Tom Horner was a man who took words seriously. That’s why he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The figure who had woken him, assuming that he wasn’t embroiled in a dream, had offered him some sort of bargain. It was Death, or a prank concocted by someone who was pretty thorough. He didn’t much like punking, but felt obliged as a good sport to smile when others laughed about it. Tom easily conceded that it was harmless, but he couldn’t see how playful quasi-lying was admirable.
His room was neat, with little clutter. It had taken some forethought to keep it that way, which Tom didn’t mind expending. Nor did he mind a part of his life revolving around making the cleaning easy. The computer on his desk was the sole, lonely occupant of it. Any papers he had were neatly stored away. The file cabinet was his friend, as it made financial chores easy. In the almost infinitesimally small chance he was ever audited by the tax collectors, he would sail through it in a breeze. Tom had heard of people who paid a little more tax than was necessary, so as to have a “hook” if they themselves were ever audited, but that practice struck him as inefficient. Better to be neat than pay an extra, all-voluntary, tax on sloppiness.
The rest of his apartment was a similar study in neatness. He had sometimes wondered how his girlfriend would have fit in should they live together, but it was a non-issue right now. Forethought, like any valuable resource, had to be economized. Having a live-in, as of now, wasn’t a sufficiently high priority.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he were missing anything. His high-school confusion had been mirrored by hers. When they had first hit it off, they had ended up smiling over their same disjointedness. It turned out that the kind of girl he had mooned over was a near-ideal prom date for the kind of guy she had mooned over. The base of their bond was the mutual recognition that they’d both been a little silly when teenagers. She wasn’t exactly plain, but she had a knack of appearing so. She had a circle of friends, but she could come and go as she pleased. He found it easy to praise her for her inner individuality, but it didn’t come as easily as her praise for his inner integrity. She was one of those silver-ring girls, and he didn’t mind. Tom never knew that one of the techniques she had picked up was admiring a guy for a character trait that everyone took for granted. It took a bit of practice, for some, but it made the postponement of intercourse a much easier stream to navigate.
Tom had actually fallen asleep on his home-office couch, having put in a long after-hours spell. He wasn’t one of those people who put a computer in the bedroom; to him, it said nascently sloppy. He wasn’t that kind of workaholic.
He had already risen, and seen that Death had several inches on him. “You’d better confirm what you just said. If I help you with a newly-dead person, then you’ll tell me the year of my own demise.” It came out flatly.
Death nodded, his incongruously bulbous nose bobbing up and down. “It will be your task to shepherd the soul after his death. Many facing death do not accept it quietly, or complaisantly bend to their fate. They cause trouble. Your task will be to mollify such trouble so I can arrive and escort them to their death-place. In return, as I said before, you will learn the year of your own death.” And make things easier for him when my own time comes, Tom noted. Dream or no, it made sense.
He considered for a moment, in which it didn’t occur to him to renegotiate the year part. “Okay. I’ll do it.” Death seemed to know that he meant it.
He might not have, had he knew what he was in for. To put it bluntly, the room he was now in was a disaster. Death had accompanied him, and some kind of night-vision highlighted the fresh corpse in front of both of them. The bed-sheets were tumbled about in a way that invited the term “rat’s nest.” Although it didn’t look like a room in a boarding house, it might as well have been. Junk-food packages littered the place, congregated near the junk-pile desk that contained a computer somewhere. Tom’s girlfriend was somewhat Reubenesque, although not unhealthily so, but this fellow – whoever he was – took the cake. Most likely, he had taken a lot of cake. And chips, and choco bars, and a whole load of “else.” He seemed close to Tom’s parents’ age.
“This man is a professional spammer, specializing in the promotion of stocks that many deem worthless.” Tom felt his face harden. “It is beyond him to consider the effects his conduct had upon the innocent; he prefers to think of them as gullible. He uses legalisms when it suits him, when his momentary advantage finds them shielding, but has boundless contempt for the law.” Hearing Death’s elaboration now made his upper back tense up. It wasn’t going to be an easy job; that was for sure.
He turned to Death, tilting his prominently-jawed head up. “So what do I do?”
“Call him; his spirit will answer. When he is ready, call me. I can be summoned merely by a call in your mind. Make sure that he will offer no resistance beforehand.”
Tom nodded. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was certainly straightforward.
“Get up, spamboy.” Tom got his response by seeing his equally-obese spirit form clamber out of his body.
“Sure, man, sure.” He was evidently immune to disdain. “What brings you here?”
Then he blinked, and seemed to remember something. “Hold it – how did you get here?”
Tom bit the bullet. “I’m here because you’re dead.”
“Bullcrap,” the man replied as he lumbered over. “You ain’t the Grim Reaper and I was feeling fine. Feeing fine, come to think of it. So why you bothering me?”
It was evident why the real thing had gone to outsourcing. Maybe his cadences didn’t impress that many, too. Tom doubted if this crook would be impressed at all. “Turn around; look at your bed.”
The rotund fellow did so, and saw it for himself. “Well. I really thought you were flinging it. Guess you weren’t.”
Point accepted, he turned around. It was as if he was flopping while vertical. “Can’t blame me for being skeptical. Everyone gulls everyone in this world.”
Tom was beginning to feel ill. Habitually, he turned to reason. “That’s not true. People who are honest are taken for granted, but they’re not ostracized. If you were right, they would be.” Maybe they’d be forbidden fruit, he wondered, but kept that thought to himself.
“You know what I mean,” came the irritable reply. “Those people don’t count. Every one of them thinks they’re important, but they’re just the pack mules.” The thought that his guide might be one of those “pack mules” either didn’t occur to him or didn’t bother him. The fellow’s sensitivity seemed insulated by his fat.
“I mean, look. I bummed around, but that’s because I couldn’t be bothered. Once I got my act in gear, it was easy to scam enough dough to get a down payment for this place. Or, I should say, enough ‘proof of income’ for a nice little dealie.
“And I haven’t been thrown out! Still makin’ the payments, as if nothing had happened. Talk about recession-proof!”
It was a good thing that he liked to gab, because Tom’s treasured words had utterly failed him. Here was a human being who thought that his fellow humans were put on Earth only to shoot money in his pocket. He made it even plainer that he didn’t care about anything involving ethics or morals. He even said to Tom, “Even you can make it in this racket, Mr. Bashful. Even a stick like you.”
Oddly, it was easy for Tom to remember the task he had agreed to. Some tough talk seemed worth a try. “Look, it’s over for you. You’re dead, you’ve seen it, and you might as well deal with it.” He resisted the temptation to use “go quietly” in his next sentence. “Things’ll go a lot easier if you go along with the Reaper.”
“Kid, there’s no such thing. You’re gulling me,” he said with an odd-to-place fat smile.
That gave Tom his opening. “Want to bet on it?”
The spammer cocked an interested eyebrow and replied, “what are the terms.” Despite his overall nihilism, he seemed to take those words seriously.
“You see Death, you go quietly. No gab, no talk, you get behind him and go.”
That got a half-toothed smile that was easier to place. On a six-year-old it would have looked cute. Tom was sure that this fellow still thought it was endearing. “Okay; I can do that.
“Now show him to me!”
Tom turned inwards to make the summons, and was rewarded with a presence that, though alien, was comforting in a way. Unlike this blob, Death meant what he said. By comparison, the Grim Reaper was trustworthy.
The spammer let out an oath, followed by “it is him.” Everything but the scythe and hourglass.
Tom raised both eyebrows, and the spammer nodded. “All right; you won this one.” He was a little shorter than Tom, and had to tilt up his head a little more. “Okay, Death. Take me away.” They both disappeared, and soon Tom had too.
He arrived back in his home office a moment before Death. Tom killed the time watching his own body, somewhat mesmerized.
He didn’t need to look around; he felt Death before eyesight confirmed.
“You have fulfilled your task; it went expeditiously. Before I tell you the year of your death, you must know how to rejoin your body. Use a similar act of will – wish it – and you will descend into life.” Tom felt its eyes on him, and he obediently nodded.
“You will meet your death in the Christian year 2073.”
“Thank you,” Tom replied. For more than just the information.
Death nodded, and vanished - leaving Tom to come to terms with what he had just experienced.
Whoever that fellow was, he was grotesque. Living in a one-room slum, wearing his body down with awful food, acting and even thinking like an animal – Tom could go on and on. He might, once he got back in his body. It proved to be as easy as Death had described.
Eyes opening, Tom saw the indeterminate image of the blank white wall. Whatever night vision he had, he had lost after his homecoming. His return confirmed, he again reviewed what he had seen.
That fellow – fat, disgustingly slobby, crooked, rapacious in his small-scale way. Chances are, he had forgotten he had owned a house. Too used to boarding houses and bumming around. And that smile, that –
An image struck him, and Tom suddenly burst into laughter. He spent the next ten minutes undulating on the couch, finding it impossible to stop.
When done, he got up to get to his bedroom. Before he left, he spent a moment fondling his neat desk.
