Death Sucks

by Andrew Mallen

  Bobby saw then that Sin wasn’t the only casualty of the falling scythe. Gordon lay motionless, pinned by the blade that had buried itself almost to the center of its curve in the old man and the ground beneath him.

  Sin followed Bobby’s gaze and coughed wicked laughter at what he saw, “You fool…you killed him for me after all. You fool! You killed god!”

  Oh shit! I fucked up!

  *

  “He’s still alive!” Maria cried out from where she knelt beside Gordon.

  “Not for long bitch,” Sin sneered. “And when he dies…it will be over. I will be…God and you…both of you…will endure suffering beyond…”

  “Oh shut the fuck up already!” Bobby screamed. “Listening to you blow yourself all the time is about the most painful thing I ever had to listen to. Just shut the fuck up asshole, nobody wants to hear it. Reality check dickhead, your ass is over there along with your twig and berries. You’re dying dude so just do us all a fucking solid and die quietly.”

  “We have to do something Bobby, he’s…he’s dying!” Maria cried.

  Calling 9-1-1 ain’t going to work. Where’s Lenny when you need him?

  “CPR…I learned a few things from Lenny and Roger,” Bobby offered as he knelt beside her.

  Lame.

  “If he dies first…” Maria began to explain what the Reaper already knew.

  Bobby was no Dr. Dreamy but he could tell Gordon only had a few seconds left on the clock, “We can’t do much for Gordo but we can hurry Mr. Personality over there on his merry way.”

  Sin had already figured out their only option and was pulling himself through the grass to where his sword had fallen.

  “Sword?” Bobby asked as he scanned the gruesome scene.

  “There,” Maria pointed.

  “Shit,” Bobby should have known it wouldn’t be right there where he needed it to be instead of thirty feet away.

  Sin had reached his own sword and turned back toward Gordon and swiped his unraveling intestines aside to clear a path to his last chance at victory.

  “Go! Hurry!” Maria shouted in panic.

  “He’s half a guy, I can take him without it!” Bobby assured her as he watched Sin drag himself toward them fearlessly.

  Pretty fucking spry for a guy with his guts in tow.

  “No!” Maria shrieked. “Use the sword Bobby! Go!”

  “Oh! Right!” Bobby remembered and ran for the sword.

  *

  It took about five seconds to reach it. He scooped it up and turned around, just in time to see Sin strike a death blow.

  “No. No! You motherfucker!” Bobby’s vision went red. His throat loosed a wail of such rage that, even as Sin struck again, he looked to see its source.

  Sin smiled then, wide and wicked, knowing he had won.

  No fucking way! No way! This can’t happen! It can’t! Please, please don’t let this be happening.

  Sin raised his sword and struck the Angel again as Bobby sprinted toward him. Maria’s back was cleaved wide open, shattered ribs jutting through her tattered flesh. Her beautiful hair hung over her face, the face Bobby loved more than he’d ever loved anything or anyone.

  You bastard!

  “It’s over dog!” Sin shouted as Bobby rushed toward him. “It’s over Grant. Stop and I will show you mercy.”

  Mercy ain’t going to cut it asshole. Mercy has left the building. You’re going to die right her and right now!

  “Your god is dead. I am all there is now,” Sin replied, holding up one bloody hand like a crossing guard.

  Bobby sliced it off without hesitation.

  “Fool,” Sin grunted, cradling the spewing stump.

  Bobby swung again, blinded by fury, and Sin ducked easily beneath the wild swing. “Stop boy!” he commanded.

  “Hell no! You gotta die dude! Even if it’s just for a few minutes, even if I have to pay for it forever, you’re gonna fucking die! It’s your turn asshole, it’s your fucking turn to feel some pain.” Bobby needed him to understand, to know that killing Maria, killing his girl, would not flush, “You might be a god or Satan or whatever but you killed my girl and that, you piece of shit, can’t happen without some serious fucking consequences.”

  Sin fumbled with his remaining hand to heft his sword in a feeble attempt to defend himself. Bobby kicked it from his grip as soon as he raised it. Sin tried to crawl backwards but entangled himself in his innards.

  Bobby circled the fallen demon, trying to decide what to chop off next to maximize the monster’s pain and suffering. Sin played his final card and morphed back into his scaly, horned self. He was still in two and one armed but far more intimidating than the groveling surfer. “This is your last chance boy,” he warned.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Bobby replied and hefted the sword high above his head.

  “You can be my Second,” Sin cried in desperation. “You can rule beside me.”

  “Really?” Bobby cocked his head like an inquisitive puppy.

  Sin’s black eyes widened with hope. “Yes! Yes! You can rule! You can have any world you want.”

  “Any world?”

  “Yes! Any one! Earth if you want it! Name it and it is yours.”

  “How about planet go fuck yourself?” Bobby smiled and swung the ancient blade, driving it with all the anger and all the pain burning inside him.

  Sin stared, wide eyed and frozen, at Bobby as his severed head rolled to a stop at the Reaper’s feet. “Bitch,” Bobby spat.

  The demon was dead.

  *

  Bobby crumbled to his knees, dropping God’s sword as the weight of what happened overcame him. He dreaded what was to come. Not the inevitable return of Sin or the eternity of suffering but seeing Maria brutalized and knowing it was because he failed her. If he had the whole mind-bending, death of the dead thing figured right, the Angel wouldn’t be lucky enough to have escaped like Gordon. Seeing her murdered once was bad enough, being forced to witness her tormented by Sin’s minions until the end of time was more than his mind could handle without cracking.

  Bobby cried. Tears coursed from his eyes and snot bubbled from his nose but he didn’t care. Lost to his sorrow, unaware of everything save the cold, heavy ache that filled him, he wailed with all he had that could.

  Maria, I’m sorry babe, I’m so fucking sorry. I love you so much. I should have been faster, I should have saved you. I’m so sorry.

  “Wow, if I knew you were such a cry baby I never would have fallen in love with you,” the Angel’s voice sounded as if it came from right behind him.

  Bobby spun on his knees, sure it was the result of his mind finally giving way under the burden of guilt and sorrow but unable to resist its lure. Maria stood, as fresh as a daisy, beside Gordon, who looked like he just climbed off the fish stick box. They smiled at him lovingly. Gordon held out one hand to help him to his feet.

  *

  “What the fuck is going on?” Bobby didn’t trust the apparition, sure it was the first of the uncountable cruelties Sin promised.

  “We did it Bobby,” Maria replied, her own tears beginning to flow. “We won.”

  “Thank you Robert,” Gordon breathed and bowed before the flabbergasted Reaper.

  Bobby wasn’t buying what they were selling. “I saw you guys die. I saw what Sin did to you Maria, or whoever you are. I saw you…her butchered, I saw her bones, her guts.”

  Bobby quickly checked to see if the bodies were still there. They were gone. Sin’s scythe stood alone, rooted in the muck. “What the fuck?”

  “Maria shielded me,” Gordon explained, resting one hand on the Angel’s shoulder. “There was still life in me. Sin tried to finish me but Maria threw herself in front of his blade. She gave her life to save mine and gave you the time you needed to finish what I could not. She gave her life to save us all.”

  She deserves more than a pat on the back for that my man.

  “Yes she does Robert,” Gordon agreed with the Reaper’s unspoken sentiment.

/>   Dumbass! Are you ever going to learn?

  “I…um, I…but…” Bobby tried to speak but couldn’t.

  “It’s okay Bobby,” Maria assured him lovingly. “It’s all over Bobby. You did it.”

  “But what if I didn’t? What if I waited too long? What if I had taken the prick’s deal? What if I fucked things up like I always do?”

  “Then we would not be here,” Gordon explained casually. “There is no use considering what might have been, it will never be. What matters is what is. We are. Sin is not. You, Robert, you are the reason for all that is and all that will be.”

  “Whoa…too deep Gordo.” Bobby would have preferred the simple version but saw nothing but truth in the old fisherman’s clear, blue eyes.

  *

  Bobby turned to look at Sin. The devil’s eyes, black and lifeless, stared back at him with the same truth. He was dead. It was over.

  “So he’s really dead? Like dead dead? Like never see him again dead?”

  “Yes,” Gordon replied with none of the joy the statement roused in the Reaper. “My son is dead.”

  Bobby saw His sadness and His truth, Gordon mourned Sin despite all he had done.

  I’m such an asshole.

  “Sorry dude.”

  Gordon reached out with both hands, taking Bobby’s. “I am too. Sin…he chose this path. I could do no more for him. You did what I could not and for that I will be forever grateful.”

  Bobby squeezed Gordon’s trembling hands in his own. “No problem big guy, you’d do the same for me.”

  The old fisherman pulled the Reaper toward him and wrapped him in a long, powerful embrace. Bobby hugged back, holding the old man tightly as they cried together, for far different reasons. When Gordon pulled away, unashamed by his sorrow, Bobby’s heart ached of Him. “You okay Gordo?” he asked foolishly.

  “I will be.”

  Before Bobby could say another word Maria stepped between them, threw her arms around him and squeezed him against her shuddering chest as the dam she’d built to hold back her emotions gave way.

  Aren’t I the popular one?

  She wept against his neck for a long time and Bobby let her. His own tears flowed once again, released by the love he felt for her and from her. When the weeping slowed, trying his best to play it cool, Bobby said, “It’s okay babe. It’s all over.”

  “It is over,” she whispered against his neck, too afraid to let him go.

  “You went and got yourself killed crazy lady,” Bobby breathed in her ear. “Promise me no more hero sh…stuff, okay?”

  “I will if you will,” she whispered back, her warm breath sending shivers down his spine.

  “Wait a tick, why am I leaking?” Bobby pried himself gently from Maria’s grip, swiped at his nose and regarded the snot on his fingers as if fine art. “Why am I leaking?”

  “You’re alive,” Gordon replied from where he stood watching the love lost couple’s reunion with complete satisfaction.

  “Alive?”

  “Alive,” Gordon assured him, smiling an ‘I’ve got a secret’ smile.

  Closing his eyes Bobby listened and at once heard the steady beat of his heart from within him. He inhaled deeply and felt Yoba’s sweet air fill his chest. “I’m alive! I’m a-fucking-live! Yeah boyeeee!” Bobby howled at the orange sky.

  “Bobby!” Maria chided.

  “Yeah babe?” he looked at the Angel with a smile of pure, unfiltered, immeasurable happiness.

  Maria saw what she felt in her heart and smiled, “Language.”

  Shit girl you’d better loosen up because I’m going to love the shit out of you forever.

  “Yes you are,” Gordon chuckled.

  11.

  God, the Angel and the Reaper sat overlooking the small white pond in the next valley over from the carnage they left behind.

  “First things first Gordo,” Bobby said, tugging at his robe. “Can you please get me out of this thing?”

  “Of course.”

  The rough material immediately disappeared. There was no more prickling fibers assaulting every inch of his skin, no more itching, no more burning, and no more pain. Looking down, terrified of finding himself naked, he discovered something different and smiled. A threadbare Guy Harvey T-shirt with a mako bursting from the back, faded khaki American Eagle shorts and a pair of slip-on Onitsuka Tigers hung where the dreaded uniform of his now defunct vocation used to. “Holy moly, rock and rolly!” he cried in delight. “This is my favorite outfit. How’d you know?”

  Gordon and Maria smiled, tears of joyed perched and ready to fall.

  “So now what?” Bobby asked the billion dollar question.

  “Hell is no more,” Gordon replied. “The world still exists but not as it used to be.”

  “Really? Already?” Maria asked, as surprised as Bobby.

  “Of course,” Gordon replied with a nonchalant shrug.

  “So what about all the…the souls that are…were there?” Bobby asked knowing there were a lot that deserved their freedom but more than a few that needed exactly what Hell offered as well.

  “All those suffering there were set free,” Gordon answered with pride.

  “All of them?” Bobby cried in disbelief.

  “All who suffered, yes.”

  “Jones?” It was the first name on a long list Bobby compiled who deserved their fate.

  “He is among those I have yet to decide what to do with. Those souls who embraced Sin’s teachings, those who savored their roles as tormentors, tortures and Reapers, they remain. I am not sure what to do with them. This, all that has happened, has taught me a great deal Robert. One very important lesson is that forgiveness cannot be pure if I do not offer it to all.”

  Bobby shook his head, “They need to be punished. They hurt people. They ruin people’s lives and they don’t give a shit, not one, about any of it.”

  “Then don’t they need it even more? What they did after death was not entirely their fault. They had little choice.”

  “Sure they did.”

  “Did you?” Gordon asked, knowing the answer but wanting Bobby to find it for himself. “Could you refuse Sin when in his world?”

  Bobby shook his head. He did things in Hell that he never thought himself capable of. He couldn’t deny the place brought out the worst in him but refused to say it.

  “Hang around a barber shop long enough and eventually you’ll get a haircut,” Gordon offered a simple yet profound analogy.

  What the fuck is he babbling about now?

  “Bobby!” Maria cried yet again.

  You’re in here too now? Could you both please get out of my head? That little trick has definitely run its fucking course.

  Maria studied her feet in shame. Gordon shrugged and nodded.

  “I just don’t get it Gordo,” Bobby said.

  “No matter how good you are, no matter how pure your intentions, if you soak them in hate long enough they’ll eventually spoil.”

  “So you think Jones is good, like, on the inside, deep down in the depths of his nasty, twisted, putrid, rotten heart?”

  “Wow,” Maria groaned, rolling her eyes. “Tell us how you really feel?”

  “Maybe,” Gordon replied boldly.

  “No offense Gordo but you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Bobby provided an analogy of his own. “You’re not even in the right forest.”

  Gordon chuckled. “Good one.”

  “Thanks.”

  “All are born pure. Free will allows the living to choose their own path. Yet free will is not always free, and rarely easy. A mistake in youth can destroy one’s future no matter how great the potential or how pure the heart. One bad choice can shackle even the strongest of heart to a life to suffering. Yes, there are those who rush toward dishonesty and mayhem because they crave it. There are others who find themselves surrounded by it and see no other path. Some who falter are victims of the bad choices of others and end up living a life they did not choose but cannot escape. Nothi
ng is as simple as good and evil, right and wrong. You can do right for the wrong reason and wrong for the right reason. Life, living, in your world as in all others, is not easy Robert.”

  “No shit, death’s no picnic either.”

  “To judge, to decide whether a life has been well-lived, is impossible unless you have lived that life yourself. Every decision, every thought, every feeling, every act, every word leads and shapes life. Those who find themselves lost should not be abandoned, it is they that need me the most, it is then that I need to be there to stand beside them. I was wrong to turn my back on the poor souls who struggle. It was wrong to let Sin have them. They are my children, each one a part of me. By abandoning them, I failed myself as much as I failed them. I will never do that again. I will never turn away from those who need me.”

  Bobby heard the pain in His words and saw the humiliation in His eyes. He felt for Him, he truly did, but he also needed Him to understand. “I hear what you’re saying big guy,” he said softly, controlling the anger building inside. “I do but you gotta understand, there are some really sick mother…”

  “Bobby,” Maria growled through her tears of empathy for her Lord.

  “Some seriously messed up people down there, I mean some seriously super-evil, black-hearted, psychopaths.”

  “Fear,” Gordon offered the one word and waited.

  “Yeah?”

  “Fear is at the root of it all. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of love. Fear. Every act of hate, violence and deceit originates in fear. Sin knew this all too well and used it to create his world. He wielded it like a weapon. All those under his reign endured constant fear. You know this better than I do, you were there. That fear changed you, turning you into one of those you so easily denounce. The only reason you were able to resist it and overcome it was because you found love. Jones and Rachkovsky, and all those who so quickly joined Sin will stay where they are until I find a way to discover their truth. It may take a while but I will not abandon them. Maybe they will rediscover love and find a way back to me.”

  “Come on Gordo, love? Those bastards? That’s a bit of a stretch.”

  “Love is the greatest, most powerful force of all. A sliver of love can destroy a mountain of fear. Love saved you Robert. That same love saved me. It saved everything.”