“Jeezus!” For Greg Grisdale, it was way out of character. Even part of him knew it right after. Cripes; I sound like a dog.
He certainly wasn’t a pushover, or one to take it lying down. He had leapt out of his bed without thinking about it, and saw that the cloaked figure had a few inches on him. Whatever it was, it was hidden and possibly well-padded. The only feature Greg could see was its nose: bulbous.
It occurred to him that this thing had gotten into his place unseen, and it didn’t look like a human being despite its shape and nose. So, he contented himself with, “who are you? How did you get in here?” His voice had clicked back into character, thanks goodness.
The creature didn’t disappoint his first impression. “I am Death.” Greg found himself relaxing.
“Death, is it? Well, what are you here for? I’ve been to the doc; he keeps telling me I’m so healthy, I’m wasting my time in the waiting room. Can’t be for me, can it?”
Had its voice not been so resonant, it would have been grating. “Your death is not yet; in that, you are correct. I require your assistance with a death.”
“Why?”
Death paused a bit, and Greg felt the corners of his mouth rising. The thing doesn’t take to questions, that’s for sure. As his assessment sunk in, his upper lip rose up to his gums. It may be Death, but it wasn’t all that frightening. He could deal with it.
“As the number of souls have increased, so have my responsibilities.” Now he sounds like a priest. “My power has limits, and the number of simulacrums – “ whatever – “I can create are not infinite. Thus, I need assistance so as to ration my time.” As it completed its last sentence, Greg could feel its invisible eyes.
His smile was gone, and his back slipped into a crouch as he wondered if he had underestimated the creature.
“All right,” he said, trying for a reasonable manner,” “you don’t have the time to waste. Is this a volunteer job?”
“No; there is payment. For assisting me, you will learn the year of your own death.”
And if I don’t do it right, I don’t get paid. Simple and straightforward.
His posture now straightened, Greg replied promptly. “Okay; I’ll do it.”
In the blink of an eye, they were in another room in what appeared to be a house. It was a bedroom, but not the master bedroom. It was too small, and so was the bed. Also, the figure in it – on top of it – was too young to be the owner. A bottle of pills was near his semi-fetal figure.
Death supplied the words. “This young man is a weakling. He ended his life with pills, much as a woman would do. When others would be girded, he sniveled.”
So, that was the assignment. Great. Death sure knew how to pick ‘em!
“Okay, I got it. I take it you have to leave now; how do I get you back once he’s ready?”
“Summon me with a simple call in your mind. To reach the soul, call out to him.” With that, the creature vanished. Greg understood why; its last instructions didn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for questions. So, to it:
“Kid? You up?”
Incredibly, at least in other circumstances, the poor fellow’s body became double-exposed. He didn’t get up; instead, his shadow-body curled up more.
So he is up, Greg answered himself with an inner sigh. It looked like this one was going to be a long one.
He snuck over, and calmed himself by noting that his own body must be back in his room. Greg hadn’t landed a gal yet, although he came close a few times. Things were fairly easy, so he didn’t feel any hurry to. He wasn’t old enough to grow out of the sway, lay and sash-ay lifestyle. All a kid like this meant, was someone who’d crimp his action unless a hard distance was kept between them. It was going to be a challenge.
Might as well be factual. “What got you offing yourself?”
Still balled, the kid replied. “I couldn’t stand to live.” Nasal voice, the kind that transitioned smoothly to a whine.
But something seemed wrong – “Lots of people are like that.” Instead of continuing with what he thought, he veered into “Was it a terminal disease that got you pill-swallowing?” After all, it might have. The pills had to have come from somewhere.
“No,” the kid droned back. “There was nothing for me in life.”
Stifling, Greg turned it into a near-cough. He had been right about this – kid. Yep, Death sure knows how to pick ‘em. “So here you are, and followed through.”
Unexpectedly, the kid turned his head and glared at the bigger man. “I don’t like you.”
Had Greg been able to see his face in the mirror, he would have seen beatific. The kid saw button-eyed. “Well, fella, I can’t say that I’d be jollying around with you either.
“If you want to know why I’ve come here to scare you, it’s because –“
The kid’s spirit-body was now out of his corpse, moved to the far side of the bed. “You think that I’m – Oh, God!”
Musing that the last two words sounded almost normal for him, Greg figured out what he had seen. “Yep, that’s your corpse. Pill bottle’s on the other side.”
Instead, the kid kept looking at him. “Basically, I’m your guide,” Greg continued. “Once you’re up to it, I’m going to be summoning someone that’s scary but doesn’t mean you any harm. He’ll – it’ll – “take you to where you’re going to go.”
He stayed polite, but Greg’s opinion of his charge was hardening. A loser; a waste of space. Someone that you laughed about and then forgot. Nothing more.
As he recovered, the kid’s brow wrinkled more. To restrain himself, Greg noted that the night vision that came with his own spirit-form was pretty good. It might as well have been twilight. Greg braced himself as soon as he saw the other’s mouth opening. “So I’m nothing to you,” in a tone that suggested he had switched subject and object.
“Let me show you something,” Greg responded as he came over to the bed. The kid’s back was to the wall, so he wouldn’t go anywhere – or so Greg thought. To make himself less threatening, he kept his arms back and moved in with his face. The youngster didn’t move, even as Greg’s face was right over his corpse.
“If you’ll look closely a little over my right eyebrow, you’ll see a little scar. Do you know how I got it?”
“A bar brawl?” the kid drawled back. He didn’t even have enough stuff in him to sound chilly.
“No, not in the slightest. One night, I was walking down a hill and a car was going by. Next thing I know, I felt this ‘thud’ right over my eye. It didn’t hurt all that much, and I didn’t know it was bloody until I felt something sticky run down on my eyebrow. All I knew was that the car’s tire hit a rock and shot it to my face.
“The point I’m trying to make is, there are some times when you have to keep plowing ahead. You’ve done what you did, but you have to see through the next step.”
As he half-expected, the kid didn’t snap to it. On the other hand, he didn’t get any whine back either.
“Cripes! Weren’t you worried about your eye being hit?” Before Greg could respond, he heard, “What do you really think of me, anyway?”
For some reason – it might have been the assignment, it might have been the sight of Death, it might have been something else entirely – Greg felt as if his normal opinion had been drained away, leaving only a quiet recognition that he knew nothing about the figure cowering on the far side of his bed. He found himself saying, “I don’t know enough about you to say.
“In fact, I haven’t walked in anything close to your shoes. Not even close. That’s the truth.”
It was the truth. How could Greg get across that his dad scolded him when he had cried, or even when he didn’t win a fight? That he was raised to either shrug pain off or see it as a goad? The kid wasn’t that small, and he wasn’t a stick, but there was a kind of shapelessness about him. There really was no way they could relate.
Strangely, the realization made Greg relax. He accepting their incomparability was like a runner throwing off his training weights. He was now sure that the rest of the chore would go smoothly: the hump was passed.
And he was right. “Move aside,” the kid said, and started to get up. Within a minute, he had gone with Death.
At the same time, Greg was back in his own room. It wasn’t that much bigger than the kid’s, as it was part of all the apartment Greg could afford. The Grim Reaper didn’t keep him waiting long.
“The death went quietly, and with minimal resistance. You have fulfilled your part of the bargain.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, –“ something under the cowl said that the thing did mind, so Greg shifted gears – “when do I die?”
The creature nodded, slightly. “Your death will transpire in the Christian year 2069.”
“Okay.” The thing had fulfilled its part of the bargain too.
\
Greg didn’t know quite how to proceed. It would be mannerly to shake hands, but the Grim Reaper wasn’t exactly a Facebook contact. Uncharacteristically, he waited a second.
Seeing his body out of the corner of his eye gave it to him. “Say, how do I get back in there?” he asked with a motion towards his body. “The same way?”
“An act of will, yes.” Now uninterested, Death vanished.
Leaving a normally extrospective man with a fait bit to think over.
