by Allan Hatt
Twenty-one humans believed Pain and Death’s offer of immortality was a rather sick joke being made by their friends with a really stupid sense of humor.
Ten humans produced guns and tried to ventilate Pain and Death’s impervious bodies. Pain was amused by the effort, but recognized a failure when he saw one (he just didn’t recognize Failure).
A surprising number of humans, forty-two all tolled, gave up their wallets or purses and ran away screaming for help. Death kept their identification cards for future reference.
Six humans asked if they were being taped for some popular reality style television program.
One human died outright when Pain and Death approached him. “Great,” said Death. “More paperwork. Like I need this aggravation.”
Finally, Pain spotted Failure in his peripheral vision nonchalantly dismantling the brake system on a car. Pain approached Failure and told her to bugger off before he turned all of her toilet paper into rusty barbed wire and then gave her case of explosive diarrhea. Quite sure that Pain wasn’t bluffing or incapable of the threat, Failure thought it best to leave the pair alone and amuse herself by tampering with baby monitors.
Failure had just disappeared when a human named Victor Klein walked straight into Death, who had been standing on the sidewalk watching the exchange between Pain and Failure. Death wouldn’t have noticed the human at all if it wasn’t for the loud noise it made when it fell ass first onto the pavement. Pain quickly strolled over to see what all the noise was about.
Victor looked up frightened at Pain and Death and asked, “Do you have any Pez?”
Pain and Death looked at each other in total confusion.
“I said, ‘ Do you have any Pez?’” repeated Victor, his voice being just this side of hysterical.
“Uh, no,” answered Pain. “We don’t.”
The human jumped cheerfully to his feet and heartily shook their hands. “Then I take it you aren’t policemen. Or policewomen,” he said, a wide, almost sane smile on his face. “All policemen, and policewomen, too, carry Pez dispensers. It makes them feel superior.”
“Uh,” said Death. “Um.”
Pain asked, “What difference would it make if we were policemen?”
“Or policewomen?” added Death.
Victor looked around quickly and moved towards Pain and Death before saying, “It’s because they’re after me, you see. The policemen, and policewomen, too, that is.”
“Oh? Any particular reason?”
“Probably because I recently escaped from the Perpetually Disturbed Mental Institution and Steak Ranch.”
Pain’s face beamed with pure joy. Death’s skull seemed to glow and, if he had the ability, he would have smiled. They both recognized that they might have accidentally found a potential candidate for their game. They had great success in the past with those that were slightly unbalanced mentally but seemingly functional otherwise.
“Thank you, Fate,” whispered Pain. He asked Victor, “If you don’t mind me asking, what did you do to end up in this institution?”
“I prevented my girlfriend from being abducted into another dimension by the High Priest of Kwork,” answered Victor proudly, as if this were an actual, noteworthy accomplishment.
Pain and Death visibly slumped. This piece of meat was clearly insane but not in the manner they had initially hoped. They had felt a similar sense of disappointment once seat belts and airbags were invented for automobiles. Previous to that, automobile accidents were a growth/growth industry. Lots of blood and suffering. A limb here, an organ there. Maybe a little decapitation. Now car crashes produced little more than crushed metal and plastic boxes with relatively whole people inside. Hardly worth any excitement at all.
“Sadly,” continued Victor, “The policemen, and policewomen, too, called my preventive acts ‘murder’. I think a judge agreed with that hasty assessment as well. So did a bunch of people with the first name of Jury. Funny that a group of people with the same first name would all get together like that. I mean, the odds of that spontaneously happening must be pretty high.”
“Uh,” said Death. “Um.”
Victor said, “The ironic part to all of this is that I learnt, while wrongly institutionalized for a crime that I didn’t commit, that my girlfriend had actually been murdered the same day I was arrested. Very sad, in a way.”
“Funny that,” said Pain, getting interested.
“One of life’s many coincidences,” said Victor with little discernible emotion in his voice. He took a quick breath and said, “Although, when I think about it, preventing her from entering the Kwork dimension did leave her in a state that could’ve been mistaken as death. She was awfully still and silent afterwards, but women are like that when they don’t get what they want aren’t they? They sulk and moan about the pain. And complain that they’re getting cold. That they’re getting faint from loss of blood. Women overreact like that about everything. Everything is one big production. Hysterical. They're all hysterical meat.”
“Blood?” asked Death, trying to raise an eyebrow he didn’t have.
“Oh, yeah,” said Victor. “It was all over the place. It was a mess like you wouldn’t believe. Preventing inter-dimensional travel is some messy business, let me tell you.”
Pain suddenly felt an inspiration.
“What if I told you,” began Pain, “that this High Priest of whatever was still up to his old tricks?”
“Do you think that's something you're likely to tell me?” asked Victor, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“It might be.”
“Then I think I might be a bit upset,” said Victor. “I might even be highly motivated to try and prevent him from ensnaring other people of this dimension and secreting them away to his. That's just wrong. And a bit tacky. I mean, one should pick up chicks in their home dimension.”
“Maybe he doesn't have Internet in his dimension,” said Death, “and has a hard time making a love connection. This planet is pretty well known for its loose people.”
Pain glared at Death.
“What?” said Death. “It's true. This planet is practically a red light district.”
Ignoring Death, Pain said, “For the record we completely agree with you, human. This High Priest guy has no business in this dimension. We have, in fact, been trying to track him down ourselves. We're special agents of the dimensional police. We've been tasked to take down this heathen.”
“Yeah,” said Death, catching on to where Pain was going with this conversation. “He's like a greased weasel. A greasy, weaselly, uh...thing.”
“We could use the help of a highly motivated individual,” said Pain. “This planet is a mess of people being charmed by the High Priest. We could really use someone willing to seek these people out and prevent them from being kidnapped. We have limited resources and have to focus on tracking down the High Priest himself. We just can't spend any time preventing these crimes ourselves. But maybe we can hire an operative to do that for us. There are some amazing benefits.”
“Interesting,” said Victor, deep in thought. “But where do you stand on the issue of flickering streetlights?”
“Well...” said Death. He didn't even try to finish his sentence, realizing he didn't have the capacity to properly address total nonsense. He thought it best to defer to Pain.
“We can discuss that later,” said Pain. “Let's talk about what we need from you. And what we can do for your hard work and participation at bringing this scum bucket to justice.”
* * *
The deal went something like this:
To Pain and Death's surprise, Victor wasn't particularly interested in immortality for his efforts, requesting to substitute a steady supply of Pez to him instead. He preferred a Spider-man dispenser but a Jughead one would do just as well.
Victor's next request was that for every person he ritualistically prevented from being kidnapped to Kwork he wanted one hundred and twenty-five Kworkians destroyed. He thought this would be
a good way to send a punitive message to the High Priest and inspire him to quit his evil ways or to give himself up to the proper authorities.
Pain and Death explained that Victor wasn't to ever reveal his source of Pez to anyone under any circumstances. If he didn't maintain the strictest confidence about working for Pain and Death he would automatically expire. If the authorities of this world caught Victor while discharging his duties he would also automatically expire to prevent him from being taken into custody and handed over to Kworkian operatives working in this dimension.
Along with his initial supply of Pez in his preferred dispenser, Victor received a cheap plastic badge that identified him as a deputy of the dimensional police and a pair of enchanted glasses that allowed him to see people who were in danger of being abducted or were agents from Kwork working in this dimension. The badge was actually a slightly torn beer label Pain had removed from a discarded bottle in a nearby alleyway and the glasses had clear glass in them, having the only special property of making the user look like a nerd. These were details that neither Pain nor Death thought they should share with the human.
With these details worked out, all parties shook hands and then went their separate ways.
* * *
“Look,” said Pain through slurps of nuclear waste soup, “he's at it again.”
Death hopped quickly, and quite nimbly for an animated skeleton wearing a long cloak, over to the table and took a position in front of the widescreen television they had set up to monitor Victor's activities. The television had been enchanted to tune into Victor’s unique biorhythms and automatically turned itself on when his body chemistry and brain activity indicated he was preparing for murder.
On the screen Victor happily hummed a Barry Manilow song to himself while slicing a helpless human to bloody chunks.
“Quite a unique slicing style,” observed Death, transfixed.
“Yeah,” agreed Death. “He takes pride in his work. Can't help but love a good psychotic. Man, they have a focus I totally lack.”
It took a few moments but the victim eventually lay still, eyes wide open in stifled fear and panic. Various body parts and dislodged pieces of flesh were spread haphazardly around the body. Victor stood passively in a pool of the victim's cooling blood, popped a candy into his mouth and said, “Maybe we should start seeing other people. I don't think this is working out.”
Pain laughed so hard he nearly spewed up his entire digestive system. Death clicked his teeth together in approval.
Pain swallowed hard and said, “That was classic. I wish I had recorded that. I'm really beginning to appreciate how efficient a mental human can be. Given a little direction, the entertainment value alone is off the scale.”
“It's almost like he had help,” said Death.
“I guess a little incentive goes a long way with the psychotic crowd. Now, we have to keep up our end of the bargain. Work your magic, pal.”
“Of course,” said Death. He waved a hand symbolically in the air and said, “There. One hundred and twenty-five Kworkians down the drain. Screw it. Let's make it an even two hundred.”
Death found his own joke so absurd that he burst out laughing. He clutched his ribs, rocked back in his chair, threw himself backward with too much force and immediately fell off the chair he was seated on. This made Pain laugh so hard he lost control of all his bodily functions. The ensuing shit, fart, piss, belch, hiccup, vomit and cough woke up their neighbor, Dream.
Dream proceeded to the bathroom, urinated while fixing his hair in the mirror, then went back to bed and promptly fell asleep again.
* * *
In a mere eight months Victor had managed to slaughter twenty-four people, misguidedly believing he was serving a higher cause and preventing these poor people from being kidnapped to a hostile dimension. He did this without being caught or even implicated in any of these crimes.
* * *
Pain held a cookbook in one hand, thumping a finger on a page with the other hand at a specific paragraph and said, “It says right here that pancreas is instrumental in the preparation of sweet bread. Look. It says so right there.”
Pain gave the cookbook to Death who scanned the indicated paragraph.
“Well, now I know something I didn't really want to know,” said Death. “So, that last person, he took their pancreas and made pastry?”
“That's what I said but you wouldn't believe me,” replied Pain triumphantly.
“That's gross,” said Death. He closed the cookbook, placed it on the table and failed at an attempt to look disgusted. The failure based on the fact that a skull has no facial features. “I was never a big fan of murder and gourmet food being mixed together. Kind of lacks class or something.”
“I like the style of it myself.”
“You would.”
“Hey, I like progress and innovation.”
“You know,” said Death, a tentative tone to his voice, “maybe we should tell him to take it down a notch. I mean, he’s eating people now and that’s a little weirder than I like.”
“I don't believe this,” exclaimed Pain. “You're turning chicken. You're worried we're going to get caught, aren't you? You're afraid someone in administration is going to notice we're screwing around.”
“It's not that at all,” replied Death getting angry.
“What is it then?”
“What it is,” said a harmonic voice behind Pain and Death, “is the two of you being flushed down a celestial toilet along with all the shenanigans you've been engaging in for the last millennium.”
Pain and Death froze where they sat. Neither of them had to turn around to know whom it was that stood behind them in the doorway to their room. They did so anyway.
“Hi, Gabe,” said Pain pleasantly. “How's the cherubs and seraphim?”
“It's Gabriel,” said the archangel Gabriel,” not Gabe or any variation of the name you can summon from the pitiful depths of your consciousness. And this is far from a social call, so do not expect me answer your attempt at pleasantries.”
“I knew this was going to happen,” whispered Death.
“Just keep quiet,” whispered Pain. Raising his voice, he asked Gabriel, “What can we do for you, old friend?”
“As I stated,” said Gabriel, his wings twitching slightly and the cheeks of his perfectly structured face reddening, “I am not a friend. Old or otherwise. Pretending familiarity not earned is insulting. I would advise you of the dangers of insulting a member of the Host.”
Gabriel grasped the hilt of the fiery sword that hung majestically at his waist. His perfectly formed hand gently wrapped itself around the golden handle. The implied threat of this action was not lost on Pain or Death.
“No offense intended,” said Pain. His grin slacked into something resembling a grimace and he repressed the urge to snidely ask the archangel for forgiveness. “Come in. Make yourself comfortable at least.”
Death tried to include himself in the conversation by nervously gesturing to an open chair for Gabriel to sit in. Instead, he smacked the back of his bony hand on the edge of the chair and almost tipped it over.
“Ouchie,” said Death.
“As for the reason I am here,” said Gabriel without acknowledging Pain and Death's hospitality, “I am aware that you two have been infringing on company policy and have been directly meddling with the affairs of the human race.”
“We are?” asked Pain.
“Indeed, you are,” replied Gabriel.
“Oh,” said Death. “I did not know this.”
“I find that statement highly suspect,” said Gabriel, facing Death directly.
“Okay,” said Death. “Shutting up now.”
“What about the Divine Intervention clause?” asked Pain.
“Are you stating that you are divine?” asked Gabriel, turning his attention to Pain.
“I'm not sure,” replied Pain. “Are you asking?”
“No. I am not. I am, in fact, telling you that the two
of you combined are not remotely close to divine. Divinity requires omniscience and there is only one being that fulfills that criteria,” said Gabriel. To illustrate his point he jutted a perfect finger in the air towards the ceiling.
“Got it,” said Pain. “So, that clause is exclusively for Him.”
Gabriel grimaced and pointed his finger at the floor, saying, “And the Other One, who seems to delight in pushing the boundaries of that clause to the limits.”
“Interesting,” said Pain, filing away that information away for a later time.
“I have two expectations at this time,” said Gabriel. “I expect you both to clean up the mess you've created and then to promptly return to properly conducting your duties. I trust this is understood?”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” said Death.
Pain coughed into his hand. The cough remarkably sounded like, “Asshole.”
Gabriel found it beneath him to address this childish insult. Having completed his task he disappeared with one wide flap of his white wings. No air stirred in his wake and not one feather fell to the ground as he soared out of Pain and Death's room.
Pain scowled at Death.
“We're a little boned,” said Death.
“Nah,” said Pain dismissively. “Just pop down and waste that guy. Problem solved.”
“You really have no idea what I do, do you?” asked Death. “Like, anything beyond the basic details.”
“What? You take souls all the time.”
“We made a deal with him!”
“So? It was an empty deal.”
“If I make a deal with someone I have to honor it. No matter how stupid it is.”
“Seriously?”
“Them's the rules. I thought you knew that. It's why I don't play chess with humans anymore.”
“I'm still not seeing the problem here.”
“I agreed he wouldn't get taken unless he told someone about us or got caught by the authorities. Unless either of those condition arise I can't touch him.”
“You're just telling me this now?”
“You're just asking me now! Besides, I figured he would have gotten busted by the police by now.”