Death

by George Pendle

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “There were times on Earth when I thought—”

  “Who gives a shit, Death? Really. I mean, who gives a shit?”

  “Well quite, I mean, that’s what I thought as well, but—”

  “You’re not listening to me, Death, and I’m certainly not listening to you. You are the dullest being I have ever spoken to in my entire life. What did you used to do, bore people into the afterlife?”

  “Now, look—”

  “No! Don’t say it! The sound of your voice makes me sick!” She stormed off, shaking her head in irritation. Eddie passed her on the way.

  “Hi, Sympathy,” said Eddie. “Still only feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “Fuck off, you breathy freak,” she spat, before stopping and looking him up and down with disgust. “I mean, Bad Flute Playing? What the fuck? You shouldn’t even exist. You’re a joke. A bad one. One that doesn’t make people laugh. One that people wish had never been said. One that makes people uncomfortable just remembering it. That’s the kind of joke you are.”

  Eddie shrugged his shoulders. He had been in the clinic long enough not to take offense at such outbursts. He told me there was a time when Meekness had gone on a rampage, and Eddie had only just avoided being crushed in his mammoth serrated jaws by disguising himself as a nearsighted mouse with emphysema. Meekness had been so stunned by this incredibly diffident vision that he had immediately shrunk back to his normal size, apologized to everyone, and gone back to Earth the next day.

  One day, on our way back from a long walk in the forest of burning tires, Eddie and I came back to the main building to find a huge commotion taking place. There on the top of the building stood a figure I recognized as Misfortune. He was old and haggard and bent double, and his nightgown was ripped in the most awkward places. He wore a noose around his neck, the other end of which was tied to the clinic’s flagpole, from which a black flag flew at half-mast.

  “He’s escaped again,” said Eddie as he drew up beside me. “They usually don’t let him near anyone else because, well, you can see.”

  Bits of masonry were falling off the building, slamming into the ground around us. A sudden fissure opened up in the ground and swallowed up one of the other patients. It began to rain. Knives.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked. “He seems to be working fine.”

  “That’s how unlucky he is,” replied Eddie.

  “I’m sick of bad luck,” cried Misfortune. “Nothing ever goes right. Ever. It’s not fair.”

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” the doctors chanted in unison.

  “I’m not,” cried Misfortune. “I’m doing the wisest thing I can possibly do.”

  “Let’s talk about this,” intoned the doctors as one. “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

  But it was. Misfortune tightened the noose around his neck, stepped off the building, and fell. The rope snapped taut, the muscles in Misfortune’s neck bulged, but at that precise moment the knot tying the rope to the flagpole came unbound. Misfortune continued to fall, though, and seemed set to end it all when twenty feet from the ground his billowing nightshirt caught an updraft of air and inflated. He floated down to the ground in complete safety.

  “He tries it every few days, but he keeps surviving,” said Eddie. “Last week he tried to slit his wrists but ended up cutting his nails.”

  I later heard that some of the doctors believed Misfortune had in fact contracted a virulent form of Good Luck; how else to explain his remarkable escapes? But anyone who saw his tear-stained face as he was led back to the high-security wing would have recognized this diagnosis to be well wide of the mark.

  Visitations

  I did not respond well to the treatment. Everything just seemed so morbid now. How could I possibly be enthused about ending Life when it was the one thing I truly cared for? I didn’t even bother going through the motions of recovery. I remained optimistic and happy. I secretly spat out the depressants I was given, and to the despair of my doctors, I began to jog.

  “What are you doing, Death?” they’d cry.

  “Keeping fit,” I replied.

  “But you don’t need to,” they’d complain. “You’re not alive.”

  “It never hurts to be prepared,” I’d say, and bound off.

  One morning, as I ran through the grounds of the clinic, I heard a sound like a million screams hurtling toward me. It was Mother. I stopped in my tracks as her giant serpentine body slithered purposefully toward me. Father followed, his wings stirring up a hurricane.

  “How…How…are you, son?” said Mother, trying to contain the molten tears gushing from her empty eyes.

  “Fantastic,” I said. “Couldn’t feel better. Really, really happy.”

  “Oh, the embarrassment!” thundered Father.

  “Hush now, dear,” said Mother sadly. “It happens to lots of beings. Look at the Seven Deadly Sins.”

  The Seven Deadly Sins had begun as Mother’s protégés, but had since become the clinic’s most famous patients. It was rumored that they had suffered a collective breakdown at the hands of Saint Thomas Aquinas in a theological scuffle one night in a Paris monastery, when Aquinas had assaulted them with a barrage of homilies, disputations, and doctrinal strangleholds. The results were gruesome. Sloth had become manic-compulsive, Anger was now apologetic, Pride had let himself go, and Gluttony had become terribly thin. Avarice gave away all her clothes, and Lust now suffered from terrible headaches. Only one Deadly Sin seemed quite happy with his lot, unfortunately, and that was Envy. You could see them roiling down the corridors of the clinic together, exuding virtue. It was very sad.

  The Seven Deadly Sins: In Deadlier, More Sinful Times.

  “What made you do it, son?” asked Mother. “We thought you liked your job.”

  “I did, Mother,” I replied. “I did, but something happened to me. I met someone.”

  “Who was it, son? Was it Boredom? Was it Change?”

  “No, Mother, it was a girl.”

  “A what?” said my parents in unison.

  “A girl, a human girl.”

  “A mortal!” roared Father. “But that’s revolting!”

  “Quiet, dear,” snapped Mother. “It’s not his fault. Is it, son?”

  “I want to be with her, Mother,” I said quietly. “I want to be with her, in time, in Life. I don’t care if I have to die. I think I…love her.”

  Mother reared back on her tail in horror and let out a hideous roar that shook the buildings of the clinic. Flames exploded from Father’s mouth, engulfing a passing doctor and blackening the already-burned Fields of Char. They were taking it rather well, I thought.

  “What did we do to deserve this?” bellowed Father. “Didn’t we always treat you with hatred and contempt? Didn’t we always ignore you and dislike you? And now this!” He put an arm round my mother, whose body was wracked with inhuman sobs.

  “Let’s go,” she howled to Father. “We’ll be back, son, don’t you worry. It’s just…such a shock. We’ll be back…” She waved good-bye without even looking at me, and with one flap of his wings, Father hoisted her and himself into the dark sky.

  I sat down and decided to make a daisy chain.

  “We’ve found someone much more your type,” said Mother. Weeks had passed and my parents had returned to visit me. “You know, someone who’s not mortal.”

  “You should have come to see me, son,” said Father. He had calmed down somewhat. “I know lots of nymphs and demonettes who’d have done anything for you.”

  “Now, now, dear,” said Mother. “Let’s introduce them.”

  Mother disappeared in a puff of acrid smoke and returned moments later with a hideous black-faced hag smeared with blood. She was completely naked except for a garland of skulls and a girdle of severed hands.

  “Death, meet Kali,” said Mother, before whispering, “she’s just your type.”

  It was true. I should have liked her. She was your typical goddess of de
struction, a devourer, wild-eyed and maniacal with four arms to boot. But I felt no initial spark with her as I did with Maud. Mother and Father left us alone and we sat awkwardly, avoiding each other’s gaze.

  Kali: In the Era Before Handbags, Four Arms Were a Godsend.

  “So you’re Death,” said Kali. “I think we met at a mass sacrifice once.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was the one in black.”

  “Yes,” said Kali. She looked around at the miserable clinic and grunted her approval.

  “Do you like blood?”

  “In moderation,” I said, trying to be hospitable. “I mean it can make things a bit slippery if there’s too much of it…”

  “I love blood,” said Kali. “I love the taste of it.” Her bleeding tongue protruded coquettishly.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I offered to show Kali around the clinic’s grounds. Her necklace of skulls clattered loudly as we walked.

  “So what does the Great Kali like to do to pass the time?” I said.

  “The Great Kali destroys souls, devours life, annihilates the living, murders the—”

  “Yes, naturally,” I said, “but when you’re not devouring and annihilating, what do you like to do then?”

  A quizzical expression played upon her face. “I rend,” she said uncertainly. “And I rip.”

  “But you must like doing other things.”

  “I…I…I don’t know,” said Kali; she looked confused.

  “There must be something?” I asked. I was perhaps being a little too aggressive, but I longed to hear if she indulged in Life too.

  “Knitting? Cooking? Bird-watching?”

  Kali’s four arms hung limply by her side, and her fiery face was looking to the ground. A dribble of viscous, black snot dripped from her nose.

  “N-no,” she said, choking back a sob. “I rip and…I rend.”

  I suddenly felt exceedingly sorry for her. The poor girl had never done anything but what she had been told to do. What a tragic waste. I reached toward her to comfort her.

  “Get your hands off me!” she cried, flames bursting forth from her head. “Men! You’re all the same! Always trying to change us and make us something we’re not! I hate you!”

  And with those words she disappeared in a puff of sulfurous smoke. I heard a slow, sarcastic handclap.

  “Oh, well done, son.”

  It was Father.

  “A nice goddess like that, too. She was falling all over you. And now your mother’s in tears again. You know you’re the laughingstock of Hell? All the demons are getting on my back about it. It’s not good for the family name. When are you going to grow up?”

  “Oh, shut up!” I cried, and jogged off.

  My parents’ visit left me in a bad mood, and I was congratulated on my surliness by the doctors that evening. However, by the next morning I had already blanked it out of my mind and was relapsing back to my joyful new self. I was humming contentedly in the clinic’s Spit Garden, ignoring the oozing brooks of phlegm that bubbled through the ground at my feet, and mulling over the hypothesis that bunnies are the most delightful creatures in the world, when an awe-inspiring blinding light appeared in front of me.

  “Who is it?” I cried.

  “How many awe-inspiring blinding lights do you know exactly?” boomed a rather irate divine voice.

  “Oh. Hello, Lord God Sir.”

  “Yes, well,” He boomed. “You caused Me a lot of trouble, you know? Stopping people from dying! What did you think you were trying to do? It caused Me no end of problems. I even had to ask the pope to help out, and you know how I hate asking favors from him. He now says he wants to wear that silly hat of his again.”

  “But what happened to the people I saved?”

  “You don’t understand, Death; those days never happened. We’ve removed them from the calendar. They are un-days, false memories, nothing more. We got rid of your days and started afresh.”

  “Won’t that look a bit awkward to future generations? I mean, ten days missing in a year.”

  “That’s why We got the pope to do it. He’s always doing crazy stuff like that.”

  Gregory XIII: Thank You for the Days.

  “Anyway,” boomed God, looking me up and down, “how are you feeling?”

  “Terrific,” I replied.

  “Hmmm,” He boomed. “That’s too bad. You haven’t been having any dark thoughts of late, have you? Visions of catastrophe and disaster?”

  “No. Sorry, Lord God Sir. I’ve mainly been thinking of the small furry things in Creation. You really did a good job on them, You know.”

  “Well,” boomed God, “that’s very kind of you, Death, very kind indeed. But really, you of all people shouldn’t be thinking of such things.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is unnatural!” cried a harsh voice. There was a flutter of wings and the angel Gabriel appeared by God’s side.

  “Gabriel has helped pick up the slack, limp and drooping, while you were away. He doesn’t think you should have your old job back, do you, Gabriel?”

  “I just don’t think that we should have outsourced such an important role to someone who is, after all, the son of Satan,” he sniffed. Gabriel had changed. His wings were sleek and greased and his robe seemed off-white. He was wearing black eyeliner.

  “Between you and Me,” boomed God in as conspiratorial a fashion as one can when one’s voice shakes the heavens, “I think he’s always rather wanted your job. Gabriel never liked the living much.”

  “But he’s an angel!” I protested, suddenly feeling rather protective of my role as the dread destroyer of Life. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “If an angel can become lord of Hell, then I can become Death,” cried Gabriel.

  “Yes, well, Satan is something of a…special case,” boomed God, as if He was none too keen on discussing the details. But Gabriel was on a roll.

  “I am Gabriel, the Angel of Death! Merciless, cruel, avenging. None escape Gabriel’s dread grasp.”

  Despite God’s blinding divine light, the clinic seemed to be growing increasingly dark. A black emanation was issuing forth from Gabriel’s body. I felt a chill settle within me, and then a shock of recognition.

  “Is that my Darkness?” I asked.

  It was just as I remembered it, uniquely formless, shapeless, amorphous, and it was reaching out toward me plaintively. I was surprised to find that I had actually missed the Darkness. I tried to touch it, but Gabriel pulled on a leash and jerked it back.

  “It is my Darkness now,” said Gabriel, slapping the Darkness down as it reared up in anger. It collapsed into a puddle and whimpered silently to itself. Gabriel leered at me. There was nothing behind his eyes.

  “But God,” I protested, “You can’t have people ‘falling to their Gabriel,’ or being ‘Put to Gabriel,’ it sounds silly.”

  “I know, I know,” boomed God out of the corner of His eminence. “But he’s been pestering Me for eons for the job, and when you went wrong, what else could I do? Now maybe when you get worse again we can talk about having you back. Until then though, I’m afraid the matter is closed. Gabriel is the new Death. Oh, and another thing.”

  “Lord God Sir?”

  “There was a soul that kept on being reincarnated due to an irregularity within the Department of Reincarnation. I don’t know if you noticed. Name of Mab? Or Mabel? Or Madge?”

  “Maud,” I said quickly.

  “Yes, well, whatever,” boomed God. “It seems she kept on being reincarnated not through any religious belief, but through the sheer force of her will. There must have been something on Earth that held an irresistible pull for her. I can’t imagine what it was. I mean, I know it’s good and everything, but still…all very irregular. Anyway, We have corrected this error. She will be walking the earth no more.”

  I was stunned. A bunch of grapes appeared in my hand.

  “Get bad soon,” boomed God, and disappeared.

  �
�No,” I cried. “No! No! No!”

  I collapsed to the ground. There was no hope. None whatsoever. Maud was gone and I would never see her again. I looked up.

  Gabriel still stood there, smiling.

  “You went too far, Death; I warned you. You shouldn’t have spent all that time with that sheep. It was unnatural.”

  He leaned close toward me. His breath stank of milk and honey. “She screamed, you know, when I came for her.”

  “What?” I said.

  “When I uncorked her soul by the river, she seemed to like it.”

  He smiled to himself.

  “She said I was a much better Death than you.”

  I remained silent.

  “She said she wanted a real Death to usher her into the void. Well, she got it from me! The whole Earth is going to get it from me. I got rid of Michael, now I can get rid of you.”

  I could hold it in no longer.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I screamed in his face.

  “You make me sick,” shouted back Gabriel. “Life makes me sick. There’s only one solution. Kill it! Kill it all!”

  Gabriel laughed, an unpleasant, morbid laugh, the sort of laugh that would once have made me feel all cold and Death-like inside. With a flap of his wings he was gone. I looked at the grapes God had put in my hand. They had withered.

  No Maud. No Life. No Death. What was I? What had I become? For the first time since my arrival in the clinic, I wished I was back at my old job. To think that Gabriel had sent my beloved Maud into the Darkness—the poor old Darkness, now shackled to an angel!—it was all too ghastly for words. What other desecrations would Gabriel wreak in my absence? It was daunting to imagine myself returning to Earth, returning to the playground of my love, but the idea of Gabriel taking my place was insufferable…unbearable…unendurable! It was wrong! He was not Death! Only I could be Death! Only I was Death! Only I…