Death

by George Pendle

  “Yes, yes, it’s true,” I said. There was no need for it to be a secret.

  “I also hear that there’s some big money being put on you to take a fall in Round Two? And I mean big money. Know anything about it?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Come on, Death, don’t be so naïve. There’s no gambling in Heaven. Where do you think the angels place their bets? Right here on Earth is where, and Phil the Raccoon provides a full and discreet nocturnal bookmaking service for those of the saved who accidentally wander out of Heaven while everyone’s asleep.”

  Raccoons. Always with their schemes. I had once met a raccoon who had attempted to assassinate Archduke Rudolph, the Crown Prince of Austria, in order to inflate the price of strudel, which he had sold short. As it was, he was caught by the royal bodyguards as he clambered into the archduke’s bedroom, intent on savaging him in his sleep. The raccoon had been turned into a hat, which became all the rage in late-nineteenth-century Vienna. Strudel prices, however, had remained low.

  Raccoons: Good Schemers, Excellent Headwear.

  “Well, why do you want to know about the fight?” I asked.

  “Call it a surfeit of Free Will,” said Phil the Raccoon, “or maybe I’m just looking after my best interests. I had an angel in the other day who was putting everything he owned on you going down in Round Two—money, an old harp, a girdle, and the pearl handles he’d filched from some gates. This match could bankrupt me! But more than this, I’m a moral creature. I don’t like the idea of the fix being in for anything. What kind of a world would it be if everything was predetermined? Nobody would want to wager on anything.” He looked at me straight in the face. “Doesn’t it make you mad?”

  “Not really.” I sighed; I had resigned myself to my fate.

  “Really?” said Phil the Raccoon.

  “I admit,” I said, “that throwing a wrestling match with the Messiah may not be exactly the way I would have chosen for myself. But isn’t every existence in Creation a fixed match of sorts, a futile combat against insurmountable odds?”

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Phil the Raccoon. “That’s hardly the attitude to take.”

  “I am Death,” I reminded him. “I’m not really meant to be very positive.”

  “It could be worse,” said Phil the Raccoon.

  “I don’t quite see how,” I replied. “After all, I’m dealing with an all-powerful being with a split personality.”

  “Well, look,” said Phil the Raccoon, “give me twenty-four hours to come up with a solution. Maybe this doesn’t need to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you don’t have to die, Death.”

  I looked at the small, bushy-tailed mammal gesticulating on the ground in front of me. Was this really all that stood between me and extinction? Was this my final hope?

  Last Judgment

  It was my last day on Earth. In fact, it was the last day Earth would ever have. Any minute now the rivers would begin to run red with blood, fire would begin to fall from the sky, and the whole prematch razzmatazz would begin. Twenty-four hours had elapsed since I had spoken to Phil the Raccoon, and since all would be lost in a matter of hours, what did I have to lose by humoring him a little? However, when I went to see him again, he was standing at the head of a huge crowd of creatures—humans, birds, fish, rocks—who were all talking wildly. As I approached them, their conversation slowly died down.

  “Well, Death,” said Phil the Raccoon. “I had to pull a few strings, call in some favors, and strong-arm a few of the smaller invertebrates, but me and the rest of Creation have been talking.”

  “About what?”

  “Life is a mess. You’re happy, you’re sad, you’re up, you’re down, you’re spinning wildly around not knowing what you’re doing. Yet there’s always been one constant. One thing we could always rely on, while all the rest of Life fell apart. And that’s you, Death. You’ve always been there for us. Whether the big man upstairs exists or not, it’s you who we know exists. We may have our differences, sure. I mean, sometimes you take us earlier than we think you should. But you always take us, and that’s the point. We’ve always known where we stand with you, Death, or rather where we fall, and we appreciate that, from the bottom of our still-beating hearts. Am I right, fellas?”

  There was a braying murmur of assent.

  “In fact,” said Phil the Raccoon, “we figure that you’re an intrinsic part of Life. Whether it’s the last beat of a heart or the final word in an argument, you’re always there. Is a door any less the part of a house because you leave the house through it?”

  There was a braying murmur of confusion.

  “What I’m trying to say is—we don’t want you to go. And we’re not going to stand for it. For too long we’ve been the subject of arbitrary divine forces. I mean, look at Gerald here.”

  A flounder flopped forward. “Hey, Death,” it said.

  “I mean, having your eye migrate around your head?” continued Phil the Raccoon. “Can you imagine how that messes you up?”

  “Scarred me for life,” said Gerald the Flounder. “I wake up in cold sweats at night just thinking about it.”

  Flounder: “You Lookin’ at Me? No, Seriously, Are You Looking at Me?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” continued Phil the Raccoon, “there’s nothing I like more than the infinite variety of Creation. But there’s a fine line between ‘infinite variety’ and ‘bat-shit crazy.’ Anyway, what I’m trying to say is—what we’re trying to say is—you never pull any of that nonsense on us, and we…we love you for it, Death.”

  The crowd broke into a round of applause. There was much hooting. Phil the Raccoon crossed his arms and swallowed. I noticed Gerald the Flounder had disappeared.

  “Thank you, thank you all,” I said. “I appreciate you saying all these kind words about me. But I’m afraid it’s no use. God has decreed that you’re all to be resurrected at the end of today and live forever in Heaven.”

  “Live forever?” continued Phil the Raccoon. “Are you shitting me? I can barely keep my alimony payments going as it is, let alone for all eternity.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  “And besides, who wants to live forever? Life may be brutish, ugly, and short…but so are we.”

  “I’m not,” piped up a giraffe standing at the back of the crowd.

  “All right then,” snapped the Phil the Raccoon, “brutish, ugly, and tall. You see, Death, we appreciate Life for what is, in all its filthy glory. And we like having you around to tell us when it’s over. You provide closure, you know?”

  “Well, I’m glad you feel that way,” I said, “but I’m not sure what can be done to stop it.”

  “Don’t worry, Death,” said Phil the Raccoon. “It occurs to me that, considering your working relationship with Life, a little solidarity is in order.”

  He then proceeded to tell me the most ridiculous plan I had ever heard.

  Later that day, as the Book of Endings foretold, Phil the Raccoon choked to death on one of Gerald the Flounder’s bones. But rather than sending his soul into the Darkness, I took it with me on a trip to Heaven.

  Preparations for the Second Coming had begun. The bunting was out. Large posters read THY KINGDOM HAS COME and NO SMOKING. Newly installed bunk beds filled every possible nook and cranny. I noticed the stadium had been completed and was already starting to fill with angels. At its center was a roped-in ring. A tinny public address system was advertising the match.

  “For one night only! The match to end all matches! The altercation to decide your salvation! Battling for your everlasting souls! In the white corner, the Mayhem from Bethlehem, the All-New Jew, Half-Man, Half-God, All Fighter! Jeeeeeeeee-zus Christ!”

  Jesus Prided Himself on His Elaborate Ringside Entrances.

  There was loud applause.

  “And in the black corner,” continued the voice, “the Reason for So Much Suffering in the World.
Death. Former male prostitute.”

  There were a few scattered boos and then abrupt silence. Vendor angels were selling Jesus paraphernalia. Phil the Raccoon gave me a look of disgust, but I later caught him trying to buy a pair of stick-on stigmata. “For the kids,” he told me. After all our planning, could I really trust him?

  When we finally arrived at the Parliament of Heaven, it was almost empty. At the far end Jesus was packing a suitcase for His Second Coming. God was trying to sit on top of it in an attempt to get the lid down.

  “Well, look who it is,” Jesus beamed. “You’re early. Better not be early tonight.”

  “Yes, Death,” boomed God, “I hope you have not forgotten our…agreement.”

  “Ahem,” coughed Phil the Raccoon.

  “Actually, it’s Amen,” boomed God. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Phil the Raccoon,” said Phil the Raccoon, “and You’re forgetting one thing, O Great One.”

  “I forget no things, you small furry creature,” boomed God. “I know everything.”

  There was a pause.

  “What have I forgotten?” boomed God.

  “You think the living have just been wasting their time on Earth, just having sex and taking long walks and waiting for You to save us?” said the Raccoon. “Well, we haven’t. We’ve been busy.”

  “I bet you have,” beamed Jesus sarcastically. “Been chasing frogs, have we? Getting hit by cars? Being turned into hats? Oh, how busy you must have been.”

  “Ho, ho,” boomed God. “Very droll, Jesus.”

  “Actually,” said Phil the Raccoon angrily, “we’ve been holding meetings, and forming subcommittees. We’ve been debating issues and taking votes. We’ve been organizing!”

  “What are you saying, you silly nocturnal flesh-eating mammal?” boomed God.

  “The Earth is a closed shop, God,” cried Phil the Raccoon, pulling out the soul of a dead whistle. “Creation is going on strike!” And with that, the Raccoon let out a mighty blast, and everything in Creation immediately put down their tools, or claws, or proboscises and stopped what it was doing. The Earth stopped spinning on its axis, the clouds stopped moving, the winds stopped blowing, all the forces of nature ground to a halt in direct contravention of their divinely ordained duty. And the rivers refused to run red with blood, the birds declined to fall from the sky, not a flake of snow fell in the desert—Judgment Day was postponed! For seven days and seven nights, every creature, plant, and inanimate object sat down and sang. They sang for me.

  “2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate,” chanted the reeds in the rivers. “Death!”

  “Oh, come on,” boomed God. “This is ridiculous.”

  “10-12-14-16, who keeps Earth looking pristine,” chanted the parrots in the trees. “Death!”

  “I will not,” boomed God, “I will not give in to this gross intimidation.”

  “56-58-60-62, who do we all go through,” chanted the creeping things that crept in the tall grass. “Death!”

  “Not you too, creeping things?” boomed God.

  On the fifth day God sent in strikebreakers, replacement beings, and special new concepts hurriedly designed to get Creation moving again. There were many scuffles, but the new creations were ill-adapted to survival on Earth; they had not, after all, spent eons evolving upon it. The new plants God sent were swiftly uprooted by existing trees. New skulking things were crushed by age-old stomping things. New minerals reacted badly to the atmosphere and dissolved instantly. New languages failed to catch on and were swiftly ignored. Throughout all this, the chanting continued.

  “1898988-1898990-1898992-1898994 who is waiting at the door,” intoned the amoebas and mitochondria. “Death!”

  What with the mayflies and lemmings staging die-ins of mammoth proportions, the metallic ores and sedimentary rocks refusing to be moved by even the most aggressive of tectonic forces, and the unending chanting of anything with a vibrating mucous membrane, God was finally worn down. Phil the Raccoon and I were called to Heaven for negotiations, but before I left I addressed Creation.

  Celestial Solidarity.

  “Without you there would be no me!” I bellowed, pointing at each and every member of Creation. They clapped wildly. “And with me, there will be no you!” the clapping faltered somewhat. “Mark my words, I will be seeing you all again, very, very soon!” There was some disconcerted muttering, but slowly the world began to spin again, and everything went back to normal.

  In Heaven, we were met by God and a rather sulky-looking Jesus, who was unpacking His suitcase.

  “Very well,” boomed God. “You’ve proved your point. But what do you want?”

  “First,” said Phil the Raccoon, “we want Death to be reinstated as Death.”

  “Yes, why not,” boomed God. “In any case I’ve been having My doubts about the Second Coming. I don’t want people to think We’re selling out.”

  “Second, we want more and slower frogs,” said Phil the Raccoon. “Well, that’s me done. Do you want anything, Death?”

  “I want to call You God,” I said to the blinding light. “Not Lord, not Master, not Lord God Sir, just God.”

  “Oh, all right,” boomed God. “As long as I can call you Alice.”

  “Er, okay?” I said. After all, some concessions had to be made.

  “And there’s just one more thing,” I said. “I want to see Maud.”

  “Whatever you say, Alice,” boomed God, and Heaven suddenly disappeared.

  I found myself back on Earth, in the middle of the twentieth century. Could I really be about to see Maud again? I thought about all the years that had passed since our glorious ten days together. Those ten days of forbidden joy in which no one died. Would she still remember them as fondly as I did? I wondered if she had changed. Of course, her physical exterior would be different, I had no doubt, but would Maud’s nature be any different? Would she recognize me? It had, after all, been half a millennium since last we had seen each other. Would we know what to say to each other after such a long time apart? Would there be awkward silences? Would I be tempted by her again into Life?

  I pulled out the Book of Endings from my cloak and was gratified to see that it had grown a giant appendix. My name was no longer visible. I noticed that instead of the Second Coming, a Second World War was now raging on Earth. You had to hand it to God—He had a sense of humor.

  A phantom heartbeat sounded in my chest as I located Maud’s name in the Book. It lay alongside many, many others. There would be no showboating this time for my beloved. I found her in a large concrete room, in the middle of Europe somewhere. It was filled with naked people. None of them looked very happy, not even Maud. I was slightly surprised by this. She looked skinnier than she had before; her cheekbones flashed in the dim light. Strangely, it looked as though she had been crying. I had never seen Maud cry before, although I was pleased to see that this only brought out the sparkle in her brown eyes all the more.

  “Help me, Death. Don’t let me die,” she hissed upon seeing me. “Let me live, for the love of God, let me live.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. It was as if time had stood still. She was still playing the same old game, our old game! She was still the same delectable Maud!

  “You’ve got to help me live, Death. Like you did before. The last time. You’ve got to let me live again.”

  She was good, I’ll give her that. Utterly, utterly believable.

  A thick gas began to hiss down from the roof of the room and Maud held her breath, her delicate red cheeks glowing in the dim light. As the other people in the room began to scream and kick up a terrible fuss, I saw her eyes frantically search for an escape route. It was truly as if she wanted to live! Suddenly she noticed an open air vent at the opposite end of the room and clambered her way over the dying to get to it, but as she tried to squeeze herself through it I grabbed hold of her foot and held her back, laughing at her feigned panic. She turned on me viciously. “I’m not playing this time, Death!” she choked. “I
want to live!”

  I smiled.

  “No, no, Death. You don’t understand. I don’t want to die. Not this time. Not this time.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. It felt strange. There were none of her usual coquettish looks, no biting of her lip with excitement. Could she possibly mean it? I felt my existence spin on a coin edge. She was joking. She must be. She had to be. Right?

  I reached out to touch her face, to try to get some sense of what she meant, but in that moment she turned pale, reeled backward, and started trembling. From her mouth foam flakes erupted, her eyeballs rolled in their sockets, and the blood deserted her face. Raising a loud scream, she wrenched her head to and fro, and then fell to the ground convulsing. It took some time before she was actually dead.

  It was a good, classic death, one of her best, yet I felt strangely sad. I freed her soul and stood waiting for her with open arms. But she emerged shivering and refused to look at me.

  “Maud, it’s me,” I blurted. “I wanted to see you so much. I was in a clinic and had to be taught to be bad again and then I stopped Gabriel from destroying the world and then I was almost phased out of existence but Creation went on strike and I was reinstated and then I asked to see you and here I am.”

  She looked at me with something like rage in her eyes, and the words froze in my mouth. The Darkness enveloped her rather shamefacedly, and she disappeared from view, but all the while her eyes stared at me. Stared at me with something that looked strangely like the opposite of love. I waited for a playful smirk to break on her face, a blown kiss to come from her lips, a wink to show in those lovely brown eyes, but there was none.