paychecks stopped. So far, he was up to a month and a half.

Thomas was on his way out for a date. He’d seen her around here and there, and had a bit of a crush on her, but had never had the guts to ask her out on a date before. Now that he was cheating death every minute he was alive, the thought of a little thing like getting rejected for a date was barely even a concern.

He picked her up at her apartment, and the two of them went out for dinner at a restaurant he’d always wanted to try. His date was oddly quiet for most of the evening, but she’d laughed at his jokes and he thought things had gone well.

When he dropped her off, he walked with her up to the entrance to her building.

“I had a great time tonight,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, it was fun,” his date said.

“Do you want to go out again some time?”

His date looked uncomfortable, and said, “I don’t think so, sorry.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. He felt a little more rejected than he’d thought he would if things didn’t go well. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, it’s just... You know what deja vu is? Well, I feel something sort of like the opposite of that. This whole time I’ve had the strangest feeling that whatever we were doing should never have happened.”

“Wow. OK, that’s a little harsh, I think. Have a good night,” Thomas said and turned to walk away.

“I don’t mean it like that. You seem like a great guy. Something is just weird, and it’s probably me.”

“OK. See you around then.”

Well that turned out to be a disaster. And a waste of sixty bucks, Thomas thought as he walked back to his car. He was sad that it hadn’t worked out at all, and a bit angry at what she’d said. He supposed he shouldn’t have asked if he’d done something wrong. Next time a girl told him she didn’t want to go out for another date, he’d just smile and say “OK, good night.”

Back at his place, he changed into the shorts and t-shirt he usually slept in, and grabbed a thick, three ring binder from his bookshelf. He brought the binder to his kitchen table and opened it. Suddenly, everything seemed all right again.

The binder was chock full of copies of Death’s notes, including names, times and addresses. It also contained the information on how to avoid her.

He wasn’t sure where the binder had come from. Someone had just left it in front of his front door, with a note that said, Thomas, you might find this useful.

And he certainly had.

Chapter Seven

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:56:00 +0000

Jay Ericson, 63, was going to die in three minutes from internal injuries received when he accidentally hit a power line while pruning a tree in his yard. Death stood about ten feet away from him, stop watch and clipboard at the ready.

The yard was neatly maintained, and had several nice plants arranged in small gardens here and there. The tree Jay was pruning was monstrous. It was mildly shocking to see a tree that old in a suburb. It had a good number of dead branches, which could be dangerous if they were left to fall on their own.

Jay’s wife had just brought him a glass of lemonade and gone back inside. Neither of them noticed Death, though she was standing in plain sight. Standing in plain sight hadn’t bothered her before, and she’d always taken it for granted that she was unseen while working. After this whole thing with Thomas started, though, she was always rather relieved when her clients didn’t notice her. Discretion was the better part of reaping souls, after all. It wouldn’t do for everyone who was about to die to start panicking and flailing about in hopes of warding her off.

Jay had finished his lemonade and resumed work on the tree. Every second he got a little closer to the power line. Death was focussed on his every movement, so she was very surprised to hear a voice right next to her. Talking to, of all people, her.

“Hey Death, who’s cooking today?” Ares said. He sounded a little overly cheerful.

Death jumped, and looked to see Ares standing right next to her, also watching Jay work. She wondered how long he’d been there, and looked around to see if anyone was in the area. She might be unseen when she was working, but she wasn’t sure if Ares would go unnoticed. And if people could see him, well, he was the kind of guy who made an impression that was hard to forget.

“I’m working right now Ares, it’s not a good time to chat.” She did her best to sound pleasant, but her aggravation with being interrupted was obvious.

“If you say so. Mind if I just hang out and watch? I love seeing someone who is a master of her craft going about her work.”

“Can he see you?”

“Him? No. He’s pruning a tree.”

“OK, could he see you? If he were to look this way?” Death asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Ares said, then he bellowed, “Hey! You in the tree! Can you see me?”

Jay jumped slightly, and turned around to see who had yelled at him. He appeared confused when he realized it was a very large, muscular man dressed in black leather. He wondered if he’d somehow managed to piss off a professional wrestler, and if so, how he’d forgotten about it. Then he looked straight at Death.

“Yes, I can see you,” Jay said, and started to climb down from where he was perched in the tree. “Who are you?”

“Ares, god of war. Who are you?”

Jay had reached the ground, and wondered if climbing out of the tree had been such a good idea. He would have had a strategic advantage in the tree, assuming this guy stayed down there on the ground. Death was busy frantically revising her notes and trying to cook up an alternate plan.

“God of war, right. And who’s she?”

Ares looked over at Death, who looked back and, almost imperceptibly, shook her head no.

“I don’t know. Some chick who was just hanging out in your yard. Don’t mind us. Go back to work.”

Right then, Eris appeared next to Ares. Jay saw this happen, took two steps backwards, and his mouth had dropped open. He wondered if he’d lost his mind.

“You know, it wasn’t very nice of you to stand me up after making plans,” she said to Ares. Eris looked rather pissed off.

“What the hell? Where the dell did you come from? How did you do that?” Jay asked Eris.

Eris didn’t answer, as she had noticed Death. Eris gave her a withering look, then looked at Ares.

“You stood me up to come hang out with this emaciated whore in some guy’s yard? What’s so interesting about this asshole that you’d want to come watch him die?”

“What?” Jay said.

Eris continued, “Yeah, nothing. Which means you’re just here to hang out with your little piece of morbid ass.

Death suddenly didn’t feel very well. She had really just wanted this to be a nice, clean where she could focus on her job, instead of trying to deal with utter chaos. She was also feeling extremely insulted. However, there would be time to deal with Eris later. For now, she needed to focus on getting this situation back into some kind of control.

“I didn’t stand you up,” Ares said to Eris. “I don’t even remember making plans with you.”

“Oh, whatever. You made plans with me. We were going to go and stir up some destruction and mayhem. But instead of hundreds of dead and a ruined city, I have to track you down having a tea party in some idiot’s suburban backyard?”

Jay was beyond confused. He said, “What the hell did she mean about watching me die?”

Death took a breath to speak, but Eris was already talking.

“Yeah, sorry guy. It’s your time.”

Just then, a very large branch fell from the tree he’d been pruning and struck him on the head. Jay collapsed under it, and didn’t move apart from a slightly twitchy left foot.

“What the hell just happened?” Death said.

“Chaos, honey. Look into it sometime,” Eris said. “And stay away from Ares, he’s mine. Got it?”

“Whatever, Eris. I didn’t invite him here.”

“Could someone please tell me what the fuck is going on today?” Jay’s soul said. He was standing with his hands on his hips just in front of the three gods.

Death was about to apologize for the sloppy work, but was interrupted by Jay’s wife, Mindy (overdose on painkillers), came running out into the yard, screaming. She ran over to Jay’s body and tried to lift the branch off of him, but it was too heavy for her to move. She looked over at Death, Ares and Eris.

“For God’s sake, come help me!”

“Yay, chaos!” Eris said.

Ares seemed unsure of what to do. He took a hesitant step forward, then a few more, and then went over to where Jay’s body lay pinned by the branch. He lifted it off easily and tossed it to one side. Then he shook himself, and went back over to where Death and Eris were standing.

Mindy held Jay’s head and tried to convince him not to be dead.

“Did we screw things up?” Ares asked Death.

She glared at him. “Yes, you guys screwed things up. I told you I was working, but you just had to hang around anyway.”

“Seems to me we just made things more interesting,” Eris said.

“Would one of you please tell me what the fuck just happened here?” Jay’s soul said. He was starting to shake.

“Well, obviously you just died, stupid,” Eris said.

“OK,” Death said, “That’s enough. Ares and Eris, you two need to leave. Now.”

“Whatever,” Eris said, and disappeared.

“Um. Sorry to mess things up,” Ares said. “I guess I’m not so good with non-violent situations.”

“It’s fine. Go now Ares,” Death said.

“See you around,” Ares said. He disappeared as well.

“What a day,” Death muttered to herself. She looked at Jay.

“Sorry about all this. I had a really good death planned out for you. You wouldn’t have even seen it coming. You might not have even felt it.”

Jay looked unimpressed. “Yeah, well, instead I spent my last few seconds on Earth confused and then terrified.”

“Hey, I said I was sorry. And most people spend their last few moments confused and terrified. Comes with the territory, pal. Do you know how few people actually die in their sleep? And what fun is that, anyway? You don’t even get the experience, you’d just wake up dead. Boring.”

“Wow, you’re really an asshole,” Jay said.

“Sorry. I’ve been out of sorts.”

When Death returned from the gateway, the ambulance to for Jay had just arrived. Mindy was busy fretting over Jay, and didn’t notice Death’s reappearance. The EMTs didn’t notice her either.

She walked down the street a ways to where she had left her motorcycle. It looked like there was something on the seat. When she reached her bike, she saw someone had left a dozen black roses for her. There was a card too.

It was signed “Thomas S.”

The son of a bitch had been there too. Couldn’t she just do her damn job?

Death decided to call Hep and Scroat.

“Hey, have you found anything out about Thomas?” Death asked.

“Not really,” Hep said. “So far we’ve staked out his house, but he hasn’t been there.”

“The bastard just left me a bunch of black roses on the seat of my bike.”

“Whoa. That’s pretty cocky,” Hep said.

“Yeah. And I don’t see a sign of him otherwise.”

“Well, maybe Scroat and I will just go ahead and invite ourselves into his place and see if there’s anything of interest in there.”

“That sounds totally reasonable to me,” Death said. “Let me know what you find out.”

“Likewise. Hey, if he’s following you around, it might make it a lot easier to grab him.”

“Fingers crossed, Hep.” Death said. She hung up the phone and got on her bike. She was going to catch this guy.

Her phone beeped then to remind her she had another death to attend to. She hoped that this one would go uninterrupted by uninvited friends. It would be nice to just go about business as usual, even if it was only for a few minutes.

Chapter Six

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 03:41:00 +0000

Death had agreed to visit Hep and Scroat at their house after she’d dropped off the soul she’d been collecting when she ran into them. She’d forgotten then those two actually rode their motorcycles, on actual roads, in order to actually get anywhere. Hep had some kind of... thing... that made traveling by thought, as she did, extremely painful. As far as she was aware, Scroat couldn’t travel by thought at all. It all worked out pretty well for them, though, since they preferred riding to other methods of transportation anyhow.

Because of this, she’d arrived at their home roughly an hour and a half ahead of them. So much for a quick meeting. She checked her calendar. Incredibly, she had two hours to herself before the next passing.

It was time to go have a bite to eat. Death was thrilled.

She had an hour and a half to herself before Hep and Scroat arrived. She could go anywhere, eat anything. The number of possibilities was staggering. With and hour and a half to herself, she could have dinner in New York and pick up a pie in San Diego.

She decided to try a place near her home that she’d never been able to get to. Despite her constant travel and work, Death did have a home of her own. It was a fairly nice apartment in an older complex in northern California. Of course, she got to spend time there about as often as she got to eat. Her landlord took advantage of that fact and used her apartment, which was furnished in a generic but nice way, as a model when showing prospective tenants around. He was, of course, wise enough to not do this when Death happened to be there.

Near her apartment, anyhow, was a taco shop she’d never remembered to try out. Right now seemed like a good time.

She arrived in front of the taco shop seconds later. Inside were a few tables and a counter to order at. She went in, and checked the menu over the counter. There were a few other people inside. Most of them looked like college students. Humboldt University wasn’t too far away.

She ordered five carne asada tacos, and took a seat. She was absolutely delighted to be there. She wasted no time before devouring the chips and salsa, which mainly served to remind her that it had been a very long time since she’d last eaten anything.

The chips ran out far too quickly, and she wasn’t able to get an employee’s attention. She considered just going into the back and getting her own damned chips when the waiter brought out her tacos. If he’d been paying closer attention to how Death was watching the tacos, he probably would have dropped the plate on the table more quickly, for fear of his hand getting eaten as well by mistake.

There was a loud argument going on at the table next to hers, but Death barely noticed. She looked down at her tacos and savored the moment. Five tacos. All hers. She had another hour before she could expect Hep and Scroat to be back at their place. Nothing to do but enjoy her tacos.

The argument got louder still, and two of the men at the next table had stood up suddenly, still arguing. Death picked up her first taco. It was almost too hot to hold.

She was about to take a bite when one of the men who had been arguing fell backwards on to her table. He’d crushed her plate of tacos, and knocked the one she’d been holding out of her hand.

It seemed to fall in slow motion as it arced towards the floor.

“No!” Death yelled, and reached, too late, to catch the airborne taco.

The two men were fighting on her table, inches away. A hideous, primal rage built in Death. She grabbed one of the men by the face and shoved him with all of her might off of her table. She then stood up and grabbed the other man by his collar, pulled him up from the table, and threw him across the room.

“You ruined my dinner, you rotten sons of bitches,” Death said in a low hiss. “Do you have any idea, any fucking idea at all how long it has been since I last ate? Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to try this place? It’s been a long, long time.”

One of the men had started to get up.

“Get your ass back on the ground before I bury you,” Death said. He sat again. “Now, I’m going to make this as clear as I can. The only fight I’m going to allow to continue in here is me beating the ever-loving shit out of the two of you. I just want my goddamned taco. It’s not that much to fucking ask. Now, you go pay my tab and get out of here before I decide I’m interested in what you look like on the inside.”

The entire group who had been at the next table decided that right then would be an excellent time to leave. The one’s who hadn’t been fighting apologized for disturbing Death’s evening. The two who had been fighting went to the counter with their heads down, dropped several bills on the counter and scampered out the door.

Death looked at the ruins of her tacos. She really should have killed them.

The waiter came over, a bit timidly, and asked if she wanted some new tacos. Death took a look at the time, and realized she couldn’t wait.

“No, thanks. I’ll come back another time,” she said. She went outside and noticed the group who’d just left were standing nearby, talking. They all noticed her watching them, almost at the same time, and hustled away.

She arrived back at Hep and Scroat’s place just as they rolled up.

“Some timing,” Hep said as he got off his bike. “I’m glad you didn’t have to wait too long.”

“You know me,” Death said. “All action all the time.”

Hep opened the door and let Death into the trailer he and Scroat were living in.

“I don’t remember you guys living in a trailer. I thought you lived in a house,” Death said.

Hep and Scroat glanced at each other. Hep said, “We did. The house burned down. One of our neighbors loaned us this trailer until we can rebuild.”

“Your house burned down? How the hell did that happen?”

“Just don’t fucking ask,” Scroat said. “We let Inktomi stay here. Do I need to explain the rest?”

Death said, “You guys let Inktomi stay in your house? I’m impressed. I wouldn’t let him stay in my potting shed.”

Hep said, “We didn’t let him stay here. Scroat did. We got back and found the entire place burned to the ground, including my workshop.”

“Harsh,” Death said.

“Yeah, way to throw me under the bus, cockstain.” Scroat said.

“I meant, harsh that your entire place burned down,” Death said. She glanced around. “This place seems OK.”

“It’s a dump, but it’ll do for now,” Hep said. “So, who’s this guy we’re looking for?”

Death told them what she knew about Thomas Swinton. She described what he looked like, and was able to provide them with the addresses she’d expect him to be hanging around. His home, his parents’ home, his job, even a few of his friends’ addresses.

“So remind me what we’re getting out of this again,” Scroat said.

“Well, for starters, there’s the whole thing of preventing the worlds of the living and dead from tumbling in to chaos,” Death said.

Scroat looked skeptical, “From one guy getting loose? I kinda doubt it. I think you’ve just got a hard on for for this guy because he gave you the slip.”

“No, Scroat, if some guy wanted to live forever hiding from me, I really wouldn’t care all that much. But everything this guy does is going to have an impact on the future. It’s like the thing about a butterfly flapping its’ wings and causing a hurricane on the other side of the world. At some point, he’s going to have an impact on a pivotal event. Maybe he’ll kill a world leader, indirectly. Maybe he’ll set back cancer research by twenty years. And while he’s doing that, whatever afterlife awaits him is currently short one soul. He’s impacting events in the afterlife by simply not being there.”

“And that’s bad?” Scroat said.

“Yeah, that’s bad.”

“Wait a second,” Hep said. “What impact is he having on the afterlife? They’ll pretty much get along with or without him, won’t they? I mean, I know there are a few ghosts who have given you the slip and stayed around here. How is this any different?”

“Somewhere out there is a soul that’s waiting to be reborn, and it can’t leave until this Thomas character has given up his spot here on Earth. Shoot, somewhere in heaven there’s a football game or something that’s a player short. He has a place he’s supposed to be, and he’s left a gap. He’s still out there acting and having an impact on other people’s lives when he’s supposed to have moved on. Do you dig what I’m saying?” Death said.

“Yeah, I think I get it,” Hep said.

“But you’re still not going to pay us, is what I’m getting,” Scroat said.

Death rubbed at her temples. “OK, I’ll buy you each a case of beer for helping me out. Will that convince you?”

“Yep,” Scroat said. “I’m good now.”

“You don’t,” Hep started to say, but Death interrupted him.

“No, I can buy you a couple cases of beer for helping me out. I did kind of stiff you last time.”

“Whatever, I’d help you out for free,” Hep said.

“Then you can give me your fucking case of beer as well,” Scroat said. “Your payment can be watching me enjoy drinking them.”

Chapter Five

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 04:47:00 +0000

There are days that are less than ideal for commuting by bicycle. Depending on one’s latitude, the temperature extremes of summer and winter can be uncomfortable, even dangerous with the wrong clothing. Then there are days like the one on which Thomas Swinton was going to die.

Death held her umbrella in one hand, and her notebook and stopwatch in the other. Making notes as things progressed would be tricky at best. From the looks of things, it had been raining all day and probably all night before that. If she were to step off the sidewalk into the grass, her shoes would have quickly filled with water, and might even have gotten stuck a bit depending on where she stepped.

Thomas Swinton rode his bicycle to work every day. He rode through rain, snow and gloom of night. Anything short of a force five hurricane was just a minor inconvenience, so far as he was concerned. A rainy day like this one barely registered as bad weather.

Death watched and waited for Thomas. Her notes said he would be along in one and a half minutes. In one minute and thirty five seconds, he would be dead.

At the appointed time, Death saw a bicyclist, pedaling hard through the rain. In a few moments, he would get cut off by a driver that wasn’t paying attention. His brakes would fail due to the rain, and he would swerve in front of a cement truck. He’d be dead from brain damage before the ambulance arrived.

Death checked her stop watch, and started counting down. In five seconds, he would get cut off. Then she’d just have to grab his soul and she’d be out of the rain.

Except that’s not what happened. When the bicyclist was close enough for Death to be able to see his face, she recognized him as the man who had seen her at two previous deaths. He came to a slow, easy stop across the street from her. Death took a glance at her notes. This was definitely not going by the plan.

Thomas looked over at Death and gave her an enormous, cheesy smile. He waved. The car that was supposed to cut him off, didn’t. The cement truck drove on without stopping.

Then Thomas vanished.

Death rarely panicked. No matter the situation, no matter how sideways things went, she was able to maintain her focus and finish her job. Staying calm in calamitous situations was critical.

She had never had a client simply disappear before. She panicked.

Death dropped her clipboard and umbrella and ran across the street to where Thomas had been. If someone had seen her, they might have suspected she’d lost her mind as she looked around wildly, waving her arms through the air trying to find a hiding spot or some kind of disturbance that could explain where Thomas had gone. She stood still and just felt for him. Being able to feel where a client was made it possible for her to find anyone whose time had come. However, she couldn’t even feel him. After several minutes of searching, she had to admit that Thomas was well and truly missing.

Losing a soul was bad, but letting a living client get away still alive was a disaster. It was true she had granted extensions to a few people in the past, though even that usually had messy results. But in those situations, she could still just go and collect them whenever needed. So if someone used their extension to make epic naughty, well, she could put a stop to that.

But this Thomas guy had somehow figured out a way to hide from her.

Death sat down on the curb to think. She was already soaked through, so a bit more rain wasn’t going to have much of an effect on her. Her phone beeped at her to remind her she had another client to see to.

She was going to need help if she was going to track Thomas down and keep collecting souls whose time had come. She had no idea who might be able to help her, though. It would have to be someone who had a lot of free time. Someone who wouldn’t mind covering a lot of ground if required.

Her phone beeped again. She needed to get back to work too.

The death was another fight gone too far outside another dive bar. The bar was in the Sonoran desert, in a fake ghost town that was on the brink of becoming a real ghost town due to a lack of tourism. The cheap Old West styled buildings were falling apart. There were a lot of motorcycles and a couple of old cars parked outside the bar, otherwise the whole place was empty.

The killer had fled the scene, even though he was well known and not well liked by the patrons of the bar. He would be arrested later that day.

“So, what was that all about?” Death asked the soul of the recently deceased man.

“I don’t know. He just came up to me, called me a pussy, and took a swing at me. I was just going to rough him up a bit to teach him a lesson, but the son of a bitch had a knife.”

“That’s rough,” Death said. She was going to continue, but one of the motorcycles caught her eye. It was a sidecar rig, very black and absolutely perfect.

“I think someone I know is here,” Death said to the soul. “Do you mind sticking around for another minute or two?”

“Well, I don’t have much else to do.”

“Let’s go inside.”

In the back corner of the bar sat two men. The larger of the two was drinking beer out of a pitcher. He was physically imposing from the waist up, though his legs were shriveled and misshapen. He was also impossibly ugly. The smaller guy had a deep, deep tan, and was wearing a black t-shirt with white text that read “Fuck You and Your Fucking Horse, You Fucking Fuck.” It was Hephaistos and his roommate Bama-Pana (who went by Scroat).

Death smiled, and went to greet her friends.

Hephaistos saw her first. “Death! What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

“Just work, Hep.” She pointed at the soul. “What have you guys been up to since I saw you last?”

“You’re fucking looking at it,” Scroat said.

“Are you feeling up to helping an old friend out?”

Hep and Scroat looked at each other warily.

“Well, I guess that depends what you need in the way of help,” Hep said. “We’re not much good at reaping, in case you forgot.”

Death laughed. The two of them had filled in for her when she’d had some... personal problems... a while back. It hadn’t gone especially well for them.

“No, I don’t need you to sub for me. I need you to track someone down.”

“What’s in it for us? As I recall, neither of us got so much as a blow job the last time we helped you, OW!”

Hep had kicked Scroat under the table.

“Well it’s true,” Scroat said. “I mean, if I needed someone to stand in for me for a while, I’d at least buy him a case of beer.”

Hep rolled his eyes. “As if we’d had anything better to do any way,” he said to Scroat. To Death he said, “Who do you need tracked down? How come you can’t just find whoever it is yourself?”

“The guy’s name is Thomas Swinton. He vanished when I was trying to collect him, and he seems to have figured out a way to hide from me.”

“Why do you think we’ll be able to find him? I mean, you’re the one with the ability to just know where people are. We’re pretty much stuck with a phone book and a pair of binoculars, relatively speaking,” Hep said.

“I can tell you where he’s likely to be and where he’s likely to go. What I don’t have is time to stake these places out until he shows up. I need a couple people who have a lot of, shall we say, leisure time.”

Scroat laughed. “I’ve never considered being out of work leisure time before. But now that you mention it, my lifestyle is pretty leisurely. I don’t know if I really care to interrupt my leisure with a bunch of fucking private eye bullshit.”

“Whatever Scroat. We’ve been so bored lately we came to this bar in hopes of something interesting happening.”

“So you’ll help me out?” Death said.

“Sure, why not?” Hep said.

Chapter Four

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 21:32:00 +0000

Roughly six Naughty Gnostic souls were on the loose somewhere in the Los Angeles area. It wouldn’t be too much work for Death to track them down, but it was going to be difficult to find the time while attending to other Deaths. There was a good chance they’d be haunting for quite a while, since at this point if she found some extra time, Death was going to use it to eat.

She hoped she’d be able to find them before too long, though. Being isolated for eternity was probably the worst thing she could think of.

For now, however, she had other business to attend to. William Tyler, 27, was going to crash his hang glider near Bend, Oregon.

At the Pine Mountain launch site, William was already waiting for the right winds to take off when Death arrived. There were a few others waiting their turns behind him.

According to her notes, he was going to launch in three minutes and twenty seven seconds, glide roughly a mile, stall, fail to recover, and crash. Death planned to wait for him to launch, and then meet him at his crash site. She started her stop watch.

William stood near the edge of the launch, watching the plants move in the wind, looking for his opportunity to take off. Three minutes and twenty seven seconds passed, and William had not taken off yet. Death figured she’d perhaps started the watch early, and that William was going to take off any second.

After ten minutes had passed, the gliders waiting their turns started grumbling.

“Hey man, don’t be a launch potato,” one of them called to William.

When thirteen minutes had passed, one of the others said, “Shit or get off the pot man! We’d all like to fly sometime today.”

Death saw William take a deep breath, and jump. She moved in the blink of an eye to the predetermined crash location. From there, she was able to see William’s glider, as it fell more or less directly down the slope until it, and William, met the ground several thousand feet lower.

“What the Hell?” Death said. She double checked her notes, which informed her that William should have been dead in her current location a few minutes ago. She hadn’t been so far off the mark for a very long time. She’d have to figure out where she went wrong later, though. For now, she needed to get over to where William’s soul would be before he decided it would be a great idea to wander off.

At the crash site, she found William looking uphill. At the launch site, the other gliders were looking down and shouting indistinctly. He jumped slightly when he noticed her.

“Whoa, where did you come from?”

“Nasty fall, huh?” Death said. “What happened?”

William scratched the back of his neck and said “I don’t exactly know. I guess I judged the thermals wrong. I should have just gotten out of the way for those other guys and tried flying another day.”

“Well, if you take enough risks, you’ll probably get burned eventually. I hope the rewards made the pitfalls worth it.”

William smiled, “They sure did. What happens now?”

Death held out her arm to him and said, “Now you walk with me a little further, and you move on.”

Moments after delivering William to the gateway, Death’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket, and read another text message alerting her to an unscheduled death. It was in Los Angeles again.

If Ares was killing more people already, she was going to have some very harsh words with him. She understood killing was kind of his thing, but his enthusiasm for his work was a bit frustrating when he wasn’t actually involved in a war. Deaths on the battlefield were usually handled by a variety of other gods. Good thing, too, because it would be nearly impossible to keep up with war dead by herself.

Death arrived to discover the soul of a forty three year old dentist named Dr. Lawrence Soderholm standing next to a running Corvette. His body was inside, looking strangely healthy. There was a vacuum cleaner hose running from the exhaust pipe into the window. A suicide. Suicides just pissed her off.

I guess I got my wish. Ares wasn’t involved, Death thought.

“Nice Corvette, asshole,” Death said.

“Um, thanks?” Dr. Soderholm said.

“So, I see you killed yourself. How did that work out for you?”

“Fine, I guess. Maybe. I’m not sure.” He looked a bit confused. Death had seen plenty of suicides. They all looked confused, like they hadn’t gotten what they’d wished for, and weren’t sure whether or not they liked what they’d gotten instead.

“Did you think that I wasn’t going to do a good enough job for your death, you arrogant prick?”

Dr. Soderholm’s mouth dropped open and he went a bit pale. “Huh?”

“Well, you must have thought the death I had planned for you wasn’t going to be good enough. So you decided the DIY route would be best. Just to make sure you got good and dead. And in your Corvette too. Fancy. You know your body shit all over in there, don’t you?”

“Yes, but... Wait. What are you talking about?”

Death stepped closer to Dr. Soderholm. He could see her jaw twitching a little bit, and wondered if perhaps he’d made things much worse for himself. Whoever she was, she looked kind of dangerous. Maybe that was a silly thing to worry about now that he was dead, but then, maybe it was exactly the right thing to be worried about.

“You, jack ass, I’m talking about you taking matters into your own hands and killing yourself. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? Do you know how much work I have to put in to make sure a person’s death is exactly right? It took eons to get proficient at it, and here you are, a god damned amateur, doing my job for me.”

“So... you’re Death?”

“You tell me, Dr. Bigshot Bringer of Death. What do you think, since you’re an obvious expert on these matters?”

“Um...”

“Um? Um!? You’re standing face to face with Death and the best you can come up with is ‘Um’? You know, if you want to do my job, the least you can do is be slightly knowledgable about it.”

“I didn’t mean to step on your toes.”

“No? Then you should have lived out your stupid little life until it was time for me to come get you. Do you know what you’re thrown away yet?”

“Well, kinda. I realized when I was slipping under that I could actually solve all of my problems...”

Death interrupted him, “Except for the problem of being unable to move after gassing yourself to death. God, I hear that same stupid line every time. You suicides all think you’re so fucking profound because you finally realized you’ve got free will, just in time to croak.”

She starting poking him in the chest. “You know what you gave up? Pizza. Any time you were hungry, you could just get yourself a fucking pizza. Or a cheeseburger.”

Death looked him up and down.

“Or in your pathetic case, a salad. You threw away a world of potential. What could have been so bad?”

“Well, work was unbearable and my wife...”

“You could have changed any of that, lived out the rest of your days being awesome, and I would have come to collect you at the end. Which, by the way, would have had a lot more dignity that shitting yourself in your Corvette. Whatever. You dumb shit. Let’s get you to the gateway.”

Death grabbed Dr. Soderholm by the ear and was about to bring him to the gateway when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look, and saw one of the Naughty Gnostics that had snuck off the other night. He was standing just outside the garage.

He looked like he wanted a favor. Death glowered at him.

“Hey, Mr. Sneakypants, did you discover being a ghost isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”

He nodded. “I tried to visit my family, but none of them could see me no matter what I did. I managed to knock some stuff over and move some stuff around, but they just blamed the dog.”

“Do you know where the rest of your buddies are?”

“Not really. I assume they’re doing what I did, but we ran off, and then we got split up, and then I couldn’t find any of them anywhere. I went to all of their houses, and then the places we used to hang out, but I didn’t see them anywhere. I’m so glad I saw you. I was starting to freak out.”

Death rolled her eyes, “Yeah, I bet. Did you think things were going to turn out awesome if you ran away from me? I’m not a cop, you know. People never realize I’m here to help you out. I’m on your side.”

She looked at Dr. Soderholm briefly, then back at the Naughty Gnostic.

“Well, most of the time I’m on your side. Come on.”

Death held out a hand, and brought the two souls to the other side.

Death decided she could really go for a martini. Several martinis, actually. In fact, retiring to her couch with two bottles of gin and a jar of olives sounded like a fantastic way to spend an evening. Getting someone to cover for her for a few days might not be the worst idea.

She wondered how the next death was going to go wrong, or go weird. So far that day, she’d collected a hang glider that didn’t, a suicide, and a biker ghost who’d had enough already. Up next was probably going to be a not-very-good ninja done in early by an accident involving his pet monkey with a penchant for throwing stars and a fire hose, when he was supposed to just die of a run of the mill heart attack.

Death cracked a grin at the thought. She was going to have to write that idea down for later.

Chapter Three

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:07:00 +0000

The place called itself a pub, but it wasn’t really. It was a sports bar that sold beef stew along with the traditional deep-fried things every bar serves. It had vaguely British decorations around the walls. The waitresses wore teeny-tiny little skirts that kind of resembled kilts, only slutty, and Union Jack halter tops. All the same, it was a place with food, and Death had a whole hour to herself.

The hostess (robbery gone wrong) seemed surprised to see Death walk in alone. Women didn’t usually go there by themselves.

“Hi, welcome to O’Hanrahan’s. How many will be in your party?” the hostess said with a little too much enthusiasm and a toothy grin.

Death raised an eyebrow, and said, “Just me.”

The hostess blinked several times, then looked down at the seating chart. She marked an X on one of the tables, and said, “Right this way.”

Oddly, none of the men, or other women, in the place seemed to notice her. Ordinarily, a woman dressed head to toe in motorcycle leathers would have been the center of attention when she walked in to the room. Death didn’t mind being inconspicuous, however. She was there to eat, not make new friends.

When her waitress (undetected heart murmur) came to her table, Death ordered a beer, potato skins, cheese sticks and a bacon cheeseburger.

Sitting back in her chair, Death thought about how long it had actually been since she last ate. That half sandwich might have been a year ago, now that she thought about it. Maybe she should have asked to get her entire order deep-fried, including the beer.

Speaking of beer, the waitress appeared just then with a frosty cold mug.

“Your food will be out in just a few minutes,” she said.

Death started tapping her foot impatiently. She had just picked up her glass of beer when her phone rang. There was a new text message. She wondered if she’d forgotten about an appointment. It was rare, but it happened. She read the text message, which was simply an address and a time. The time was 90 seconds from right then. The address was in Los Angeles.

The lack of notice meant it was either a suicide, which always pissed her off, or a person had been Struck Down by some other god. Otherwise there would be more time to get ready. She might have even been able to get her food to go. Instead, she just got a text message warning her that a death was going to happen, soon, and that she’d better get there.

Far fewer people were Struck Down than committed suicide. So, it was safe to assume a suicide had interrupted her lunch. Whoever it was that killed him or her self, they were going to have a nice long discussion about not jumping the gun. Particularly when doing so has an impact on Death’s lunch break.

Death vanished from the bar. No one noticed. A few minutes later, the waitress came by with food, then had to stop and think about who, exactly, had ordered it. She just couldn’t recall. She did know, however, that someone had been at that table, and had ordered a lot of food she was going to have to pay for now. Irritated, she went back to the kitchen and threw it all away.

Death arrived at the address in Los Angeles, and discovered she was in a dive bar full of bikers. Most of the people in attendance were wearing leather vests with patches on the back. It seemed the Naughty Gnostics MC were in attendance.

She’d never heard of them before.

Everyone was facing away from her, watching something happening in the far corner of the bar. It looked like a fight was brewing. There was a low murmuring of conversation, but otherwise the bar was silent.

She heard a familiar voice say, “Oh is that so? Well, why don’t you take that attitude and suck on this?”

There was the thump of a fist being driven into someone’s gut, and then chaos erupted. Like many motorcycle gangs, the Naughty Gnostics MC had a “One in, All in” policy. Most of the time, it kept the members in line, because if they started a fight, it meant they started a fight for the whole gang.

It also meant that if an outsider punched a member, he was going to get pummeled by an entire gang instead of one guy. Every person wearing a patch in the bar rushed to the corner where the action had apparently started. Where there had been silence, there was now a great deal of indecipherable shouting.

A gang fight shouldn’t have summoned her at a moment’s notice, though. Death had heard of “blue suicide,” pointing a gun at a cop in order to be shot, but never “biker suicide”.

In the dim light of the bar, she was just able to see something flying through the air towards her. It landed just short and rolled to her feet. She looked down, and realized she was looking at a man’s head.

Right about then, there started to be a great deal more screaming coming from the far corner of the bar. There was a sudden rush of leather clad men running past Death to the exit. She could hear motorcycles starting outside, and roaring away into the distance.

In the corner of the bar, there were several bodies, and what looked like a man dressed in black leather jumping up and down on one of them. He was taunting the bodies as well. Death recognized the man as Ares. It wasn’t a suicide after all, they’d been Struck Down.

“Yeah! What have you got? Nothing! HA HA HA!” Ares said. He appeared to be enjoying himself quite a bit.

Nearby, the souls of the bikers watched this with dismay, as well as a fair amount of embarrassment. Then they noticed Death watching them, and tried to look stoic and tough.

“Forget it guys. Looking tough doesn’t work when you’re already dead,” Death said.

The souls looked at each other, then slumped a bit.

“So, uh, what happens now?” one of the dead bikers asked Death.

“I’m not exactly sure. What do Gnostics think happens to the naughty ones?”

The souls whispered urgently to each other for a moment.

“Uh, to be honest, we don’t really know what the Gnostics believe happens after death. Um. We just thought it was a cool sounding name.”

“Brilliant,” Death said. “It seems to me I read that Gnostics believe in reincarnation. Maybe you’ll luck out.”

Ares looked up from what he was doing then and saw Death. A huge smile spread across his face.

“Hey! Death! Hi! You should have gotten here a little earlier, we could have decimated this lot and then grabbed a beer when we were done. You missed all the fun!”

Ares kicked one of the corpses to punctuate his last point. One of the souls winced.

“Killing for sport isn’t really my thing, Ares,” Death said.

Ares looked affronted by the very idea. “This wasn’t sport! This was an act of war. One of these Noobie Knotheads keyed my car. Retribution was due. You let someone get away with that kind of thing, they’ll just walk all over you. If the rest of them didn’t want a war, they shouldn’t have all jumped me. Now I’ve got to track down the ones who got away and kill them too. And their families. And then raze their homes and salt the earth.”

The souls all glanced at each other. Maybe the “One In, All In” rule wasn’t so bright after all.

Death looked down and started to rub her temples. She’d missed out on a bacon cheeseburger, the first one in over a year, over an act of petty vandalism.

“OK, could you do me a favor and just let the other ones go? Just this time? I guarantee they’ve learned their lesson, and I don’t really care to interrupt what I’m doing to collect them every time you find one.”

Ares looked hard at Death, and thought for a moment.

“Well,” he said and paused a moment longer. “I guess the rest of them witnessed what happens when someone crosses me. Maybe I can stand down for now.”

“Thanks, that’s all I ask,” Death said.

“Of course, if any of them so much as look at me funny, I’ll rip out their guts and force-feed them to the others.”

“As well you should,” Death said. She was about to take her leave, when another woman appeared in the bar. Death recognized her as Eris, the goddess of chaos. She looked disheveled, and her eyes twinkled in a mischievous way.

“Ares, did I miss the fun?” Eris said. She noticed Death then and said, rather coldly, “Oh, hello Death.”

“Hello Eris. Forgive me for leaving already, but I’ve got to get these souls to the other side.”

Death wasn’t the biggest fan of Eris. Things tended to get extremely complicated the second she arrived. It was best to just politely leave as soon as possible.

“Come on, you guys,” Death said to the deceased Naughty Gnostics. She looked away and then back at them. “Hey, weren’t there more of you a minute ago?”

“Yeah, they split,” one of the three remaining souls said. ”They said something about needing to warn the other guys.”

Death sighed. “I don’t have time for this. You three, come with me. I’ll round the others up when I have time to spare.”

As the four of them waited for the gateway to arrive, one of the souls asked, “So, uh, what happens if you don’t find the other guys?”

“They’ll get to enjoy a solitary eternity on Earth watching everything they ever love die, be replaced, and then watch the replacements die and be replaced. If they’re lucky, they’ll go entirely mad after a few hundred years. Madness makes eternity a little easier to contend with.”

“Oh,” the soul said.

“But, hey, I’ll probably find most of them eventually. You guys don’t seem bright enough to stay out of the way for long.”

The gateway appeared, and Death said, “Good luck on finding out what happens to Gnostics in the afterlife! Maybe I’ll catch you again sometime.”

When she got back to the bar where she’d left her bike, she was disappointed to discover that her table had been cleared away. Her waitress walked right past her without noticing. The waitress seemed a little crankier than she had been before. Death supposed she’d stiffed the waitress. She slipped a twenty into the waitress’s apron pocket, and left the bar.

Her bike was now surrounded by several other motorcycles of various makes. She checked her calendar to see when her next appointment was. In eight minutes, Janice Bowden, 36, was going to be attacked by an alligator in the Everglades. Time to roll.

Death swung a leg over her bike and fired it up. The sound of the engine running did a lot to block out the thoughts of what a screwed up day it had been so far. She hoped the rest of the day would be free of divine interventions. She also hoped she’d be able to find something to eat soon. Maybe she’d be able to pop by a cuban sandwich shop while she was in Florida. A sandwich was a happy thought. Death twisted the throttle and roared out of the parking lot, vanishing just before she would have to merge in to traffic.

She arrived in the Everglades and was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer humidity of the place. She’d have to see to it that Janice passed quickly.

Chapter Two

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 03:53:00 +0000

Death kind of wished she had some popcorn to munch on while overseeing the next passing. Partly because she was hungry, but mostly because she’d put a lot of effort into planning this death, and it promised to be a hell of a show.

Bunny Krantz, 78, multiple gunshot wounds, was the heading on her checklist.

It was just before seven o’clock, and getting close to sunset, as Death rode up to the address in her notes. The parking lot was full of cars, and a number of elderly people were going in and out of the building. Some stood in groups outside, socializing, while others were clearly there on a mission.

Evergreen Bingo was the hot place to be for those in the white haired crowd. None of the people outside noticed Death as she rolled past the parked cars and came to a stop just to the left of the bingo hall’s entrance. There was small group of people (cancer, blood clot, aneurysm, surgical complications, and old age) standing not ten feet away, smoking and chatting, entirely oblivious to the pale, skeletal rider in their midst. Death walked past them and in to the bingo hall.

Inside were long rows of tables, with a crowd of mostly old folks lined up in chairs along each table. Most of them were smoking, and a great many of them had their lucky items on display around their bingo cards. There were troll dolls, little stuffed animals, lighters, photos of children, silver dollars, and more on display. Not many of them looked like they were having a good time, but they were very focused on what they were doing.

Bunny Krantz sat near the middle of the hall. She had an impressive collection of troll dolls arranged around her bingo cards. She also had a reserve supply of five daubers, apparently in case several of them failed mid-game. Her eyes rapidly scanned the thirty cards in front of her for each number as it was called. She stamped the matches with machine-like efficiency. Her mouth was set in a grimace that only changed when she took a drag from her cigarette.

Death noticed there was a snack bar in one corner of the room. There were various mechanical contraptions displaying hot dogs and pretzels, going around and around. They had nachos, smothered with fake, bright yellow cheese. There were pizza pockets and corndogs in a hot case.

She checked her notes and the time. The action wouldn’t really start for another five minutes. She could probably grab something. What would it hurt? Part of the job was grabbing a bite whenever possible, because people who were soon to be deceased weren’t likely to just hang around waiting for her to finish her lunch break before she got there to finish the job. People in their homes rarely offered food, so she had to take advantage of every opportunity to eat.

There were two people in line ahead of her (car crash, choking). Death checked her watch. Four minutes until she had to pay attention, no sweat. Car Crash got his two hot dogs with mustard, relish and lots of onions and went back to his table. Choking, however, had issues. She asked if there were unsalted pretzels (There were not). She asked if nachos were made with real cheese (Only genuine cheese food product). What flavor were the pizza pockets (Pepperoni). Any sausage? (No).

Death checked her watch. Two minutes.

Choking decided she’d like a hot dog, plain, and a large Diet Coke. When the snack bar employee gave her the soda, Choking got upset. Too much ice. Death rolled her eyes. Then the hot dog looked old, was there a fresher one? One minute to go.

Death sighed, and went back over to keep an eye on Bunny. She had her stopwatch and pen at the ready.

A woman with blue-rinsed hair (Pneumonia) came through the front door of the Bingo hall. Death started her stopwatch. Pneumonia was wearing a dark blue housedress and carrying an enormous purse. She made her way through the hall to where Bunny sat.

She stood next to Bunny and cleared her throat.

“Yeah? What do you want?”

“You’re in my seat,” Pneumonia said.

“This is my seat, Marge,” Bunny said. “I always sit here.”

Marge adjusted her enormous purse and said, “That is my seat. Maybe you sit there on Tuesdays, but I’ve sat here every Thursday for five years.”

“Is that so? I think you’ve made a mistake. This is my seat,” Bunny said. She didn’t miss a beat stamping the numbers she had, despite the interruption.

Marge crossed her arms and stood her ground. “I’m going to go get my cards for the next game and let you finish this game. Then you need to move.”

“Whatever you say, Marge.” Bunny had yet to look up from her cards. Marge walked away stiffly.

“Crazy broad,” Bunny muttered to herself.

Death checked off an item on her list. She really could have gone for some nachos. Maybe a hot dog, even if it looked a little old. There was nothing wrong with food that’s a little old.

Marge was buying cards, and shooting dirty looks over at Bunny. Bunny was, apparently, oblivious to Marge. When the game ended, Marge walked over to Bunny again.

“OK, you finished your game, Bunny. Now move to another seat please.”

“This is my seat, Marge. Go find your own place to sit.” She had yet to look up at Marge. She fiddled with one of her trolls a little bit.

“You’re in my place to sit. I let you finish your game there, now let me have my seat!”

“Go fuck yourself, Marge.”

Marge turned red. “Why, you, I asked you politely to move. You are going to move now one way or the other.”

Death checked her stopwatch and checked off an item on her list.

She started to gather up Bunny’s trolls and other possessions. Bunny stood up, quaking with anger, and said, “Don’t you touch my things!”

Marge continued picking up Bunny’s lucky items.

“This is my spot, you need to go find your own spot,” Marge said.

“I said not to touch my things,” Bunny said. She slapped the troll dolls out of Marge’s arm, and started stabbing at her with her dauber. “You go sit someplace else and leave me alone.”

Bunny managed to leave a smear of ink across Marge’s forehead, and her housedress was polka-dotted with ink as well. Marge put her arms up and backed away from Bunny, who walked along with her for a few steps, still poking her with the dauber.

A few of the people in their immediate vicinity were paying attention, but everyone else in the hall was minding their own business.

“You’re crazy, Bunny,” Marge said. “I’ll get my seat back eventually.”

“It’s my seat, Marge,” Bunny said. She went back and sat down again. She started rearranging her troll dolls as though nothing had happened. Marge went and found a seat far away from Bunny.

The next game started, and Death watched quietly as Bunny focused on her cards, marking each number in the same machine-like manner as before. Marge was watching her cards, but paused now and then to stare over at Bunny. Bunny didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t let on.

Bunny’s cards were filling quickly, and it looked as though she had several cards where she was only one number away from getting a bingo. She lit a cigarette with her free hand, never looking away from the cards.

“G 17” the announcer (heart attack) read.

Bunny shouted, “Bingo!” and held her card up in the air. An attendant (medication side-effect) rushed over and checked Bunny’s card. Marge stared and chewed her lip. The attendant verified that her bingo was valid, and another employee (car crash) brought over her prize – a counter-top pizza oven. Bunny looked triumphant, and thanked the employee. Then she thanked her troll dolls for a job well done.

Marge got up from her seat and made her way back to where Bunny was sitting. Death checked off an item on her list, and waited.

“You got my bingo!” Marge said. “You stole my seat and you stole my bingo!”

“It’s my seat, Marge. I didn’t steal your bingo,” Bunny said. She sounded very bored with the conversation. Bunny took a drag off her cigarette, and flicked the ash into a tin ashtray that was nearly overflowing.

“You did!” Marge said. “Give me that oven, it should be mine!”

Bunny turned to face Marge. “I’m keeping the oven, Marge. I won it, you didn’t. Go play some more and win your own prize.”

Marge started shaking. “You stole my spot!”

“Yeah, what are you going to do about it?”

“This,” Marge said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pearl-handled .38 Special. Bunny’s eyes went wide just before Marge opened fire.

She shot Bunny twice in the chest. The front of Bunny’s shirt quickly turned red, as blood poured from her wounds. Bunny slumped to the floor, and Marge shot her twice more. Blood puddled, and spread out from Bunny’s body.

“You were sitting in my lucky spot, you bitch!”

Most of the people in the hall had hurried toward the exit when the shooting started. The few who stayed were staring at Marge now. She didn’t notice them. Marge slipped a little bit in the blood as she stepped forward and swept Bunny’s cards and trolls off the table. She then sat down in the chair recently occupied by Bunny.

Death noticed that one of the people who hadn’t run was the same man who had been standing outside the kitchen window in that house near Chicago and looking in at her. He was looking right at her. When he saw she was looking back, he looked her up and down, and gave her a lascivious wink. Then he walked away.

“That was uncalled for,” Bunny said. She was staring at Marge and her body lying on the floor.

“I’ll say,” Death said, assuming Bunny was talking about the wink. “How crude.”

“What?” She wasn’t.

“Oh, uh, sorry, I thought you were talking about something else. That was totally uncalled for,” Death said. “Were you, by the way, sitting in her spot?”

“Certainly not! I’ve been sitting there for years. Marge has always liked stirring up trouble. She thinks she can push everyone around. Well, not me. I’ll stand my ground.”

Death wasn’t sure standing one’s ground over a favorite place to sit in a bingo hall was the best use of time and energy, but then, it wasn’t worth shooting someone over either.

“Look at what she did to my troll dolls! She has no class at all. What a piece of work.”

The police had arrived, and were approaching Marge with their guns drawn. There were only a few people left in the hall, everyone else had left. Many of them were in the parking lot, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Is someone going to start calling numbers, or what?” Marge said.

One of the police officers was telling Marge to slowly put her hands on her head.

Death held out her arm to Bunny and smiled, “Would you walk with me?”

After leaving Bunny to whatever afterlife awaited her, Death returned to her bike and checked when the next Death was due. In ten minutes, a man in Denmark was due to die from a fall. That meant she had five minutes to find something to eat.

There were several people still lingering outside the bingo hall, so she walked over to a small group talking nearby.

“Say, is there a place nearby where I could get something quick to eat?”

The group stopped talking and turned to look at her. They seemed to barely notice her, except for one woman (influenza).

“Oh, sweetie, you look like you’re dying for something to eat. There’s a bakery about two blocks that way, I think. Of course, I don’t know if they’ll still be open at this hour.”

Death smiled and said, “Thanks, I’ll check it out.”

“Good luck!”

Death got on her bike and got it pointed the right way. Behind her, the folks she had just talked to had a moment or two of awkward silence before one of the women, not the one who had told Death about the bakery, spoke up.

“You know, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I can’t recall what she asked us.”

The one who had talked to Death paused, and said “I think she wanted to know the way to the freeway.”

Death could see the sign for the bakery when she was a block away. It looked as though the lights were on inside. She was about half a block away when the windows of the bakery exploded out onto the street, and flames roared out of the openings. Within seconds the entire building was engulfed in flames.

It wasn’t fair.

She saw a figure running away from the building, further down the road. She came to a stop, and realized there was another person standing on the sidewalk nearby. He had long, dark hair, and was dressed head to toe in black leather. He was also grinning ear to ear.

“Ares?” Death said. The man turned, and smiled all the wider.

“Death! Wow, what great timing! Did you come to help out?”

Death wasn’t exactly sure what Ares was talking about, but then, he was a god of war, so it was safe to assume someone was going to be very dead very soon.

“No, I just happened to be in the neighborhood, looking for a bakery.”

Ares got a bit agitated, and said, “Well, you didn’t miss a darn thing here. You sure you don’t want to help me out?”

“Sorry, I’ve got to run in a minute. What, exactly, are you up to?”

“Well, I’m burning down this bakery, obviously. Then I’m going to kill the baker and anyone else who pisses me off along the way.”

He seemed very enthusiastic about the possibility of getting pissed off along the way.

“But why are you burning down the bakery and killing the baker?”

“Well, I ordered a birthday cake and when I got here to pick it up I discovered he got it all wrong. How hard is it to make a darn white birthday cake with ‘Happy Birthday Hades’ on it?”

Death was momentarily stunned by the sheer overkill of Ares’ reaction, then remembered who she was talking to.

Ares said, “But anyway, it’s great to see you. How’s that bike treating you?”

Ares had given her the bike a couple of years ago. It had actually been built by Hephaistos for Ares. It had been a very generous gift.

Death smiled and said, “Very well, thank you. It’s good to have a proper steed again.”

She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to run. Another death to attend, you know.”

“Sure,” Ares said. “Don’t be such a stranger, give me a call sometime. We can rain down ruin on some unsuspecting armies!”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Death said.

She arrived in Denmark just in time to get started. The client, Per Erik Knuttson, was setting up a tall ladder next to his house. Per Erik looked like a pleasant guy. The little hair he had was white blonde, and he had pale blue eyes with deep smile lines. He gathered his tools and climbed up to clean the leaves out of the rain gutters.

The house was adorable. It looked like a gingerbread house, with a cobblestone driveway and sidewalk.

Per Erik had been pulling clumps of leaves and other detritus from the gutters for several minutes when the ladder began to slip. He grabbed on to the ladder and tried to stay very still, to keep the ladder from sliding any further. He screamed a little when it slipped a bit more and stopped again.

He had just enough time to calm down slightly and open his eyes again before the end of the ladder slipped off the roof, and set him tumbling to the ground. Unfortunately for Per Erik, he landed head first. There was a sickening crunch as his neck broke, and he collapsed in a heap.

“You know, I thought I’d set that ladder to be pretty steady,” his soul said to Death, looking up at the roof and then down at the ladder and his body.

“Cobblestones can be treacherous,” Death said.

“Do you think it will be long before someone finds me?”

“Not long at all. I expect someone will have looked out their window to see what all the racket was. There’s probably an ambulance on the way already.”

This seemed to relieve Per Erik. He took Death’s arm and the two of them stepped out of this world.

Chapter One - Meet Death

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:12:00 +0000

Death stood, calm, patient, waiting, off to one side of the room. She’d arrived a bit earlier than usual, so she just watched as the warehouse staff bustled around her. No one noticed her. The warehouse was clean, and lit by florescent lights that gave everything a sickly green color. A forklift zipped past carrying a pallet of chattering glass containers, barely audible above the din of the conveyors and other machinery. The forklift beeped its horn a few times as it approached a corner.

She removed an inexpensive plastic stop watch from her pocket and attached it to her clipboard. On her notepad, she had the timing of the events to come in the next few moments in exacting detail. It was her opinion that every passing was significant, at least as significant as every birth, and deserved its due diligence.

A door opened a few feet away from her, and a middle aged man in a gray work shirt stepped through it. Industrial Accident, Death thought when she saw him. “Buzz” was the name embroidered above his left breast pocket. Death uncapped her pen, and started the stop watch.

Buzz hurried along the racks until he came to the right row, turned and continued down that row. Death made a check mark next to an item on her list, and followed him. When she caught up, he was arguing with another person. His name tag read “Tom.” Heart attack on the toilet, Death thought.

“It looks like we’ve only got a couple cases left, we can’t ship that many today,” Tom said. He shrugged and started to turn away.

Buzz turned a bit red, and put his hands on his hips.

“Bull shit,” Buzz said, “we’ve got four or five pallets stacked up in storage. I saw them yesterday.”

Tom turned back. “I’m pretty sure we don’t. Hang on, I’ll check.”

He pulled a walkie talkie from his belt and asked if someone working in storage could see if there was any of the product in question still in stock back there. Death stood three feet away from Tom and Buzz, still unnoticed. She checked off another item on the list.

“I’m going to be shocked if we have any of these, Buzz. They’ve been flying off the shelf,” Tom said. The radio crackled, and someone confirmed that there were still three pallets back there. Would he like them brought to the picking line?

“Yeah, I’ve got Buzz here and he needs five hundred of them to go out today,” Tom said into the radio. To Buzz he said, “I guess it’s your lucky day. We should have that pallet up here in about five minutes.”

“It’s a miracle,” Buzz said, “I just can’t believe it. Will wonders never cease?”

Tom didn’t reply. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and became engrossed in something, tapping the keys furiously, as if whatever he was doing was an urgent matter. Buzz, meanwhile, stood with his arms crossed, waiting for the forklift to show up.

Death checked off another item on her list, and took a look around where they were standing. It was dark, with only a few lights far overhead providing illumination. There was just enough room for a forklift to maneuver in the aisle, and the racks were easily twenty feet tall. A voice on the intercom asked Jenny to please dial 2729.

Death noticed she was hungry, and tried to remember the last time she’d eaten. She was pretty sure it had been a half of a ham sandwich, about eight months ago. There had been a delicious smelling burger she’d almost had the time to eat five months ago, and last week she had just ordered a taco before she had to attend to a death. She flipped through her calendar to see what was on the agenda after she’d wrapped up this passing. It looked like she was going to have to hustle to get to the next one in time. She sighed. Eventually someone would die in a restaurant or grocery store or deli or some other place with food and she’d be able to grab a bite.

For now, she would try not to think about it.

A forklift approached from the far end of the aisle. The driver (Pneumonia) beeped the horn twice. Buzz and Tom stood to one side. The forklift operator slowed down and maneuvered the pallet into its place in the rack. When he was done, he looked up at the top of the rack, then over at Buzz and Tom. He shut down the forklift.

“It looks like there’s another pallet of these up top there,” he said. “Do you want me to get it down while I’m here?”

Death checked off an item on her list and took a few steps back.

Tom had started to say, “That’s all right,” when Buzz interrupted him.

“Yeah, since you’re here, would you?”

Tom gave Buzz a dirty look, which Buzz pretended not to notice.

“Sure thing,” the driver said. He started the forklift, and raised the fork. The hydraulic pump whirred. When the fork was at about the right height, the driver leaned out of the cage to see what he was doing, and wiggled the fork up and down a few times to get it in exactly the right spot. He drove forward, and lifted the pallet.

Tom and Buzz stood watching as the forklift slowly backed up, pulling the pallet out from between two others. There was a crunching noise, and Tom and Buzz both shouted “STOP!”

The driver stopped the forklift, and the three of them craned their necks to see if they could spot what had gone wrong. The pallet was half over the rack, half off.

“It looks like you’re just slightly crooked and jammed on one of the other pallets,” Buzz said. “You gotta turn to the right just a touch. I’ll guide you.”

He walked up closer to the rack and looked up, “OK, start turning right.”

Death checked her stopwatch and made a tick next to an item on her checklist.

“A bit more,” Buzz said, then “Stop! OK, back it out.”

The forklift backed slowly away from the rack. Just as the pallet cleared the edge of the rack, most of the boxes on the pallet shifted and fell. Each box weighed at least forty pounds. Buzz tried to get out of the way, but didn’t make it. He was crushed under nearly a ton of packaged machine parts.

Death checked off the last item on her list, and stopped the stop watch. She noted the time down. Everything had gone exactly as planned. Perfect.

Tom and the forklift driver had rushed to the pile of boxes and started pulling boxes away.

“Buzz! Are you OK? We’re gonna get you out!” Tom said as he heaved a box to one side.

Buzz’s soul stood next to the pile of boxes, looking down at the two men. He could see one of his boots sticking out from under the pile. He looked up and noticed Death then.

“Hey, who are you? You weren’t here a minute ago,” Buzz said.

Death gave him a gentle smile and said, “Yes, I was.”

Buzz looked at her for a moment, then back at the pile of boxes. Tom and the forklift driver were still moving boxes, and reassuring Buzz that they were going to have him out of there in just a minute.

“Is that me under there?”

“Well, no, you’re right here. But that was your body.”

Buzz scratched the side of his head and kept watching as several other people had joined in and were pulling boxes away.

“So I’m dead?”

“Yes,” Death said. Since Buzz wasn’t watching her, she checked her calendar. Ten minutes to her next appointment.

“What now, then? I was expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, or pearly gates, or, uh, maybe something not as nice as that,” Buzz said. He thought for a moment, and as he realized he was still in the warehouse, which meant he was still at work, “Is this Hell?”

Death laughed, kindly, and reassured him. “No, this isn’t Hell. I am here to bring you from to the gateway to the next world.”

“Where’s the next world?”

“I really couldn’t say, but I don’t think you need to be alarmed,” Death said. She did not add that if he did have reason to be alarmed, she wouldn’t really know, and worrying about it for the next few minutes wouldn’t do him any good anyway.

“What if I don’t want to go?” Buzz asked. He had folded his arms and was beginning to look stubborn.

“It’s my job to bring you to the gateway to the next world. If I didn’t, there would be souls all over the place. Bored, unhappy souls, trapped here on Earth,”

“I could run,” Buzz said. Death could see the idea taking root in Buzz’s mind. She really didn’t want to have to chase down a soul and drag it back. It was tedious. And it was far worse for the souls to get away. Absolutely everyone they knew in life would be dead in one hundred years, more or less, and then the only thing to do was wait out eternity, alone. If the soul was exceptionally lucky, it might find it’s way to an afterlife, but usually they just lost their minds and spent eternity lurking in a dark corners, making the living vaguely uneasy without meaning to. Not much of an existence.

Death sighed. “Yes, you could run. And then I would have to chase you. I’ve chased souls before, many times. I’m rather quick, and I’m good at finding the ones that run. And it’s my job to bring you to the gateway. It’s not my job to ensure your trip is painless. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

Buzz considered this for a minute, and relaxed a bit.

“So no last visit to loved ones before I go?”

“No, sorry,” Death said.

“And no spending a year or two haunting people who bothered me?”

“Definitely not,” Death said. “Besides, from what I hear, haunting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Most of it is just waiting around for the hauntee, and most of the time they don’t even notice they’re being haunted. It’s a lot of effort for nothing.”

“OK,” Buzz said. “I guess I’m ready to go, then.”

Death held out her arm, and said, “Walk with me.”

The two of them stepped out of this world, and into the next. It was dark, and silent. It seemed to Buzz he was standing on something, but he couldn’t tell what. It just looked like darkness under his feet. He could see Death walking next to him, and there was a tiny, brilliant light a great distance away.

“Where are we? I mean, what is this place?” Buzz asked. “Is this where I’m supposed to stay for the rest of eternity?”

“No,” Death said. “This is more like the entryway to eternity. We’re just passing through here.”

“Is that where we have to go?” Buzz asked, pointing at the light in the distance.

“No, it will come to us,” Death said.

The light already looked much larger, and Buzz could tell it was approaching at great speed. Seconds later it came to a stop just in front of them. As Buzz’s eyes adjusted to the brilliance of the light, he could see that it was a doorway. The doorway was ancient and ornately decorated. Inside, all he could see was bright white light, shimmering and pulsing.

“That is where you must go,” Death said.

“Any idea where it’s going to take me?”

“None at all,” Death said. She smiled at Buzz. “Go on.”

Buzz peered in to the light coming from the doorway, brushed himself off, and stepped through. The door shut quickly, and Death stood alone in the darkness. She stepped back into the world. The warehouse employees had uncovered Buzz’s body. One of them was on the phone, nearly hysterical, explaining what had happened to a 911 operator.

Death walked back through the warehouse, unseen, and then outside to where she had parked her motorcycle. It was a bright, sunny day. She swung a leg over the seat, raised the kickstand, and pressed the starter button. The engine came to life with a roar, as it always did.

She took a deep breath and said to herself, “On to the next.” She shifted into first gear, the transmission making a loud clunk, and rolled out of her parking space, pointed in the general direction of her next appointment.

If someone had seen her, it would have looked as though she’d ridden halfway across the parking lot, and then vanished.

Death reappeared, and came to a stop, in the living room of a large house in the suburbs of Chicago. The rumble of exhaust shook the floor, walls, and decorations, not that anyone noticed. She shut down her bike, and silence fell over the house once again.

The room looked as though the decor had last been updated in nineteen eighty three. The couch was upholstered with an ugly floral patterned fabric that was starting to fray. The coffee table had rings from beverages drank long ago. Everything was clean though. Someone obviously took pride in this stuff.

A television was on in another one of the rooms, somewhere. It sounded like a football game was playing. She could hear the excitement of the announcers as the action, apparently, picked up.

The bike’s motor made ticking noises as it cooled. Death was alone in the living room. She got off the bike, and checked her notes to see if there was some info about where the next client would be.

Unfortunately, the only information was the address of the house, and the client’s name, age, and intended demise. Jacob Stein, 54, alcohol poisoning.

She walked up the stairs towards the sound of the television. There were family photos on display in frames hanging on the wall next to the stairs. A man, a woman, two girls and a boy.

Jacob staggered past Death, without seeing her, as she reached the top of the stairs. Death started her stop watch, and followed along behind Jacob. He made his way into the kitchen, holding himself up with one hand on the wall as he went. His other hand was busy holding an empty glass. He stunk of cigarettes and alcohol.

In the kitchen, he grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam and poured himself another generous glass full of whiskey. The bottle of Jim Beam was nearly empty, and Death noticed a couple more empty bottles scattered around the kitchen. Jacob had obviously been at it for a while.

On the kitchen counter was a letter printed on business stationery. Death looked at it briefly, and saw that United Dynamics no longer required Jacob’s services, effective immediately.

Jacob stood at the counter and drank the glass he’d just poured himself, then refilled his glass.

There was a sudden, loud sound outside. It sounded like a car had run into an empty dumpster. Jacob started, and turned quickly to look out the window and see what had happened.

In his drunkenness, however, he tripped over his own feet. He fell, forehead first, into the counter and slumped to the floor unconscious. Death watched all this happen, and checked off an item on her list. For now, Jacob was still breathing.

Death considered rummaging through Jacob’s fridge to see if there was anything good to eat in there, but refrained. She was, after all, there in an official capacity. It would be inappropriate to eat right then.

Jacob began to make retching sounds, still unconscious. Soon he was making choking sounds, and a few minutes after that, his soul stood in the kitchen over his body.

“Oh shit,” Jacob said. “This is going to be a rough scene for my wife to come home to.”

“It could be worse,” Death said, with as much compassion as she could muster. “You’ve barely left a mess at all. Your wife will be OK.”

“At least I won’t have to tell her I lost my job,” Jacob said. He didn’t actually sound relieved about this fact at all.

“There’s that,” Death said. She was about to ask him to walk with her when she looked out the window and noticed a man standing across the street, looking directly at her. Head injury, she thought. She got a strong sense that he really was looking at her, then dismissed the idea. People didn’t see her when she was working. He was probably just daydreaming and happened to be looking in her direction.

“Any idea who that guy is?” she asked Jacob.

Jacob looked out the window, “I’ve never seen him before.”

He looked at Death again. “Is there any chance that this is just going to be a near death experience? I’ll wake up to a brutal hangover and an angry wife in a day or so?”

“Sorry, no chance,” Death said. “Would you walk with me?”

She led him to the gateway, preoccupied with the strange possibility that someone had seen her. On the rare occasions that someone actually saw her, it was usually seconds before their demise, or the person was deeply disturbed in some way. Once, a woman (kidney failure) had run, mostly naked and screaming out of a locker room at a gym after seeing Death waiting for another client who was about to have a heart attack. Death knew, in a vague sort of way, that the screaming woman had experience some kind of heavy trauma a long time ago.

But normal, well-adjusted folks just didn’t see her. A coincidence was all it was. She was so lost in thought, she didn’t notice that Jacob had asked her a question.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Death said. She was slightly embarrassed to be caught daydreaming.

“I asked if you knew where this doorway leads to,” Jacob said. The gateway stood open before the two of them.

“I really couldn’t say. Don’t be afraid,” Death said.

“Have I got to go in there?” Jacob asked. He looked very nervous.

“Yes,” Death said. “Everyone has to pass through the gateway eventually.”

“Even you?”

Death laughed gently, “Not me. Every mortal. Go on, now.”

Jacob looked at the gateway, and stepped through it in an abrupt movement.

Back in the living room of Jacob’s house, Death wondered if she would have time to get to downtown Chicago and grab a slice of pizza before she had to go and take care of her next client. She started her motorcycle, which rattled the house once more. She rode away, with daydreams of pepperoni and sausage pizza running through her head. Moments later, Jacob’s wife pulled into the driveway, about to find a nasty surprise.

Within minutes, Death had mostly forgotten about the stranger she thought had seen her. The stranger, however, had not forgotten seeing Death.