The Perky Reaper

Chapter Twenty Five

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 20:02:00 +0000

Death was on high alert now. Taking care of the souls on the cruise ship had been relatively easy, compared to the mess in the stadium. She wanted her bike back, and she wanted to stop whoever had decided to start killing everyone. And, somewhere in the back of her head, was a desire for pie. However, Death did have her priorities straight: Order, justice, then pie.

Death’s phone beeped at her, and she was dismayed to see it was an immediate collection. She was also mildly relieved that it was only one soul that needed to be collected, rather than hundreds or thousands. One soul was pretty easy to deal with.

However, if this Robert Svenson guy was a suicide, she was going to tear his frickin’ head off. On the upside, it looked like he lived pretty close to the Bump & Grind. She might be able to go and get a cup of coffee, if she had a spare minute afterwards.

Moments later, Death was outside Robert Svenson’s apartment. She went inside, expecting to find a suicide pacing around and looking forlorn and confused. Instead, she found the soul of an enormous man, dressed in black with skulls printed on his shirt, with a shaved head, and incongruously dainty wire-framed glasses, reading a battered copy of The Illiad. Something about him seemed familiar. What was it, though?

Robert happened to look up, and noticed Death. He calmly marked his place in his book, and then said, “Hi. Who are you?”

“I’m Death. Are you Robert Svenson?” Death said.

“Rob, yes, that’s me. So you’re Death. Andi said you’re pretty cool the first time she visited me,” Rob said.

Oh, of course, Death thought. This was the friend Andi was visiting. No wonder he seems familiar.

“I have to be honest,” Rob said, “I was settling in for a long eternity here. I’d been expecting a bright light, or a tunnel, or, I dunno, the Raiderettes or something, but nothing happened, so I figured I’d get caught up on some of the things I’ve been wanting to read.”

“How long have you been waiting?” Death said. “And did I see you holding a book? How did you figure that out?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Rob said. “It took me a couple of tries to get the hang of picking up a book, but I figured it out. I’d guess I’ve been here for a few hours, maybe half a day. I’d sat waiting for someone to come and get me, but no one did, so I decided I might as well use the time for something.”

Death was impressed.

“Hang on, half a day?” she said. Her phone had just alerted her to his death, and said it was an immediate collection. She hoped her phone wasn’t getting behind now.

“Yeah, Andi came and killed me earlier, then wandered off saying something about rescuing people,” Rob said.

He was going to continue talking, but Death interrupted him.

“Hang on, did you say Andi killed you?” Death said.

“Yeah, and she thought I’d be happy about it too. Then when I wasn’t she left in a huff. No apology or anything. Just weird, I didn’t ever think she was like that before. Man, I guess you never really know who people are going to grow up to be, huh?” Rob said.

Death looked at Rob, and said, “You weren’t supposed to die yet, either. You were going to live a long life. Hang on. She thought you were going to be happy about it?”

“Yeah, she wanted me to help her kill, like, everyone. She said something about rescuing everybody, and a whole new way. Andi went off the deep end, I’d say,” Rob said.

“Things are a lot worse than I realized,” Death said, mainly to herself. She took a breath to say something else to Rob, when her phone rang. She took it out, looked at it with a slightly puzzled expression, and answered it.

***

Ares was in a bar and was, as usual, spoiling for a fight. Actually, the place he was in billed itself as a sports pub, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The joint looked a little like an Irish pub, in that it had lots of dark wood and a staggering array of beers on tap. And the menu featured beef stew, along with fish and chips. However, it also had enormous televisions covering almost every vertical surface, and the waitresses were all wearing “kilts” that were less of a kilt and more of a bikini bottom. The place must have been able to hold close to five hundred people, and there were at least three hundred people present.

Just about the right number for a good, proper bar brawl.

Ares had been working his way through the pub, visiting the tables, and getting the people sitting at each of them riled up about sports, politics, money, whatever it took. At the moment, the place was bubbling with tension. Ares noticed the bartender and the waitresses had all disappeared. It was just going to take a final irritant to push the crowd into a collective rage, and then the fight would start.

Ares could barely contain his excitement. He heard a motorcycle rumbling outside, and turned to see if the motorcycle had delivered the final ingredient to make his bar brawl recipe complete.

He was extremely surprised when he saw that, rather than a mean-looking biker, a cute little college-aged girl walked in. He was extra surprised when he realized that he recognized her, and that she was Death’s apprentice.

He had his phone out and was calling Death to see if she knew that Andi was not in Death’s apartment the way she was supposed to be, but in fact at a bar. And apparently on a motorcycle.

As soon as Death answered her phone, Ares started talking.

“Death, it’s Ares. Did you know your little intern just walked into the bar I’m in? Isn’t she supposed to be…”

Ares trailed off, because suddenly everyone in the bar dropped dead around him.

“God damn it!” Ares shouted, into the phone by accident. “She just killed everyone! I’ve been in here for a couple hours working this crowd and she just killed all of them! What a fucking waste of my time.”

He continued, but Death wasn’t listening. He didn’t notice the line had gone dead.

Andi had noticed him, however. A large, muscular man in black leathers who is shouting curses really stands out in a bar full of people, all of whom are dead except for him.

“Shit,” she muttered, and hurried outside.

***

Death had hung up the phone as soon as Ares had said Andi was in the same bar he was in. She looked at Rob, and decided that he might be useful to have along.

“Andi has been spotted. I need to go stop her. Are you going to come with?” Death said.

Rob considered it for about half a second before deciding that tagging along with Death to catch the woman who had killed him sounded a lot better than re-reading The Illiad.

“I’m in,” he said.

Just then, Death’s phone started going off in her pocket, again. She didn’t even bother to look at it this time, she knew what had happened.

She grabbed Rob’s hand and said, “Let’s go.”

***

Ares was still standing in the middle of the bar shouting about what a god damned inconvenience Andi had caused him when Death and Rob arrived. Death took a look around at the room full of irritated souls, but didn’t see Andi.

She did see the bright daylight streaming through the exit door as it closed, however. Death sprinted through the bar, threw the door open, and stormed outside. In the bright daylight, she saw Andi looking back at her, frantically trying to get on the bike and get the kickstand up. Death was on her in a fraction of a second, holding Andi firmly by the hair.

Distracted by the pain, Andi let go of the handlebars to try and pull Death’s hand out of her hair. She tried to step away, but Death held fast.

Trying to step away had, however, gotten Andi far enough off of Death’s bike that it fell over on to its side, making a racket that made Death’s heart sink.

She pulled sharply up on Andi’s hair, lifting her off the ground until her feet dangled in the air.

“I was upset with you before,” Death said, “but now I am really, really pissed off.”

Death noticed Ares and Rob watching out of the corner of her eye, but paid them no mind. She stepped out of the world, and held Andi up off her feet until the gateway appeared. Andi kicked and thrashed and protested, but it really had no effect.

“You know,” Death said, “I’m not really one for the cruel, divine punishments. I’ve never cursed someone to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill just to watch it tumble back down again. That kind of thing isn’t my style.”

The gateway appeared and opened before them then.

“It’s not my style,” Death said, “but you have pissed off a lot of other gods, and some of them aren’t quite as nice as me.”

Andi had still been thrashing and protesting, but suddenly got very quiet.

“What’s going to happen to me?” she said.

Death smiled her gentle smile, and said, “I really couldn’t say.”

She threw Andi through the open door. It shut quickly behind her, and Death stood alone in the dark.

She thought quietly for a moment, then seemed to come to a conclusion, and smiled.

“I want a steak, and French fries,” Death said. “And a beer.”

She stepped back into the world, and saw that Ares and Rob had righted her bike again. They appeared to be examining the side it fell on, and were pointing at it now and then.

“Hey Death,” Ares said. He looked concerned. “Well, the good news is that your bike didn’t get beat up too badly. You can see a few scratches here and there. I bet Hep can fix that up for you, no problem.”

Death smiled, and said, “Excuse me a minute, I have to get all of the former patrons of this bar to the other side. Stick around for a few, will you, both of you?”

Ares and Rob looked at each other. Ares said, “Sure, no sweat.”

Death gathered the souls inside, who were still pretty pissed off about everything they had been pissed off about before they’d died, and brought them to the gateway. When she was done with that, she went back to where Ares and Rob were.

She checked her phone, and was absolutely thrilled to discover that she had an hour and a half until her next collection. She wasn’t sure how that could have happened, but decided not to think about it too hard and just enjoy it instead.

“So, Rob, sorry to say it, but I can’t really do much to help you. But, I’m impressed that you’ve figured out how to interact with the physical world again so quickly. You know, there’s a lot of other cool stuff I could teach you. Because of Andi’s little stunts there are a bunch of souls out there that still need to be found and delivered, and I can’t do that and keep up with my regular, scheduled work. Want to tag along for a while and help me out?” Death said.

Rob didn’t even think about it before saying, “Sure, that sounds great. When do we get started?”

“Soon,” Death said. She turned to Ares.

“I think you offered to buy me dinner,” she said, and smiled.

The End.

Final word count: 50,498! I've had comments disabled for the month, but if you would like to, you can leave a comment below. Thanks for reading along!

Chapter Twenty Four

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 00:18:00 +0000

Two new chapters posted today! Click here to go back to Chapter Twenty Three, or you can go to the Table of Contents to start where you left off.

Andi was discovering that although she admired Death’s concern and care in crafting individual passings in the same way that she might admire, for example, a beautifully hand-built piece of furniture, mass-production was the way to go when it came to liberating souls.

Especially since it seemed she didn’t even have to really do that much more work to free several thousand people compared to one or two. Honestly, she wondered why Death was stressing so much and not just getting a sandwich now and then. This was a piece of cake.

After the stadium, she’d had to think a little bit about where to go next. She knew she didn’t want to be predictable. If she just went from stadium to stadium, east to west, she figured there was a good chance Death would figure it out pretty quick and just be waiting for her at the next stadium.

She’d thought about the time she’d been in Florida and saw a cruise ship tied up, with the never ending stream of passengers coming out.

Moments later she had her bike parked on the top deck of the Caribbean Queen IV. And not too much longer after that, the Caribbean Queen IV became a ghost ship. Within seconds, the souls were milling about. Again, there were varied reactions. Many of the passengers weren’t too terribly upset at the realization that the afterlife was a cruise ship, however, most of the crew were extremely distressed by this realization.

Andi didn’t linger to see the reactions, though. She suspected Death would be along soon, and she was going to have to stay ahead of her. She kicked the bike into gear, and tore down the shuffleboard court, vanishing just as she reached the edge of the deck.

She reappeared and rolled the motorcycle to a gradual stop, just outside Rob’s apartment. At first, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing there. Then she realized that she wanted a partner to help her with her mission. A friend. And she was fairly sure that Rob would be willing to join her.

Andi shut down the motor, put down the kickstand, and walked into Rob’s building.

When she got in to Rob’s apartment, she found him watching TV. A perfectly coiffed news anchor was reporting that officials still had absolutely no idea what had happened at the stadium to kill thirty thousand people, but that there was no reason to panic.

“Hey Rob,” Andi said.

Rob jumped, spilling his drink and cursing.

“What the?” Rob said. “Oh. Hey, Andi. I was starting to think I’d just dreamed your last visit. I was thinking it was just stress or something.”

“No, you didn’t dream it,” Andi said. “How are you? Did you graduate yet?”

“Not yet, I’ve got my last final exam tomorrow,” Rob said. “How are you? What happened last time you visited? You just vanished.”

“I’m great. Yeah, sorry about that, just one of those things,” Andi said, and trailed off. “Look, uh, what are you planning to do after you graduate?”

Rob looked at Andi a little funny, but he said, “Well, probably get a job of some sort, find a girl, settle down, have a bunch of kids. You know, the usual.”

“Right,” Andi said.

She thought for a moment. She wanted Rob to help her out. In order to do that, he was going to have to

die. She hadn’t had to kill anyone she knew yet. She felt a little funny about it. Kind of like it was wrong.

Her doubt cleared away, however, when she remembered that she was rescuing Rob. And then she’d get to have her friend with her, helping her out as she freed the rest of the world. It would be the two of them, bringing a new dawn.

Andi smiled, and touched Rob’s shoulder.

“I think I’ve got something much better than that for you,” Andi said.

Seconds later, Rob’s soul was there with her. He looked down at his body, and then at Andi. His mouth was working, jaw twitching a bit, as he began to understand his situation and then tried to find the words to express what he was thinking.

“What the fuck? It was my time to go already? What the hell did I die of? So far as I know, I was perfectly healthy,” Rob said. He was starting to get a little red in the face.

“No, it wasn’t ‘your time’, I just released you. For good behavior,” Andi said, and smiled.

“Released me for good behavior? Is this just a joke to you?” Rob said.

He sounded pretty pissed off. Andi hadn’t been expecting that, she’d been expecting her friend Rob, who had been game for just about every sort of mischief she’d been able to dream up, back when she was still alive, to be excited for another big fun idea.

“What?” Andi said. “No, it’s not a joke. I want your help, Rob.”

“My help for what, exactly?” Rob said. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping Death, anyway? Shouldn’t Death be here asking me to help her out? Since when do interns get assistants?”

Andi really hadn’t been expecting this. Then she remembered what Death had said about everyone reacting differently to their passing, and that she should try to be comforting and understanding. Rob needed to feel rescued.

“Look, Rob, I’ve freed you. I’d like you to come with and help me. I’m not working for Death any more, I’ve gone out on my own. She was too old-fashioned and didn’t understand the importance of efficiency. There are so many people in the world, Rob, and she’s going around collecting them all one or two at a time. That’s old world thinking,” Andi said.

Rob was starting to look a little - well, actually, a lot - freaked out now. He was looking at Andi as if he’d never seen her before.

“You’ve freed me? One death at a time is old world thinking? What the hell are you talking about Andi?” Rob said.

“I’m talking about a whole new way, Rob. I’m talking about freeing everyone, rescuing the entire world,” Andi said. “I’m talking about making the world a better place.”

“By making everyone dead?” Rob said. He sounded utterly revolted by the idea. Then his expression changed, as he thought.

“Wait a minute,” Rob said. “Wait a minute. Were you responsible for this?”

He gestured towards the television, which was showing footage of the crews working to clear out the stadium. The anchor was repeating that there was no word on what the cause of all the deaths had been.

Andi smiled, and said, “Yeah, that was me. See, my job is rescuing people…”

Rob interrupted her. “You killed thirty thousand people because you think you’re rescuing them? Can you hear yourself? That’s just insanity. What happened to you Andi?”

This wasn’t going how Andi expected at all. Rob was supposed to say, “Wow, cool! OK, I’ll help you out,” not start questioning her motives and sanity. It was kind of disturbing. And annoying. She was inviting him on a grand adventure, and he was insulting her offer.

“Fine,” Andi said. “If you don’t want to be a part of this, you don’t have to be. I don’t need you anyway.”

“Well, good god damned thing, because I want absolutely no part of this. You need to stop, Andi, before you make things even worse,” Rob said.

Andi was already walking out of Rob’s apartment. She couldn’t believe her best friend had turned his back on her. But, if she had to work alone, then so be it. In time, people would appreciate her vision. Maybe they didn’t understand now, but they would.

“I’m not stopping,” she said.

Chapter Twenty Three

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 00:09:00 +0000

The trouble, for Death, with collecting thirty thousand souls at once, isn’t that she can’t bring them all to the other side at once. The problem is wrangling all of them. It’s difficult enough getting a group of forty people to all do the same thing at the same time. Just as in life, without someone explaining what is expected of them, souls have a tendency to just wander off to do their own thing.

And when there are thirty thousand of them, a whole bunch of them can wander off to do their own things.

Death had, of course, done massive collections in the past. The difference was that those had been planned. She’d had a strategy for dealing with the sudden mass of freshly dead folk.

This collection was unplanned, though. Her phone had been beeping almost constantly. She had, in fact, just turned the volume down all the way so it wouldn’t keep bothering her. The last thing she needed at the moment was an extra annoyance.

Death had been trying to wrap her head around how to get all of these people somewhat organized and crossed over, and then how to track down as many of the souls that had wandered off as possible, when another problem occurred to her. She had other collections, scheduled ones, which still needed to be made.

Ares had said something that had Death a little worried. He’d asked her how Andi could be trusted to stay in her apartment. At the moment, she was hopping very much that Andi was exactly where she’d left her, because she was going to need some help collecting all of these souls and keeping up with the regularly scheduled collections.

The souls still in the stadium would have to wait a little longer, and the ones that had wandered off would have to be dealt with when Death could get around to it. She had to go and get Andi and put her to work.

As long as she hadn’t run off to play with her friend again.

Death took a deep breath and travelled to her apartment.

“Andi?” Death said. “Hey, are you here? There’s a situation I need help with.”

There was no reply. Death furrowed her brow, and took a quick walk through her apartment on the off chance Andi was in another room. Of course, she wasn’t.

When Death got back to the living room again, she noticed something a bit off about the desk. It took her a second to figure out what was different, but then she saw it: Andi’s clipboard and stopwatch were on the desk.

“Oh, shit,” Death said.

One more soul she was going to have to try and track down.

Death noticed the little bell on her desk was silent. She took her phone out, and noticed it had stopped scrolling alerts as well.

OK, things were definitely going to be hectic, but at least they were settling down. Death turned the volume up on her phone again, and went back to the stadium to deal with that mess.

She wondered where Andi might have gotten off to. She worried for a moment that perhaps Andi had stolen her motorcycle, but then dismissed the idea as paranoia. Andi had shown bad judgement a few times, but she hadn’t done anything before that would suggest she was the one who had stolen Death’s motorcycle.

Death went back to the stadium. It didn’t seem like too many of the souls had left, the place was still chock full of them. There were also ambulances, EMTs and police present. They didn’t seem to be doing much. The EMTs couldn’t really do anything, and there wasn’t any obvious disorder, or any evidence at all of what had happened for the police to deal with.

Death called out to the souls, “Would everyone please gather on the field? I’ll get you out of here and on your way as soon as possible.”

As the souls made their way down to the field, Death thought a little more about Andi’s departure. She felt betrayed and angry. Andi was supposed to have been at the apartment, planning deaths. Death really could have used some help at the moment, and instead had discovered that her intern had up and quit.

The field in the stadium was filling with souls, so Death hurried down and started bringing groups over to the other side. Her phone beeped once, alerting her to another collection. She felt a little pang of anxiety as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to go and handle the collection. She really could have used a hand. As it was, she was going to have to hope that the soul that was due now wouldn’t wander too far.

It took quite a while, but Death steadily made her way through the entire group, at least the ones that were still there, bringing them over. When, at last, she was in the stadium by herself, she tried to figure out her next step. Did she track down the ones who had gone elsewhere? Did she go and collect the people who had been scheduled to be collected?

She was going to be scrambling for a while to keep up, anyway. And then, if she ever had a spare moment again, she was going to have to try to find her bike too.

Death decided that the souls who had been scheduled to be collected would take priority over the ones who were out wandering now. At least with the scheduled collections, she would have a bit of an idea of where they might be.

She checked her phone. Incredibly enough, it looked like she had only missed three scheduled collections, and they’d been fairly close together. There was a chance they’d still be hanging around where she was supposed to collect them.

Death traveled to the first address listed in her alerts. She was about an hour late.

She arrived at a nice little house outside of Seattle. It was modest but tastefully decorated, and well kept-up. Matthew Braaten, fifty seven, was in the living room, pacing around and working himself into an ever-increasing freak out.

“I just don’t believe this,” Matthew said to himself as he was pacing, “I spent the last five years in this house alone and mostly lonely, and now I have to spend the afterlife here too? It’s just not fair.”

Well, that’s probably not good, Death thought. But at least he’s here and not out wandering somewhere.

Matthew hadn’t noticed Death yet, he was still pacing around, getting more and more worked up, apparently.

“Matthew Braaten?” Death said.

Matthew spun around quickly to face Death.

“Who the fuck are you? How did you get in here?” Matthew said. He spoke quickly, and sounded extremely suspicious of Death.

Death smiled kindly and said, “I am Death, I’ve come to collect you. I can go where ever I need to go, that’s how I got in here.”

“So, what, you just come around whenever you feel like it? You leave me here wondering if I’m going to spend eternity in this house and then just show up and tell me you can go wherever you want, is that how it works?”

Death did her best to maintain her patience. Matthew did have a good reason to be upset, after all.

“I can go where I need to go, I didn’t say I show up when and where I want to,” Death said. “Anyway, I’ve come to collect you and bring you out of this world and into the next. Would you come with me?”

“Have you got some other pressing matters to attend to? You don’t want to, oh, I don’t know, stick around here for a cup of tea? You just show up and expect me to come with you?” Matthew said.

“Well, I’m sorry you’re upset. I have no doubt you’re feeling a little freaked out from having to wait, but I assure you I didn’t mean to leave you here for so long,” Death said.

She was starting to think about the other two collections that were waiting for her to come and get them. She hoped they’d be in slightly better moods than Matthew. She understood he was simply reacting to the situation he’d found himself in, but she wished he could be a little more stoic about it, and a little less of a sarcastic asshole.

“You’re sorry I’m upset? Oh, man. You know what? You can go ahead and fuck right off. I think you need to leave now, to be honest,” Matthew said.

“Did you just tell me to fuck off?” Death said. She went from being slightly impatient to very ticked off, quickly. “OK, then. I tried to be nice about this, but I’ve had just a spectacularly shitty day, and you’re going to come with me the easy way or the hard way. Your pick.”

“You’ve had a shitty day?” Matthew said. “You have had a shitty day?”

Matthew had bad timing in addition to not knowing who he should vent his annoyance upon. As he started in on how Death didn’t have any idea what a shitty day way, her phone started to beep at her, a lot. Again.

Death took her phone out, and was dismayed to see another scrolling list of “Immediate” collections. She lost her patience with Matthew.

“OK, I tried,” Death said. She grabbed Matthew’s nose, hard, and pulled him to the other side with her.

“Ow! Led go!” Matthew said.

“Nope,” Death said. “I gave you the option to do this the easy way, and you decided not to.”

The gateway appeared, and Death gave Matthew a healthy shove into the brilliant light pouring out. Her aim had been a little off, perhaps because she was distracted by her phone that sounded like it was never going to stop beeping again, and Matthew bounced off the frame of the gateway.

He groaned and staggered back. Death caught him by the upper arm.

“Oops,” Death said. “Well, let’s try that again.”

She pushed him in the right direction again, and this time he made it. The gateway closed quickly once he was through, and Death hustled back to try and figure out what to do about this new emergency.

The first thing she did when she got back was turn on Matthew’s television and look for news of another disaster of some sort. There wasn’t anything obvious yet, apart from the usual blood and gore on the news. That stuff was all pretty isolated, and things she had either already handled, or that were someone else’s problem to deal with.

Her phone had stopped beeping relatively quickly, compared to the racket caused by the stadium catastrophe, so she took it out to see what the deal was.

All of the deaths were at sea. They were on a cruise liner, about two thousand five hundred people.

Death wondered who was screwing with her now, and again wished that she had some help dealing with the situation.

The upside, she supposed, to the catastrophe being on a cruise liner out in the middle of the ocean was that there would be significantly less temptation for the souls to wander away. It would take most of them quite a while before they would realize that the ocean didn’t hold any dangers for them now that they were already dead.

Thank goodness for small favors, Death thought.

Chapter Twenty Two

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 02:36:00 +0000

Photo by Wystan

Ares sat in his favorite comfy chair, reading Soldier of Fortune magazine and laughing hysterically. He always loved reading obvious mall cop’s ideas about how best to do battle. He loved the pictures of so called assault rifles, loaded down with so many accessories they would make Rambo shake his head in embarrassment for the poor sap caught carrying it.

Ares was all for overwhelming and unrelenting force, and he owned an impressive collection of exotic weapons. The difference was that his collection was made up of weapons which were all effective, he knew damn well how to use them, and he knew that he could and would use them. In a heartbeat, without thinking twice.

If he was feeling honest, he would tell you he’d usually use them without even thinking once.

When his phone rang, he was a little disappointed he had to put the funny magazine down, but he did, and composed himself before answering.

The voice on the other end said, “Ares, this is Death. Can you come here?”

Ares’s mood suddenly got even better.

“You’ve got it. Where is here?” Ares said.

“I’m in front of a little coffee shop called the Bump & Grind, in…” Death said, but Ares interrupted her.

“Oh, wow, cool. Have you met the owner of that shop? She is OK, mostly,” Ares said.

“Um. I guess I haven’t met her yet,” Death said. “So could you come here?”

“On my way,” Ares said.

Seconds later, Ares appeared on the sidewalk next to Death. It was dark outside, and the two of them stood in the shadows outside the Bump & Grind, unnoticed. Inside, the owner and one of the employees were putting the chairs up on top of the tables, and taking care of the other final details for the day before closing up shop.

“Hey Death! Are you ready for that dinner?” Ares said, by way of greeting.

There was a long pause, and then Death said, “No. My bike is gone.”

This time it was Ares’s turn to pause and think.

What he said, when he spoke again, was, “Oh, shit. Hep is going to be pissed off.”

“What does Hep have to do with this?” Death said, a little exasperated.

“Hep gets a little irritated when things he’s built have gone missing. You know he built that bike for me. Actually, it was in trade for Achilles’s armor. If you want to get him ranting sometime, ask him about Achilles. Anyway, he wanted the armor back. It had been missing for a couple thousand years, you know,” Ares said.

“Well, that sucks for Hep, but it doesn’t solve my immediate problem, which is that my motorcycle has gone missing. I’m calling you in hopes that you might have some idea where to start looking,” Death said.

“Why would I know where to start looking? That’s kind of a stretch,” Ares said.

“Because it was your bike first. Because there are a lot more people who are annoyed with you than there are annoyed with me. And because you’re in touch with all of the old crowd. I barely have time to send anyone an occasional post card. They can keep their eyes peeled, and one of them might have heard something,” Death said.

“Oh, well, I guess that makes sense,” Ares said. “OK, well, I can start asking around a bit and see if anyone has heard anything.”

“That’d be great,” Death said.

“Any chance I can buy you dinner, since we’re here?” Ares said.

“No,” Death said.

“OK. The offer stands, anyway,” Ares said. “Say, where’s that little intern that has been following you around?”

Death hadn’t been expecting to be asked that question, and she answered before she had a chance to stop herself.

“She’s back at my apartment. I left her there while I try and figure out what to do with her, since she had to go and visit an old friend of hers. One that knew damn well that she’s been dead for two years. I’m having a hard time trusting her at the moment. I can’t have her out advertising the job we do, and I don’t care to keep accompanying her to every collection to make sure she’s doing what she’s supposed to be doing, so I’ve got her back at my place planning deaths,” Death said.

“Wow. So you got her under lock and key, huh?” Ares said.

A little light flickered on in Death’s mind. There was something there, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“No, she’s not confined, she’s just on time out,” Death said.

“Yeah, I suppose it’s harder to deal with someone after their already dead,” Ares said. “I’d have asked why you hadn’t just killed her, otherwise. Actually, I have to ask, what makes you think she can be trusted to stay in your apartment?”

The owner of the coffee shop and the employee came out a door close to Death and Ares then, talking seriously, in subdued tones, as the owner locked up.

“All those people, I just can’t believe it,” the owner said.

“I can’t either. And I just can’t believe that they don’t have any idea what killed them,” the employee said.

Death’s ears perked up, and she turned around to listen. “All those people”? “Killed”?

Ares had turned to listen as well. By chance, the owner of the shop glanced in his direction, and away again. Then slowly back to look at him again. She clearly recognized him. Several expressions crossed her face, none of them friendly or welcoming.

Ares waved at her and said in a friendly voice, “Hey Tamara.”

“What the hell are you doing here? I moved away from California to get away from you and your freaky roommate, and I still don’t want anything to do with you, Ares,” Tamara said.

“Whoa, jeez, Tamara, I just said hello,” Ares said. “Lighten up a little bit.”

“Is everything OK?” her employee said. She looked extremely uncomfortable, but also ready to jump in and help out, if needed.

“Stay here, please. Keep your phone ready in case you need to call the police,” Tamara said. Then, to Ares, she said, “Go away, and don’t come back.”

“What’s the scoop here, boss?” her employee said.

“This guy and his roommate are mixed up in some kind of crazy shit, and they dragged me into it. I don’t know if it was part of some weird plan to pick me up or what, but I don’t want anything to do with either of them. Somehow I’m not really surprised it’s this one that showed up again, though.”

Death was a little curious about what the story was there between Ares and Tamara, but she was far more concerned about what the two of them had said about what sounded like a whole bunch of people, killed. Tamara and her employee hadn’t noticed Death yet.

Death made herself noticeable then.

Tamara jumped back when she saw Death, and her employee followed suit.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Tamara said. She was holding her keys out in front of her, defensively.

Death said, “Relax, I’ve been here the whole time. You must just not have noticed me. Ares was just leaving - weren’t you Ares? – and he’s here because I asked him to meet me here. It’s just a coincidence. Say, uh, what were you talking about when you came outside? Has there been some kind of disaster?”

Tamara looked at Death suspiciously. She said, “You mean you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Death said. She was getting more concerned by the second.

“An entire stadium full of people just died. There’s no explanation. No one knows if it was a terrorist thing or what,” Tamara said. “How did you miss it? It’s on every radio station, and every channel on TV.”

Death was going to ask Tamara another question, but her phone starting beeping at her. Constantly. She pulled it out, and the screen read

IMMEDIATE
IMMEDIATE
IMMEDIATE
IMMEDIATE

Every time the phone beeped, another “IMMEDIATE” appeared on the screen. The phone did not stop beeping.

“Oh shit,” Death said.

***

Thirty thousand people had been in the stadium. Well, technically speaking, the thirty thousand people were still in the stadium. The difference was that they were all dead now. And so, there were thirty thousand souls, milling about in various states of confusion, grief, relief, annoyance, anger and every other possible reaction. All of them were baffled as to how they could all have died at the same time, without there being some kind of obvious wreckage or other sign of things gone wrong.

Some of the souls had gathered in little groups, here and then, conversing. The subjects of discussion were not limited to the obvious issue either. In the way people do, lots of the souls were discussing anything but the fact that they had all just died. A shocking number of them were discussing the weather. A few of the more bold souls were discussing the game they had been watching, and which team would have won if they hadn’t been, uh, interrupted. And, of course, a few here and there were loudly demanding to know what the hell had just happened.

Anyone still alive and in that place would have been haunted by how silent the stadium was. However, those who could see the dead would not at all be surprised by the cacophony of 30,000 voices. To the dead, it still sounded like they were in a stadium.

Which is why none of them heard the motorcycle rumbling at idle, or noticed the young woman astride the motorcycle, parked on the top of the outer wall of the stadium, looking down on them.

Andi looked down on the stadium full of souls, feeling the motorcycle as it rumbled and shook beneath her. She looked down upon what she had wrought, and felt proud. Powerful.

“I am become Death,” Andi murmured to herself. Andi the Destroyer of Worlds.

No, she thought. Andi the revolutionary. Andi the Liberator.

If anyone had been looking, they would have seen Andi smile. She kicked the bike into first gear, and roared away, vanishing before she reached the end of the wall.

Chapter Twenty One

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 02:14:00 +0000

Photo by Terence S. Jones

Death had been annoyed with Andi a couple of times since she’d allowed her to tag along and learn the trade. She’d even been angry once or twice, when Andi’s mistakes could have, or did, have some serious consequences

At the moment, she was livid. She felt like Andi had betrayed her trust the very moment she’d decided to try again. What Andi was supposed to have done was made the collection, and then not go visit her old chum.

And the part about visiting an old chum really got Death torqued off.

The thing was, they were supposed to be moving in the background. They were supposed to be unseen, unnoticed, intangible, quietly going about their business and keeping the world moving.

They were not supposed to be visiting old friends who were likely to turn around and sell a book about “My Old Friend: The Grim Reaper.” If people started looking for Death, and Andi, their job was going to get a lot more difficult. It’s easy to be unnoticed when people aren’t looking for you in the first place.

At the moment, the two of them were outside of the Bump and Grind. Inside, the owner and one of her employees were trying to wind down for the evening. Death’s motorcycle was parked at the curb.

“So,” Death said, when she had calmed down enough that she could speak, “what, exactly, were you thinking when you decided that going to visit a friend who is still alive was a good idea?”

Andi realized she was in incredibly deep trouble at the moment, so she thought carefully before answering. She considered telling Death some kind of lie, that she’d needed to finish some kind of business with Rob. She considered getting defensive and saying that she didn’t see what the big deal was.

What she finally decided on, however, was the simple truth.

“I just wanted to see my old friend. I miss him,” Andi said.

Death pressed her lips together and didn’t speak.

One the one hand, she was grateful to Andi for at least being honest with her. She could tell Andi wasn’t lying, and also that she didn’t realize how much she had screwed up. On the other hand, she didn’t like it that her intern might be the one to confirm that there is life after death, thereby making everything significantly more complicated for Death. And she was worried that if Andi had decided to go and visit her friend once, she might decide to do it again, or go visit others as well.

She thought carefully before speaking again.

“I don’t think you understand how big of a mistake that was,” Death said.

Andi felt her heart plummet into her feet. She was certain she was about to get fired.

“Look,” Death said, “the deal is, people can’t know about us in more than a vague sort of way. It’s fine for there to be myths about the grim reaper, coming for everyone at the moment of their death. It’s not fine for people to actually be expecting us. Think about this for a second: would you really want to deal with everyone present – the person dying, the other people present, the doctors, the family, random concerned citizens – to drop what they’re doing to plead with you for that person’s life? Or looking at it as some kind of morbid opportunity for righting past wrongs? We need to be secret.”

She continued, “Visiting your friend once may not be that big of a deal. There have been crazy people claiming they’ve seen me about my business for millennia, and no one has taken notice. But if you’ve told him that you’re in training to act as death, and that, actually, I’m not all that bad once you get to know me, and then go back sometime in the future and tell him more, that’s a problem. And if you start visiting other people, and the temptation is already there, I know, and telling them what you’ve been up to, they’re going to start to put things together.”

“Now, maybe not everyone will buy in to their story. But enough could to dramatically change the world works. I don’t really want people getting organized and worshipping me, or trying to stop me,” Death said. “And that’s a real risk if enough people catch wise.”

Andi was looking for an opportunity to apologize and tell Death that she hadn’t realized what she’d done, and that it wouldn’t happen. She was surprised, then, by what Death said next.

“I’m not sure I can trust you to do this job, Andi,” Death said. “I think I’m going to have to send you to my apartment for a while, until I can figure out what we can do, if there is anything we can do, about this.”

“Come on,” Death said, and held her hand out too Andi.

“Don’t I get to say anything about this?” Andi said.

“Not right now,” Death said. “I don’t know what you could possibly say to make it all OK at the moment. We’ll talk about it again. In the meantime, you’re going to have to sit things out for a little bit while I decide how to move forward from here.”

Andi made a displeased face, but she took Death’s hand. “Let’s go,” she said.

In the blink of an eye, they were inside Death’s apartment. Nothing had changed since Andi had last been in there, but then, it was incredibly likely that she had been the last person in there.

“I want you to stay here for now,” Death said. “I’m not sure what to do yet. I’ve taught you too much to have you just cross over. And I doubt you want to spend the next millennia as an immortal pizza delivery girl. For now, I’d like you to stay here and come up with plans. Maybe we can get a little bit ahead, even.”

Her phone rang then.

“Damn it,” Death muttered as she dug her phone out of her cloak to see what needed to be done now.

“I need to go, of course,” Death said. “Stay here, be good. I’ll be back soon.”

With that, Death disappeared and Andi was alone in Death’s apartment again. She looked at the desk, thought about trying to plan out some deaths, then sat down on the couch instead. If she was on time out, then she was going to relax.

She stuck her tongue out at the desk, in her defiance. Andi had the strangest feeling that the desk was looking at her with reproach.

See, Death talks about rescuing and releasing and comforting, but then she locks me up here in her apartment, Andi thought. Ugh, all that effort learning how to do this stuff, and I’m just going to end up being a secretary and a go-fer for the rest of time. It figures.

She stretched out a bit on the sofa, and heaved a sigh.

What do I do when I need to be rescued from the rescuer? Andi thought

She had another thought then. If all of these people needed to be rescued and released from life, why were they doing the job all onesy twosey? Why not rescue everyone all at once?

In fact, it seemed kind of cruel to leave people suffering their way through life only to rescue them in what might turn out to be an unfair, unpleasant way.

And she had another thought.

What, exactly, was keeping her in Death’s apartment?

Andi sat forward a bit. There was probably nothing keeping her in Death’s apartment. She could travel just as easily as Death could. So far as she knew, there wasn’t anything that could force her to stay put. All she had to do was leave.

She thought about it some more, and remembered that Death would be able to catch up with her pretty quickly. And what’s more, Death could catch up with her without being noticed until she was already, well, caught. She settled back into the couch.

Unless I can move keep moving faster than her, Andi thought.

But how could she do that? What is faster than moving by thought and willpower?

Thought, willpower, and a motorcycle.

Could she do it? Could she keep ahead of Death, release everyone, and not get caught?

I could if I didn’t bring people to cross over.

Andi felt a brief pang of conscience then, remembering what Death had said about the slow descent into madness and eternities of suffering for souls that didn’t cross over.

And then she remembered that what seemed to drive people nuts was loneliness and watching everything they loved rot away and change. But if everyone was a ghost, that wouldn’t be a problem

It would be a kindness.

That made the decision easy. Andi tossed her clipboard and stopwatch on the desk, and stepped out of Death’s apartment.

If someone had noticed her, which they hadn’t, they would have seen Andi appear in front of the Bump and Grind, next to Death’s motorcycle

The bike sat, low, long, gleaming, beckoning her to take it.

Andi grabbed the handlebars, swung a leg over the saddle, stood the bike up, raised the kickstand, and pressed the starter.

The engine roared to life as it always did, only this time Andi could feel the vibration of the motor thrumming through the handlebars and up her arms. It made her feel invincible. No, unstoppable.

Andi shifted the bike into first gear, whacked the throttle open, and roared away from the curb. If someone had been watching, they would have seen her and the bike vanish maybe two hundred feet further down the road.

***

After Death had brought the last collection to the gateway, she crossed back over into this world. She had ten minutes until the next collection, and her plan was to go and get her motorcycle, then ride for as long as she could manage and think about what to do next when it came to the Andi situation.

Moments later, Death appeared, unnoticed, in front of the Bump and Grind right where she’d left her bike.

Only her bike wasn’t there.

Death was puzzled for a moment. Had she forgotten where she’d left her bike? She couldn’t imagine that she had. She’d never had any trouble remembering exactly where the bike was before.

Slowly, slowly, a sickening realization washed over her. The bike wasn’t where she’d left it because someone had stolen her motorcycle.

For a moment, she wasn’t exactly sure what she should do. No mortal had stolen her motorcycle, they wouldn’t even know it was there to steal. She tried to think if there were any gods she knew of that were pissed off at her.

Eris had a problem with Death, because she was jealous Ares had had a crush on Death and not her, but she usually contented herself with tormenting Ares. Although, Ares had given Death the bike, it was possible…

Death took out her phone and did something with it she had only done a very, very few times before. She made a phone call.

Chapter Twenty

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 02:06:00 +0000

Photo by a2gemma

It had been a couple of weeks since the incident with Ares at the pub. Andi was proving herself to be a reliable and competent intern, and Death had started giving her a little more responsibility again.

At the moment, both of them were having a cup of coffee, outside of a large coffee chain. It wasn’t the kind of place that would be Death’s first pick, but it had been conveniently next to the location of the immediately previous collection, so it was the obvious choice.

The two of them had been quietly drinking their coffee together when Death’s phone rang. Another immediate collection. Damn it, and she’d just gotten some coffee too. Death decided she was bringing the coffee with her, she wasn’t about to miss out of her coffee because of someone else’s bad choices.

The only problem was that the next scheduled collection was in just a few minutes. She was doing to have to deal with both of these problems. Then it occurred to her that the solution was already sitting right next to her, also drinking coffee.

Death turned to her, and said, “Another immediate collection. I’ll deal with this one, but I’m going to need you to go and handle Ms. Ferguson in two minutes. Is that cool?”

Andi perked up a bit. Getting to run a collection entirely unescorted was going to be a new experience, and it meant that deat was beginning to trust her again.

“Sure,” Andi said. “I can do that.”

“Great,” Death said. She gave Andi the important details that weren’t already on Andi’s checklist, wished her luck, and vanished.

Andi was little bit surprised at how little fanfare had been involved in sending her off to handle a collection, alone. She checked the time, finished her coffee and set off to collect Ms. Ferguson.

Violet Ferguson, eighty four, had been the secretary for an elementary school until she’d retired nine years earlier. Since then, she’d spent her time making and selling vulgar cross-stitch pieces at craft shows. At the moment, she was working on one that said “Fuck this bullshit, I’m getting drunk.”

When Andi arrived, it took her a moment to notice that all of the stereotypical old lady decorations had a peculiar bent to them. She was mildly shocked when she realized that all of the pieces she would have expected to say things like “Home Sweet Home” or “Kindness, Laughter and Friendship are always welcome here” were short on saccharine sentiments and long on profanity.

Andi decided she kind of liked this Violet Ferguson.

She checked her notes, and started counting down until Violet Ferguson’s final moments. There wasn’t a great deal to do, since Violet was going to simply have a stroke and quietly die right there in her chair.

At the appointed time, Violet’s eyes rolled, she dropped the embroidery she’d been working on, and slumped back in her chair, dead.

“Well, shit, I liked that one, too,” Violet’s soul said.

“I’m sorry,” Andi said. “It was simply your time. Would you come along with me, Violet?”

Andi held her hand out to Violet.

Violet looked at her and said, “I thought for sure you’d be older, skinnier, and wearing a black cloak. That’s how you looked last time, anyway.”

Andi was too surprised to say anything. None of the souls she’d been around to collect had said anything along those lines to her before.

“Last time?” Andi said.

“Ouch. Well, I guess you see enough people in the course of your work that you wouldn’t remember me. I died on the operating room table, twice, before I managed to stay in my body. I met you then, though you looked different.”

Of course, Andi thought, she’s had a near-death experience. She’d know what Death looks like if she’d been paying attention.

“You must have met Death,” Andi said. “She’s my boss. I’m Andi, nice to meet you.”

“Andi huh? Are there are lot of you grim reaper types running around?” Violet said.

Andi hesitated a bit, then said, ‘So far as I know, there is just the two of us. Death says there are others, but I have yet to see any of them.”

Violent nodded, “I guess I’m not surprised. There are lots of people out there, and all of them are going to die eventually. Seems like a lot to handle for one person.”

She looked around at the room they were in, looked down at her body, and said, “OK, I guess I’m ready to go.”

Andi offered Violet her hand, and Violet took it. The two of them stepped out of the world.

When Andi was finished escorting Violet, she realized that she really had no idea when Death would be back. She might have a few minutes to herself, which was a luxury she hadn’t had in quite a while.

Andi thought for a couple of seconds about what she might do, and then she decided on something. She would go and visit Rob. With that decision, she focused on Rob, and stepped away.

Rob was sitting at his desk, cramming for his final exams. Assuming he didn’t somehow flunk any of his classes, he would be graduating after this term.

He was quite absorbed in his studies, and didn’t notice Andi when she appeared in his room. Andi was a little surprised by the new surroundings. The last time she’d seen Rob, he’d lived in the dorms. She wondered how long she’d been dead. It didn’t seem all that long.

“Hi Rob,” Andi said.

Rob started, then laughed, and then turned around to see who was talking to him. When he saw it was Andi, he started again, and uttered a little shriek before fumbling and falling off his chair. Rob scrambled back up again, and looked at Andi with a mixture of curiosity and terror.

“Andi?” Rob said.

“That’s me,” Andi said, and smiled.

“But you’re dead,” Rob said. “And you’ve been dead for, gee, two years, give or take. I was at your funeral and you were definitely dead. You can’t be here,” Rob said.

He seemed to settle down a bit then, and even smiled a little bit. “OK, I fell asleep studying and now I’m dreaming that you’re here. I must be missing you without realizing it at the moment. Any second here, I’m going to wake up, say ‘that was a weird dream’ and go get some coffee so I can keep studying.”

That wasn’t really the reaction Andi had been expecting. She’s been expecting, actually, for Rob to be happy to see her. She was a little hurt, to be honest.

***

Death wasn’t sure, at the moment, if she would have been more irritated to find another suicide rather than to discover Ares was at it again.

This time, Death found herself watching chaos unfold in a bank. One of the tellers, already dead, hung limp over the counter. Ares was holding another one up by his hair.

“All I want to do is withdraw some of my money. Why is this so complicated? Keeping my money until I need it is your job, that’s why I have an account here. I don’t give you my money so that you can refuse to give it back to me when I ask. I’d even asked nicely. Look, I’d even filled out one of these fucking withdrawal slips, so you don’t have to do anything but count out my money. Why, exactly, to I have to talk to the branch manager in order to get my money?” Ares said.

He was shoving the withdrawal slip in the teller’s face.

“I’m just following the rules,” the teller said. He was struggling, but there’s honestly not much a person can do to resist when they’ve been lifted by the hair and held at arm’s length by a god of war.

“Well, who the hell can help me then? Where’s this branch manager you all are so freaking dependent on in order to do your jobs?” Ares said.

The branch manager was, in fact, cowering behind his desk at the moment, having a quick peek over his cube wall now and then in order to see if the scary man had gone away. When he saw that he hadn’t, he ducked back down.

The teller was a little too occupied with being terrified and experiencing an astonishing about of pain in his scalp to point to the branch manager’s cubicle, but he looked over that way, and Ares followed the teller’s gaze until he spotted the little placard that said “Branch Manager.”

“Thanks,“ Ares said, and dismissively threw the teller into the nearby wall. The teller collapsed to the floor in a heap.

Ares strode over to the branch manager’s cube, and quickly spotted him hiding under his desk.

“Customer service is required here, asshole,” Ares said. He grabbed the edge of the desk and lifted sharply, pulling it free from its mounting and exposing the branch manager, who had curled up into a little ball.

Ares grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him to his feet. The branch manager screamed and wet himself a little bit.

“Now,” Ares said. “Maybe you can explain why it is that I can’t have my money.”

“It’s just a very big withdrawal for us, we’re not used to dealing with that kind of cash with no notice,” the branch manager said apologetically. He’d wanted to sound firm and professional, but failed completely.

“Well, that’s just horseshit, man. You’re a damned bank. This is where people keep their money. I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t be able to come in here and get my money out,” Ares said. “No wonder everyone hates bankers, you guys suck.”

Death supposed she should intervene, even though this time it seemed like Ares actually had a point.

“Ares,” Death said, “I think he’s learned his lesson. He’s already ruined his suit, maybe cut him a little slack this one time?”

Ares looked sharply to see who was telling him to cool it, but he relaxed when he saw it was Death. He kept a firm hold of the branch manager, but spoke conversationally with Death.

“Hi Death! Where’s your trainee? Did you have to fire her?” Ares said.

“She’s off taking care of a collection, since you had to interrupt my day, again,” Death said. She sounded kind of tired.

“Interrupt? Oh, yeah,” Ares said, and glanced at the two bodies on the other side of the room.

“I don’t suppose you could let him go, just this once? I promise you, his ending is going to be pretty unpleasant anyway,” Death said, indicating the branch manager.

“Well,” Ares said. “OK, I guess. I suppose he’s learned his lesson.”

Ares set the branch manager down again, but kept ahold of his collar.

“Right?” Ares said to him.

“Sure thing, you’ve got it,” the branch manager said in a rush. “Anything you want.”

Ares looked at him with no small amount of suspicion, but let him go.

“Don’t forget it,” Ares said.

The branch manager walked backwards as quickly as he could, not turning his back on Ares.

Ares turned to Death, and resumed the conversation in an ordinary tone of voice.

“So have you got time for me to buy you a make-up dinner today? Anything you’re in the mood for, just name it,” Ares said.

“No thanks, Ares, I don’t have time and I have to get these two over…” Death said and trailed off. She looked as though she was trying to overhear a conversation that was just slightly too soft to hear easily.

“Well, just give me the word,” Ares said. “Like I said, anything you’d like, my treat.”

Death wasn’t looking at Ares. She had an annoyed expression on her face.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “Look, I’ve got to get these two souls over and then go take care of another mess, Ares. I’ll catch you later.”

Ares looked disappointed, for a moment.

“Oh. OK. See you later, Death,” Ares said. “But be sure to call me, it’ll be my pleasure to buy you dinner sometime.”

Death grabbed the souls of the bank tellers by their arms, and stepped out of the world.

***

Rob couldn’t believe that he was talking to his dead friend Andi. It was utterly impossible. And even more impossible was what she was doing, now that she was dead.

“So, you’re learning how to be death?” Rob said.

“Yeah! Wait until you meet her, she’s a trip!” Andi said.

She was thrilled to be talking to Rob again. Andi hadn’t realized how lonely she had actually gotten. Learning to collect souls had kept her extremely busy, and Death was pretty cool, but it wasn’t the same as having a friend to pal around with.

Rob smiled slightly, and said, “I’m still trying to come to terms with the idea that you’re actually here in front of me and that I’m not dreaming.”

Andi pinched Rob’s arm, hard but affectionately, and said, “You’re not dreaming, I’m really here.”

The two of them were no longer alone. Rob was not expecting to see Death when she appeared, so he didn’t. Andi didn’t see her because she was too busy paying attention to Rob.

Had either of them noticed Death standing quietly behind Andi, they would have seen that she was not amused in the least. In fact, any outside observer would probably describe Death’s apparent mood as “a state of high piss-off.”

Andi was still chatting a mile a minute with Rob.

“Wow, so I’ve been dead for way longer than I thought. It’s weird how time passes now. And so you’re almost done with school that’s…” is as far as Andi got before she appeared to vanish into thin air.

Rob blinked a couple of times, and looked around the room. He was alone again.

“Andi?” he said. “Hey, are you still here?”

There was no answer. He wondered if that had actually happened, or if he was just dreaming of a long gone friend.

Chapter Nineteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:45:00 +0000

Photo by Dominik Schwind

Death and Andi had not had time to even try to get something to eat in quite a while. The amount of time between each of the collections seemed to be getting shorter and shorter, and it had taken Andi quite a while to get the hang of travelling. Between finding Andi after each mis-step, and getting to the collections on time, finding time to get some food was out of the question.

Andi had, however, finally managed to get the knack for travelling. After a few huge mis-steps (she did end up in Africa once, but was relieved to not find herself staring down any puzzled lions. And she had wound up in an abandoned mine one time.), she gotten a little better, bit by bit, until now she could arrive pretty close to exactly where she’d intended to.

And, as time passed and Andi didn’t let any more souls wander off alone, Death had begun to trust her a little more again.

So today, between the collections of a thirty nine year old nurse and a seventy eight year old retired bus driver, Death asked Andi to go and get some cheeseburgers.

“Something easy to eat on the move, please,” Death had said. “As good as a super bacon mega mayo barbeque holy hell cheese burger sounds, that’ll require too much focus I think. Something small will do. Get eight or so.”

So, with those instructions in mind, Andi had set out to find a fast food place where she could get a sack of easy to manage burgers.

She came back with a bag full of burgers while Death was in the middle of a collection. The bag had photos of people doing healthy things like playing soccer, climbing mountains, and other such things that people who regularly ate at that restaurant were unlikely to be doing any time soon. Andi wondered if the bag was supposed to be aspirational, or just supposed to soothe one’s guilt. Either way, it was a bag chock full of unhealthy deliciousness.

In looking at the bag, a question occurred to Andi.

“You’re not dead like me, are you?” Andi said to Death.

Death was paying attention to the events going on in the room around them. A drug deal was about to go bad, and it took a lot of focus to keep things progressing the way they were supposed to.

“No, I’m immortal. Why do you ask?” Death said.

“Well, I was just thinking about this sack of burgers, and the fact that it’s not exactly healthy food,” Andi said.

Death chuckled slightly, and said, “When you only get to eat once every few years, a few extra calories and grease are hardly a problem.”

“That’s not what I meant. I was just wondering if you ever get sick. I mean, does anything ever knock you on your butt for a few days?” Andi said. “Or is that a total non-concern for you?”

Death though carefully about how to answer, as gunfire erupted in the room and the people who hadn’t been shot scattered for cover.

She hadn’t ever been sick, exactly, although she had gotten depressed that one time and stayed in bed rather than face the world for a while. But Andi didn’t really need to know about that.

Unlike on TV, the gun fight didn’t go on and on. The people closest to an exit took their first opportunities and ran for it. The final death toll was just one person, a man who really should have known that the word “motherfucker” will never result in the de-escalation of a bad situation.

“No,” Death said to Andi, “I can’t think of a time that I’ve ever gotten sick. I don’t worry about it at all, actually.”

The soul of the man who had been shot said, “Am I dead?”

“Yes,” Death said.

“Thank God,” he said. He sounded like it was a huge relief.

He went peacefully and agreeably with Death and Andi to the gateway, and crossed over without incident.

“Well, that was a little strange,” Andi said.

“Was it?” Death said. “Hey, can I have one of those burgers while we talk?”

“Oh, of course,” Andi said. She pulled out a cheeseburger wrapped in wax paper and handed it to Death, who did her best to not snatch it out of Andi’s hand and laugh with glee. It was important to maintain some decorum.

Andi continued, “So, yeah, I don’t think I’ve been along on any collections where the person seemed relieved to be dead.”

Death was holding the still-wrapped burger under her nose, savoring the moment and doing her best to enjoy all of the sensory pleasures presented by the first food she’d gotten her hands on in close to three years.

“Oh,” Death said. “Well, I guess he was a little more vocal about it than most, but it seems to me that a lot of folks are actually relieved. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re looking forward to the afterlife, or if it’s simply that now they don’t have to worry about how they’re going to die anymore, or what. I guess it’s a different experience for everyone.”

Death was slowly unwrapping her cheeseburger, loving the feel of the wrapper and the crinkling sounds it made as she re-arranged the wax paper so she could hold the burger and not spill any ketchup or grease on herself as she ate it.

She had it arranged just the way she liked it when her phone rang. Death exhaled sharply, exasperated, and took her phone out of her pocket while muttering, “what the hell is it now?”

What it was just so happened to be was another immediate collection. Two people this time.

Death rolled her eyes.

“Come on, we’ve got work to do,” she said to Andi.

Andi had exactly enough time to recognize that they were now in a bar of some sort, and that there was a brawl going on, when she saw something unexpected.

A man’s head, recently separated from his body, flew past her and knocked the burger out of Death’s hand.

Andi knew that Death was probably not going to be very happy about that, but she didn’t even have time to say something before a headless body flew into her, knocking the bag of burgers out of her hand and into the fireplace.

A fireplace? Andi thought. We must be in a pub, then.

Then she thought, Death is going to flip out.

She looked, and saw an expression of surprise cross Death’s face before being replaced almost immediately with a look of pure fury.

Another head rolled past Andi’s feet, and she heard a crash somewhere in the room that she assumed was the body that head had recently been attached too.

What had been a brawl turned into a stampede as the patrons of the pub tried to flee from the person beheading other patrons. When Andi had her bearings, she saw that the one person not fleeing was a rather muscular man in black leather.

“God damn it, Ares!” Death shouted. “It’s bad enough that I had to interrupt a meal in order to come and deal with more collections because you lost your temper again, but then you have to go and knock the food out of my hand, and then cause the rest to get ruined in the fireplace?”

Ares spun around from what he’d been doing, which was attempting to start the bar on fire, to see who was yelling at him.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry about your lunch. I didn’t see you there or I would have totally thrown that guy the other way,” Ares said. “I’ll buy you dinner sometime to make it up to you, OK?”

He gave Death his most charming smile.

“Dinner sometime doesn’t make up for the fact that I’m overworked as it is and I’ve just missed out on a meal,” Death said.

“Well, you know how it is. Some people just need killing,” Ares said.

The two souls, who had been pretty good friends in life, watched all of this with matching looks of confusion and displeasure.

“I don’t think I needed killing,” one of them said. “I’m pretty sure I just happened to be in your general area and you grabbed me and yanked my head off.”

“Yeah, well, you were in the brawl, so you weren’t totally innocent,” Ares said.

“Actually, I was just trying to get out of here,” the soul said.

“Me too,” the other soul said.

“Well, whatever, I don’t have to explain myself to a couple of dead guys,” Ares said. “Sorry, Death, I’ll buy you and your intern there a meal sometime to make it up, but for now, I’ve got to split. See ya.”

Ares vanished.

“Well that guy is an asshole,” the first soul said.

“Are you telling me?” Death said.

The soul glanced at Death, and then decided the best thing to do would be to stay quiet and hope there weren’t ways she could make things a little worse for them.

The second soul, who wasn’t quite as perceptive as the first, started talking then.

“You know, this is bullshit. I just came down here to the bar to have a couple of beers and hang out, and then I hear some shouting and before I know it there’s a brawl and then when I’m trying to get out of the bar and stay out of trouble, some guy that looks like he should be a bad guy for the WWF grabs on to my head and pulls it off, which fucking hurt by the way, and now you’re being rude too? When did everyone become a total asshole? Was it just today or have things been slowly getting worse without me noticing or what?” he said.

Andi and the first soul stared at him, amazed that he was willing to just start ranting when Death was standing right there, looking like she was ready to get a little bit smite-y herself. Andi wondered, like the first soul, what kind of awful retribution was going to befall the second soul.

What happened is that Death blinked a few times, and started laughing.

“Oh, my friend, I think things have been slowly getting worse for a while…” Death said, still laughing a bit. “Sorry, you two have had a rough day, and you don’t need me making it worse just because I missed lunch. There will be other lunches.”

She reached out to both of the souls, smiling and giggling a little bit, “Would you two come with me please?”

Death and the two souls crossed over, leaving Andi in the pub trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

When Death got back, she said to Andi, “what a day, huh?”

“I guess so,” Andi said. “So, uh, how are you able to just switch your patience back on like that? I was expecting you to unleash hell on that guy.”

Death smiled and said, “I have to do my job first, and have tantrums second. So I try to keep in mind that the souls I’m collecting should feel comforted. Rescued, even. I’m not here to beat up on them.”

“Rescued, got it,” Andi said. She looked around a bit at the wreckage of the pub. It was empty now. “You know, I bet we could find something to eat in here. It is, after all, a pub. They have food.”

“No, that wouldn’t be right,” Death said. “Come on, we’ll just have to try again somewhere else.”

“OK, if you say so,” Andi said.

“I say so,” Death said.

Chapter Eighteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 02:36:00 +0000

Photo By ZepFanMan

Andi looked around and wondered where the hell she had gotten to this time. It was cold. There were trees. And nearby she could see the coast, though again, she wasn’t sure which one she was looking at. It was an overcast day, so she couldn’t even use the sun to try to orient herself a little bit.

It was a little disorienting after being in the desert only seconds earlier and attempting to move to a cactus, not an ocean, but she wasn’t as freaked out as she had been the first time. Death had found her pretty darned quickly the last time, so she just stayed put and trusted that Death would show up soon to collect her, and then they’d try again.

In the meantime, she figured she might as well take a look around. There were a couple people walking along the coast. She couldn’t really hear their conversation, but little snatches came through. She thought she heard one of them say, “ayuh.”

Am I in Maine? she thought.

Then she heard Death next to her.

“How did you end up in Maine?” Death said. She sounded amused, but still supportive.

“I have no idea, I…” Andi started to say, but Death interrupted her again.

“Sorry, kiddo, we’ve got an immediate collection. I didn’t want to leave you stranded, but we need to go,” Death said.

Andi felt it as they stepped away from where they had been standing, before she could even respond to what Death had said.

When they stopped, Andi saw they were in front of a Bakery.

“Well, let’s see what’s gone horribly wrong,” Death said. She sounded irritated.

The two of them walked into the bakery. Standing at the counter was an enormous, muscular man in black leather clothing. He looked a bit irritated. Andi recognized him as the man who had been outside the burning bar in the desert.

Death sounded tired and annoyed when she said, “Hey Ares.”

Ares turned around, and smiled broadly, “Hey! Hi Death! What brings you here?”

Death gave Ares her best how stupid do you think I am? look.

“I assume you brought me here,” Death said.

Ares looked completely surprised. “Well, I guess that’s fair, but I’m just here trying to get a birthday cake.”

Death didn’t say anything, she just walked behind the counter and in to the back of bakery. Andi followed her.

Hanging from a length of extension cord tied over an exposed pipe running along the ceiling was the baker, John Connely, 52. His soul stood nearby, looking troubled.

Ares had followed them into the back of the bakery, unnoticed. Andi started a bit when he spoke.

“Well, shit. I guess I won’t be getting a birthday cake here. This place was the best, too,” Ares said.

Death turned on him.

“Why the hell did you hang the baker, Ares? I wish you could keep your temper reigned in a little bit when it’s, you know, not actually a war,” Death said.

Ares put his hands up, palms open, towards Death.

“This wasn’t me. Besides, an electrical cord hanging isn’t my style, you know that,” Ares said. “It would have taken a lot to get me pissed off enough to kill this baker. Seriously, you can’t get a better cake in this town.”

John Connely’s soul quietly watched this discussion with an extremely puzzled expression on his face.

Andi also looked puzzled. Something seemed familiar about this guy, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She flipped through her notes a little bit, and realized that John Connely’s was one of the deaths she had been given to plan.

All that work, flushed away by a baker with a bad attitude and an extension cord. It made her a little angry.

John hadn’t been paying attention to Andi, he was listening to Ares instead. John said, “Really, you think my cakes are the best?”

Ares turned to John and said in a very dismissive way, “they were the best, asshole. Why did you have to off yourself today?”

Over the last couple of seconds, Andi’s temper had started to get the best of her. Planning a death was a ton of work. She’d had to consider everything about him, and figure out how to orchestrate a series of events leading to his demise.

She scowled and said, perhaps a little louder than was strictly needed, “Why did you have to off yourself at all?”

“Well, I don’t really see how that’s any of your business,” John said in reply.

Andi hadn’t realized that one could actually see red, until she did exactly that just then.

“It’s my business because I spent a fucking ton of time planning out your death and you had to go and make all that work irrelevant by hanging yourself with an extension cord. It was a great death I’d had planned out for you too. It was going to have everything, a little surprise, a little action, lots of gore. You would have been amazed. But now you’ve just made it so no one will ever use this building as a bakery again and that’s it. Whoop de doo. Jerk,” Andi said.

“Gee, I hadn’t thought about that. Not many people are going to want to run a bakery here again, are then?” John said.

“Of course you hadn’t thought about it. Did you think about anything?” Andi said. “No, you just decided you couldn’t handle how hard your life was anymore and decided to quit like a big… quitting… poopy-head.”

Ares was watching this all unfold with no small amount of amusement. Death was wondering if she should try to calm Andi down, but then thought about how much suicides pissed her off as well, so she kept her mouth shut.

“And the worst part is that I…” John had started to say.

“Realized that the only problem you couldn’t fix was that you’d just hung yourself? I’ve heard that before, it’s not that profound,” Andi said. “Hindsight isn’t worth much when you’ve just taken away any chance you had of ever at least making changes for the better.”

“I’d think you could be a little sympathetic,” John said, starting to get defensive.

“It’s too late for that too, stink-face,” Andi said. “You know what, just shut up. Take my hand, we’re crossing over.”

“I’m not sure…” John said.

Andi grabbed him by the ear, “I am. Let’s go.”

Andi stepped out of the world, dragging John along with her. The gateway appeared after a moment, and John said, “Is this the gateway to Hell?”

Andi said, “I don’t know, but you probably should have considered that before you killed yourself, huh? In you go.”

Andi gave him a firm push through the gateway.

When she got back to the bakery, Death and Ares were both looking at her, kind of dumbfounded.

“Your intern there has a hell of a temper,” Ares said to Death.

“Yeah, I guess,” Death said. To Andi she said, “I don’t think I’ve seen this side of you before, Andi.”

Andi blushed, no longer full of fury.

“Sorry, I guess that kind of caught me by surprise too,” Andi said.

“Well, I can’t blame you for being angry. You’ve seen how much it pisses me off,” Death said.

Ares glanced at a clock on the wall, and said, “well, it look like it’s time for me to split. I need to go try to find another bakery that can whip up a birthday cake worth eating.”

Andi said, “What do you need a birthday cake for, anyway? Aren’t you a god of war?”

“I don’t see what the one has to do with the other. I’m going to a birthday party, and I need a cake. What do you think I need a birthday cake for?” Ares said.

“I guess it just seems kind of funny, a god of war, buying a birthday cake,” Andi said.

“What? So I can’t enjoy birthday cake just because I’m a god of war? You know what? Whatever, I’m out of here. See you later, Death,” Ares said. He promptly vanished.

Andi was quiet for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“That seemed a little abrupt,” she said to Death.

“Well, you did just tell him that there was something funny about him buying a birthday cake. And Ares isn’t known for being a particularly good sport,” Death said. “He’s razed entire villages for less.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Andi said.

“Not at all. Guess who had to collect all the souls after an unexpected village bonfire. Several times,” Death said.

“Whoa,” Andi said.

“Yeah,” Death said.

She checked the time, and saw they had just a few minutes until the next collection. It looked like it should be another easy, straightforward collection. An industrial accident.

“Come on,” Death said, “We’ve got work to do. I’ll let you sit this one out and just watch while you calm down a bit. I know how annoying suicides are.”

“OK, cool, thanks,” Andi said.

A few moments later they were standing outside a factory, by the loading docks. There were trucks coming and going, and several forklifts rushing back and forth, loading and unloading trailers.

Jeff Goldman, twenty four, was looking forward to the end of his shift. He had two days off, and was ready to get his weekend started. Just another hour and he’d be out of there.

Death and Andi stood by, unnoticed as always, watching as Jeff finished talking with his supervisor and the driver of the truck, determining where everything he was going to load off the truck needed to go.

A few minutes later, he had his forklift running and was hauling pallets loaded with various raw materials out of the trailer and into the warehouse. This was fine for several trips, but as the truck was unloaded, the issue of the brakes not being set became a big problem.

Jeff drove the forklift into the trailer to grab another load, but didn’t notice that the inertia of the forklift had caused the truck and trailer to roll forward about ten feet. And, unfortunately for Jeff, no one else noticed it either, except for Death and Andi.

When Jeff had lifted another pallet in the trailer, he backed rapidly out of the trailer. Ordinarily, he’d just end up in the warehouse, turn, and take the pallet to wherever he was supposed to take it.

But this time, instead of a loading dock, at the end of the trailer was a five foot drop. Jeff didn’t even notice the drop until six thousand pounds of forklift had toppled out of the back of the truck. And, unfortunately for Jeff, he was what broke the fall between the forklift and the ground.

The forklift suffered minimal damage, but the same couldn’t be said for Jeff. He suffered about as much damage as you might expect.

“Aw, shit,” Jeff’s soul said as he looked down on his remains. “It was almost the weekend. I can’t believe I got sloppy enough to not check the brakes on that truck before I unloaded it. Damn it.”

“People make mistakes,” Death said kindly. “Would you come with me?”

“And I had a whole case of beer in the fridge and a bag of weed at home waiting for me. I was so ready for this weekend,” Jeff said.

“Well, that is unfortunate, but it was your time,” Death said. “Would you take my hand?”

Death’s phone rang then. Jeff seemed content to lament his bag of weed for a while longer, so she checked it.

Another immediate collection? Death’s mood took a sudden turn for the worse. She grimaced.

“Can you hang around and bring this guy over when he’s ready? I just got another immediate collection,” Death said.

“Another one? Jeez. OK, sure, I’ll take care of it,” Andi said.

“Great, I’ll be back,” Death said, and with that, she was gone.

Jeff was pacing back and forth, glancing at the wreckage now and then, and watching his former co-workers alternately hustling and trying to help, freaking out, and just standing in shock.

“There’s not much you can do here,” Andi said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Jeff ignored her, and started chastising himself again.

Great, Andi thought. A suicide, and now a guy who wants to beat himself up over an accident.

And she wondered what the deal was with yet another immediate collection. Had someone gotten themselves smote? Or was it another suicide? She was a little embarrassed about how angry she’d gotten at the suicide they’d just had to collect. Now she really understood why Death had been so pissy at the suicides they’d collected previously.

Andi got a little lost in thought. When she snapped out of it, she realized that Jeff had gone missing. She had absolutely no idea where he’d wandered off to, but the fact was, he wasn’t standing with her anymore.

“Oh shit,” Andi said.

She ran to the other side of the truck, up into the warehouse, to the far side of the parking lot. Jeff was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do. She knew Death would be displeased. On the other hand, even if he was kind of annoying, Andi didn’t wish a slow descent into eternal madness on him. He hadn’t done anything that bad.

But Death was going to be cranky if she’d just collected a suicide. It was a dilemma.

And it was one she didn’t have time to ponder, because that’s when Death showed up. She didn’t look especially cheerful.

“So Ares killed a different baker,” Death said. “Apparently Ares wanted something in the way of a Yule log for a birthday cake, and this guy refused to make one, and told him to come back in December. The good news is, I managed to catch Ares before he’d gone all out rampage and killed everyone the baker had ever known.”

Andi said, “He’s done that?”

“More times than I like to think about. Anyway. Are we done here?” Death said.

Andi swallowed hard. The right thing to do was to try and prevent eternal torment because she’d screwed up. But she knew it wasn’t going to go over well. She steeled herself as well as she could, and spoke.

“Jeff seems to have wandered off, and now I can’t find him,” Andi said.

Death stared blankly at Andi.

“I’ve searched for him,” Andi said quickly, “as best I could. I really have no idea where he ran off to, though.”

Death tightened her lips, and exhaled through her nose.

“OK, well, we’d better find him. I’d better find him. You stay here, I’ll be right back,” Death said. She vanished.

Andi felt pretty certain that she was going to get herself escorted to the gateway for sure this time. She considered running off herself, and seeing how long she might be able to elude Death, but then she realized that doing so might just make Death even harder on her when she finally caught up. So she stayed where she way.

After a few minutes, Death appeared again.

“He went home,” Death said. “That’s usually where they go. Home or their favorite place. He’s squared away now.”

“OK, good, I’m glad,” Andi said.

Death seemed to be figuring out how to say something. Andi stayed quiet and waited.

“So, Andi, that was kind of a huge mistake there. You have got a tremendous amount of responsibility when it’s your job to bring a soul to the next world. People are not meant to stay here after Death. It’s extremely bad for them, mostly. They have no purpose any more, and they have to watch eternity pass. Letting them get away is dooming them to torment. So, you can’t let them wander off,” Death said.

She continued, “I have to be honest with you, Andi, my trust in you is shaken. I can’t keep giving you more responsibility if you make mistakes like this. Do you understand?”

Andi nodded.

“OK,” Death said. “Well, let’s keep moving. People aren’t going to stop dying just because we need a break.”

Chapter Seventeen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 02:43:00 +0000

Photo by Jeff Weese

It took a while, but Andi managed to really get the hang of orchestrating a collection. Death had been standing back to let her run the collections, giving little bits of feedback and advice after each, but mostly Andi was just doing the job.

As she was getting more and more experience running collections, she discovered something that surprised her. She was starting to know, upon meeting someone, the manner of their death. So she might pass a man on the street and notice that he had brown hair, a mustache, worn out shoes and was going to die in a car crash.

She asked Death about it.

“Yeah, that’s how I see people too. Their death is just another part of who there are,” Death said.

“Could it change? I mean, could you see someone and know they’re going to die in an industrial accident, and then see them again and discover it’s going to be pneumonia?” Andi said.

Death tried to think of the people she had seen more than once, and whether or not the manner of death she foresaw had ever changed. She was pretty sure it had happened, but couldn’t think of a specific example.

She said, “Yes, that could happen. I mean, people other aspects of their appearance easily enough. If they change the direction their life is heading, why wouldn’t the manner of their death change? I doubt it’s a real common thing, though. Most people are pretty set in their ways. They determined how their life was going to be early on, and stay right on that path. It doesn’t always makes sense, but that seems to be how it goes. People are weird.”

Death was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Well, you’ve got a handle on planning deaths, you’ve got the actual orchestration of a collection down, you can step out of the world and manage to come back again. I think it’s time for you to learn how to travel.”

“Travel?” Andi said.

“Right. How to get from point a to point b. You know, quickly.” Death said.

“You mean how to travel like you?” Andi said. “Cool! OK, when do we start?”

Death checked when the next collection was. They had nine minutes. It was enough to get started, anyway.

She didn’t think too much harm could come to Andi, just some annoyance. Maybe a little discomfort.

“We’ll start now. I don’t expect you to get this right the first time, OK?” Death said.

“Um, OK,” Andi said. “I don’t expect me to get it right either.”

Death smiled slightly and said, “Well, you might find the results of getting it wrong unsettling. So, what you need to know is that I will come and get you if you get lost.”

Now Andi was feeling somewhat less enthusiastic, and a little more concerned about what she might be getting herself into. Death was being a little bit too reassuring for her liking. Andi was fairly certain that things might be about to get pretty hairy if Death herself was trying to reassure her.

“How lost, exactly, can I get?” Andi asked.

“Well,” Death said, “You might just end up in the neighboring building. Or you could end up in the right building, but stuck halfway through a wall. Or you might, for example, end up somewhere in Antarctica when you were trying to get to Detroit. This takes some practice, is all, and ending up in the wrong place can be stressful. So, just remember that I’ll be able to find you, and I’ll come get you if you find yourself somewhere not quite right.”

Andi considered her options. Potentially uncomfortable disorientation and the possibility of getting trapped inside an ornamental boulder, or Death telling her that this wasn’t working out and escorting her to the gateway for a belated crossing. Her concern was eased a little bit when she remembered something important: if she got stuck in a wall, she was a ghost. She could just step out of it.

Having gotten her confidence back, she said, “Great, what do I have to do?”

Death thought about it for a minute.

“You know, I’ve never had to explain this to anyone before. I can’t really tell you how to do it, I can really only sort of explain what you need to do in order for it to work. You’re going to have to figure out how, exactly, you can do it,” Death said.

“OK. That wasn’t very confidence inspiring, you know,” Andi said.

“Well, consider it an opportunity to become comfortable with ambiguity,” Death said.

Andi didn’t answer, just continued looking at Death, listening.

“OK, so it’s a lot like stepping out of the world, except you’re not stepping out as much as you are stepping over,” Death said.

“So I’m taking giant steps here, OK, that’s easy enough to understand,” Andi said.

“Right. So you’re taking a giant step here. And in order to do that, you need to know where, exactly, you’re stepping. Once you’ve got it down you might be able to step without looking where you’re going, but for now that’s not going to work,” Death said.

“OK. So if I’m here in Dallas, and I need to get to Detroit, how exactly do I see where I’m stepping?” Andi said.

“Focus,” Death said. “It’s like learning how to grab a coffee cup. You’ve got to focus all your attention on where you want to be, and you need to be completely certain of where that is. Otherwise you’ll end up somewhere else,” Death said.

Andi thought about the times they’d left some backwater town in Alaska following a collection and then had another collection in an urban center in Australia.

“How can I be completely certain of where I’m going if I’ve never been there before?” Andi said.

“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” Death said. She checked the time. They still had five minutes to the next collection.

Death continued, “OK, so we’ll start small. Look across the street. Do you see that fire hydrant?”

Andi looked across the street. There was a fire hydrant less than one hundred feet away. Piece of cake, she could practically just jump that far.

“Yeah, I see the hydrant,” Andi said.

“OK, what I want you to do is step over to it. Just focus as hard as you can on that hydrant, and when you feel ready, take the step,” Death said.

“That’s it?” Andi said. “Focus and take the step?”

Death smiled, “That’s the best I can explain it. You’re just going to have to figure out how to do it.”

“OK,” Andi said.

Confidence, she thought. Just stay confident. Focus on the hydrant, then step over to it. No problem. I can do this.

Andi stared at the hydrant for a full thirty seconds. It was yellow, with grass growing up around it a little bit. She stared at it until she couldn’t see anything but the hydrant. Then she closed her eyes, and stepped.

When she opened her eyes a fraction of a second later, she saw corn. She looked around a little bit. She had no idea where she was on the planet, but where ever she’d ended up, she had managed to step into the middle of a corn field. The corn was taller than her, and she regardless of the direction she turned, she couldn’t see anything but more corn.

She suddenly felt very alone, very lost, and very afraid. Back when she’d been learning to drive, she’d managed to get herself pretty well lost, but that didn’t compare to this in the slightest. She wanted to just run along the rows of corn for as far as she had to in order to find the end of the row and escape the field at least, and maybe figure out where the hell she was.

She’d never felt so disoriented, ever.

“You stepped a little further than across the street,” Death said, next to her. She sounded mildly amused.

Andi turned and hugged Death before she realized what she was doing. After a second, she realized what she was doing, and let Death go again.

Death looked a little uncomfortable.

“Well, I guess that was sort of an intense experience for you,” Death said. “That’s understandable, you left Dallas and ended up in the middle of Iowa without intending to.”

She checked the time, “Come on, we’ve got a collection to attend to. I’ll handle this one while you regroup, and then we’ll try again.”

The next collection was pretty routine, a twenty four year old woman in her Chevy Malibu got in a head on collision with a Ford F-350 pulling a huge RV on a mountain road in Nevada. The woman hadn’t had much to say, just quietly went with Death and Andi and crossed over without a word.

When they got back, Death checked to see when the next collection was. Twenty minutes. It was tempting to try and get something to eat, but she decided it would be best for Andi to get right back to learning to travel.

“OK, well, let’s try travelling again,” Death said.

Andi’s heart sank a little bit.

“Already? I feel like I need more time to recover,” Andi said.

“If we wait any longer you’re just going to develop a big fear of it, and then you’re really going to have trouble. I was right behind you last time, and I will be this time too, so there’s nothing to fear except maybe a little confusion,” Death said.

She looked around a bit. The road they were on at the moment was actually pretty busy, and on the off-chance that Andi was nearly successful this time, she didn’t want her to step into the middle of the freeway. Nothing bad would happen, but it would be pretty scary to look and see traffic bearing down on her.

Well off the road behind them, there was a perfect, two-armed cactus close to a big boulder. Death pointed it out to Andi.

“Try to step over to that cactus,” Death said.

Andi wasn’t feeling very confident, and wasn’t sure she really wanted to try stepping anywhere near a bunch of plants that were kind of known for being pointy and sharp. But the alternative sucked too.

So, she said, “OK, here goes.”

Andi did her best to put aside her fear of ending up just outside of Timbuktu staring down a bunch of very confused lions. She focused as hard as she could on the cactus.

A thought popped into her head just as she stepped, I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

Death had actually been expecting Andi to show up somewhere in the vicinity of the cactus. Maybe a couple hundred yards away, but, you know, not that far off. However, Andi vanished and did not appear again.

Death felt for her, and found her somewhere in coastal Maine.

Well, at least she ended up somewhere pretty, Death thought.

She was about to follow Andi when her phone beeped at her. She pulled it out, and checked to see what the deal was.

The deal was an immediate collection.

“Damn it,” Death said.

Chapter Sixteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 02:12:00 +0000

Photo By Tim Sepulveda

Andi had found that being dead, and constantly rushing from collection to collection, had done funny things to her sense of time. No matter how hard she tried, and she had spent more than a few spare moments counting it out on her fingers, she just didn’t know how long it had been since she had gone to Death’s apartment to get her clipboard and stopwatch. Making things a little more complicated was that they weren’t only working in the United States, or even the northern hemisphere, exclusively. Summertime in Germany was wintertime in New Zealand.

She was, however, certain that it had been several weeks, possibly a couple of months. Although she wasn’t hungry in the same way Death was, she was starting to miss the act of eating and tasting, not to mention having the leisure time to do something like sitting and eating an entire meal.

And since Death had decided to train her in on doing collections, she hadn’t had a lot of spare time to go and try to get something for both of them to eat. When there was time, the two of them would go, only to be interrupted, disturbed, or otherwise prevented from enjoying a bite to eat.

At first, Andi had been simply doing her best to follow along with Death’s carefully mapped out plans for each passing, keeping track of the notes and the time passing. She had discovered that Death made it look very easy to run a collection. It was not.

Andi had learned that Death did not, in fact, just passively watch as people’s deaths played out before her. She was an active participant, guiding forces and events to their conclusion.

“But what about free will? Are you saying people are destined to meet a certain end, and you make that end happen? Couldn’t they do something and save themselves?” Andi had asked her.

“I try not to let free will get me down,” Death said, smiling. “People’s endings aren’t certain until they’ve happened and their soul is standing there waiting to cross over. They can always made different choices. There have been a couple of times… Well, anyway, most of the time, people stay true to choices they’ve already made. They just walk the paths they’ve laid out for themselves. The art in what I do, and the art I’m trying to teach you, is finding and orchestrating the perfect end for that person, based on who they already are.”

“So if someone has a eureka moment, they can avoid a particular ending?” Andi said.

“Sometimes,” Death said. “Although, most people have a time when they’re supposed to pass. So if they get lucky and dodge a bullet, so to speak, it just means I have to think on my feet a little bit.”

“How do you know who has a specific time and who can keep going until the next time you cross paths? And who, exactly, determines the time someone is supposed to pass,” Andi asked. She was getting more confused by the minute.

“Well, for people with a specific time, I just know. You’ll get the hang of that. But I don’t know how the time is determined. That part, the how, isn’t my job, I just know when,” Death said.

“Aren’t you curious, though?” Andi said.

Death laughed.

“Curiosity for those who have time to stop and be curious,” Death said. “But yes, sometimes I wonder, just like I wonder what might be on the other side of the gateway. When it is time for me to know these things, I will know.”

“You’re remarkably tolerant of ambiguity for someone whose existence revolves around plotting specific events in minute detail,” Andi said.

Death didn’t reply.

Since then, Andi had been more and more active in the collections. Death had sat down with her after one collection, and gone over the checklist for the next passing.

“So, look here, what has to happen for the bus to run a red light?” Death said.

“Well, you’ve already got that listed. The driver has to be distracted by a guy in a Statue of Liberty costume chasing down another guy in a banana suit who was trying to work on the same corner,” Andi said.

“And what could go wrong with that?” Death said.

“I don’t know, seems pretty distracting to me,” Andi said.

“Well, how about this item here, where a pedestrian is waiting to cross the street? Might that have an impact?” Death said.

Andi thought about the impact that a pedestrian could have on whether or not a bus driver was distracted by two business mascots having a turf war. She wasn’t sure what the pedestrian had to do with anything.

“I don’t know. What does the pedestrian have to two with the two other guys?” Andi said.

“Well, she’s going to be waiting to cross the street, right?” Death said.

“Yeah, right,” Andi said. She had no idea where Death was going with this.

“Think she pushed the button to get a walk signal?” Death said.

“Well, yeah, I guess she would. Oh, that’s on the list here…” Andi said. She was still baffled.

“What would happen if she pushed the button thirty seconds later?” Death said.

Andi thought about it for a second. The light would probably change a little later. She still wasn’t sure what it had to do with the two guys distracting the bus driver.

“Well, I guess the light would change at a different time,” Andi said.

“You’re getting warmer,” Death said.

Andi thought hard. If the light changed to red thirty seconds later, what?

Then it occurred to her. The bus driver wouldn’t end up running a red light, he’d pass through while the light was still green, or at worst, yellow. The person being collected, another pedestrian, wouldn’t step into the street in front of a bus that had a green light.

Death saw Andi’s expression as she came to the realization of how significant the woman waiting to cross the street was.

“So, what do we need to make sure happens?” Death said.

“We need to make sure the woman crossing the street hits the crosswalk button at the right time,” Andi said.

Death smiled, and said, “You’re getting it.”

“OK,” Andi said. “So what can we do about that?”

“Well, we can influence her a little bit. We can guide and suggest, in a manner of speaking. So we might suggest to her that she ignore her cell phone when it starts ringing, because she has places to be and the phone can wait. If she stops or slows down to dig her phone out of her purse, that could be enough of a delay to really muck everything else up.”

It had taken Andi a while to get how exactly guiding and suggesting worked, but she had, slowly, learned how to turn her will into a force that could actually influence events.

Death had, little by little, allowed Andi to orchestrate more and more of the collections. She had taught Andi how to step out of the world, and how to bring a soul with her.

She’d been there, giving little pointers the entire time. A couple of the souls being collected had actually taken quite a bit of interest in the mechanics of the job. Others had been annoyed at having to deal with a trainee.

Today, Death had determined that Andi was ready to run the show on one of the collections. In six minutes they were due to collect one Oscar Williams, 58.

“OK, I think you’re ready to do this,” Death told Andi. “You’re in charge of the whole collection this time, I’m just going to stand back and stay out of your way.”

“OK,” Andi said.

She felt more than a little bit intimidated. It was a lot of responsibility, and she didn’t want to screw things up. Also, knowing that Death was there to coach her and help guide things if they went awry at the previous collections had done a lot to keep her calm. Suddenly, she felt like a bundle of nerves.

Death’s motorcycle rolled to a stop outside of Oscar’s house. The two of them dismounted, and Andi looked at Death hoping for a bit of guidance.

“After you,” Death said, and gestured towards the house.

Andi turned and led the way up the sidewalk. The two of them entered Oscar’s house. Music was playing, it sounded like disco, down in the basement. Andi and Death went downstairs and found Oscar dancing with his wife to the Bee Gee’s.

How sweet, was Andi’s first thought. Her next thought was, is this on the checklist?

Andi glanced at the checklist, and started her stopwatch when Oscar lowered his wife into a low dip.

She expected her level of anxiety to lower a bit as she worked, but instead it stayed high. It might even have been getting worse. She wanted to be sure she got this right.

One of the items on the checklist was that Oscar was going to start showboating, Saturday Night Fever style. However, after the end of the current song, he started to turn towards one of the chairs. He was going to sit down.

Not good, not good, ok, what do I do? Andi thought. She noticed Oscar’s wife looked a little bit disappointed, and decided she could work with that a little bit, and get him riled up into wanting to dance, and show off even.

She reached out with her will, suggesting to Oscar’s wife that teasing him gently might get him motivated to keep dancing rather than sitting down. Just make him feel a little competitive and playful and keep him moving.

“Oh, come on, keep dancing with me you lazy old pussy,” Oscar’s wife said. “All you do any more is sit. Three minutes of dancing and you’re spent. Though, I wish I could get three whole minutes out of you in bed. I can’t even remember the last time that happened…”

“What?” Andi said. That was not a bit of gentle teasing at all.

“What?” Oscar said, turning back to face his wife again. “God forbid I rest for a second. This happens every fucking time we have a nice moment, Cindy. Every. Fucking. Time. We almost get along for five minutes, and you turn into a hateful bitch.”

“See? Now I get the truth out of you. You never wanted to dance with me in the first place. I don’t know why I even bother with you!” Cindy said.

Andi looked frantically between her checklist and the scene playing out in front of her. This was not in the plan. She tried her best, focusing as hard as she could, on getting the two to laugh, reconcile and resume dancing, but to no avail.

They were outright shouting at each other now. Oscar was getting rather red in the face as Cindy hurled insults and accusations at him.

Finally, he grimaced, and said, “You know what? I have enough of this bullshit. I’m done. We’re through. Pack your shit and go stay with your mom, I’ll ship the rest of it to you.”

“What?” Cindy said, even louder than their argument had been already.

Holy crap, this isn’t right at all. Andi thought. She started panicking, trying to think of something, anything, to get things sort of back on track.

“You heard me,” Oscar said. “Get out.”

“Fuck you I’ll get out,” Cindy said. She snatched a heavy crystal tea light candle holder, shaped like a golf ball, off an end table and threw it as hard as she could at Oscar. It struck him in the nose, and there was a sickening crunching sound as it impacted.

That is not what killed Oscar.

What killed Oscar was reeling backwards and tripping over the ottoman they had pushed out of the way in order to dance. He fell over it, and hit the back of his head on the brick surrounding the fireplace. Oscar slumped to the floor and died, as a song by Earth, Wind and Fire played on the stereo.

Andi was frustrated, and embarrassed, and shocked all at once. Oscar was supposed to die of a heart attack, not blunt trauma to the head. It was probably because of how badly things had gone wrong that she was somewhat short with Oscar’s soul when it appeared next to her.

“Damn it, that didn’t work out at all right,” Andi said to Oscar. Then she caught herself, “Sorry, sorry. Come with me, please.”

Andi grabbed his hand, and they stepped out of the world. Death followed, still observing.

The gateway appeared, and Oscar asked, “Are these the gates to Heaven? Do I get to see my grandpa?”

“I don’t know,” Andi said, a little more abruptly that she’d meant to. “That’s where you need to go, though.”

Oscar looked troubled, but walked through the gateway. Andi looked at her checklist and checked off that one, final item. At least that part had gone right.

Death walked over to where Andi stood in the darkness. The look on her face said, We both know that didn’t go quite right, but I don’t want to make you feel any worse.

“Well… at least the right person ended up dead this time,” Death said. “Sometimes things don’t go the way they were intended too. That’s OK. But your bedside manner leaves a little bit to be desired, Andi. People should feel, ideally, like you’re rescuing them. You’re the hero, come to release them and help them move on. You’re the friend helping them get through a challenging time. You are not the annoyed DMV employee who is going to have to come back and deal with fifty more identical assholes tomorrow.”

“But,” Death continued, “other than that, you did a good job. Come on, on to the next one.”

Chapter Fifteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 02:10:00 +0000

Photo by David Ohmer

Death and Andi were currently trying to collect a soul, and the collection had turned into a bit of a bear of a job. Or, more precisely, the person being collected had turned into quite a bit of an asshole.

Maybe asshole is too strong of a word. Obnoxious, belligerent, and time-consuming might be better descriptions.

Any which way you care to describe it, this soul was being awfully annoying, and Death had just been denied lunch, so she was having a hard time keeping her cool.

Howard Fine, twenty eight, was an electrician, and had been on the job when he’d suffered an unfortunate and rather fatal accident. He’d been working in a commercial building, and had been twenty five feet up a ladder when he grabbed a live wire, expecting it to be cold.

If the cardiac arrest hadn’t killed him, the brain damage from the fall would have.

And now Howard was pissed off. He, that is to say, his soul, was walking around the room, ranting.

“I locked that god damned circuit out myself,” Howard said. “And I bet I know exactly who unlocked it too. It was that idiot fucking new guy. I don’t know how he ever made it to journeyman, with the dangerous shit he’s always pulling.”

Death and Andi watched as he paced and ranted. Usually the souls would start to lose steam after a couple of minutes and come along easily enough, but Howard seemed to be get himself even more worked up.

Death was trying her best to be patient.

“There’s nothing you can do about that now, Howard. Would you come with me?” Death said, with as much compassion and kindness as she could muster.

Howard didn’t seem to notice her.

“I’ve been working with this crew for five years and I fucking told Bill to fire that kid after the first work, that he was going to get somebody killed…” Howard said.

Death started to get a little annoyed. Time was passing, and she was going to have to get to the next collection any second. This guy seemed agitated enough that she wouldn’t really want to try and bring him along to the next collection. Chances were he’d just slow that down too.

Death reached her hand out to Howard during a lull in his rant, and said, “Would you come with me please?”

Howard stopped pacing and focused his attention on Death then.

“No, I won’t go with you. I was just killed because of a careless asshole’s idiot move, and I’m not ready to go yet,” Howard said. “So, how about you and your spooky little girlfriend sit down over there and shut the fuck up for a while.”

“Hey!” Andi said, and was about to tell Howard off when Death decided she’d had enough.

“OK, I tried to be nice. We’re going now,” Death said to Howard. “I offered to bring you the easy way.”

Moving with a speed that shocked Andi, Death had crossed the distance between herself and Howard, and had him in a headlock before Howard had even thought to try and defend himself.

“We’ll all agree that your death was a tragedy, but I think you’re going to come with me peacefully now, or else you’re going to end up very uncomfortable. Am I clear?” Death said. She squeezed Howard’s neck a little tighter.

Howard struggled against Death’s grip for a moment, before realizing that he was vastly out-powered. Her arms were like iron, unmoving, not even giving a little bit as he struggled. Finally, he gave up.

“OK, you’re clear,” Howard said.

“Excellent,” Death said. To Andi, she said, “I’ll be right back.”

Death vanished, and Andi was alone in the room where Howard’s body had fallen. Someone came in looking for him, and then ran outside, cell phone in hand, to call an ambulance. A few minutes later, Death reappeared. Her hair was slightly disheveled.

“Did everything go OK? You’re looking a little worse for the wear,” Andi said.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, everything went fine. I just firmly escorted Howard to the gateway, and made sure he made it all the way through when it opened for him,” Death said.

“OK, cool,” Andi said. She wasn’t sure what “firmly escorted” meant when Death said it, but she suspected it meant something along the lines of “picked his ass up and hurled it like a rag doll.”

Death checked her phone to see when the next collection was. They had five minutes.

She looked at Andi, and said, “I think you’re probably ready to start following along with what I’m doing at collections. Once you’ve got the gist of it, I’ll start letting you run some of them. For now, we need to get you’re a clipboard and a stopwatch. I’ve got a stash of spares in my apartment. I think what I’ll do is drop you off there, and come back and pick you up again just a little later.”

Andi was a little confused. “Why not just go to an Office Max or something to get a clipboard and stopwatch? Just about any office supply or drug store will have those.”

“Well, you’re right that you can get a stopwatch and a clipboard pretty easily, but unlike me, you are not Death, so the tools you work with are going to have to be warmed up already,” Death said.

“What do you mean, warmed up?” Andi said.

“Well, you don’t think I keep on top of all of the collections I have to plan and oversee with a stopwatch that might otherwise be used to time Physical Education classes, do you? You’re going to need something I’ve used before. Luckily for you, I have some spares,” Death said. “Anyway, time’s wasting. Let’s go.”

The two of them walked outside, and got on to Death’s waiting motorcycle. Seconds later they rolled to a stop outside of a brick apartment complex. The building was charming, old, and otherwise not noteworthy in any way. They were definitely in an urban area, but Andi wasn’t exactly sure which city they might be in.

“Where are we?” Andi said.

“Outside my apartment,” Death said.

Death reached into her cloak, and pulled out a key. She handed it to Andi.

“It’s a spare. I’m on the second floor, apartment 202. I have a little stash of spare stopwatches and clipboards in the desk in the living room. Pick out the ones that appeal to you, and I’ll be back shortly to get you,” Death said. “Don’t snoop.”

“OK,” Andi said.

With that, Death rode away, vanishing just a couple hundred feet away.

Andi turned and walked up the sidewalk to the front door of the building. She tried the door, only to discover it was locked. Working the key in the door and getting it open before it locked itself again automatically proved to be a bit of a challenge, but after a few minutes, Andi made it inside and started up the stairs.

Andi wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to just drop her off outside and for her to simply go through the doors into Death’s apartment, open a window and toss a stopwatch and a clipboard outside to pick up when she got back downstairs, rather than having to fumble with the key and doors.

Then she thought about what Death had said about the stopwatch and clipboard being “warmed up,” and decided there had probably been a very good reason for doing things this way. She wondered if she would find out what that reason was, in time.

The lobby of the building had small, octaganol, black and white tiles, and dark wood trim. The stairs were on the right side of the room. They were made of dark wood as well. It seemed like a nice building. Not particularly fancy, but not a dump either. Everything looked kept up.

Andi climbed the stairs to the second floor. The hallway had dark blue carpet and white walls. It was well-lit, and there was a big window at the end of the hall that let in a fair amount of daylight as well.

Death’s door was the second one down the hall from the stairway, on the right side. There was a small plaque next to the door that simply said, “202”.

Andi put the key in the door, unlocked it, and walked in to Death’s apartment.

She had to admit, it was a little underwhelming. She’d been expecting enormous, ancient, leather-bound volumes. Skulls. Maybe a gargoyle or two. Certainly a lot of black.

Instead, there was a lot of light colored, modern furniture. White and beige were the dominant colors, with a few splashes of color here and there.

Death’s desk stood out among the efficient, modern furnishings, however. It was the only thing in the place that was immediately, obviously ancient. It was elaborately carved, and had an almost bewildering number of little drawers and cubbies. There were a couple of huge, ornate hourglasses on the top shelf of the desk, quietly hissing. Andi wondered what they were timing. There was also a small bell, about the size of a glass for port wine, made of brass that had aged to a fine patina.

Andi jumped slightly when the bell rang itself. She wasn’t sure how a small brass bell could sound final, but it did.

Her curiosity piqued, she reached to pick up the bell and inspect it, and was shocked when it moved itself out of her reach.

“OK, sorry,” Andi said to the bell, then felt a little silly for apologizing to a bell.

She took a good look at the desk, and was a little dismayed that there weren’t any clipboards or stopwatches that were sitting out in an obvious spot. She sat down in the desk chair, which was incongruously modern, although it was upholstered in black leather.

In the middle drawer of the desk, there was an incredible assortment of writing implements, quills, and pieces of chalk, and some things she didn’t recognize that were clearly for writing, along with a few fine fountain pens and a staggering assortment of cheap disposable pens and number two pencils.

No stopwatches or clipboards, though.

She opened one of the larger drawers, which immediately slammed itself shut again. Andi had the strangest feeling that she was being rebuked by the drawer.

“Sorry, I’m just looking for a clipboard,” Andi said.

One of the other drawers opened itself then, just a little. Andi grasped its handle and opened it the rest of the way. There was a pile of clipboards, in varying states of use and repair. There were also slates, and what Andi suspected were wax tablets.

Andi reached into the draw and selected one of the clipboards that looked pretty well used, but not obviously broken. The back board was a little battered and worn, but the clip still seemed strong. It would do. She set the clipboard on top of the desk.

“OK, where are the stopwatches?” Andi asked the desk.

This time, nothing happened.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude if I was. Could I have a stopwatch, please?”

Still nothing. Andi exhaled sharply.

“Fine, I’ll just find them myself, if you’re going to be that way,” she said.

She opened and shut several of the drawers and little doors in the desk. A few of them slammed themselves shut, but this time Andi wasn’t deterred, and opened them again. After a couple of minutes, she found a drawer that had an incredible assortment of clocks, wristwatches, pocket watches and other timekeepers. There were a few smaller hourglasses, and several fine timepieces (Andi spied more than one swiss watch in the pile) among the less fancy quartz watches, and dirt-cheap plastic stopwatches.

Andi reached for one of the beautiful, mechanical stopwatches, only to have to move away from her hand.

“OK, not you then,” Andi muttered. She reached for another, a brass pocket watch, which also rushed away when she tried to pick it up.

Andi sat back in the desk chair and thought for a second. She remembered that Death currently carried a plastic stopwatch (it was bright red), and figured there was probably a good reason for it. It also occurred to her that borrowing a stopwatch that was a piece of functional art might just be a little presumptuous. Perhaps she should just take one of the cheap stopwatches for now, and upgrade later.

There were several cheap stopwatches in the drawer. Andi decided on a purple one, although she was somewhat tempted by one that was vibrantly green. The purple stopwatch did not flee from her. She set it on top of the clipboard, and closed the drawer of timepieces.

Andi looked around the room, and was beginning to feel tempted to explore Death’s apartment some more when she heard a motorcycle come rumbling up outside. She picked up her clipboard and stopwatch, and hustled out of Death’s apartment, locking the door behind her.

“You didn’t have any trouble finding them, did you?” Death asked her.

“Nope, it was a piece of cake,” Andi said.

“Really? That desk can be a real pain in the ass sometimes,” Death said. “Well, good. Come on, we’ve got a death to attend to in three minutes.”

Chapter Fourteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 01:46:00 +0000

Photo by Steven Depolo

This particular can of beans was only unusual in that it had been in the gutter for a day or so. It had fallen to its current location after being thrown through a window about thirty feet up during a domestic situation. The domestic situation had resolved itself when one party had told the other to go and piss up a rope and left.

No one had come to claim the can of beans however, and it had basically resigned itself to spending its remaining days in the gutter. Which, for a can of beans, isn’t really that much worse than being kept in a cupboard until finally being opened, having its contents scooped out, and then being discarded.

It was, therefore, quite surprised to find itself the object of so much attention all of a sudden, and wasn’t sure if it was enjoying itself or not.

Death and Andi had recently collected someone in the same building the can had been thrown from (no relation to the can thrower, or its intended target), and had a few minutes to spare before the next collection.

As such, they had sat down so Andi could keep trying to learn how to pick something up. And, conveniently, the can had been in the gutter right there.

“This should be perfect,” Death said, scooping it up out of the street and setting it on the trunk of a nearby Buick.

“Now, try to think your hand real,” Death said to Andi. “Focus all of your energy and attention on having a solid hand, and pick up the can.”

Andi looked at the can of beans. Just an ordinary can of Bush’s baked beans. Nothing to be intimidated by. She thought about her hand, becoming solid, becoming strong. She thought she could actually feel it becoming more real.

She reached for the can, and although her hand slipped through it again, this time it moved, slipping a little bit as her hand pushed through it. It left a little scratch on the trunk of the Buick.

Andi pulled her hand back, quickly, surprised.

“Good!” Death said. “You’re doing way better already. Now try it again.”

Andi focused as hard as she could on her hand. It really did feel as though it were solid again. She reached for the can again, and this time, grabbed it. She felt it, cold and surprisingly heavy in her hand, squeezed and picked it up.

Andi laughed with delight, and the can promptly slipped through her hand, which was now insubstantial again, and left a little dent in the Buick.

“Shit,” Andi said.

“That was fantastic,” Death said. “You’re totally getting the hang of it. A little more practice and you’ll be carrying bowling balls.”

Andi gave Death a half smile, and said, “Are we going bowling sometime soon?”

Death smiled back and said, “Well, probably not. Try it again.”

This time, Andi picked up the can with ease, and she managed to hang on to it for almost five seconds before it dropped and left another dent to match the first on the Buick.

Death’s phone rang then.

“Time to roll,” she said.

Andi left the can of beans where it hand landed on the Buick. This was, for the time being, a relief for the can of beans. It wasn’t a particularly big fan of being dropped over and over by a ghost girl.

Andi and Death sped away just as the owner of the Buick came out and found the can of beans and new dents in the trunk of her car. She cursed, and swept the can off the trunk and back into the gutter.

After they’d collected the next soul, Death saw that they had eight minutes before the next collection. The two of them rode to a nearby Taco Bell. Death shut down her bike and told Andi to get off.

“OK, well, since you can pick stuff up now, I think it’s about time for you to try and pick us up some lunch,” Death said.

“Well, OK,” Andi said, “but I don’t know how to make people see me.”

“You don’t. You’re a ghost. You can’t make them see you, but you can make yourself visible. It’s just like picking things up, only it’s all of you. And the only way you’re going to figure it out is by trying to make yourself visible to someone who can’t see you otherwise. Hop to it, I’ll be back in a few. Get thirty tacos, half soft, half crunchy, and a couple of sodas,” Death said. She fished around in her cloak, and produced two twenty dollar bills. “This should cover it.”

She handed the money to Andi, who found herself focusing very intently on not letting go of something that had been extremely easy to hold very recently.

“See you in a bit,” Death said. She started her motorcycle again, and rode away, vanishing about half a block away.

“Great,” Andi said.

If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen two twenty dollar bills making their way across the parking lot of the Taco Bell. When Andi reached the entrance to the restaurant, she paused in order to figure out how to focus on both hands at the same time, so she could open the door and not let go of the cash Death had given to her.

When she thought she was calm and focused enough, she reached for the handle of the door. Her hand passed right through it again.

“Damn it,” she muttered. She tried again, and this time she was able to catch the handle, but just couldn’t seem to muster the strength to actually pull the door open.

“This is ridiculous,” Andi said. She stretched her neck, tilting her head from side to side (kind of a pointless gesture, but it helped her feel a little more confident, at least), then reached for the door handle again.

She’d just gotten ahold of it when a man in faded blue overalls pushed the door open and promptly walked through her.

She did not enjoy the experience.

Without thinking about it, she stepped through the door before it had closed. Then she realized that although she was inside, she still couldn’t do much of anything if no one could see her, or if she couldn’t open the door again to get out, or, for that matter, carry a bag of thirty tacos and two sodas.

But, she was there, so she was going to have to try now. She focused as hard as she could on being visible. She got in line, and kept thinking visible, solid, obvious.

Two more people walked through her, which she found disagreeable both times, before the third person stopped just short and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you, somehow.”

Andi blinked in surprise, and said, “It’s cool.”

When she got up to the front of the line, and it was her turn, the cashier said, “Can I help the next guest please?”

Andi stepped forward and said, “Hi, I’d like…” before being interrupted as the cashier asked to help the next customer again.

The person who had been in line behind Andi looked around at the cashier, and said, “Oh, there had been someone ahead of me a second ago.”

Then Andi was stepped through again.

“Damn it!” Andi said.

Death came in to the Taco Bell then. She found Andi pretty quickly.

“So, are the tacos on their way?” she said.

“Not yet, I haven’t been able to order,” Andi said. “I almost did, but then apparently I stopped being visible again.”

Death nodded a few times, “Well, try again, you’ll get it.”

She looked at the time. “And I’ve got to run again. I’ll be back to see how you’re doing.”

Andi was tempted to ask Death to just take care of the ordering, since she was there and capable of doing so, but then thought better of it. The reason she was flitting around with Death rather than enjoying whatever was waiting for her in the afterlife was because she had offered to help Death out. She suspected Death wouldn’t forget that bit if she had to keep helping Andi out instead.

Andi went to the end of the line and tried again. This time she was able to make herself visible right away, and no one walked through her, which was a relief. Having someone step through her felt oddly intimate, in addition to the unpleasantness of having her personal space well and truly invaded.

This time, when Andi got to the front of the line, the cashier asked her what she’d like, rather than asking the next person to please step forward in a rather annoyed manner.

“I’d like fifteen crunchy tacos, fifteen soft tacos and two large soft drinks, please,” Andi said.

The cashier was looking at her register, entering the order, and said, “Fifteen crunchy tacos, OK, anything else?”

Andi said, “Um, yeah. Also fifteen soft tacos and two large sodas. Please.”

The cashier looked up, then looked around and said, to no one in particular, “Where did she go?”

Then, under her breath, “damned flakes.” She cleared the order and asked the next person in line what he’d like.

Andi may have had a little bit of a tantrum then. She was getting just a touch frustrated. She got in line again. Outside, she heard a motorcycle pull up, and wait, idling. After a few minutes, she heard it rumble away again.

When she got up to the register, the cashier recognized her, of course, and said, “I thought you’d walked out. Did you have an emergency?”

“Something like that,” Andi said.

“What would you like?” the cashier said.

“Can I please get fifteen crunchy tacos, fifteen soft tacos, and two soft drinks,” Andi said.

“Fifteen crunchy tacos. What else would you like?” the cashier said.

“Damn it!” Andi said. She assumed she’d turned invisible again.

“I’m sorry, if you wish to use that kind of language, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Otherwise, please continue with your order,” the cashier said.

“Sorry, I’m having a rough day. Can I get fifteen soft tacos and two large sodas as well, please? And that’s to go.” Andi said.

She managed to complete her order without too much further difficulty

A few minutes later one of the employees brought two bags full of tacos to the counter, and called Andi’s order number. Andi asked for a carrier for the soft drinks, and once she had everything in hand, made her way to the restaurant’s exit.

When she got to the door, she realized she didn’t have a hand free to actually open the door. She thought about what she would have done prior to becoming a ghost, and remember that she could just push the door open with her butt.

It turns out, pushing the door open with your butt is a lot more difficult when you’re a ghost. She was able to get the door partway open, but then, unexpectedly, the door swung itself shut, through her.

Her arms holding the tacos and soft drinks were still inside the restaurant, while most of the rest of her was now outside the door. She very nearly tried to just pull her arms the rest of the way through the door, but remembered at the last possible second that the tacos and drinks were still very much solid, and would probably not slip through the door unharmed.

Andi stepped back into the restaurant, and pondered what to do. Should she make two trips, leaving something outside and coming back in for the rest so she could have a hand free to work the door? Should she try kicking the door open and running through it before it could shut?

Luckily, just then, another customer entering the restaurant opened the door, and even better, he saw her, and held the door open for her.

“Thank you,” she said and she walked quickly through the door. Problem solved.

She saw Death parked nearby, and walked over without incident.

Well, almost. An impatient driver blew the horn nearby, and in her surprised she became intangible again, and dropped the sodas and the tacos. Which wouldn’t have been such a loss if the tacos hadn’t fallen into a puddle of oily water.

“Well, fuck,” Andi said.

Chapter Thirteen

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 02:17:00 +0000

Photo by Frank Kovalchek

Death and Andi were at a table outside of a coffee chain. Death had ordered two small cups of coffee, and had set one of them down on the table in front of Andi.

“Pick it up,” Death said.

Andi looked around to see if anyone was watching the two of them. She thought there was a good chance someone might freak out if they saw a coffee cup moving around by itself in broad daylight.

“What if someone sees?” she said to Death.

“No one will. People don’t notice me unless I want them to. No one will notice you until you learn how to be noticeable,” Death said.

“I noticed you,” Andi said. “Had you wanted me to?”

“Well, OK, sometimes people notice me when I’m not expecting it. Usually I notice them shortly afterwards because they run away screaming. It’s OK, though, other people are remarkably good at not looking to see what a running, screaming person is running away from,” Death said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Andi said.

“People don’t make sense,” Death said. “Now, pick up the coffee.”

Andi shrugged, and reached for the coffee cup. She could feel it, again, as her hand passed through it. It was curious to her that although she could definitely tell the coffee was hot, there wasn’t any pain. Really, passing her hand through hot coffee should have had her dancing around, shaking her hand, and looking for a bucket of ice water to plunge her arm into.

“OK,” Death said. She took a sip of her own coffee. “Now try it again. Really focus on your hand, and on grabbing the cup.”

Andi focused as well as she could on her hand. She chanted a little mental mantra to herself hand… hand… hand…

She reached for the cup, and passed through it again.

“Damn it,” she said, under her breath.

“Try again,” Death said. “Think of it this way: why don’t you fall through the floors, or sink into the ground? It’s because you have an internal rule that says you won’t.”

“I could fall through the floor?” Andi said. She sounded mildly panicked. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her, and now she was picturing herself getting trapped in a basement, or somewhere underground, until she either went mad or figured out how to get out again.

“Well, if you were going to, you would have already. Anyway, you need to make a rule that says you can grab things when you want to. But, I guess, in order to do that, you’re going to have to succeed at grabbing something. Hmm… It’s kind of a chicken or egg problem. Anyway, try again. Think your hand solid. Imagine the building blocks of the universe coming together to make your hand a solid thing. I hate to say this because it sounds phony, but… visualize.”

Andi did. She thought about tiny atoms, knitting themselves together, making chemical bonds, grouping together to make a solid, tangible hand at the end of her arm. She thought about bricks and mortar. She imagined a container being filled with fine sand, the sand getting packed in, making the container stronger and stronger.

She reached for the cup, and her hand passed through it again.

“Damn it!” she said, somewhat louder than she’d meant to.

Death’s phone rang then.

“Whoops, that’s our cue to leave,” Death said. “Just keep practicing, you’ll get it.”

The next collection was a twenty four year old man named Tyler Brown. Death and Andi appeared at the place of the collection, and it took Andi a moment to get her bearings. She looked around, and realized she was near the middle of an wide open field. She didn’t see any people nearby. Who were they supposed to collect?

“Um, where is this person we’re supposed to collect?” Andi asked Death.

Death pointed up, and said, “At the moment, up there.”

Andi was puzzled for just a second, then realized she could hear an airplane’s engine droning somewhere above them. She looked up, and saw a fairly big airplane flying low, at least compared to how high the jets she had noticed in the past flew. Then she saw one little spec after another coming out of the airplane.

After a second, she realized she was seeing skydivers.

“Don’t walk around at all,” Death said. “I don’t think you’ll like the feeling of a skydiver landing through you.”

Andi stayed put where she was, looking up. In a matter of seconds, the specs sprouted great, colorful parachutes, and came spiraling down, one after the other. Except for one.

One of the specs did not open a parachute, and the spec grew larger and more man-shaped at an incredible rate. Seconds later, the now full-sized man slammed into the ground directly in front of Andi and Death.

“Holy crap!” Andi said before she could catch herself.

Tyler’s soul stood next to them, looking down at his remains.

“Well, that’s a fucking drag,” he said. “How did both of my chutes fail?”

“Sometimes it’s just your time to go,” Death said.

Tyler seemed to actually notice the two of them them.

“Who are you? Were you just standing here watching as I died?” he said.

“We are here to escort you from this world,” Death said. She reached out to him. “Would you come with us?”

“Why does it take two of you?” Tyler gestured towards Andi. “And she doesn’t look all otherworldly like you, she just looks like a college student. What’s the deal?”

Death wasn’t quite prepared for that question, but handled it as well as she could. “She’s in training.”

“Oh, great, so my death was just a training run. Beautiful,” Tyler said. He sounded incredibly annoyed.

“It wasn’t a training run, she’s just observing as I work,” Death started to explain, then remembered that she didn’t have to explain herself to someone who had just willingly jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. “Anyway, would you come with us, please?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Tyler said.

After they had delivered Tyler to the gateway, Andi asked Death a question that had just occurred to her, as she was thinking back on her high school years of customer service jobs.

“So how many of the people you collect would you say are unpleasant to deal with?” Andi said.

Death laughed and said, “That wasn’t unpleasant to deal with. That was ‘somewhat cranky’ at worst.”

“OK, well, all the same, how many of the collections are a real drag?” Andi said.

“Oh, I don’t know. There are a few jerks here and there. You know, people don’t magically become nice just because they’re dead. They’re still the same people,” Death said. “But most people are the same as they were in life, basically nice folks, more or less polite, as friendly as they would be meeting anyone new.”

Andi thought about this for a second, and said, “OK, I guess that makes sense. So there isn’t a whole lot of people mourning themselves, or otherwise being upset?”

“Fewer than you would think,” Death said. “I think most people are a little relieved. It’s kind of like we’re setting them free.”

Andi didn’t say anything, and considered whether or not death was like being set free. She wondered, briefly, if maybe she was missing out on something by not crossing over. Then she decided that learning to be a grim reaper was pretty cool, and that she’d stick it out a little longer.

Death checked her phone to see when the next appointment was. She almost couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that they had thirty minutes. That meant they could go and get Death’s bike from in front of Andi’s dorm, and it was possible that they would even have time to stop and get something to eat.

Death discovered she was in a much better mood, all of a sudden.

She said to Andi, “Let’s go get my motorcycle. It’s been parked for too long.”

Andi and Death appeared, unnoticed as always, in front of Andi’s former dorm. Death’s bike sat exactly where she’d left it, unmolested. There was snow packed on the ground, and the foot prints leading from the entrance to the dorm and past the motorcycle all curved around Death’s bike, it didn’t look like anyone had even stopped to check it out.

Which is what Death would expect.

“Have you ever ridden on a motorcycle before?” Death asked Andi.

Andi was marveling at how beautiful Death’s motorcycle was again, and it took her a second to realize she’d been asked a question.

“What? No. They’re too dangerous, my parents would have killed me,” Andi said.

Death smiled a little, “Well, I guess there’s nothing stopping you now, is there? It’s pretty easy for you. Get on after me, hang on, shut up, and don’t do anything stupid.”

Andi wondered if the thrill of motorcycling, whatever it might be, would be lessened by the fact that she couldn’t die again. Or how she could tell the temperatures of things, but they no longer affected her comfort.

Death had stood the bike up, and was looking at her, waiting for her to get on the back seat. The little pad on the back fender looked impossibly small. She hoped she wouldn’t fall off (and luckily, it didn’t occur to her then to think about what Death had said about falling through floors).

Andi got on the back of Death’s bike, and held on.

“Are you ready?” Death said.

“I guess so,” Andi said.

Death started the motor. She noticed it took a fraction of a second longer to start than normal, though the difference would be imperceptible to anyone else. It had been sitting too long, but it had also been built by Hephaistos so it was, more or less, perfect in every respect. Sitting didn’t bother it. Riding through burning buildings didn’t bother it.

It didn’t seem to like being washed, though.

The motor roared to life. Andi was stunned by how loud it was, and how visceral it felt as the bike rumbled underneath her.

She fell in love with it immediately.

Death rolled the bike backwards with practiced ease, straightened it out on the sidewalk, and roared forward directly towards the dorms.

If she could have caught her breath, Andi would have screamed.

However, rather than coming to a very sudden stop from thirty miles an hour, the dorm transformed before Andi’s eyes into the street just a little ways down the road from a row of fast food chains. When she realized what happened, and was able to get her tongue pried off the roof of her mouth, she laughed with delight.

Far too quickly for Andi’s liking, they reached one of the restaurants, and Death slowed and turned into the parking lot.

When she shut down the bike, Death turned a little bit and said, “You get off first.”

The two of them had just started to walk towards the restaurant when Death’s phone rang.

Andi heard her mutter, “damn it.”

Death pulled her phone out and looked to see what bad news had been delivered.

Another immediate collection. The corner of Death’s mouth curled down, and she narrowly avoided launching into a rant about suicides interrupting her lunch. However, she was, after all, a professional and she had to set an example for Andi.

So instead, she said, “it looks like we have a collection we need to get to right now. Lunch will have to wait,” and turned around to walk back to the bike.

As Death was starting the bike again, Andi could have sworn she heard her mutter, “fucking suicides.”

The two of them roared out of the parking lot of the Jack in the Box that was supposed to have been where they got lunch. Seconds later they were hurtling down the road in the middle of the desert. A great plume of black smoke made it obvious where they were headed, especially because the burning building was the only building anywhere near them. The road stretched ahead (and behind them, not that Andi could see it) into nothingness.

Death skidded to a halt in the gravel parking lot of what looked like it had been a bar before being engulfed in flames. There was a long row of other motorcycles neatly parked in front of the building.

Andi was amazed at the amount of heat coming from the flames, and was mildly relieved that she didn’t have to actually feel like she was being cooked.

There were a large number of people and souls standing outside of the burning building. Enough that it was actually kind of difficult to tell them apart. However, there was one man standing outside of the building who stood out for two reasons.

One reason was that he was enormous. He stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the parking lot, dressed head to toe in black. Black sunglasses, black leather vest, black t-shirt, black leather cuffs around his wrists, black leather pants, black boots. He was built like a professional wrestler, with long curly black hair and a tight, short beard.

The other reason was that absolutely everyone else was edging away from him, souls and still-living folk alike.

He was taunting the crowd that was trying to get away from him, and apparently hadn’t noticed Death and Andi when they’d arrived.

Andi stayed next to the bike and watched as Death stomped over to this man who was able to intimidate an entire crowd of living and dead bikers, and shoved him.

“You asshole, Ares! What could they have done that was so bad you had to keep me from getting lunch? Again,” Death said.

She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at him.

Ares turned around quickly, surprised, outraged and, apparently, sort of gleeful. Then he recognized Death and it looked like it was his turn to be, well, not intimidated, but respectful.

“Hey! Hi Death! It’s good to see you!” Ares said, with a broad grin.

“I was seriously about to get some lunch. What the hell Ares?” Death said.

“OK, OK, settle down a little bit. I just wanted to see my old friend Death, is that so bad?” Ares said.

“I just saw you last week when you got all outraged about how you were treated by the clerk at a hot-rod shop and you decided the way to deal with it was to kill him and his family,” Death said.

Ares smiled all the wider, “Well, OK, so maybe one of these bikers might have set me off. I am a god of war. Sorry to have interrupted your lunch. I’ll make it up to you.”

Death looked at the crowd of people who were still keeping a healthy distance between themselves and the large angry man in black leather. It was going to be difficult to wrangle all of the souls together and get them out of here if they were still focused on avoiding Ares.

Death took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “OK, look, you can make it up to me today by taking a hike so I can get this mess cleaned up and get to my next appointment on time.”

Ares looked like he was about to argue with her, but then, apparently, though better of it.

“OK, I’ll get out of your hair. I’ll see you around, Death,” Ares said, and gave her a dazzling smile.

He noticed Andi then, still standing by Death’s motorcycle.

“Wait a second, now, who is she?” Ares said.

“That’s Andi, she’s helping me out,” Death said.

“Oh, like an intern? Cool. I had one of those one time. It didn’t work out,” Ares said, and shrugged.

“I’m shocked,” Death said. “I would have thought you would still be close friends with whoever it was.”

“Me too, but, you know, he said something about pursuing other opportunities and needing new challenges,” Ares said.

“I’m pretty sure that was so he could quit without getting killed,” Death said.

Ares appeared to consider this for a moment, and then said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. I do have something of a temper. OK, well, see ya later Death.”

He turned and gave Andi a big wave. She ducked, then waved back. And with that, he was gone.

Death whistled loud enough to shock Andi, then said to the faces that had turned to look, “Would everyone who is now dead please come with me.”

Better than half of the group that had been milling about walked over and gathered near Death. There were members of two different motorcycle clubs present, apparently. One group had been members of the Road Goblins MC, and the others had been members of the Irritable Rogers MC.

“So what the hell did you guys do to piss off Ares?” Death asked them.

Everyone turned and looked at one of the Road Goblins, who in turn looked deeply embarrassed.

“Nugg over here told him to get out of the god damned way when he was ordering a beer, and shoved him.”

Death nodded. That would do it.

She looked back and Andi, gestured one minute, and she and the souls stepped out of this world.

As they were waiting for the gateway to appear, one of the Irritable Rogers said to Death, “Is that your bike back there?”

“Yes,” Death said.

“It’s sweet. Who built it?” the biker said.

“A friend of mine,” Death said.

“Anyone I would know?” the biker said.

“Probably not,” Death said, and smiled.

Andi was still standing next to Death’s bike when she got back.

“So, who was the guy in black?” was the first thing Andi said to Death.

Death gave her a wry smile, and said, “That was Ares.”

“The god of war? What the hell is he doing here in the desert?” Andi said.

“Getting into bar fights, as usual,” Death said. She checked the time. They had to be at the next collection in five minutes.

“Are you two friends?” Andi said.

Death had to stop and think about how to answer. Were they friends? They weren’t enemies, exactly. On the one hand, Ares had been a massive pain in the ass in more ways than she could count, and that was just him. Add in the hassle of his cousin who was extremely of her for some reason, and he was directly and indirectly responsible for a hell of a lot of annoyances for her.

On the other hand, he’d given her the motorcycle Hephaistos had built for him, so that was pretty cool.

“It’s complicated,” Death said. “He’s basically a good guy so long as you don’t irritate him or get in his way when he’s already irritated. Ares is a ‘kill everybody in sight first and ask questions later’ kind of guy.”

“Anyway, we’ve got a collection to get to. Let’s roll,” she said.

Chapter Twelve

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 23:54:00 +0000

Photo by Matti Mattila

Margaret Olson, 74, was about to die while she slept. She was in bed, next to her husband of three years, Thomas.

Death and Andi stood watching. Before they had arrived, Death had given Andi some very specific instructions.

“Stand there quietly, watch, and do not disturb me while I’m working,” Death told her just before they left the McDonald’s.

The fact was, this was a pretty easy collection. Show up, wait as Margaret slept, collect her at the appropriate time. A monkey could do it. They could have chatted, a little. However, Death was actually still pretty steamed at Andi. And, she had to admit, she was angry with herself as well. She shouldn’t have let Andi distract her.

And she wondered why she had decided to let Andi help her out in the first place. Sure, she could use a hand, no doubt about that, but she hadn’t even considered actually getting someone to help her out before Andi had suggested it. It wasn’t like her to be impulsive.

She had to admit, though, that Andi seemed to get it. Was that why? Or was it because she’d taken some interest in Death, had asked about her motorcycle, had been concerned for how she was feeling?

Angry or not, Death was willing to give Andi a shot. As long as she didn’t continually make things worse, she could keep tagging along.

And, Death supposed, she could show Andi the ropes, if she continued to show some promise. It would be great to be able to actually share some of the workload, since it didn’t look like things were going to slow down any time soon.

Andi stood quietly and did her best to be unnoticeable. Apart from the matching snores of Margaret and Thomas, the room was silent. Andi looked around the room a bit and realized that, although it was dark, she could see everything in the room clearly.

It looked like her grandparents bedroom had looked, really. There were a few things, lamps and pieces of furniture, that she suspected would be qualified as antiques, possibly valuable ones, mixed with new, cheap things from Wal-Mart. Their things were clearly used, not just displayed. It seemed comfortable.

A couple moments later, Andi noticed that there was only one person snoring. Margaret’s soul stood next to Death and Andi. She looked at her body. It looked as if she were actually still sleeping, for the moment.

“Oh, poor Thomas,” she said. “He’s already lost one wife.”

Then she noticed Death, and smiled.

“Oh, hello. I’m Margaret,” she said.

“I know, Margaret,” Death said. She reached out her hand, “Would you come with me?

Margaret reached to take Death’s hand, then she noticed Andi. She seemed a bit startled.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. Who are you?” she said.

“I’m Andi, it’s nice to meet you,” Andi said.

Margaret looked curious, but unsure of how to ask what was on her mind. Death spoke and answered the question Margaret wanted to ask.

“She’s my assistant,” Death said. “I’m teaching her how to do the job. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, no, of course I don’t mind,” Margaret said.

“Thank you,” Death said. She reached out to Margaret again, “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Margaret said. She took Death’s hand. “Will Thomas be OK?”

“I couldn’t say, but I’m sure he will be,” Death said, and smiled. She glanced over at Thomas. The manner of a person’s death was just another feature to Death, like eye color or hairstyle. Pneumonia, in about three weeks, is what she saw.

There was no need to trouble Margaret with that information, however. She would find out for herself, or not, soon enough. And it wasn’t like there was anything Margaret could do about it, anyway.

Seconds later, Death, Margaret and Andi were at the gateway.

Andi had a moment of panic, thinking that Death was going to make her go through the gate as well. However, Death just gently ushered Margaret through the doorway, and then the two of them stood together in the dark.

“I thought you were going to make me go, too,” Andi said when the gateway had vanished again.

Death gave Andi half of a smile, and said, “No, I’m not going to send you packing because of one screw up.”

“Why did you bring me here again, then?” Andi said. “I had expected to be left behind in Margaret’s bedroom until you were done. You didn’t bring me with the last couple of times.”

“I brought you with because I want you to observe. And, I also wanted to keep an eye on you. I can’t have you getting into mischief, idle hands and all,” Death said.

“What kind of mischief could I get into? I can’t even pick things up,” Andi said. “The worst I could do is wander off…”

“Exactly,” Death said. “I told you about the ‘watching everything you love die and the unrelenting change of the world’ and the slow descent into madness if you run off, right?”

“You might have mentioned it,” Andi said. She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Actually… how is that going to change if I’m with you? Maybe I shouldn’t be here. The slow descent into madness doesn’t exactly sound like fun.”

“The difference is that you’re going to be with me. And you’re going to have a purpose. Rather than simply observing the world change, you’re going to have a hand in it. I’ve decided I’m going to train you,” Death said.

Andi wasn’t expecting that answer. She’d actually been expecting Death to agree with her, and tell her than after she’d managed to deliver a pizza or two so Death could eat, she was going to escort her to the gateway and that was going to be it.

“What do you mean you’re going to train me?” Andi said.

“I’m going to teach you how to collect souls, and help me out,” Death said.

“Whoa,” Andi said.

“If that sounds good to you, I mean,” Death said. “You don’t have to.”

Andi thought about it for a minute. Become death? She worried briefly that she might be missing out by not crossing over. Then she decided that, at least for now, tagging along with Death and learning the trade seemed like it would be pretty interesting. And, perhaps, even noble.

“OK, let’s do it,” Andi said.

Death smiled.

“Great,” she said.

They stepped back into the world, on the street outside Margaret and Thomas’s house.

“I’ve got a question,” Andi said.

“OK,” Death said.

“If you can train me to collect souls… Does that mean there are other deaths out there?” Andi said.

Death took a deep breath, held it for a second, and let it out.

“Yes, there are others,” she said.

“OK,” Andi said. “So, do you all work together, or what? Do you meet up for drinks now and then?”

Death laughed, and said, “No, we don’t meet up for drinks. We do our best to avoid one another, actually. Every now and then we cross paths.”

“Why do you avoid one another?” Andi asked.

“Well… It’s not like there are several other copies of me out there acting as death. We’re all a little different, some of us are a lot different. There are gods, angels, demons, forces of nature… We’ve got our own jobs to do,” Death said. “And we generally prefer to work alone, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“OK. But the end result is the same, somebody dies. How is it that you don’t step on each other’s toes?” Andi said.

“Like I said, we’ve each got our own jobs,” Death said.

“Is it like you each have your own jurisdiction?” Andi said.

“Sure, that’s as good of an explanation as any,” Death said.

“So how do you know who you’re supposed to collect, and who is someone else’s job to collect?” Andi said.

“I can’t explain that. I just do,” Death said.

Her phone rang then. There was another collection to be attended to. Death looked at her phone.

Now, it said, and gave her an address in Taos, New Mexico.

“Now?” Death said, mainly to herself. She had a bad feeling. Things had been getting faster and faster, but an immediate collection usually only meant one thing.

“We need to go,” Death said, quickly.

Andi still wasn’t satisfied with the explanation Death had given for how things worked with the other deaths and how they knew which people to collect and which were the responsibility of some other death. However, she supposed she’d get a better answer some other time when things were less urgent.

The two of them disappeared from where they had been standing, and in the blink of an eye they were in Taos, outside of a pretty nice house.

Something occurred to Andi then, “Hey, don’t we need to get your motorcycle? What’s the deal there?”

Death had been busy, but not so busy that she’d forgotten about her bike. She was hurrying up the driveway and sidewalk to the house. Andi struggled a bit to keep up with her.

“Yes, we’re going to need to go get it. If we have a couple of minutes after this collection, we’ll go get it. It’s still in front of your dorm, I think.”

“Why are we rushing like this?” Andi said.

“This is an immediate collection,” Death said. “Something went wrong. Either someone pissed off a god enough to get smote, or…”

“Smote? That really happens?” Andi said.

“Yeah. Mostly it’s Ares who gets bent out of shape and starts killing people nowadays. It used to happen more, but most of the other gods have mellowed a bit.”

They were inside the house now, and rushing up the stairs.

“What does it mean if they weren’t, uh, struck down by an angry god?” Andi said.

Death grimaced and didn’t answer.

Andi was a little concerned about what they were going to encounter in the next few minutes. If Death didn’t like it, it couldn’t be good.

Death opened the door to the bathroom and walked in. Andi was initially mortified by the invasion of privacy, but a couple moments later she remembered that she had very recently witnessed several deaths, and really, what’s more private than that? She followed Death into the bathroom.

Andi’s first thought was Wow, nice bathroom. Then she saw a bewildered looking soul, and dead body hanging in a noose tied to the shower door’s frame.

And Death looked extremely pissed off.

James Vanderbeer, 47, had evidently hung himself.

“So, what, you just couldn’t wait for me to get around to visiting?” Death asked James.

“What?” James said. He looked even more confused.

“Did you think you were going to do a better job of making yourself dead than I would have? Because, let me tell you, I am way better at my job than you are. Do you know how much work I had to put into planning your death? The one you were supposed to have? But no! You just had to up and kill yourself. I bet you’re one of those people who keeps pestering their family about what’s in the Christmas gifts until they just give up and let you open them so they can have a minute’s peace. Asshole,” Death said.

James had no idea what was going on, and didn’t seem to be catching on especially quickly. Which was another thing that annoyed Death about suicides: they always seemed to be surprised they were actually dead.

James wanted to understand what was happening. He wasn’t exactly clear on why he was being subjected to an angry rant from an emaciated blonde in a cloak and, apparently, her trusty sidekick. What he said was, “What?”

“You! Asshole! You killed yourself. It’s fucking insulting. Ugh!” Death said. “You know what, whatever! Come on, let’s get you to the other side so I can get back to doing my job.”

Death grabbed James by the ear and the three of them stepped out of this world. As they stood, James confused, Death furious, Andi wondering what the hell was going on, and waited for the gateway to appear James spoke.

“You know, when I was hanging there…” he began saying, but Death cut him off before he could finish his thought.

“You realized that you could have solved every single one of the apparently insurmountable problems you just had to kill yourself over, and the only problem you couldn’t solve was the fact that you had up and killed yourself. Like an asshole. Yes, yes, very profound. None of the other suicides I’ve had to clean up have ever been such a poetic and brilliant soul as you. Oh, wait, all of them fucking say that. Just shut up, would you?” Death said.

James was still apparently confused, but he did stop talking.

Andi, on the other hand, was utterly baffled. Death had never been this harsh with any of the other souls she’d collected, at least when Andi was there. It was a side of Death she hadn’t seen before. Death hadn’t even been close to this furious when Andi had distracted her enough that she’d accidentally collected the wrong person.

The gateway appeared, and James appeared properly awed as the doors swung open and the brilliant light poured out.

“Am I…” James started to say, but Death interrupted him again.

“Hey, you’re the one who couldn’t wait to freaking get here, stop yapping and get moving,” she said. She stuck her foot in the small of his back and shoved him through the gateway. The gateway closed, and Death rubbed her face and said, “Suicides,” as though the word itself tasted foul.

Seconds later, Andi and Death were back in Taos, outside James’s house.

“I need a beer,” Death said.

On the one hand, Andi was afraid to say anything for fear of setting Death off again. She would hate to be the one on the receiving end of Death’s wrath. On the other hand, she was too confused about what had just happened to stay quiet.

“So, uh, what was is that upset you so much just then? I’m confused,” Andi said.

Death looked at her, and Andi nearly flinched. Death saw Andi’s discomfort, and relaxed the tiniest bit.

“Sorry. Suicides piss me off,” Death said.

“Well, I figured that part out,” Andi said. “But what, exactly, is it about them that makes you mad? Don’t you just have a checklist for them too? Their deaths are planned too, right?”

“No, they’re not. That’s the thing. They’re taking matters into their own hands. It’s insulting. That guy had a great death all planned out. He was going to reconcile with his estranged son and everything on his death bed. I put a lot of work into that plan, and he just went and pulled the plug early,” Death said.

“He had an estranged son?” Andi said.

“Not yet. His son is currently eight,” Death said. “I hope it’s not the kid who finds him.”

Death paused for a second, then shook her head and said, “Selfish assholes. I just can’t stand suicides.”

Andi was still stunned.

“Shouldn’t you have a little compassion for them? I mean, their lives were apparently unbearable,” Andi said. “Maybe it was the best thing for them.”

“No,” Death said firmly. “Every single one of them says something along the lines of having realized they could have solved all their problems, except that they’d killed themselves. It’s selfish bullshit. Feel bad for their families and friends who had their hearts broken, but don’t feel bad for the suicides.”

Another thought crossed Andi’s mind.

“Do they go to Hell?” Andi asked Death. “I mean, is that where they end up when they go through the gateway?”

“I couldn’t say,” Death said. “I really have no idea, I just bring people to the gateway and they walk through it. I assume that it takes them wherever they need to go next.”

Andi considered this for a moment, then said, “So, how about reincarnation? Do people ever get reincarnated?”

Death thought for a second before answering, and said, “Yeah, sometimes. Every now and then I’ve gone to collect an infant, and discover the soul is someone I’d collected just a few days or weeks earlier.”

Death stopped talking for a second, apparently lost in thought. Her phone rang and brought her back out of her reverie. Death checked her phone, and smiled.

“Sweet, we’ve got twelve minutes. Let’s go get coffee,” Death said.

Chapter Eleven

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 02:32:00 +0000

Photo by Jon Bunting

Death and Andi arrived in one of the less-reputable parts of Miami, Florida. A deal for black market, unpasteurized cheeses and milk was about to go bad.

Mike Hamilton, 27, was the owner and operator of a food truck that specialized in the finest whole, organic, environmentally friendly foods available prepared fresh and handed directly to their customers.

Strictly speaking, using unpasteurized milk and cheese in his dishes wasn’t legal. However, a couple of large payments and the occasional box of all natural cookies under the table, so to speak, to the local food inspector kept him from looking too closely at where Mike’s dairy products were coming from. And it’s not like anyone had gotten sick eating his food.

Frank Evans, 46, was a dairy farmer. He didn’t really care about “all natural”, or “environmentally friendly.” Organic sold, and what’s more, he could sell raw milk to the loonies who wanted it for four times as much as he could sell pasteurized milk.

Frank kept his off the books business very, very low key. The FDA didn’t have a sense of humor, and it was tough making a living as a dairy farmer otherwise.

And now this little shit was making noise about the price Frank was charging and threatening to report him. Which meant he was threatening his family’s source of income. Which meant he was threatening his family.

Death and Andi appeared, unnoticed, next to the garage door of the commercial kitchen Mike ran his food truck operation from.

Death took out her stopwatch and started it, and traced down the list on her clipboard to the present moment.

“So, what can I do to help?” Andi said. She was already imagining herself looking imposing and otherworldly in a cloak like Death’s, collecting the recently deceased and bringing them to their final destination.

Death was intently watching the two men as they argued. The argument was getting heated now, and was going to come to blows any second.

“You can see about finding us some lunch. Something fried, please. Or meaty. Fried and meaty will work,” she said, without looking away.

“That’s it?” Andi said, disappointed. Go and get lunch? It was a long way from shepherding the dead.

Death glanced over at Andi, briefly, and said “You volunteered to help out, getting lunch will help. Oh, I want something salty. Whatever you do, make sure there are French fries.”

Death turned her attention back to the two men. Frank was yelling in Mike’s face now.

Andi looked around at where they were. It was a pretty gritty, industrial looking area. Run down. Dirty. There were two guys within twenty feet of her who were about to try killing one another about milk and cheese, and she assumed they were probably not the worst of the neighbors in the area.

“You want me to wander off by myself, here?” Andi said. “This looks like where murderers go to get murdered.”

“It’d be great if you could bring some extra ketchup with you,” Death said. She was starting to look a little distracted, but she was doing her best to keep track of the action unfolding in front of her, making sure everything went according to plan.

Mike had given Frank a hard shove, and Frank came back with a free-wheeling swing at Mike’s jaw.

“Can it wait until we’re somewhere safer?” Andi said.

Death turned to Andi and said, spitting each word, “No, it can’t wait. It’s been two years, six months and twelve days since I had a bite to eat, and it’s been a solid week since I’ve even had a cup of coffee. Go and find me something fatty and salty and whatever it is, don’t come back without it.”

“But,” Andi said. She was going to argue, but decided against it when she saw how intense Death looked all of a sudden.

“I am more hungry than you have ever been or will ever be. You offered to help me out, so please do so for now by bringing me some lunch,” Death said.

“OK, OK…” Andi said. She turned to walk away in search of something deep fried, and Death turned back to see that Frank’s soul was standing there next to her.

“What the hell?” Death said before she could catch herself.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Frank’s soul said. “Who are you?”

Andi had stopped walking and turned to see what was going on.

Death was rapidly looking over her notes. At the top of the page, the name of the person to be collected was Mike, not Frank. Death grimaced.

“What just happened?” Death asked Frank.

“Well, that little fucker shoved me and I tripped over that ledge over there. Hit my head on the building, I think. Now I’m here.”

Death nodded and looked at her notes. Mike was supposed to have been shot. Great.

“Will you excuse me for a second?” Death asked Frank. “I need to talk to my assistant for a second.”

She rushed over to where Andi was standing. Andi was staring at Death, wide-eyed. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

“The wrong person just died, Andi,” Death said, very quietly. Quiet or not, it was clear to Andi that Death was not amused.

“Well, that’s…” Andi had started to say, but Death interrupted her.

“The wrong person died because I was distracted when I was trying to do my job. Now, I’m going to have to deliver a soul, whose death I put a good deal of planning into, by the way, and come up with a new plan for the guy who was supposed to die,” Death said.

“Geez, I…” Andi said.

“So, just so we’re clear, when I ask you to do something, then within reason I expect you to do it, not argue, and definitely not to distract me when I’m working. And, by the way, you’re dead, so being in a bad part of town shouldn’t concern you too much. Are we clear?”

Andi was close to tears. She nodded.

“Good. I’ll be right back,” Death said. “Then we’re going to head to the next collection, and from there I expect you to find some lunch.”

Andi watched as Death walked back over to Frank, and asked him to accompany her. The two of them disappeared.

She hadn’t realized that Death actually had a hand in making sure a person’s passing went correctly. She’d kind of assumed the plan was laid out, and that things more or less just happened according to the plan.

She was also a little stunned at how angry Death had gotten. Things must have gone even worse than she’d realized.

A few moments later, Death reappeared, alone. She appeared to be much calmer now.

“OK,” Death said. “Well, there’s not much we can do here now. Let’s move along to the next collection, which is in…”

Death checked the details in the notes in her phone.

“Oklahoma City, Missouri. In five minutes. Ready?” Death said.

Andi took a deep breath, and said, “Ready.”

Seconds later, the two of them stood outside of a house in, presumably, Oklahoma City, Missouri.

“OK, you get to work on finding something to eat. I’ll take care of the collection,” Death said. “Something tells me there’s probably some kind of hamburger joint about one mile that way.” Death pointed to the East.

“How much time until the time?” Andi asked.

Death checked the time on her phone. “Four minutes, roughly. Why?”

“Just a thought, if you drop me off closer to a place with food, you won’t have to wait for me as I try to walk a mile and then return. That’ll take me close to an hour.” Andi said.

Death considered this for a moment.

“Good point,” Death said. She checked the time again. Three and a half minutes. There was time for her to bring Andi to a restaurant and then get back here with a couple minutes to spare. “OK, let’s do this.”

Seconds later, Andi and Death stood outside the entrance to a McDonald’s.

“Get a couple of apple pies while you’re at it,” Death said. “I’ll be back.”

With that, Death vanished and Andi was alone outside of a McDonalds, apparently somewhere in Oklahoma City.

“Well, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me this is how I was going to end up,” Andi said to herself. She turned and walked to the entrance to McDonald’s.

When she reached for the door, she discovered a new challenge that hadn’t occurred to her before: she was a ghost, and therefore couldn’t open the door.

Andi tried several times to grab the handle of the door, with the same result each time. Her hand just passed through the handle. She could feel it as the handle slipped through her fingers and palm, but she couldn’t actually grab the handle.

She stood, stumped, with her hands on her hips. Given how the morning had gone, Andi really didn’t want to have to explain to Death that she hadn’t managed to get lunch because she was unable to open the door to the restaurant.

Andi tried to grab the handle again, really focusing on hanging on to the handle this time. Her hand passed through once more, but she had a small revelation: she could just walk through the door.

She reached out, experimentally, and pushed her hand against the glass of the door. Her hand slipped through the glass easily, and so she pushed her arm through up to the elbow. Apparently she could just walk through the door. Great!

Andi stepped through the door, then stopped and gasped when was all the way through it. The door had felt infinitely more real than anything she had ever felt before. It was unnerving. She didn’t really care to have that particular experience again, though she also suspected she was going to have to get used to it as part of helping out Death.

She got in line, and waited patiently for her turn to order.

A woman who had to be close to 80 cut in line ahead of her. Andi was extremely irritated, but decided to let it slide, since the woman, after all, was a senior citizen.

Then a young man stepped in line in front of her, behind the old woman.

“Hey!” Andi protested, but it didn’t do any good. She tried to tap him on the shoulder but, of course, was not able to. The young man shivered and looked around uncomfortably, before going back to trying to decide what he wanted to order.

Getting lunch was turning out to be a lot more challenging that Andi had thought it would be. She had another thought then, and checked her pockets.

No money.

So, if she were somehow able to get to the front of the line, at the moment, the cashier wouldn’t notice her, she wouldn’t be able to pay, and she wouldn’t be able to carry the food anyway. She was in a pickle.

Just then, Death appeared next to her.

“Wow, was there a long line? I figured you’d have at least ordered by now,” Death said.

Andi looked at Death to try and figure out if Death was screwing with her or not. If she was, Death had a hell of a poker face, Andi decided.

“No, the line keeps growing, and I keep ending up at the end of it because no one can see me. Also, I can’t open doors. And I have no money,” Andi said. She hadn’t realized how completely frustrated she was until she heard her voice shaking. She wasn’t used to being unable to figure out how to deal with a situation, and it bothered her. A lot.

“Oh,” Death said. “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re going to have to learn how to be physical. Hmm. I’m going to have to think about this.”

She looked longingly at the menu board, and then her phone beeped. Another collection was due.

“Well, we’ll figure out a way for you to learn,” Death said. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

Chapter Ten

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 02:16:00 +0000

Photo by Daniel Oines

My Typewriter Gave Up The Ghost were living their dream, for the moment. The six of them described their band as chamber pop, and as such, they had a guitarist, bassist, trumpet player, keyboard player, drummer and a singer who occasionally played the harmonica. At the moment, they were on a tour of the United States, playing in basically any bar that would let them. They made just a little more money than they needed to make it to the next gig, which meant they slept either in the van, or at the home of a fan or a friend in the area.

At the moment, My Typewriter Gave Up The Ghost were all about as stoned as a person can get without just falling asleep mid-Twinkie. They were currently driving west across South Dakota, mile after mile of straight road through farm country.

“I don’t know man, it sounds cool when ZZ Top does it, but I don’t think it’s right for this band,” the drummer of My Typewriter Gave Up The Ghost said in response to a suggestion by the singer that he add some electronic drums to his kit.

“Whatever, you guys never take my suggestions,” the singer said. It was true, too. He’d been a late addition to the band, recruited when someone pointed out after a show that none of them had especially nice voices, but were otherwise pretty good. His ego grated on the others a bit.

The guitarist, who was laying uncomfortably on top of a pair of speaker cabinets, didn’t even open his eyes when he said, “that’s because your ideas suck.”

“Whatever. Your ideas suck,” the singer said. He sulked for a minute or two before he forgot what they’d been talking about and started looking for the bag of potato chips.

“Stay out of my chips,” the guitarist said.

The singer looked sharply at the guitarist, and wondered how the hell he’d even known he was looking for them. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Good,” the guitarist said.

“Can you two get along for a little bit? You’re harshing the van. Again,” the bassist said.

“Who asked you?” the singer said.

If the trumpet player had been awake, he would have agreed with the bassist, but as it was, he was asleep in the front passenger seat. At the moment, the keyboard player was driving. He’d been awake since three in the morning, and was stoned enough that his eyes were barely open anyway. He’d pretty much missed the entire argument in the back of the van because he was too busy focusing on simply not falling asleep while driving.

***

Jake and Lance were driving east through South Dakota at the moment. They were coming from Wyoming, on their way to visit a friend of theirs who had moved to Sioux Falls chasing a girl. Jake was driving, with some good old Hank Williams on the radio. Lance was asleep with a mostly-empty bottle of Miller High Life tucked between his legs.

Lance had fallen asleep about thirty minutes earlier, which was OK with Jake. Lance was a good guy, but he had basically just become Jake’s buddy by default when Jared had moved to Sioux Falls. Every now and then, he really got on Jake’s nerves

Jake was driving a nineteen seventy eight Ford F-150. It had seen plenty of use, and creaked and groaned as they rolled down the highway. It drove like a tank, but it had lasted like one too, so Jake didn’t mind. It had originally been his uncle’s farm truck, until that uncle offered to sell it to Jake for a song in order to finance an above-ground pool.

At the moment, Jake was a little jealous of Jared. He wanted to meet a girl and move somewhere that wasn’t Wyoming.

He was a little jealous of Lance too, since he’d swiped the last beer without Jake noticing.

***

Death and Andi appeared on the side of the freeway in South Dakota. There was a lot of farm field to see, no matter which direction you looked. The road was empty too.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Andi said. “There aren’t any cars around, how can there be a wreck?”

Death was busy getting her stopwatch and clipboard organized. She hoped she was going to have enough time after this collection to get everyone to the gateway and then, perhaps, get a cup of coffee. Maybe even lunch somewhere. Tacos sounded good. So did Indian food.

There’s nothing quite like a good chicken vindaloo after a big collection, Death thought.

“Yes, I’m sure we’re in the right place,” Death said to Andi. “There will be cars in…”

Death looked at her stopwatch.

“…forty five seconds. You know, you really don’t have to watch this. I can almost guarantee you’ll find it disturbing.”

Andi lifted her chin and said, “I told you already what I think about it.”

“OK, it’s your choice,” Death said. She checked the stopwatch, and looked both ways, trying to spot a pick up truck and a van.

Her stomach growled.

“Was that you?” Andi said. She looked mildly horrified.

Death sighed and said, “Yes, that was me. It’s been a couple years since I’ve eaten. Excuse me.”

“Why haven’t you eaten in two years? Is it a hunger strike thing? Making a point to someone? Or punishment for something?” Andi said.

Death smiled and said, “No, it’s nothing like that. I simply haven’t had time.”

“You haven’t had time to eat… in two years?” Andi said. She sounded utterly amazed. “Wow, do I ever feel bad for occasionally getting cranky because I wasn’t able to find a Snickers bar when I wanted one.”

Andi was quiet for a couple seconds, then said, “I wish I could bring you something to eat, or do something to help while you grab some lunch.”

“Thanks Andi,” Death said. “If I think of something you can do, I’ll let you know. Whoops! Here they come now.”

Death pointed at a spec in the distance, heading west. She checked off an item on her list, and then looked down the road the other way. There was another spec, this one headed east.

***

A month and a half of sharing a van with six other people and their musical equipment will cause tempers to occasionally flare even among best friends, and the members of My Typewriter Gave Up The Ghost weren’t best friends.

“What the hell do you need your own bag of chips for anyway? This is supposed to be a team, man. We’re a band, not a bunch of roommates,” the singer said.

“What the hell did you need to buy drinks for those girls in the last bar for? That’s the reason we all had to have fucking happy meals for dinner instead being able to get pizza,” the guitarist said.

Their discussion was getting louder by the second.

The trumpet player was awake now, and looked annoyed. Actually, everyone in the van looked annoyed. They were, in fact, all a little irritated about the bag of chips, and a lot irritated about the drinks that didn’t even lead to phone numbers.

The keyboard player, still driving, was still doing his best to stay focused on the task of driving the van, though it was getting difficult.

***

Jake was lost in thought, thinking about his last girlfriend and wondering if maybe he should have just stayed with her. Sure, she wanted to settle down and start a family, while he wanted to get out and see the world outside of Wyoming, but at least with her he hadn’t been so damned lonely.

He heaved a big sigh, and looked out his side window to the North. There was a lot of corn out there, and not much else. The road was straight enough that he suspected he could probably go to sleep with the cruise control set, and nap for fifteen minutes or so while the truck just continued along its merry path.

***

The keyboard player had finally reached his stoned argument bullshit limit.

“Would you two just shut the fuck up? God damn it, all you guys do is bicker and argue like an old married couple. I’m trying to drive up here, and you two are back there just bitch bitch bitching about fucking chips and the girls you wish you would have had the balls to hit on properly,” he said in a loud, rapid-fire burst.

“Well, who the fuck asked you?” the singer said.

Incensed, the keyboard player spun around in the driver’s seat to give the singer a piece of his mind. He’d just taken a breath, when he noticed four sets of stoned eyes opened wide, looking over his shoulder. He spun back around just in time to see that the van had crossed the center line of the freeway, and on a collision course with an old pick up truck.

“Fuck,” he said.

***

Jake had been staring out the side window, wondering if it was too late to try and reconcile with his girlfriend when he caught a flash out of the corner of his eye.

He turned to look out the the windshield again, and saw he was now driving down the middle of the road, almost perfectly over the center line, and about to slam his truck into an oncoming van driven by a panicked looking guy with long hair and a v-neck t-shirt.

“Fuck,” he said.

***

Death and Andi were standing in the perfect spot to watch the collision. It seemed impossibly fast, to Andi. For some reason, she thought car crashes would look the way they did in movies, where there was plenty of time to see every reaction and to appreciate how bad things had gotten.

Instead, the pick up truck and the van slammed into each other so fast she could barely believe what she’d seen. The noise was incredible, again, nothing like a movie, just a spectacularly loud WHAM and then the sound of various pieces of car as they fell to the ground.

Three of the members of My Typewriter Gave Up The Ghost were ejected from the van, one coming to a rest across the windshield of the pick up truck, one landing in the bed of the truck, and the other tumbling along the road before coming to a stop.

Andi noticed the wrong number of heads on the road, and realized that one of the people who had been ejected from the van must have decapitated the driver on his way out.

One by one, the souls of the newly departed appeared on the road nearby.

“Nice driving, dick,” the singer said to the keyboard player.

The keyboard player looked at the wreckage of the two cars, and the bodies, and said, mostly to himself, “Oh, man, am I going to have to spend eternity with this asshole?”

Then Death’s phone rang. The eight fresh souls turned and looked at her expectantly.

“Sorry, hang on,” Death said. She pulled out her phone. Three minutes to the next collection.

She rubbed her face with one hand, and looked a little distressed before she composed herself.

“OK, no time to waste. I’m going to need you all to come along with me, please,” Death said, and with that, they stepped out of the world.

Moments later, the gateway appeared. Brilliant light poured out of the doorway.

“So what’s through there?” Jake asked Death.

“I really couldn’t say. Whatever it is that awaits you,” Death said.

“Well, it can’t be worse than hanging around with these dickheads,” the singer said, and charged through the door.

“Does it make me a bad person to say that I’m really glad he’s gone?” the guitarist said.

No one answered.

“In you go, everybody. I’ve got another appointment, and I can’t keep them waiting,” Death said.

The band members that were one friendly terms said their goodbyes to one another, and one by one went through the door, followed by Jake and Lance.

Death looked at Andi who was standing to one side, looking back and forth between the doorway and Death.

“You too,” Death said, kindly, and gestured towards the doorway.

Andi furrowed her brow, and said, “I was just thinking, you’re really busy. And if the population is growing, you’re just going to keep getting busier.”

“Probably,” Death said.

“And you haven’t had anything to eat in more than two years?” Andi said.

“It’s getting closer to three years, yes,” Death said. She resisted the urge to check the clock.

“What do you say I stick around and help you out?” Andi said.

The question caught Death completely off guard, and she sputtered briefly.

“Well, I don’t… that is.. You see…” Death started, then paused. She thought about it for a moment. At the very least, Andi would be able to run some errands for her before she finally moved on. Maybe she could pick up a pizza while Death was tending to collections. And a little company wouldn’t be so bad.

“OK. Why not?” Death said.

The two of them were standing on the side of the road in South Dakota again.

“Great,” Andi said. “What next?”

Death’s phone beeped at her. “Next we head to Florida for another collection.”

Chapter Nine

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 02:23:00 +0000

Photo By Stewart Chambers

Jessica Bergman, 28, was going to have an unusually nasty tumble down three flights of stairs very shortly. She had just clocked out at work, and was hurrying to get her things together and get the hell out of the office so she could, with any luck, be just a tiny bit ahead of the rush hour traffic. She worked the night shift in a medical billing office, temporarily, as she hunted for a better job that was actually in her field: forensic psychology.

At the moment, however, there didn’t seem to be a lot of full-time openings for forensic psychologists in San Diego.

She was working at an office in Chula Vista, but she actually lived near downtown San Diego with five of her girlfriends in a two bedroom apartment. Working a night shift in the suburbs and living downtown meant that she had to deal with the morning commute, only she was trying to get home and go to sleep.

It was a royal drag.

Death, Andi and Philip arrived outside the office where Jessica worked, just as she was picking up her purse and heading for the exit.

“Wait here, please, you two,” Death said as she hustled towards the building. Andi followed her.

“I’m coming with,” she said.

Philip, with every ounce of disgust he could cram into his voice, said, “What’s wrong with you? You want to watch someone die?”

This stopped Andi in her tracks.

“It’s not like I enjoy it,” Andi said. “It just seems wrong to be here and look the other way while someone dies.”

“Don’t you think people might want a little privacy?”

“Don’t you think people might need a little support?”

The argument escalated from there. Andi may have, at one point, called Philip a poopy-head. When she got really angry, she had a tendency to use childish language.

Death, meanwhile, had hurried inside and stationed herself at the top of the bottom of the stairs. She had her notebook and stopwatch out, and the stopwatch was ticking down Jessica’s final seconds already. They had just barely made it in time. Sloppy, and stressful.

She heard, about three floors up, a stairwell door slam against the wall as someone hurried through it. Death marked off an item on her list, and listened attentively as Jessica rushed down the stairs. One flight, then two.

Then a gasp and the sounds of a body tumbling down the stair. It sounded like Jessica had almost managed to get her feet under her, but stumbled and fell down the next flight of stairs as well.

Falling down the third flight of stairs was just bad luck. Inertia had bounced her off the wall and then gravity did the rest. Jessica’s battered body came to rest just a couple feet away from where Death stood.

“Well,” Jessica’s soul said, while looking down at her body, “I guess I don’t have to worry about rush hour today. Go me!”

She didn’t actually sound very enthusiastic about this outcome.

“No, you don’t,” Death said to her. “Would you come with me Jessica?”

“Sure, why not?” Jessica said.

Death led her away from the stairwell, and towards the building’s exit.

“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised that death doesn’t involved a light at the end of a tunnel, or, like, my dead family members waiting to greet me or something,” Jessica said.

“Well, you’ll get to see the light shortly. I couldn’t tell you about any family members waiting for you, though. At the moment, we just have to go and get the others,” Death said. She sounded a little apologetic.

“What others? Who are we getting?” Jessica said.

“Andi and Philip. They’re dead too,” Death said. “They’ve been waiting outside.”

The two of them stepped outside, and saw Andi and Philip turn to see them. Death led Jessica over to them.

“So you two have been waiting here while I died?” Jessica said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Philip said.

“So, what, like I’m an inconvenience? The skinny bitch here had something to attend to, and you weren’t interested enough to come inside?” Jessica said.

Death was somewhat offended, but Andi spoke first.

She said, to Philip, “See, I told you.”

“Hey it’s not my job to go watch people die. Can we get on with this? The looming unknown is starting to get to me. A lot,” Philip said.

“Oh, well, you poor baby. Sorry my death kept you from a pressing appointment,” Jessica said.

Death rolled her eyes, then caught herself and felt mildly ashamed.

“Andi, can I trust you to stay here for just a couple minutes? No running off, please,” Death said.

“Um, sure, I guess,” Andi said. She was a little puzzled.

Death turned to Philip and Jessica. She stretched out her hands.

“Would both of you take my hands, please?” Death said.

Andi was watching intently, and expected the two of them to argue with Death. Instead, the both seemed to realize they were being silly, calmed down, and took Death’s hands. The three of them vanished. Andi was a little disappointed with the lack of spectacle. They didn’t fade into transparency. There wasn’t a flash of light or anything. It was just as if they had never even been there.

She stood outside the office building where Jessica had worked, and wondered how long she would be there before Death returned. She wondered a little bit about what Death had said about going mad during an eternity of solitude. She was curious about how long it would take for the madness to kick in. There were, after all, a couple people she wouldn’t mind haunting. Just to teach them a thing or two.

Andi had just barely started to maybe consider wandering off and having a little fun before going to the Great Beyond when Death reappeared.

So much for that.

Death pulled her phone out of her cloak, and checked when the next appointment was. She had eight minutes. She was relieved, that meant she’d have time to bring Andi to the other side, and go get her motorcycle again before the next collection.

Her motorcycle.

In all the rushing around, she’d forgotten which collection she’d left it at. Crap. She suspected she’d left it at Andi’s dorm. That made the most sense. It was possible it was at Philip’s house, though.

Andi had waited patiently for a minute or so while Death stood there, apparently lost in thought.

“So what’s next?” Andi asked Death, when she couldn’t stand it any longer it.

Death blinked a few times, shook her head, and looked at Andi.

“Next,” Death said, “I bring you to the other side. Then I go get my motorcycle, which I think I left outside your dorms, and then I go collect Arthur Quimbly.”

Andi got excited.

“You have a motorcycle?” she said. “That is so cool!”

“Oh, yeah, I do. Um. Thanks,” Death said. She reached out to Andi, and said, “Take my hand, please.”

Andi ignored this and said, “Can I see it?”

“My hand? Yes, it’s right in front of you. Are you unable to see it?”

“No, your motorcycle,” Andi said.

Death was stunned. No one had ever asked her that before. Of course, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t told very many people that she had a motorcycle in the first place. She wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, so she said the first thing that comes to mind.

“Sure, I guess,” Death said.

“Cool!” Andi said. She was grinning widely now.

Death was a little puzzled that anyone would care that she had a motorcycle. And she wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to Andi’s request, but it probably couldn’t hurt anything, so she decided to just roll with it.

“Take my hand please,” Death said. “I think I left it outside your dorm.”

Andi took Death’s hand, and almost instantly they were back outside her dorm. Andi looked around at the building and snow-covered ground around the dorm, and was amazed at how something that had been so ordinary just a little while ago already seemed old and kind of foreign.

She noticed the snow-covered grounds again. Something seemed funny about it. It would come to her, though, she was sure.

“Here it is, just where I left it,” Death said.

Parked next to the building, barely out of the way of the foot traffic in and out of the dorm (none of which, by the way, so much as realized there even was a motorcycle to walk around) was the longest, lowest, most black, most spectacularly shiny shiny motorcycle Andi had ever seen. She wondered if the metal wasn’t chrome but polished silver, then decided that was just impossible.

“Wow,” Andi said. “That’s pretty.”

The snow reflected light up onto the bike from underneath. It almost seemed to glow.

The snow.

Suddenly Andi realized what was weird. She looked around at the snow some more, and then at herself. She was wearing the jeans and t-shirt she’d been wearing when she died.

“Shouldn’t we be cold? And don’t you freeze riding that in the winter?” she said.

Death smiled. “The temperature doesn’t really matter when you’re dead. And the cold doesn’t really bother me. It’s not like I ride real far in the cold anyway.”

Gears were still turning in Andi’s head. She had another thought.

“Was it your motorcycle I kept hearing but not seeing over the last couple of months?” Andi said.

Death was shocked again.

“Well,” Death said, “I guess it could have been. But people don’t usually hear me or see me or really notice me at all. It’s kind of my thing, not being noticed.”

“But I noticed you in that coffee shop,” Andi said.

“Well, I was getting coffee that time,” Death began, but Andi interrupted her before she could finish.

“Did anyone else notice you in there?”

“Well, no,” Death admitted.

Andi looked a little freaked out. “So I’ve been hearing you riding around collecting people…”

“I guess it’s possible,” Death said.

Death’s phone beeped at her. It was time to get to the next collection. She checked the time, and saw she still had three minutes. She should be able to bring Andi over, and get back to make the collection, though she’d probably have to come back, again, for her bike.

“Well, Andi, this has been fun, but I need to get you to the other side. My next collection is a nasty car wreck, and I don’t want you to have to watch it. I’ve got to collect eight people this time.”

Andi’s brain was still running at full speed.

“Eight? Wow. That’s a lot. How do you do that? I mean, you can only bring two people over at a time, right?”

Death wasn’t expecting that question, and answered before thinking about it. She should have just grabbed Andi and hustled to the gateway.

“No, I can bring as many people as I need to,” Death said.

“So why did you make me wait while you brought Philip and Jessica over?” Andi asked.

“I… don’t know,” Death said.

Her phone beeped at her again. She needed to get to the next collection immediately.

“Crap. You’re going to have to come with me for this. You know, you really don’t have to watch,” Death said.

Chapter Eight

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 02:02:00 +0000

Photo By Eirik Newth

In Seaford, Delaware, Philip Hopkins was about to die.

Philip was not aware of this, and he was also not aware that his death was being watched by Death herself, and a recently deceased college student named Andi. It’s hard to say for sure if he would have wanted to know or not.

Philip was working on his roof. He knew it was stupid to be up there in the winter, when the roof was covered with snow. He’d grown up in North Dakota and knew a thing or two about snow and ice. All the same, there he was, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with his satellite dish, since the satellite company didn’t seem to have any interest in actually fixing the problem within the next few months.

Death and Andi were standing on the edge of the roof, over the concrete patio that was about twenty feet down. Seconds earlier, they had been in Andi’s dorm room. Philip was a little further up the roof, muttering curses and poking at the cables coming out of the satellite dish with his Leatherman.

“Whoa, so he’s not dead yet?” was the first thing Andi said. “I kind of assumed…”

“No, he’s not dead yet,” Death said. “You might want to look away, or go somewhere else.”

Andi looked around for the first time, and realized they were on the edge of a snowy, icy roof, a long ways up. Her eyes got very wide.

“Uh huh. And where, exactly, do you think I should go?” Andi said, still staring down at the ground, wondering just how high up they all were.

Death looked around then and said, “Oh, right. Well, I guess you might just want to look away.”

Philip was getting a little bit worked up. He dropped his Leatherman into the snow under the satellite dish, and cursed rather loudly.

Death had her stopwatch out and running, and was keeping track of the events leading up to Philip’s demise, as usual.

What wasn’t usual happened next.

“I don’t know, seems kind of rude to be present at someone’s death and not watch,” Andi said. She peeked over Death’s shoulder at her clipboard. “What are you doing?”

Death pulled the clipboard to her chest, as if Andi were trying to copy answers off of her test, and gave Andi a mildly reproachful look. “This is none of your business.”

Andi stepped aside, careful not to step back off the roof, and said, “OK, no problem. You’re the one who brought me along though.”

She turned and watched what Philip was doing now. What he was doing was yanking vigorously on one of the cables that had apparently frozen into place.

Death stopped focusing for a second on Philip, and instead focused on Andi.

“What did you mean, that it would be rude not to watch?” Death said.

Andi was still watching Philip closely.

She said, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t mean it should be entertaining or anything like that. It just seems wrong to let it happen unobserved.”

Death considered what Andi had said for a moment, then said, “I think so too.”

She waved her clipboard slightly, and said, “This is the plan for Philip’s death.”

Andi stopped watching Philip in order to look at Death then.

“There’s a plan?”

“Of course. You don’t think something like this just happens, do you? What if something goes wrong? There’s a saying I’ve adopted recently, though I’ve always felt this way: perfect planning prevents piss poor performance. Can’t recall who coined the phrase, but I like it.”

Andi wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the last bit, she was stuck on the fact that there was a plan for Philip’s death.

“Wait, so does that mean you had a plan for my death?” Andi said.

“Of course.”

“So you decided to have me drop dead in my dorm room, alone?”

“Well, there’s more to it than that,” Death said. “Believe me, your death was the perfect death for you. I put a ton of effort into making sure everyone dies in exactly the right way.”

Andi said, “So… cancer is the right way for innocent children to die? You know, you’re kind of an asshole.”

Death grimaced. She enunciated each word carefully as she spoke. “There’s more to it. I didn’t say everyone dies in a just way, or a fair way. Just the right way.”

Andi realized she’d just hit close to home. “Sorry, I didn’t understand.”

“It’s OK,” Death said. She checked her stopwatch, looked at the plan, and hoped that the last several items had happened as intended.

At the moment, Philip was crouching and not really paying attention to his footing. He was cursing a blue streak under his breath about the stupid god damned satellite company and their no good lazy bum asshole techs who are too precious to come out and fix the god damned dish so he could watch some god damned hockey like any red blooded American would want to in the middle of god damned winter when there’s nothing else to do. Damn it.

A few thoughts were gathering steam in Andi’s head. After a couple moments, she spoke again.

“So you plan everyone’s death?” Andi said.

Death ticked off an item on her list and said, “Yes, pretty much everyone.”

Andi’s brow creased. “Pretty much? So there are some people whose deaths you don’t plan?”

“Right, there are a few people out there, well, more than a few from your point of view, that aren’t in my jurisdiction, so to speak,” Death said.

“You have a jurisdiction? Are there are other Deaths?”

“Not exactly. But there are other gods of death, angels of death, and the like. They run their own shows. Then there are the special cases. Sometimes, one of the gods will get an urge to smite someone. There’s nothing I can do about that. Smote is smote. My plan goes out the window then. And then there’s those idiot suicides. Don’t get me started on them.”

“OK, cool,” Andi said. She, in fact, had every intention of asking Death what her beef with suicides was, when there was a sharp intake of breath, a thump, and sliding sound. She looked just in time to see Philip slip over the edge of the roof, with a panicked “shit” and fall to the patio.

He landed exactly wrong, or exactly right, depending on your point of view, and died instantly. Andi and Death saw Philip’s soul appear next to his body.

“Well, son of a bitch,” they could just barely hear him say.

“So now what?” Andi said.

“Now we go and get him, and I bring you two to the other side,” Death said.

Andi took a good look at the drop between them and the patio below, and said, “How do we do that?”

Death cracked a little grin, and said, “Dead and afraid of heights?”

“Not heights, just falling.”

A fraction of a second later, the two of them were on the patio next to Philip’s soul.

“You forgot you’re with me. I can be where ever I need to be whenever I need to be there, more or less.”

“That’s pretty convenient,” Andi said.

“Who are you two?” Philip asked. He looked pretty upset.

Death smiled at him, kindly, and said “I’m Death, this is Andi. Would you come with me?”

“Is Andi like your sidekick?” Philip asked. Death wasn’t sure she liked his tone.

“No, she’s just dead too,” Death said. “Would you come with us?”

Andi started talking, very excitedly, “Did you know she had your death all planned out? Isn’t that cool?”

Philip did not appear to think it was cool. In fact, Philip looked downright offended.

“It was planned? So you decided to kill me by causing me to fall off my roof like a chump?” Philip said to Death.

Death gave Andi an annoyed look, and silently resolved not to tell anyone else the secrets of her trade again, even if they did seem particularly interested and sympathetic. Now she was going to have to try and drag this guy along after calming him down.

“Hey, ease up on her there, Phil,” Andi said. “She’s doing the best she can. There’s no need to be a tool about it.”

“Tool? Did you just call me a tool?” Philip said.

“No, I called you Phil,” Andi said. “Lighten up, you’re dead.”

Philip closed his eyes and looked like he was doing his best to contain his temper.

“Philip, it was simply your time to go. Would you come with us, please?” Death said.

Philip lifted his chin and said, “What if I don’t, Ms. Doing the Best She Can?”

Death fixed Philip with an icy stare. Coming from, you know, Death, that’s pretty icy indeed.

“If you don’t, you’ll get to enjoy watching everything you ever loved or cared about waste away, die, rot and be replaced, until you eventually succumb to madness during an eternity of solitude.”

Philip took a breath to answer, and then what Death had just said appeared to sink in.

“Oh. Well, in that case, I’ll just come with you,” he said.

“Good decision,” Andi said. She was mildly horrified by the prospect of an eternity alone as well.

Death breathed a sigh of relief, quietly. If someone refused to come along, she could always just drag them to the doorway and throw them in if she had to. She didn’t really care for doing so, however. The real challenge came when someone bolted. In the old days, she’d had time to chase them down and convince them to come along with her before they succumbed to madness.

But now there wasn’t even time for her to grab lunch, much less hunt down and sweet-talk a soul on the run into coming along with her.

There had been a few runaway souls who had been smart enough, or lucky enough, to be around when she was in the area for another collection. They invariably begged to be brought along if enough time had passed since their demise.

It troubled Death knowing that there were souls still out there, slowly going mad. Some of them had found ways to interact with the physical world again, in a last-ditch effort to hang on to their time and place. Luckily, word of hauntings got around pretty quickly now, and she was usually able to go and collect them when she could find a spare moment.

“Yes, thank you, Philip,” Death had begun to say, when her phone rang. The corner of her mouth twisted a bit, and she took her phone out to see how much time there was.

The next passing was due in one minute and thirty seconds, in Chula Vista, California.

“Well, you two, it looks like we’re going to be making a stop in Southern California. Take my hands, please,” Death said.

Andi and Philip each took one of Death’s outstretched hands, and the three of them were gone.

Twenty minutes later, one of Philip’s neighbors happened to look out their window and see his body sprawled out on the patio. The neighbor rushed to help him, but it was, of course, far too late.

Chapter Seven

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 01:42:00 +0000

Little Green Man photo by smlp.co.uk

It had recently occurred to Death that as much as she might want it to be the case, the pace of collections was likely to keep increasing for the next twenty to thirty years. Maybe even longer, unless the populations started declining, and she was only responsible for 50% of that situation, were it to take place. The other half was up to the people who were reproducing.

Technology, such as her phone, was making a lot of the menial tasks more manageable, but the fact remained that killing people day in and day out was a lot of work.

So she could only do so much to make her own job easier. Otherwise, she’d just have to ride it out and hope more people started dying right next to fast food restaurants.

Which, in some parts of the world, actually seemed fairly likely.

She’d caught a break, and had a solid ten minutes between collections, so she was able to drop off the three souls who had been accompanying her as she rushed from collection to collection, and had even been able to stop and get some coffee in a gas station.

As she stood outside the gas station, drinking her coffee as quickly as she could manage, she took another peek at her phone to see when and where the next collection was.

“Well, shit,” Death muttered to herself. According to her notes, the next collection was going to be in Cumberland, Wisconsin. That’s where the Bump & Grind was, and Death had become quite a fan of the little coffee shop.

Ares, the god of war, had turned her on to the place. He’d been in there several times when it was still located in California, and said the coffee was good and that the owner was a decent sort. Given Ares’s tendency to get insulted and kill anyone who so much as looked at him funny, it was extremely high praise.

At the moment, however, Death was in Middle-of-Nowhere, Idaho. She was, actually, glad she’d been able to find a gas station. Oh well. Maybe she’d be able to hit the Bump & Grind after the collection. Two cups of coffee in one day? That would be heaven.

Her phone beeped at her to let her know that she needed to finish up her coffee break and get moving already. Death’s phone, incidentally, was also a little irritated with how busy they had been recently. It’s not fun being the bearer of bad news anyway, but that is particularly true when Death is overworked and undercaffeinated. No one, not even a phone, wants to be greeted with a muttered, “Shit.”

Death tossed her coffee cup, still half full, into the trash, hopped on her motorcycle, and roared away to the next collection.

Mere seconds later, she rolled to a stop outside the dorms at the University of Wisconsin. According to her notes, she was there to collect Andrea Watson, who was twenty years old. Andrea had some problems with her heart’s valves, and none of her doctors had ever noticed.

***

Andi had not, in fact, gone to the medical center, even though she told Rob she had. If she was nuts, at least it wasn’t the hearing voices and walking around with no pants on sort of nuts. Hearing a motorcycle at random times wasn’t so bad, she just had to keep it to herself. And there was no reason for her to go to the medical center and tell them she was hearing things just to find out that she wasn’t nuts.

So, she’d decided that unless someone started answering her when she was talking to herself, she wasn’t going to worry about it.

At least, that’s what she’d told herself until she heard a motorcycle come roaring to a stop outside the dorms. It was the middle of February, and there was no way that was a pickup truck out there. She’d been on the way back to her room, but still on the ground floor of the building, after one of her classes when she heard it, and had hustled over to one of the windows that looked out on to the parking lot.

Not a motorcycle to be seen.

She was a little worried she was going crazy.

Andi’s room was on the third floor, and she was looking forward to getting there. She had two hours until her next class, and she wanted nothing more than a nap. She and Rob had been up late the night before discussing which of the conspiracy theories they’d heard might be real, which were definitely fake, and which ones were created by the actual conspirators to throw everyone else off their tracks.

The only thing they were certain of by the end of their discussion was that there were no lizardmen living under Salt Lake City. However, that left a huge number of other cities the lizardmen could very well be living under. Especially since everyone thought they were under Salt Lake City, and therefore weren’t looking for them anywhere else. Lizardmen are sneaky.

And today, Andi was certain that as much fun as that discussion had been, she would have been better off if she’d just gone to bed at a decent hour. Especially since both of them thought conspiracy theories were bullshit, and that most things that could be explained by a conspiracy theory could be better explained by coincidence and stupidity.

On the other hand, talking about the nefarious plans of the lizardmen is a lot of fun. So, to be fair to herself, she had to admit that the choice between going to sleep and staying up to discuss crazy theories presented something of a dilemma. She had yet to hear of anyone saying on their death bed they wished they’d spent more time sleeping and less time talking about a new world order brewing right under their feet.

Andi preferred taking the stairs over using the elevators in her dorm. For one thing, it was usually faster. And for another, the elevators were dark, claustrophobic, and generally creepy. So if she could avoid them, she did. Besides, a little bit of extra exercise was a good thing.

She walked past the elevators to the door for the stairwell, and started climbing. She noticed she was breathing unusually hard by the time she reached the third floor. It was probably just because she was so tired already, she decided. A nap was going to be great. She’d be sure to set an alarm so she didn’t accidentally sleep past the start of her next class. It had happened before.

As she went down hall to her room, she noticed that, if anything, her breathing was getting harder. She wondered if she might be coming down with a cold too.

***

Death had started her stopwatch the second Andrea had grabbed the handle for the door to the stairwell. She was a little surprised to recognize her as the girl who had noticed her and talked to her briefly at the Bump and Grind recently.

Of course Death encountered many people before their appointments, but not very many of those people noticed her. Or if they did notice her, they didn’t talk to her.

She followed Andrea up the stairs, and checked an item off the list when Andrea stopped at the top of the stair for a moment to try and catch her breath. A few seconds later, Andrea starting walking again. It was obvious she was exhausted.

One of the other women who lived on Andrea’s floor greeted her as she walked by. She didn’t notice Death, of course.

Andrea fumbled with the key for her room a little bit, got the door open, and went inside. Death followed. Her roommate was not present.

Death noticed Andrea’s Salvador Dali poster, and the odd little skeletal sculptures, and raised an eyebrow. She took a better look at Andrea. Brown hair, glasses, jeans, muted green shirt, cute shoes. She didn’t look like a goth, or even particularly weird. Death would have never guessed this was her room.

It was kind of cool, really.

Death checked off another item as Andrea set down her bag and kicked off her shoes.

Andrea sat down on her bed, and dug out her phone. She had just started to set the alarm to wake her in an hour’s time when she looked up, with a mild, confused expression on her face, and then collapsed sideways on the bed.

Death could swear Andrea was staring directly at her for the last few seconds of her life. Andrea passed, and Death checked off the last item on her list and stopped her stopwatch.

“How did you get in here?” Andrea asked Death. “I would have noticed you walking in behind me. Were you hiding in here before I got here?“

“I did walk in behind you, you just didn’t notice me. Most people don’t,” Death said. “Would you come with me, Andrea?”

“Andi, please.”

“OK, Andi, would you…” Death began to say, then her phone beeped at her. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

Death dug out her phone, and saw that she had five minutes until the next collection.

“Hey, didn’t I see you at the Bump and Grind a while back,” Andi said? “You had to leave before you were even able to order your coffee. I felt bad for you.”

Death was mildly touched. People rarely noticed her, much less felt bad for her.

“Yes, I remember seeing you there,” Death said. “Look, I have to make another collection, so I hope you don’t mind tagging along with me. It seems like I keep getting a little busier every day. Do you mind?”

Andi looked a bit confused. “Why would I mind? It’s not like I have anything pressing to attend to, apparently.”

“Well, some folks get kinda cranky about it,” Death said. “Anyway, let’s go.”

“Sure, where are we going?” Andi asked.

“Delaware.”

“Oh. Great.”

Chapter Six

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 02:16:00 +0000

Photo By Gaspar Torriero

Death was a little annoyed that she had not been able to get her coffee. She was more or less used to not getting to eat regularly. The last time she could recall having three meals in a day was back when Aramaic was a hip, new language only the cool kids knew. She hadn’t been back to her apartment for close to a year. She could barely recall the last time she had slept. But despite the constant urgency of her work, she was usually able to squeeze in enough time to get a cup of coffee somewhere once a week or so.

At least until this week.

She reminded herself that she was a pro, and that she wasn’t about to let her mood (currently a touch darker than usual) affect her work. The last time she did that, it had taken her several weeks to get everything straightened out and figure out who, exactly, was supposed to be dead and, similarly, who was not.

So, Death took a deep breath, got off her motorcycle, and walked in to the shop where she would be collecting Hans Braun, sixty three. Braun was the butcher for a small town just outside of Bad Homburg in Germany.

As usual, no one noticed Death when she entered the shop. The smells of fresh meat, sausage, sauerkraut and rich spices made her stomach turn a bit, but made her appetite flare as well. She really hoped she’d have time to get a bacon-wrapped something soon.

Braun’s son was working at the counter, helping customers. Death made her way around the counter and into the back of the shop, where Braun himself was working.

Braun was a bear of a man. At the moment, he was cutting steaks. Death started her stopwatch, and observed as Braun worked. She admire his knife skills – not many people could disassemble a cow with quite as much ease as Braun.

Braun cut the last of the steaks from the piece of meat he’d been working on, and Death checked off an item on her list.

Braun left the room temporarily, and went into the cooler where a fair number of former cows and pigs were hung, waiting to be sliced or ground and made into something delicious. Death found herself momentarily distracted thinking about the many possibilities for dinner that were surrounding her. Not, of course, that she’d actually have time to cook anything herself.

Braun came back into the room carrying what must have been one hundred and twenty pounds of beef. He slammed the huge chunk of meat down on the butcher’s block, which was the size of a dinner table and well-worn. He had just started to reach for his knife when a puzzled expression crossed his face.

Death ticked off another item on her list.

Braun rubbed at his chest and shoulder for a moment, decided it was nothing, and picked up his knife. He turned to the beef and started cutting again. Seconds later he dropped the knife. It clattered off the butcher block and fell to the floor, where it spun rapidly in place.

Braun clutched at his chest with both hands, and staggered backwards until he found the wall, and slid down it to the floor. He was gasping, and trying to catch his breath to call for help.

Death’s phone rang then. She scowled, annoyed to be interrupted in the middle of a collection. She ignored it, keeping her attention focused on Braun. Not long after that, he passed away.

Seconds later, Braun was in the room with her. Death checked the last couple of items on her list, and stopped her stopwatch. She dug her phone out, and saw that there were barely two minutes to the next collection.

“You weren’t here a second ago,” Braun started to say, but then he stopped and instead said, “You need something to eat, miss. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”

Death smiled at him, and said, “There’s no time for that, I’m afraid. You and I need to get to Detroit.”

“Detroit? Well, if you say so,” Braun said. “But you can have some sausage if you like. I’ve got plenty, and it’s the best in Germany.”

“Thank you, but it wouldn’t be right,” Death said.

Braun looked mildly offended, but then recognized that Death was just trying to do her own job as well as she could, and he could respect that.

“OK. So we’re going to Detroit, you say?”

“Yes we are,” Death said. “Would you take my hand, please?”

“Of course. I’m Braun, by the way.” He took Death’s hand

“I know,” Death said, and the two of them vanished. Braun’s son would discover his father’s body in half an hour or so, when they needed more pork hocks in the case.

Seconds later, Death and Braun arrived in Detroit. They were in what had once been a residential neighborhood, but now the houses were being overtaken by nature once again. Braun found it unsettling.

“Is this place safe?” he asked before he could catch himself.

Death smiled at him and said, “Well, it’s safe for us.”

Braun didn’t seem especially reassured. He stuck close to Death as they walked up a decrepit sidewalk and entered one of the houses.

The walls of the house were mostly bare, with the wallpaper peeling off in a couple of rooms. There were a few stray pieces of broken furniture here and there.

“What are we doing here?” Braun asked, quietly.

“Picking someone up,” Death said. She stopped walking and faced Braun. “You might want to just stay here and wait. Don’t run off and you’ll be safe.”

“Why? Is what you’re going to do dangerous?” Braun said.

“No, but you might find it disturbing. People usually do,” Death said.

Braun considered what she’d said for a moment, looked around at the place they were in, and decided that if she was telling him something was going to be disturbing, then she was most likely no lying.

“OK, I’ll be here. Are you going to be long?”

“No, just a minute or two,” Death said. “Don’t wander off.”

“I won’t.”

Death walked up the stairs, and found her next client shivering violently under a few tattered blankets on an ancient mattress on the floor. John Mickelson, forty eight, known to most as “Moxie,” had a nasty case of the flu, and was squatting in a decrepit house in Detroit, in January.

Death started her stopwatch, and observed as Moxie’s last few moments passed.

“Well, that’s a kick in the teeth,” Moxie’s soul said as it looked down on his body. “A rough end to a rough run of luck.”

Death said nothing. She made a couple of notes, and put her stopwatch away.

“Boy, it’s going to take them a while to find me too,” Moxie said. “I picked this place because no one comes out here. In a place like this, it’s the other people that are the most dangerous, you know. But no one comes out here except for me, and I’m always… well, I was always careful to make sure I wasn’t followed. I haven’t seen anybody around here for at least six months. Last time I saw someone, it was a couple kids in a pickup truck, looked like they were sight-seeing.”

Moxie stopped talking for a moment. “I guess they might not find me until this place gets knocked down.”

Death spoke then, gently, “you don’t need to worry about that anymore. Would you come with me, John?”

“Moxie, please. I’ve been Moxie for twenty years, no need to be called John now.”

“OK Moxie, would you come with me?”

“Sure, where are we going?”

“Well, downstairs to get Hans, and then I’ll take both of you to the other side.”

“Other side, huh? Like that Doors song?”

Death smiled and didn’t answer. She gestured towards the door, and followed Moxie downstairs. He started talking the second he saw Braun.

“Well, you must be Hans. Pleased to meet you, I guess. They call me Moxie.”

Braun looked surprised that he could understand Moxie, then momentarily offended to be called Hans by someone he hadn’t given permission to, then surprised again.

He didn’t answer Moxie, and instead spoke to Death.

“How is it that I can understand him?”

Moxie answered first, “Well, just because I’m poor doesn’t mean I can’t speak English.”

“But I can’t speak English,” Braun said.

“Oh,” Moxie said, and fell silent.

“It’s because you no longer have a need for language to understand each other,” Death said. “Communication is a lot easier when you’re dead.”

“How about travel? Is travel easier now that I’m dead?” Moxie said.

“Well, I guess you’re going to have to find out for yourself,” Death said in reply. She reached out to both Braun and Moxie. “Give me your hands, please.”

The three of them stepped out of the world. While they waited for the doorway to appear, Moxie tried to make small talk.

“So, no language barriers, easy travel… You must have a pretty good time meeting people and seeing new places, huh?” he said to Death.

Death considered what he said for a moment. She definitely met a lot of people. More and more every day, with increasing frequency. And she’d certainly traveled and seen a lot.

On the other hand, she moved around so much, she never really met anyone or really saw anything. Death tried to recall the last time she’d been able to just hang out with someone and talk, and couldn’t do it. It had been a very long time since she’d had a social life to speak of.

“It pays the bills, I guess,” Death said. “Could be worse. But I don’t really slow down enough to get to have fun very often.”

The doorway appeared then, and opened for Moxie and Braun.

“Well, I sure hope you can figure out a way to enjoy what you’re doing. Or take a vacation or something. Maybe you need to learn how to delegate,” Moxie said. “Good luck, anyway.”

He stepped through the doorway and was gone.

“Man that guy talked too much,” Braun said. “If you are doing your job well, then you are doing great and can be proud. Take care.”

He stepped through the doorway, and Death was alone once more.

She realized she’d kind of enjoyed having their company for the last several minutes. She checked the time, and wondered if she might have enough time to grab a cup of coffee.

Chapter Five

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 02:35:00 +0000

Photo By Robert S. Donovan

Winter break had ended, classes had resumed and at the moment, Andi was exactly where she liked to be when she was at school: in her dorm room, reading something unrelated to her classes.

Her room was about as homey as a dorm room can get. The desks and closets were firmly attached to the walls, and had been there since the building opened. As such, they were old enough that they were sort of cool again. Andi had purple Christmas lights strung along the wall and ceiling over her bed, and a big poster of a Salvador Dali’s In Voluptas Mors photograph. Her roommate hated it, but not as much as she hated Andi’s sculptures displayed about the room.

In high school, Andi had developed an interest in taxidermy. Before long, she stopped trying to create realistic looking animals, and instead started dressing the animals, or just their skeletons, in fantastical outfits and posing them.

Her roommate had complained about them, so she’d brought the majority of her sculptures home one weekend, just her favorites were still in the room, and in an effort to be neighborly Andi had tried to arrange the things on her desk so that the strange little creatures would be hard to notice if you weren’t looking for them.

All the same, her roommate spent as little time in the room as she could. Her roommate, Rachel, was so determined to be normal it was off-putting. Andi had tried making friends with Rachel, but found it impossible to get beyond Rachel’s “normal” exterior. Andi felt a little bit like one of the Addams family trying to relate to an outsider any time they talked.

There was a knock at her door. That would be the other reason Rachel avoided Andi. Rob was very possibly the nicest guy on campus, but in order to find that out you had to get past his appearance. Rob was huge: Six feet and four inches of solid muscle. He also tended to dress in ripped denim and leather, and kept his head cleanly shaved. Generally, his outfit featured no fewer than five skulls. Rob was studying Political Science.

He and Andi were not a couple. If you asked them, they would both say dating the other would be like dating a sibling. They’d met the year before in Physics 101, and quickly became best friends after getting paired as lab partners.

Andi marked her place in the book she was reading, climbed down from her lofted bed, and let Rob in.
Rob seemed pretty excited tonight.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Rob said. “Right here in town, they found a bunch of actual human bones in somebody’s shed.”

“Seriously?” Andi said. “Was it a serial killer, or what?”

“They don’t know, or aren’t saying. I guess this guy passed away recently, and his kids were getting his house ready to sell when they found a box with a bunch of bones in it,” Rob said.

“Hunh. Not a whole skeleton though?”

Rob pulled out Rachel’s desk chair and sat down on it.

“No, just a leg bone and, like, a couple of ribs,” Rob said. “I guess they’re looking into it to see if there’s some kind of occult connection.”

Andi rolled her eyes.

“Have they looked into it to see if the guy was a teacher at a medical school first?” she said.

“Well, probably not,” Rob said. “What fun would that be? It’s way more fun for everyone if the guy was secretly a devil worshipper.”

Andi smiled slightly, “Good point. It’s probably the most excitement the police in this town have had in years.”

“I know, right? I bet the investigation is going to take years, just because they won’t want it to end.”

“I bet,” Andi said. “So, what do you want to do today?”

Rob leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling as though the answer might be up there.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Want to cruise down to the Bump and Grind and hang out for a while?”

The Bump and Grind was a coffee shop that had opened up fairly recently not too far from campus. The woman who ran it, Tamara, had recently relocated from some place in California. She was usually pretty vague about why she’d left California for Wisconsin, though Andi had pieced together that there had been a guy who had turned out to be some kind of nutcase back west, so Tamara had closed up her coffee shop there and moved it here.

Andi couldn’t think of anything else better to do, so she said, “Sure, let’s go.”

It was about four blocks to the Bump and Grind. Andi grabbed her jacket and a pair of knit mittens for the walk.

The sidewalks around campus could be pretty treacherous. No one was exactly sure if the school actually tried to keep the sidewalks clear or at least salted in the winter or not. Either way, enough people trampled all the snow down that the sidewalks ended up being entirely covered with a sheet of ice that never really melted, it just kept getting thicker, and more slippery. It was usually easiest to walk in the snow on either side of the sidewalk rather than try to keep from falling on the sidewalks themselves.

As the two of them walked, Andi heard a motorcycle roaring, somewhere close by. She couldn’t believe anyone would be out riding when it was this cold, and the roads were so slick from snow and ice. She turned to look, but couldn’t spot the rider anywhere.

“Where’s the bike?” Andi said to Rob.

Rob looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you hear that motorcycle? Who on Earth is out riding now? They must be freezing their ass off. Or have a death wish. Or both,” Andi said.

Rob shrugged and shook his head.

“I don’t hear a bike,” he said.

Andi looked skeptical. “Have you had your hearing checked lately?”

“My hearing is fine. Have you talked to a psychiatrist about the audio hallucinations you’ve been having lately?”

“Get bent.”

Rob laughed, and after a moment Andi did too.

“Maybe it was a pickup truck?” Andi said. “Some of those guys have ridiculously loud exhaust too.”

“Could be,” Rob said. “I didn’t hear a damn thing, though.”

They reached the Bump and Grind after a couple minutes, and went inside. There weren’t too many people hanging out there, which was probably typical for a Thursday afternoon, but there was a line.

Andi noticed a tall woman, with blonde hair waiting in line a few people ahead of them. She was scary thin, and pale, but looked pleasant enough.

Poor thing has an eating disorder, Andi thought. Or else she’s sick. Cancer maybe?

She saw the woman pull a phone out of her pocket and grimace after looking at it. The woman stepped out of line and started hurrying toward the door. She made eye contact with Andi as she walked by.

“No coffee for the wicked, eh?” Andi said to her.

The woman blinked, apparently surprised Andi was talking to her, then said, “Sweetie, you don’t know the half of it.”

She hustled out of the Bump and Grind, and Andi turned back to Rob, who was looking at her somewhat quizzically.

“What?” Andi said.

“Who were you talking to?” Rob said.

“The woman who just left. Were you distracted by something?” Andi said.

“What woman?” Rob said. He looked around, and then whispered conspiratorially, “Are you high? Because you could have shared.”

Andi gave Rob an irritated look.

“No, I’m not high. The blonde? She was a couple spots ahead of us here? She had to leave before she was able to get her coffee.”

“Well, if you say so,” Rob said. He sounded doubtful. “Maybe I missed it.”

They reached the counter. The owner, Tamara, was working the register, taking orders, and making drinks, so it took her a couple of minutes before she was able to come over and take Andi and Rob’s order.

“Hey you two,” Tamara said, with a big smile. “You haven’t been in for a few days. I was starting to worry about you and your general caffeination levels.”

“Well, school, you know,” Andi said.

The two of them ordered, and found a spot to sit in some comfy chairs near the front window.

Andi heard a motorcycle roar past, apparently just on the street outside. She turned quickly to look, but couldn’t see anything.

“You OK there, Andi?” Rob said. He looked concerned.

“You heard that, right?” Andi said.

“Heard what?” Rob said. He looked concerned and wary, now.

“A motorcycle again. You must have heard it. It’s quiet in here and it sounded like it just rolled right past us on the road outside,” Andi said. She stood up and went to take a look from closer to the window, to see if she could spot the bike.

“Are you screwing with me?” Rob said. “I didn’t hear anything. You just twisted around in your seat and started staring out the window. There wasn’t a motorcycle.”

“Are you screwing with me?” Andi asked in return. “It was so loud. You must have heard something.”

Rob looked very concerned now. “You’re not joking. Andi, if you’re not high, maybe you should go talk to the medical center. Stress can do funny things to you.”

“I’m not stressed, and I’m not hearing things,” Andi said, then paused for a second. “OK, well, maybe I am stressed, but I’m not so stressed I’m hallucinating!”

“Is this the first time you’ve heard things no one else hears?” Rob said.

Andi thought about it. She’d heard a motorcycle at weird times before, but she’d always been alone, so there was no way of knowing if anyone else had heard it.

“I don’t know. I guess so,” Andi said. She was suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable.

“Hey, it’s just me here, Andi. I’m not going to judge you, I just want to help you out if I can,” Rob said.

“Thanks Rob. Maybe I’ll go talk to the folks in the medical center tomorrow,” Andi said. “Just to be sure.”

“I think that’s probably a really good idea,” Rob said. “Just to be sure.”

Chapter Four

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 02:08:00 +0000

Photo by Waferboard

Death viewed her job, vocation, purpose, whatever you want to call it, as being an agent of mercy. Each collection was an act of compassion. Her job was not violence in itself, but a final escape from violence. To her way of looking at it, a death was a release from suffering.

She also understood that not everyone viewed it as such immediately. Some people, in fact, very much resented their demise, regardless of how flawlessly it had been orchestrated. Not everyone appreciates an artist’s work.

And furthermore, although she took great care in the planning and, well, execution of a collection, she recognized that each death was not nearly as significant to her as it was to the person actually dying.
Because of all this, Death was careful to stay calm, compassionate and above all patient while collecting a client. No one could accuse Death of not providing excellent customer service. Indeed, if you could find one of her more troublesome clients, one of the ones that had really steamed her, he or she would tell you that Death had been nothing but a professional. She may have lost her cool once or twice, but it was exceedingly rare.

All the same, Death wished her current client would just come along quietly already so she could go and get herself a slice of pizza or something. Something greasy, and salty. Deep fried would be perfectly all right. Maybe with bacon and ranch dressing.

Catherine Zeta Jones - no, not that one, and she’d appreciate it if you stopped bringing up the other one – had passed three minutes ago. She was fifty six and diabetic. Her blood sugar got way too low and she passed away without anyone noticing.

And she was currently going back and forth between being embarrassed and annoyed. Death checked the clock and saw that now four minutes had passed. She was lucky enough to have twenty minutes until the next person was due to be collected, which was totally enough time to get an extra large order of French fries from a fast food place after she delivered Catherine.

Catherine’s body was on the floor close to her easy chair. She’d been going to try and sit down, and hadn’t quite made it. Now she was pacing back and forth muttering about how if her good for nothing, peckerhead husband was home instead of out golfing, this wouldn’t have happened.

Death glanced at the clock. Five minutes had passed.

“It would not have mattered if he was here, Catherine. It was your time to go. Would you come with me please?” Death said.

Rather than respond, Catherine wandered out of the room and down the hall. Now she was scolding herself for not keeping up on her blood tests.

Death did her best to not give an exasperated sigh, and instead calmly followed Catherine into the kitchen. She found Catherine looking very embarrassed.

“Are you OK?” Death asked her.

Catherine gestured at the stove, which had a pot on one of the burners, and the sink, which had a couple of dishes in it.

“I’ve left such a mess,” Catherine said. She sounded close to tears.

Death very nearly laughed and invited Catherine to come see the horrors waiting in her own apartment, but she restrained herself, and remembered that Catherine probably wasn’t actually upset about a couple of dirty dishes.

Not everyone was excited to go, after all.

“Everyone will understand,” Death said. She held out her hand to Catherine. “Would you take my hand?”

Catherine looked at Death’s hand as if she’d never seen such a strange thing before, which was maybe a little rude since Death was certainly skinny but still more or less normal looking, then said, “Sure, why the fuck not.”

She took Death’s hand, and Death very nearly said, “Yay!”

There were still fourteen minutes until the next collection. She could totally get a happy meal to go in the time she’d have left before her next appointment.

The two of them stepped out of the world.

A few moments later, Death stepped back in to the world, alone, and set about finding the nearest McDonald’s or Wendy’s or Jack in the Box. In and Out burger would take too long, and she was on the wrong coast, anyway.

There was a Burger King close by, and Death didn’t waste a second getting there and getting in line. She was disappointed to see there were several people ahead of her, but she was hopeful that she’d have time to get something quickly and bring it along. She checked the time. She still had six minutes until she had to be at the next appointment. No problem. She’d get two cheeseburgers and a small order of fries.

The smells of grease and cooking meat and sugar from the soda machines were nearly intoxicating. Death caught herself, twice, just before she began clapping her hands in her excitement.

There was only one person ahead of her in line now, and Death could almost taste the flame broiled goodness already. The greatest feasts eaten by the kings of old had nothing on the wax paper wrapped delicacy that she was about to enjoy.

Death was, understandably, extremely disappointed when the person in line in front of her pulled a gun out of his pocket and demanded all the cash in the restaurant.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the teenager behind the counter said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Death said, nearly in synch with the cashier.

The robber gestured with the gun he was holding, and shouted, “give me the fucking money.”

The robber was wearing very baggy clothes, a hoodie, and sunglasses. He looked like an obnoxious punk kid from the suburbs, because he was an obnoxious punk kid from the suburbs. His parents were well-off, and he didn’t really have any reason for robbing a Burger King other than being, well, an obnoxious punk. He’d, in fact, had to look up how to go about committing armed robbery on the internet. That was why he was wearing baggy clothes, in fact. He’d bought them special.

Death was sorely tempted to collect him early. She glanced at the clock again. Three minutes. He’d made her miss lunch, and she was very, very overdue.

If the robber had been aware of his surroundings, things might have ended a little differently. However, he was entirely focused on the hands of the cashier, who was emptying the cash drawers and stuffing the money into a kid’s meal bag.

Death quickly stepped up next to the robber, plucked the gun from his hand with almost no effort, turned, and patiently, compassionately and efficiently pistol whipped him. He collapsed in a heap in front of the register.

“Stupid punk kid wrecked my lunch,” Death muttered as she took another look at the time.

The woman standing in line behind Death stared at her with her jaw hanging open. Death looked around and saw the same expression on a lot of other faces. Oops.

“It’s cool, he’ll live,” Death said by way of explanation.

She then thrust the gun into the hands of the woman staring at her, said, “Looks like you’re a hero today,” and vanished. She had an appointment to get to, after all.

Now, an interesting thing happens when a group of people witnesses something impossible, such as an extremely skinny woman pistol whipping an armed robber in a fast food restaurant and then vanishing into thin: They collectively refuse to believe it happened and promptly forget it happened.

As such, the woman now clutching the robber’s gun and looking confused was being praised and thanked by the other patrons of the Burger King. When she had to talk to the police later, she said she had no recollection of the events, but that she felt as though she had done the right thing.

Chapter Three

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 01:35:00 +0000

Photo by TheArches

Death arrived at her next appointment with just enough time to spare to get her stopwatch ready. She felt jumpy and anxious. Death hated not having a cushion of extra time. It felt disorganized and unprofessional to arrive seconds before things were due to begin. Of course, now and then she had to collect someone on short notice, but it really seemed like it was happening more often lately.

It was ten thirty eight in the morning on Saturday, December twenty eighth, and Hugh Slattery, 74, was about to die of a massive heart attack while watching TV. Death started her stopwatch, and glanced at the notes on her list. It looked pretty straightforward: heart attack, then dead. In about a minute and a half.

Hugh was sitting in the middle of a somewhat tattered yellow sofa. The upholstery looked kind of like velvet, with a floral pattern. The place looked as though there had once been a woman living with him, although it was apparent that it had been some time since whoever the woman was had been in this room. Death glanced at her notes. Widower, was next to Hugh’s name. That explained the pile of car parts on oil-stained newspaper spread across the coffee table.

The volume on the television was way up. Hugh was watching professional wrestling. The announcer was talking a mile a minute, and Hugh was sitting on the very edge of the couch, gesticulating and shouting at the TV. He really seemed to hate one of the wrestlers in the current match.

“Oh come on Ref! How did you miss that? The son of a bitch didn’t even…” Hugh fell silent as the action on the screen continued.

Thumping and booming noises came from the TV, and Death heard the announcer groan and say “oh, what a hit!”

“Yeah! Take that you smarmy bastard!” Hugh said.

He was beginning to get red in the face. Death checked off an item on her list.

Her stomach growled, and she did her best not to think about when the last time she ate was. Of course, trying not to think about it only made it impossible to not think about her last meal. The last time she ate was two years, four months and seventeen days ago. She’d had exactly enough time to eat an order of French fries from MacDonald’s before she had been called to another appointment. Incidentally, all the images of Death as a skeleton? Sure, it was partly the whole spooky, “specter of mortality” thing, but also, she was just incredibly skinny from hardly ever getting to eat. If she wasn’t, you know, Death, people would probably be disturbed by just how skinny she was.

Death thought about lunch a lot.

She refocused on the task at hand, and checked her stopwatch and list. She expected Hugh to start feeling a bit of pain in his left arm any second.

Right on cue, Hugh started to rub his left arm, still shouting and carrying on about what a vile, motherless bastard the villain in the current match was. Death was kind of impressed with just how passionate Hugh was about professional wrestling. She’d been mildly amused by it the couple of times she’d caught a bit, but never really got worked up the way he was at the moment.

Death alternated between watching Hugh and her stopwatch. He was starting to look pretty uncomfortable, though he was still more upset about the wrestling than the pain that was apparently spreading from his arm to his chest now.

“What on Earth did I eat?” was the last thing Hugh said before the heart attack hit him full force and he fell over, backwards, onto the couch, clutching at his chest.

Seconds later, Hugh’s soul stood in the room with Death. He looked at his body on the couch and said, “Well, at least it was quick.”

Then he seemed to remember himself, and turned back to face the TV again. He hadn’t even given Death a second look. She was a little taken aback. No one had ever ignored her in favor of pro wrestling before.

Well, not that she could remember.

Death cleared her throat, which didn’t have the desired effect since the TV was loud enough that she couldn’t be heard over it. She took a deep breath then, and walked across the room to stand next to Hugh.
She turned so she was facing him directly, and said, “Would you take my hand and come with me, Hugh?”

Hugh ignored her entirely, instead he bobbed and weaved along as he watched the wrestlers. Death had to restrain an urge to just grab him by the ear and yank him out of the world, but she knew that everyone dealt with their own death in a unique way, and she tried her best to be patient with all of them.

So she calmly stepped in between Hugh and the TV, and repeated her request.

“What? Get out of the way, you skinny broad. This is a world championship bout! I’ve got to see what happens,” Hugh said, as he leaned to try and peer around her.

“The outcome of the bout doesn’t really concern you anymore,” Death said, as gently as she could manage. “You need to come with me now.”

She held out her hand to Hugh.

Hugh responded by grimacing and taking a couple of steps to one side so he could see the TV.

On the one hand, Death found she kind of admired his complete lack of fear of her. It takes some serious moxie to be rude to Death. Sometimes people were happy to see her. Sometimes they even recognized her from their last go around, if they had been reincarnated. But there was always a measure of respect and awe. Not many people were dismissive and even annoyed with her.

On the other hand, she had a job to do, and she really was hoping she’d have time to grab a bite to eat between this collection and the next one. She was confident there was a Philly cheesesteak with her name on it out there, and she didn’t want to keep it waiting.

And either way, she wasn’t about to be ignored in favor of professional wrestling.

She stepped in front of Hugh again, held out her hand, and said, “Please take my hand, Hugh,” firmly.

“Piss off, I want to see this,” Hugh said.

Death had already been close to losing her patience, but she might have attempted to be tactful if her phone had not rang to alert her to her next appointment just then. She glanced at the phone and saw she had a minute and a half before she was due to collect Augusta Evans. She grimaced.

“OK, I tried to be nice,” Death said to Hugh, who didn’t seem to notice her. She grabbed his ear, hard, and said, “You’re coming with me, and you are going to behave.”

The two of them vanished then. Death didn’t have time to drop him off, he was going to have to come along to the next collection. It was annoying.

Seconds later, the two of the materialized – not that anyone noticed them – on the side of an interstate in Kansas.

“Is this the afterlife?” Hugh asked, finally starting to sound a bit respectful.

“Not unless you don’t behave,” Death said. “I’m going to let you go. I’d suggest you stay close, and keep out of the way.”

In just a few seconds, Augusta Evans was going to have a blowout, lose control of her car, and swerve into the path of a semi-truck.

Death started her stopwatch, and said to Hugh, “You might not want to watch this.”

Very shortly, a small red car had it’s right front tire blow out. The car swerved back and forth across the lanes a couple of times, before getting plowed into by a Peterbilt that had not even had time to hit the brakes.
Augusta appeared next to Hugh and Death on the side of the interstate. Death checked off a last item on her list, and stopped her stopwatch.

“Am I dead?” Augusta asked.

“Yes,” Death said. She reached out to Augusta. “Would you take my hand?”

Augusta appeared confused for a moment, looking at Hugh and Death, and she hesitated.

“I’d recommend just doing as she says,” Hugh said. “She’s kind of impatient.”

“I am not,” Death said. “You were rude.”

“This isn’t exactly what I expected the afterlife to be like,” Augusta said. She appeared more than a little bewildered.

“Welcome to the club, sweetheart,” Hugh said. “I was just trying to see the outcome of the title bout between The Mortician and Beautiful Ray, then I died, and now I’m on the side of a freeway in… Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“Kansas,” Death said, in spite of herself. She didn’t really feel like conversing, she just wanted to get these two to the other side and try to have a bite to eat.

“Kansas?” Hugh said. “Huh.”

Augusta hadn’t said another word yet. Death had stashed away her stopwatch and her pen, and reached out to the both of them.

“Would you take my hands, please,” she said.

Hugh took her hand, and said to Augusta, “you might as well, otherwise she’s likely to just grab you and drag you along anyway.”

Augusta hesitantly took Death’s hand. Death smiled gently at her.

The three of them stepped out of the world, and waited in the dark.

“So how many times have people made some kind of crack along the lines of not being in Kansas anymore when you bring them here?” Hugh asked Death.

“I lost count,” Death said.

Seconds later, the doorway appeared and opened.

“You first, Hugh,” Death said.

Hugh stepped up to the doorway, but stopped and turned back. He asked Augusta, “Before I go, you didn’t happen to hear the outcome of the bout, did you?”

Chapter Two - Meet Andi

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 01:21:00 +0000

Photo by Lenore Edman

Andi was randomly wandering the stacks in the Thomas St. Angelo Public Library of Cumberland Wisconsin, which was pretty much her favorite place in the world. She was currently home from college for the winter break. Andi was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin.

She hadn’t declared a major yet, because there were simply too many fascinating things to learn for her to simply narrow it down to one.

Andi wandered the stacks at the university library on a regular basis as well. She loved being around the books, and having easy access to information about almost anything she wanted to know. Plus the library was quiet, and she felt safe and comfortable there.

Since she had a couple weeks to kill in Cumberland, it seemed to her the best way to spend her time was at the library when she wasn’t otherwise occupied. It was home to her as much as the house she’d grown up in there in Cumberland.

At the moment, she was carrying a stack of six or seven books. One was about how to make soap, one about small business marketing, another about aboriginal mythology (she mainly wondered how, exactly, the Cumberland library had come to have it in their possession), a novel by her favorite author, and a couple of classics she’d meant to read. One of them was The Old Man and The Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.

The library had been nearly silent, as usual, while she walked through, casually browsing. Soon she found herself getting close to the far corner of the library, the books back here were mostly automotive repair manuals, and other similar books.

In the corner of the room, there were a few desks. The chairs were pulled together into a group. Sitting in the chairs were a group of high school kids in flannel shirts and baseball caps. Farm kids, they looked almost identical to the kids who had made her teenage years in Cumberland a living hell.

The kids in Cumberland weren’t all bad, but the ones that were tended to be big, ignorant, and mean. And Andi didn’t exactly fit in. Where most of the other kids in her school were interested in football, beer and what was in the pants of their favorite classmates, she was curious about what might be happening in the world outside of Cumberland.

The batch of teens sitting in the library, a couple of girls and three boys, were doing more talking than reading. Andi saw one of the girls glance at her, and whisper to the others. They all briefly looked at her, and started laughing. There was more murmured conversation, and giggles.

In high school, she would have been ashamed and have slunk off to another part of the library to avoid them. Now, however, Andi was twenty years old, and decided she didn’t have to take that from a bunch of stupid high school kids.

As such, she shushed them. Andi saw them all turn and stare at her, hostile. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by a bunch of seventeen year olds, though. She finished wandering that aisle in no particular rush, and decided to go to a different part of the library next. As she walked, she felt the weight of their stares, and she had to fight down an urge to turn and look at them.

When she was satisfied that she had enough books to keep her amused for a couple of days, she went to the front of the library and checked out. She still felt like she was being watched, but she dismissed the feeling and left the library. She was excited to get home and start digging through her new books.

It was still early in the afternoon, and it was a bright, clear day. It wasn’t super cold, yet, but it would be soon. In a couple of weeks, the ice on the lakes would be solid enough for fishermen to drive on, dragging their ice fishing shacks out to their favorite spots on the ice. Andi wondered how much fishing went on in the little temporary towns on the ice compared to how much drinking went on. She suspected there was probably more drinking than fishing, which was OK with her so long as someone sober drove the rest home.

Luckily there hadn’t been too much snow yet this year, so the walk from the library to her car wasn’t too treacherous and icy, just windy and a bit chilly. There had been plenty of rain in November and early December, and there were icy spots on the road in places that were shaded. The car was a white 1998 Chevrolet Malibu. She liked it, although she wished she had something a little smaller at school, since having a four door meant everyone wanted a ride somewhere.

Andi tossed her bag full of book in the back seat, hopped in and started it up. She’d been in the library long enough that the heater was blowing cold air again, so she turned that off. She’d be able to turn it on again in a mile or so, once the engine had heated up.

As she was pulling out of the parking lot of the library, starting her drive home, she heard the roar of a motorcycle’s exhaust. In the warm months, that wouldn’t be unusual at all, but in December it was curious. She looked around to see who the hardy soul was out riding in late December, but couldn’t see anyone. Soon she wondered if she’d actually heard it at all.

A couple minutes later, she turned the heat on again, and warm air rushed out of the vents in the dash.
Black Magic Woman was playing on the radio, and Andi sang along as she drove. She had been a bit lost in thought when she noticed a beat-up farm truck in her rear view mirror. Beat up trucks weren’t particularly unusual in Cumberland. What was unusual was that there appeared to be five people in the truck, and it was getting closer and closer to her.

Soon it was mere feet away from her rear bumper. All Andi could see in her rear view mirror was the grill of the truck, it seemed. The truck backed off, momentarily, and Andi was able to get a glimpse of who was in the truck.

It was the teens from the library.

Shit, Andi thought, wouldn’t you just know they’d decide they needed to show me up for shushing them when they were being disruptive assholes? Fucking farmers.

She was annoyed, but also scared. There was a whole lot of nothing out here, and it was cold. If they ran her off the road, she could be in real bad trouble if she was in a spot where she couldn’t get any cell phone reception.

The truck got closer again, and even closer than they’d been the last time. There was nowhere to pull over, at least not safely. The road didn’t have much of a shoulder, and if she lost control it was a sharp drop down the ditch and into trees.

The driver of the truck blew the horn, and Andi nearly jumped out of her skin. Her adrenaline was already pumping, and that cranked things up even more.

This is bad, this is bad, this is bad, ran crazily through her head as she scanned the side of the road for somewhere, anywhere, she could pull over and get them out from behind her.

Her stereo was still on, and Sugar, Sugar, of all things, was what the DJ had picked. Great, I’m going to die, and I’m going to die with this retarded song in my head, Andi thought.

The road dipped, and curved to the left. Andi noticed the road was covered by the shadow of the nearby trees, and had exactly enough time to say, “Shit,” when she felt the steering go loose and her car began to slide across the road, rather than continuing to turn.

After a couple of sickening moments of utter panic, the tires regained traction, and she was able to get the car pointed in the right direction before it careened off the road into the trees.

The pickup truck that had been following so close, however, was not so lucky. Andi caught a glimpse of the truck going right off the side of the road, and rolling over twice before hitting the trees that bordered the ditch.

She slowed down, briefly, and started pulling to the side of the road before she remembered that she didn’t have to stop to help people who were chasing her. And that it might, in fact, be a real bad idea to get anywhere near them now that they’d crashed and presumably wrecked their truck. Bullies rarely took responsibility for the outcomes of their actions, and frequently took out their frustrations on innocent bystanders.

As she was considering this, she glanced into her rearview mirror again just in time to see the truck erupt in a fireball.

“Holy shit,” Andi exclaimed. She couldn't believe her eyes.

She decided that she needed to at least call 911. Andi pulled to the side of the road, and was glad to discover that she did actually have some cell phone reception. She called, gave the dispatcher all the information she had, and then since there was nothing else she could do, she pulled back out onto the road and started driving home again.

A few moments later, she heard something that definitely sounded like a loud motorcycle roaring past, but she couldn’t see anything. She wondered if she was perhaps going crazy, or if maybe she should make an appointment to see her doctor.

As she drove, she decided she’d wait and see if she kept hearing phantom motorcycles. If she did, she decided, she’d talk to her doctor. If she didn’t, she’d just decide it had been a weird day and leave it at that.

Chapter One - Meet Death

noreply@blogger.com (Lucky) — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 01:09:00 +0000

Photo by Flowizm

It is said that time waits for no one, and it’s true. Time is a curmudgeonly old codger, and if you manage to meet up with him, he’ll tell you at great length about people who missed their appointments with him by fractions of a second. You’ll get the distinct impression that he’s proud of being such a stickler, and you’d be right. Of course, that’s because he hasn't done much else. Apart from, you know, keeping time since the creation of such, he hasn't done anything or been anywhere. Tolerance comes with experience, and Time is shockingly ignorant. He’s simply kept moving time forward, and gotten increasingly bitter and hostile as the years go by.

Death, on the other hand, is nearly infinite in her patience. She waits without complaint. In fact, she does her best to arrive early, to be sure she isn't late. Instead, she waits calmly until the appointed time. And because she has been everywhere and done nearly everything, you’ll find that she is tolerant and respectful towards everyone she meets. People may not look forward to meeting her, but afterwards, most find they are glad they have.

Well, almost. Even Death has a limit. But she is not going to reach that limit today.

And so, Death waits.

She had arrived a few minutes ago, unnoticed. It was rare for anyone to notice Death, unless it was their time to meet her (or because she wanted to be noticed. It’s hard to order a taco if the server doesn't realize you’re there). The few people who did notice her tended to either be mentally ill, or to have had a last minute cancellation of a previous meeting. It wasn't good when people noticed her.

The last person who had noticed her, a forty year old man, had seen her while she was waiting to collect a teen-aged girl who was about to meet the business end of a nineteen eighty seven Nissan 280z. The man who saw her had fled, shrieking.

Embarrassing.

Now, Death stood waiting in the corner of an operating room. The person on the table, Brandon Cray, was about to die when his heart stopped after complications related to the anesthesia.

Death removed a cheap, plastic stopwatch from a pocket in her cloak. Once, she had carried great hourglasses made of finely stained and polished wood, and crystal clear glass, with black volcanic sand quietly hissing through to mark the passing of the last few moments of her current client’s life. However, beautiful though they are, big hourglasses are heavy and unwieldy, and it keeps getting more difficult to replace a broken one. A plastic stopwatch keeps better time and can be found in any discount store for about a dollar.

She still had a couple of hourglasses back at her apartment, for nostalgia’s sake.

Death clicked her retractable pen open, made a note on the checklist she had her clipboard and then started the stopwatch. From here, everything was carefully orchestrated.

At the moment, the operating room was fairly quiet. The surgeon murmured instructions, and a few machines beeped and whirred.

The contemplative mood was disturbed somewhat when the surgeon inhaled sharply and said, “oh fuck.”

Death checked her stopwatch and checked an item off the list. Everything according to plan so far.

The room erupted, as much as an operating room ever erupts, in a bustle of activity and urgent orders from the surgeon. Several of the machines were making quite a racket now.

Death stood and watched the proceedings, silent and patient. After a few moments, the soul of the man being operated on appeared on the other side of the room. He had sandy blonde hair, brown eyes and a bushy mustache. Death checked her notes, it seemed like he was a little early. She scanned down the list, looking for something she had missed.

She was a stickler for details, and she didn't like unexpected surprises when she was working.

A quick review of her plan revealed that he was about to be revived, briefly. Actually, it looked like he was in for two revivals. So, he was maybe a little bit of a go-getter in his rush to get out of his body, but it wasn't a big deal. Death exhaled, a sigh of relief.

Brandon’s soul watched the medical team intently as they worked to revive him. Then he happened to glance up, and he noticed Death. She wasn't paying attention to him yet – it wouldn't be right to collect him before the plan was complete – so she didn't realize he was staring at her.

Until he said, “You weren't here a minute ago. Who are you?”

Death started, and looked up. She glanced at her notes, and saw that he was going to be revived, the first time, in a matter of seconds. She gave him her best reassuring smile.

“Try not to worry about it,” Death said, calmly.

Then Brandon’s soul vanished. At the same time, there were a few cheers from the team working on his body.

Death made a couple of notes on her checklist, and glanced at her stopwatch. That was unusual, she thought. She wondered if perhaps Brandon was actually eager to die. It happened. Of course, those people usually weren't revived. Souls that want to stay dead are remarkably resilient in their efforts to make sure they do, in fact, stay dead.

Odd.

“OK, I think we need to get Brandon closed up,” Death heard the surgeon say. She checked off another item on her list.

Seconds later, the alarms and whistles all let loose again.

“Can we shut those off please?” the surgeon shouted. He sounded impatient. Death glanced up at him.

Stephen Patterson, 74, stroke while golfing. The details of a person’s demise were as immediately obvious to her as that person’s eye color, or the shoes they were wearing.

Dr. Patterson was muttering curses in between the orders he was giving to his team.

“Well that doesn't sound good at all,” Brandon’s soul said. He was standing next to Death now. “Do you think I’m going to pull through, here?”

Death was momentarily at a loss for words. She hated to tell him that he was going to have to die a third time before he was done.

“And who are you, anyway?” Brandon said. Then he was gone again.

“Got him!” Dr. Patterson shouted, triumphant.

Death blinked rapidly a few times, then looked back at her checklist again. She made a few more notes, one of which was, “what’s the story here?”, and checked off a couple more items.

Soon enough, the cacophony of alarms and shouting began again, and Brandon’s soul appeared once more. He looked a little exasperated now.

“How many more times am I going to have to do this?” he asked. It seemed to Death that he didn't actually want an answer to that question, but after making a couple more notes, she pressed the button that stopped her stopwatch, put it back in her pocket, and answered him.

“None,” Death said. “You’re done now, Brandon.”

She smiled gently at him and held out her hand, palm up. “Will you take my hand?”

Brandon looked at Death then, and she saw his confusion clear away.

“Of course, black cloak, lurking… You’re the Grim Reaper,” Brandon said. “I didn't think you were real, though.”

Death laughed, kindly. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at Brandon.

“I am Death, and you are done here,” she said. “Will you come with me?”

She was still holding her hand out for him to take.

“Do I have a choice?” Brandon said.

Death looked carefully at him, trying to determine if he was likely to run off. She didn't really care to chase souls down anymore, but she also hated coming across souls, centuries later, that really should have come with her the first time.

“Always,” Death said, “though, I think you’ll find coming with me preferable to the alternative.”

Brandon looked at Death for any hint of a threat, or a sign that she was simply messing with him. He shuddered, almost imperceptibly, and decided that she was telling the truth. He took her hand.

There was a sensation of falling, or at least movement, and then the two of them stood in a dark, dark place. Brandon was aware that he could see Death, but he couldn't see anything else. Blackness surrounded them.

“Is this the afterlife?” Brandon said. He voice shook a little bit, and it was obvious that he was very concerned that he was going to have to spend eternity in the dark.

“No, this is,” Death said, then paused, trying to decide on the right way to explain it. “This is a waiting room. A lobby. You’re just passing through here on your way to the afterlife.”

“But we’re just standing here,” Brandon said.

“Yes, we are,” Death said. She pointed then, to a tiny light glimmering in the distance. “Look, and watch.”

The light grew and intensified, and after a few seconds, Brandon realized that it wasn't growing, it was getting closer. Whatever it was that was making all that light was travelling towards them at an incredible speed. Brighter, closer, more brilliant, and suddenly, it stopped, mere feet away from them.

As his eyes adjusted to the brilliance of the light, Brandon saw that what was in front of him was a massive pair of doors. They were ornately carved, and apparently radiating light from within. The doors swung open, and even more light poured out. It was too brilliant to see anything then.

“Is this the entrance to Heaven?” Brandon asked Death.

Death smiled, and said, “I really couldn't say. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

Brandon shielded his eyes, and walked through the doorway. Seconds later, Death was alone in the dark once more. She checked off the last item on Brandon’s list, and stepped back into our world.

She was outside of the hospital now. She’d barely had time to get her bearings again when her phone beeped at her, alerting her to her next appointment.

Once, she had carried a small iron bell, hanging from her belt, to alert her to the next death. It would begin chiming a few moments before she needed to collect someone, its chimes getting more incessant as the crucial moment approached. However, times had changed, and technology had made some of her tools obsolete. Like her treasured hourglasses, the bell now stayed in her apartment, a token of times past.

Of course she loved her bell, but the phone was a hell of a lot more convenient when it came to doing her job. It even told her the address she needed to go to next. Sometimes, aesthetics have to be sacrificed in favor of utility.

Her motorcycle was parked nearby. It had been a gift from Ares. He’d commissioned Hephaistos to build it for him, only to discover that motorcycles weren't really his thing. He’d also had a bit of a crush on Death, which may have had an impact on his decision.

The motorcycle was low, and long, and very black. Its chrome shone like an exquisite silver mirror.

She didn't need a motorcycle to get around. She could just appear where ever she needed to be, simply by thinking about it. However, sometimes, utility can be sacrificed in favor of aesthetics too.

And Death loved her bike.

She swung her leg over the saddle, and the engine roared to life, as it always did, its exhaust thundering away even though no one would hear it or notice it. If someone had been watching, which they weren't, they would have seen Death rocket across the hospital’s parking lot, blue flames shooting from the exhaust pipes, the engines roar making building shake and car alarms go off, before suddenly vanishing as though she had never been there at all.