Long Live Death: Welcome To The Afterlife

by Mercott, Joshua

  “Reincarnator, have you news of my sisters? I died in an accident and left them without a bread-winner.” “Reincarnator, you have to send me back, I am this close to making it in my business.” “Reincarnator, I was raped and murdered. Where is my justice? Why am I made to suffer in these conditions? I didn’t know that street was dangerous, I had to risk it to get home on time.” “Reincarnator, where are my virgins?”

  It was endless. How in he name of all that is lost and yet to be found did news of my presence spread? There were hundreds of people stifling the street and I’d only come in a few hours ago. Paul was snoring, I could hear him, the whole neighborhood could hear him. Carla, nah, can’t have been coy Carla. The homeless man, now there’s a culprit if ever I saw one. If he hated me so much, why give all these people a chance at the hope I apparently inspire. I who reincarnate souls based on Death’s approval. I could see why all these life-forms here in Quadrant would feel they’re in some kind of purgatory, not to mention all the questions they’ll want answered about their situation. It’s not my job to answer them, that’s the Orientation Department’s raison d’etre.

  I hurried to find Paul. Bleary eyed, spittle stains on the side of his mouth, the man rubbed his clogged nose and said, “This way, sir. I’ll take you out the back. I have ordered a cab for you. It’s hot outside so they allowed cars, I’m sure you’ll be well on your way to court, sir.” He didn’t seem fazed at all.

  “Thank you so much, Paul, I don’t know how to repay you for all the kindess you’ve shown me. I owe you.”

  “You could transfer a few credits to my name, sir.” He produced a credit-register device and told me his ‘services’—that was the word he used—amounted to 420 credits. Now that I had another person to play witness, I could use my card. I was second-witness and punched the numbers in after he’d done the same. The price for kindness paid, I followed him out the back. I had changed into my trousers, got into the back of the taxi car and left. When the people heard the vehicle vroom, some of them alerted the others and the whole lot of them ran behind the car as the driver hurried out of there.

  I reached Death Hall, paid the cabby and ran up the stairs. I wanted nothing better than to walk straight to my office and make use of the washroom before I went to the cafeteria to grab a bite of breakfast. I was stopped short by Courtier Natalew, a tall gangly life-form from the Ut system.

  “Helidon, so nice to see you. It’s been ages. I was heading out to meet a Drooma about an auto-assign system.”

  “It has indeed, Natalew, ages. I wish I rubbed shoulders with more courtiers like yourself, sir. The people I have to deal with are not as refined, I can assure you.”

  “My thanks for the compliment, Helidon. Where are you off to looking such a mess?”

  “Oh, Natalew, I’ve had a rough night.”

  “Are you alright? You need me to call a soul-medic?”

  “No, Natalew, nothing that serious. Something went wrong with my itinerary and, forget it my friend, I must have forgotten to fill in some form somewhere.”

  “If you’re sent on a field project, Courtier Helidon, it’s your assistant who receives all the particulars. Can’t have His Majesty stand there and tell you what to do, it’s uncouth and unbecoming. He tells his secretary who in turn passes word to the courtier’s assistant— Where are you going? Helidon?”

  I jogged to my office. “Civilization,” I said as I admired all the plush riches of court. I entered my office and what do I find? Krell sitting in my chair and speaking on the comm-line. I made an angry gesture for him to cut the call, get his butt out of my recliner and give me all the attention he had. He looked at me with such fake innocence I felt like doing what the homeless man did and throw everything in reach. But that would entail ‘damage to court property’ so I gave up on the idea.

  “Sir, sir, before you say anything, that was His Majesty’s secretary on the line. The King wants to see you rigth away.”

  “But I’m not ready yet. You didn’t say I’ll be in, did you? Krell?” I knew the answer to my own question. “You’re coming with me. An assistant always goes down with his boss.” We ran to respond to Death’s summons. We were late, which was a bad thing.

  “Finally, the Reincarnator arrives to answer his King’s call.” The voice boomed and echoed as I made my way along the corridor at speed, with Krell tailing. The double doors shot open and banged against the wall. “I’ve received news that you have started some kind of mass riot in the Human Quadrant.”

  “Your Majesty, this is all a big misunderstanding. Krell here didn’t give me the details I needed to make my preliminary project analysis smooth and hassle free.”

  “Blaming your assistant. I never thought you’d stoop so low, Reincarnator.”

  I gulped. He wasn’t amused.

  “Sir, you know me and Krell never get along. It was only a matter of time until a mistake happened.”

  “More excuses.” His voice echoed again.

  “My apologies, Your Majesty, I never intended to shed a dark light on your good self through my actions. I take full responsibility for all that has happened, even though it’s been quite unfair.” I looked askance at Krell who practically shivered in the presence of the King.

  “Unfair?” said His Majesty. His wings twitched. “Krell.” The short blue Polarian jumped and a sound escaped his throat. “I want all my courtiers in this office in the next five minutes.” Krell ran like the wind. “Sit down, Helidon.” I was growing extremely uncomfortable. “Not on the chair.” I didn’t know what it was about his aura but it made me do things almost automatically. I got to my knees and sat back on my calves. The carpet though soft felt like a shroud. He stared out the window for the next four and a half minutes and didn’t say a word. It was so loud inside my head. The occasional glance of his wings and frghtening image, enhanced by the light of the sun streaming in from the open window, made me gulp, sweat, itch and feel like I wanted to leap out of my own bones.

  Even though I was a soul, the memory of my mortal existence was so strong I still felt like I was in a body. When we came here, all of us needed to be subject to this dimension’s laws and were fleshified into the most recent bodies we had before our demise. I still had all the hunger and thirst impulses from my time on Earth. My fleshified body reacted to these memories. Here in his presence they were all jumbled. What kind of an effect was this? Why do I easily fall prey to it?

  Three hundred and forty-nine courtiers made their way solemnly into the office. The chamber was big enough to make them seem like a small mob. They all fell prey to the same jumbled emotions I experienced for the past few minutes. I could tell by the change in their stance and expression. Even though I was the only human in the group, some things were universal.

  “I hate when facts are forgotten,” said His Majesty King Death. “I grow displeased when obvious things are put in second place and sentiment takes priority.” He turned and walked to a spot in front of his desk. He folded his arms before him. The daylight made every feature distinct and Death was an atrociously fearsome sight, hooves, horns and all. “Did you know that Helidon here feels he’s unfairly treated?” He fixed his molten-gold gaze on me and I stared at the floor, hoping it would break and take me with it. “I believe in common information dispensement. That’s why I brought you all here so I can make myself clear once and for all. I don’t mean to embarass Helidon but this being our first mass meeting, I’d like to cement a few facts into all my courtiers.” He swept his sights across them. They had their heads lowered, like they were trying to find a way into their own rib cages.

  “Do you know why all of you are here in this city?” His voice grew slightly more aggressive. “Your souls have nowhere else to go. Know why? All three hundred and fifty of you, and the millions of citizens outside, decided to commit suicide. Your souls were paid for, if your souls can be said to have any worth, by me. Life took her due because you stole her of a stretch of time in her realm. As Helidon himself knows, none
of you are allowed to reincarnate until you’ve shown yourselves incapable of repeating the same error. If you are given new lives in any one several star-systems, what’s to say you wouldn’t subconsciously be drawn to the idea of suicide again? The last thing I want is to pay double for each of your sordid souls and the last thing Life wants is to repeat the same old drama. So both she and I are agreed that you be given other duties until you shed your baggage. Out of the kindness of my heart I appointed you to comfortable offices with power and authority, which is more than most souls in this city have gotten out of me.

  “Let’s talk unfairness. Helidon!” He practically shouted at me. “Stand up!” I immediately shuffled to my feet. “You took your own life because your mother passed away. Your father loved her so much that he drank all the money away feeling helpless and lost. The fact that two people you cared and adored fell apart made you give up on the farm that you were young and healthy enough to run in your father’s stead. When you took your life after burying your mother, more than eighty people lost their jobs because your father, even more distraught at losing you, fired them and burned the farm. Those out of a job threw your drunk father in the fire. I ask you now, Helidon, is it fair to him what you did? Is it fair to all those poor people who depended on your for a meal and a bed to sleep on in exchange for work? Do you know the pain of childbirth and the lifelong investment a mother has in her baby? Is it fair to the memory of your mother whom you dishonored with your suicide? After all they did for you. Is it fair to your friends whom you left shocked and without an explanation as to your actions?

  “Depite all of that and because of your aptitude scan results, I have appointed you chief in charge of reincarnating souls. Yet you stand in my office,” his voice grew extremely angry, “and lecture me on unfairness!” He grew in size. The sun shone off the opalescent blades on his vast wings, which spread to encompass the width of the room. He walked a few steps forward on smooth hocks of powerful sinew and muscle. “Do you know what I know? Have you seen what I have seen? Even Life fears me because of my power. Everytime she makes something she looks around and waits for me to show up. Such is my greatness that I make even immortals think twice. I have seen worlds that you cannot even imagine. The offical State language has no words or expressions to describe what I have learned. I existed when Time itself was yet to develop around the laws in each star-system.

  “If I so much as hear a complaint from you who are unfairly privileged, I will fry your guilty souls and eat them for dinner. I alone have the power to destroy. Everything in creation fears me because I have the power not just to break your body but also to annihilate your soul. Sadly for you, I refuse to grant you the bliss of extinction. I shall keep you alive and torture you in ways you never thought possible but by then you will be in too much pain even to care. I can alter space at my will!” The walls to his office shattered, gusts of wind blew everywhere and his whole body was lit with an inferno of epic proportions. His voice was so strong that if we weren’t dead already we would’ve perished right then and there hearing him speak. “I am the last word in justice. No matter what any life-form even Life herself does to create, I take them away with blade and wing. I always have the last word. Everything you ever dreamed off when mortal came with deadlines. You had to complete things before you grew old, didn’t you? Time itself bows before me, Life herself knows she can’t escape. I am law, I am all laws, I set the standard in all mortal life-systems, I am feared more than any of their gods.” The walls re-formed but his fire remained. It coated the walls and shed its heat on the courtiers in the room who by this time were silenced from sheer fear.

  “It is insulting for a King like me to stand here and educate worms like you about who sits on the throne.” His dimensions grew some more and his voice intensifid. “I will ask if I’ve made myself clear but I know that I have. Get back to work, the lot of you. You have no rights but the ones I give you. I am Death, I am Judgement, I am the end of all things. Know the presence you walk into when next you walk into my presence. Get out! Get back to work! Any complaints from any one of you and I will show you the true meaning of unfairness.”

  The sound of a stampede rumbled through the corridor as three hundred and fifty courtiers ran for the exit. Krell took point. I ran last. I could feel the searing gaze of King Death as it cut into my spine. When the double doors slammed shut and only the roar of his flames could be heard, we ran even faster. Some of the courtiers fell and were trampled but they wouldn’t die, they were already dead. The whole of government building alpha was empty and all of Quadrant City had gone silent and still. There was no traffic outside, not even a squeak could be heard. Thunder heralded rain and lightning struck the towers as the skies poured their load into one terrified space of the Universe. The windlashed air beheld a gigantic pair of blade-wings as they took to the sky.

  5

  I remember grabbing Krell by his state-sanctioned collar—because this Polarian didn’t have a body made to fit a collared shirt he had to wear one specially made to indicate his courtier rank. It made a nice handhold and this isn’t the first time I thought of grabbing the dweeb this way. I half dragged half led the dumbo into my office and without forewarning threw punches. I hit his fat belly, upper-cutted him under the chin but his bone was strongest there so I ended up using my throbbing hand to slap him silly. I could at least hope to shake the pain off without losing my streak. I kicked him in the knobbly joints he called knees and threw him over my office table. He landed neatly in my recliner and I tripped the chair with him in it.

  He fell off but not before grabbing me by the collar. History repeated as it came his turn to fight back. Adrenalized by the blows and finally realizing that I had gone loony, he kicked, slapped and punched but not as effectively as I had because his hits were weak. After a few minutes, he made to grab my hair but caught my collar again—do they make these things just for this—and I returned the favor. He caught himself from another slide across the table. I was bent inelegantly over it. We stared at each other, free hands forming fists.

  “His Majesty needn’t know about this,” said Krell.

  “Professional abuse and harassment charges are the last thing we both need right now.”

  I let go, he let go, and we slipped off the desk. I composed myself and stretched a kink in my lower spine. We silently worked together to clean up the office where we once again became Reincarnator and assistant. He rang for a soul-medic to come patch us up; we had bruises and cuts. My blood was red, his was yellow.

  “Ask the medic to make a casual visit and tell him not to ask any questions on the phone.”

  I looked at a collectible I had in my possession for many years. The small figurine of the Statue of Liberty had split in half and the woman of justice, equality and freedom for all looked dourly back at me. If she could’ve, she would’ve shook her head.

  “What happened in here,” said the soul-medic but as soon as he saw me and recognized me for my poisition, he quieted down and attended to my wounds. He wasn’t told that the Reincarnator himself was in need of attention. I knew Krell looked on with envy, that I was given preference over him. I couldn’t help but smile except for the pain it caused me. I remained seated with my eyes closed for the next fifteen minutes until it came Krell’s turn to be treated. He made a fuss, the cranky tantrumy sod, and it made me feel like punching him all over again.

  “Now what...sir?” he said after the medic left the office and we did what we could to clean up the mess, tidying up before the maid came in tomorrow. She’d have reported her suspicions.

  “Now we head back to the Human Quadrant and this time you tell me all the facts before I go and leave you in charge. In the capacity of assistant, of course.” Krell made a face and winced as he stretched a bruise. “I haven’t had anything to eat nor have I slept in I donno how long.” Krell handed the information that could have saved me all this trouble. I never knew a few lines on a piece of paper could be so perilous if left unfollowed. />
  I left immediately. What happened in Death’s office still had me reeling. It’s why I even started hitting Krell, I needed to vent anxiety through the first means that suggested itself to me. I couldn’t remain in the same building. The silence that prevailed since Death’s outburst still remained only all the courtiers were so worked up they worked harder than before, filing paperwork, punching cards, processing signatures, concluding calls, closing deals.

  I left the building with some of the courtiers giving me a nasty look. It was raining again, which meant all automobiles were replaced with horse-drawns. I hailed a cab, it was the same hansom driver. Was he waiting for me to show up? I got in, thankfully there was no traffic. I was afraid a lot of people had heard the hullaballoo and kept away from government building alpha. Sitting inside a boxed up space my loneliness caught up with me and so did Death’s words. I only took my life because I couldn’t take the pain anymore, the pain of losing mom. I understand how that could have been a disappointment to her memory but does that really mean I dishonored her? Don’t I get any credence in the case? What happened to father, as much as I loved the man before he became a drunk, was his own fault. I couldn’t help him even if I tried. I’m only human. But did I try hard enough? I doubted so many things and punched the side of the cab door out of frustration. The hansom stopped. I parted the forward curtains and shouted, “It’s nothing, keep going.”

  The address I gave the man must have been quite far. My back ached and I was starting to feel that boredom that comes with being in one place for too long. I was tired of listening to me scolding myself, telling me how I could have performed my duties better than I did. ‘You could’ve just left the homeless man alone, walked up to the nearest house, knocked, got your information without losing money to Paulson, headed to the bar, gathered some info, booked into a hotel, slept and ate breakfast like a dignified courtier, reported your resourcefulness to His Majesty and gotten a star on your file.’ Why does the voice tell me what to do after the exact opposite has happened? I couldn’t open the window even though I wanted fresh air. It was too cold and the rain still whipped the side of the cab. How the driver even managed to ride on top with only a raincoat between him and the elements I’ll never know.