Breath

by Jackie Morse Kessler

  As Ms. Lewis got the DVD set up, Xander settled back in his seat. He was all about getting graded for watching movies—especially movies he’d already seen. The lights went off, and he propped an elbow on his desk and his head in his hand.

  Naptime.

  His eyes closed as the movie began. He heard an announcer’s breathless voice setting the scene as background music began to swell, rising, building until the sound carried like a scream—

  ***

  —there’s a sound like a scream he’s screaming in pain there’s so much pain and he can’t move can’t think can’t get away he has to get away because something’s coming for him so he screams again screams until the roof of the world is ripped away and there’s noise and glaring lights and a dark shadow reaching for him—

  ***

  “Xander? Seriously, dude, wake up.”

  Xander sat up with a start, his breath caught in a scream, his heart lodged in his throat. He blinked at Ted, then looked around. He was in a waiting area of some sort, complete with pseudo-art-deco chairs and low tables wedged between them, bookended by magazine racks overstuffed with reading material. Large windows would have let in daylight, if only it were daytime.

  “Um,” Xander said. “Hey. Weren’t we in class?”

  Ted grinned, shaking his head ruefully. “That explains the screaming. You must’ve been dreaming about school. Waste of a good dream, if you ask me.”

  “Dreaming . . . ?”

  “Nightmaring, based on how you were yelling.” Ted chuckled. “At least you grabbed a little sleep. You’ve been here what, six hours, yeah?”

  Xander blinked again. “I have no idea.”

  “Bumped into Riley. Said you guys came here right after school.”

  They did? He didn’t remember anything like that. He didn’t even remember being with Riley. He mopped his hair away from his face and looked around. “Riley’s here?”

  “Riley was on the way out when I got here. Had to get home, make an appearance for the parents, do homework. You know. The usual. I got here to see you snoozing. Or, more accurately, thrashing. Hey, want me to grab you some food?”

  “Food,” Xander repeated. He felt like his brain had been turned into tapioca pudding—his thoughts felt too thick, almost soupy, and he had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. He just couldn’t figure out what it was. He dug a hand into his jeans pocket and found his lucky penny, squeezed.

  The cold flat metal was reassuring. Solid.

  Real.

  “Food,” Ted agreed. “Or, in the case of hospital fare, overpriced food-like substances. I bet the coffee’s decent. If Suzie was here, she’d be all mother hen and insist you eat something. Riley mentioned you were too anxious to eat. Said it was, and I quote, ‘adorable.’ Hear that, dude?” He clapped Xander’s shoulder. “You’re adorable!”

  Xander frowned. Hospital. They were in the waiting area of a hospital. Why . . . ?

  Before he could ask, a door opened. Xander turned, and for one moment, one crystalline moment in which time itself froze, he saw a shape filled with shadows, saw a man who was not a man standing in the doorway, standing and looking right at him.

  The shadows beckoned to him, whispered his name.

  Xander’s throat tightened and his stomach clenched. He gripped his penny tightly.

  The crystal shattered and time resumed: The shadows gave way to Xander’s father, pink-faced and grinning like a lunatic, wearing ill-fitting hospital scrubs and calling his name.

  “Xander! Xander, it’s a boy! You officially have a little brother! A healthy, six-pound-six-ounce baby boy! Mom’s great, your brother’s great, life is great!”

  Xander’s head spun. He felt his mouth pull into a grin, felt himself stand and then sit back down again, felt Ted clapping him on the back in a volley of congratulatory thumps. He was giddy with relief, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought that was wrong—he should be giddy with excitement, with joy over having a baby brother. But he couldn’t quite convince himself that he was feeling anything other than a palpable sense of relief, like something dark and terrible had passed over him and left him unscathed.

  He let out a laugh, even as he gave his lucky penny a final squeeze. Of course he was relieved; his mom wasn’t exactly young, so there had been some risk with the pregnancy and the birth. But his dad just said that she was fine—and so was his brother.

  He had a little brother.

  His dad said he’d let Xander know when he could visit Mom and meet his brother, and then he retreated. The door shut behind him, swallowing him whole.

  “So cool,” said Ted. “Hope you enjoyed being an only child for so long, because now everything changes.”

  Xander grinned. Change was good. Change meant life.

  When you stop changing, you die.

  Death

  “Spare some change?”

  “Actually, Kate,” he said, “I believe you have something for me.”

  Kate Bromley, 53—toothless, homeless, and (she thought) penniless—dug a gloved hand into her oversized pocket. Her entire face lit up when she pulled out a shiny coin. “Hey! When did I get that?”

  “You’ve had it since the beginning,” he replied. “It’s my covenant with you.”

  “I know every cent I have, mister. And I tell you, I never had this penny before now.”

  “It’s not a penny.”

  She dropped the coin into his outstretched hand. “Of course it’s a penny. It’s . . . hey. Hey. You’re him.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m dead.” She turned and saw her body, half covered by a pile of garbage bags that had done little to keep her warm. “Too proud to go to the shelter, that’s me. What was it—the cold?”

  “That, and malnutrition, and a host of other maladies. But exposure is what officially killed you last night.”

  “So you didn’t get here until what, half a day later? What’re you, lazy?”

  He shrugged and smiled as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been accused of being a slacker in my time.”

  “So do I get any last requests?”

  Ah, one of those. Some people believe in an afterlife; others believe in a do-over. He asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  “Something with a steady income would be nice.”

  “You make your own destiny, Kate Bromley. I don’t play the soothsayer.”

  “Humph. Lazy.”

  He chuckled.

  She tapped her chin as she pondered. “How about a redhead this time? Natural, not bottled. Can’t stand the bottled stuff—always looks so fake. And maybe tall. Yeah, I’d like to be more than armpit-level to the world this time around.”

  “Done.”

  She eyeballed him. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Whether it would happen remained to be seen.

  “Well. Okay.” She looked at her shopping cart, which was overflowing with bags, and the piles of garbage on the floor—the sum of her existence, shoved into plastic. She sighed once, remembering things she would rather have forgotten, then lifted her chin and met his gaze unflinchingly. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

  Kate Bromley moved on.

  ***

  The mud snails crawled along the bottom of the Hudson River, scraping up algae and debris as they moved. Josh Hume watched the mollusks as they scavenged, and he envied their simplicity.

  “Only humans make it complicated.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Josh said. “I just . . .” He closed his eyes and sobbed. “It hurt. It hurt so much. I trusted him, and he—” His voice hitched, failed.

  “Is that why you jumped?” he asked. “Because he betrayed you?”

  Josh cried quietly for a minute before he replied. “There was no place that was safe anymore. Everyone laughed. Everyone knew. And . . . everything was dark and bleak and thick, like here on the bottom of the sea, and all I could think about was having to live every day for the rest of my life feeling like m
y heart was being crushed, like I was moving under water while everyone else was doing laps in the daylight. And I knew, just knew, that no matter what I did, that feeling would never go away. Never.” He looked up to face Death. “I jumped because I finally had hope, and it got ripped away.”

  Between them, the mud snails slowly trekked along the river floor.

  “You lived,” he said, not unkindly, “and possibilities spread before you too numerous to count. You jumped, and became nothing more than a statistic.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It just hurt too much.” Josh’s hand trembled as he offered his coin. “Next time,” he whispered, “can I be a snail? Please?”

  As if he could control what happened next. But instead of saying so, he replied, “Done.”

  Josh smiled sadly, and if Death had a heart, it might have broken, or at least cracked. But Death was heartless, and always had been.

  He felt Josh Hume move on, and he contemplated the notion of hope, and of hopelessness, and how the one could so easily lead to the other.

  He left the river, shedding icicles as he passed by.

  ***

  Michael Tucker stared at the pool of red beneath his body. His mom was going to have a stroke trying to get the stains out of the carpet.

  “You really think that’s the thing that’s going to upset her?” Death asked. “The bloodstains on the carpet?”

  Michael shrugged. “You don’t know her.”

  “I know everyone.”

  “So you know she’s all about appearances. I woulda blown my face off if I had Dad’s gun.”

  “I know you did this to hurt your parents. You threw away your life in a temper tantrum.”

  “Whatever.”

  A pause, and then Death repeated, “‘Whatever’?”

  “You heard me. My life sucked. Thanks for nothing.” Michael pulled a coin out of his pocket and waved it. “Here.”

  A far longer pause, one that stretched and pulled taut. When Death finally spoke again, his words frosted the air. “Keep thy trinket, Michael Tucker.”

  Michael blinked. “But . . . but you get a coin. You have to. That’s, like, the rule.”

  Death smiled an empty smile. “It is the rule for those who move on.”

  The meaning behind his words hit Michael, and he stammered, “But why?”

  “You insulted me.”

  Michael had no idea how he’d done such a thing. It was yet another item to add to his shit list, to his personal vendetta against the world. If there was one lesson he had learned in his sixteen years, it was that life is grossly unfair.

  “So . . .” His voice cracked. “So what happens to me?”

  “Nothing.”

  Relief washed over Michael, and he let out a laugh. “Man, you got me good. I was actually scared for a moment there.”

  “You misunderstand me, Michael Tucker. Nothing is what happens to you.” Death’s smile sharpened. “You are nothing.”

  Michael reached out, perhaps to beg, but then he felt an insistent tug at his feet. He looked down and watched, horrified, as he began to unravel. The pain didn’t kick in until his legs were gone below the knees. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed again as he was slowly erased from existence. He screamed until his voice was taken away, and even then his eyes screamed silently until they, too, were gone.

  His coin winked once, as if holding on to the memory of light, and then it blackened and turned to ash.

  Nothing remained of Michael Tucker.

  On the bedroom floor, a discarded corpse began to rot.

  ***

  “Cold,” the pale steed commented.

  “He insulted me.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean what you did. Agreed, he was a piece of work, and should’ve known better than to mouth off to you. I meant the temperature. It’s cold.”

  He allowed himself to feel the chill of the wind, and he had to admit that his steed was correct: The temperature had plummeted. His fault; he had allowed himself to get distracted. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t mind. I was just pointing it out.” A pause, and then the horse snorted, “You know what helps the cold? Heat.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So? You going to see her?” When he didn’t reply, the horse said, “Or maybe escape to Club Med. I hear the vacation packages are to die for.”

  Despite himself, he smiled. “Fine. I’ll see her.”

  ***

  He walked among the rubble, pausing every time he came across another victim. Most were soldiers, and they gave him their coins and, more often than not, a salute before moving on. Others were bystanders who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to the media. The time and place meant little to him; everyone came to him at one point, whether sooner or later, whether violently or peacefully.

  He breathed in; he breathed out.

  They moved on.

  Overhead, War circled on her red steed. He smiled up at her, but he didn’t make his presence known. He liked to watch her work. She was passionate, of course—all of the Red Riders were passionate. That was a prerequisite for the job. She was also compassionate, which was rare. Bloodshed for this particular War was secondary to catharsis. She was angry over the bombing; he felt that deeply. He could feel all mortals when he wished, but the Horsemen were connected to him on a much more personal level; in a very strict sense, they were part of him.

  Or had been, at one point. Now? They were something else. Something different.

  A frown played on his face. They had changed since their conception, hadn’t they? War’s need for control had turned inward. Famine’s quest for balance had turned outward. Pestilence quietly inspired people to stand and be strong. Battles and starvation and sickness still took millions of lives, and yet the Riders who oversaw those functions had become much more than caretakers of mortality.

  They had changed.

  Not he. He was the same as he’d always been. He continued to watch life evolve while he himself remained aloof, apart. Disconnected.

  Cold.

  He closed his eyes. It was coming. He knew the signs far too well. It was coming, and soon.

  A sound, like a door slamming shut.

  Chasing after the sound, a memory, fleeting and imprecise, of contentment. Of completion.

  He reached behind him for the guitar slung across his back—the guitar that until just now had been in the Slate. Eyes still closed, he touched the piece of him that had, at one point, been a songwriter and a singer. That wasn’t exactly correct; he himself had never sung a song or played the guitar. Before he had been Death, the concept of music had been unknown to him. But just as pieces of himself were in all life, all life touched him. Part of him housed the essence that had been a musician, and it was that musician’s likeness he had taken for this current cycle.

  There had been something in the way that one had lived, the words and songs he had created, that had resonated deeply.

  As people lay dying and dead, crushed by debris or blown to pieces by a bomber out for vengeance, his fingers strummed guitar strings. Amid the cries of humanity, he began to sing about touching feelings he didn’t understand and losing a soul he didn’t have.

  Xander

  “Oh, come on,” Suzie said grumpily. “Brown is brown.”

  “Well,” Xander replied, “yes. Brown is brown. But there’s also burnt umber, raw umber, auburn, chestnut, coffee, and chocolate. To name a few.”

  “Chocolate! You’re singing my song, Zan . . .”

  Always one to take a hint, he nudged the bag of M&M’s closer to her. “You see what I’m saying? You can’t paint the tree just brown. It’s too plain.”

  “That’s stupid,” she said, popping a handful of chocolate into her mouth. “Tree trunks are brown. Even trunks that are part of magic wish-granting trees.”

  He pretended she didn’t just insult something that he took seriously. She was about as book smart as a person could be, but when it came to the creative end of things, Suzie
was as hopeless as a mathlete in an MMA tournament.

  “Magic wish-granting trees would definitely have hints of gold, like burnt sienna.” Xander dumped the tube of acrylic into Suzie’s hand. “The tree has to appear three-dimensional.”

  “It is three-dimensional. Marcie’s going to be inside, playing Cinderella’s Mother.” Suzie frowned. “And that’s another thing. Why doesn’t the mom have a name? She’s just ‘Cinderella’s Mother.’”

  “You understand that she’s a minor character, right? Into the Woods isn’t about Cinderella’s mom.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “There’s a point?”

  She threw an M&M at him.

  “Look,” he said, grabbing a brush. “Light adds depth to colors, changes them, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically.” He squeezed raw umber onto his palette and added a few streaks over Suzie’s patches of brown. “See?”

  “Yeah, sure. But this is silly. You want light? The spotlight will be on Marcie when she has her lines. Why bother being so finicky about the colors on the tree?”

  “Because it’s important. Details matter. Especially the small ones. Look.” He led her around to his section of the prop tree, and he showed her where he’d painted a few objects into the bark: Prince Charming’s sword, gleaming brightly, with hints of ruby by the pommel; Cinderella’s silver crown; a set of bronze scales the Baker used to weigh his ingredients before baking bread; knotholes that were actually pennies, winking copper.

  “Okay, admittedly, that’s cool,” Suzie said, tracing the outline of the sword. “But what’s the point? No one’s going to see the hidden drawings.”

  “Maybe not. But I know they’re there.”

  She took another handful of M&M’s. “Seems like a waste of time. Like you always bringing chocolate to Art Squad when you don’t eat chocolate.”

  “I do,” he said, but that wasn’t true. He hadn’t had a bite of chocolate since he was a kid. “And chocolate inspires creativity.”

  “It inspires my waistline,” Suzie said around a mouthful of M&M’s.

  “You don’t really care about any of this stuff, do you?” He motioned to the prop tree, to the scenery, to the backdrop waiting to be painted.