More Death

Here is Part 2 of "The Life of Death" short story. Part 1 is here.

The Life of Death (Part 2 of 3)

I was sitting on the couch, thumbing through a magazine. The 11:00 news was on in the background, and I was half listening to it. Until one report caught my ear.

“Hospitals around the country are reporting what seems like the best news one could ever hear: there have been no recorded deaths in the last four days. For the story, we go live to Mary Feldstone at Mt. Sinai.”

“Here at Mt. Sinai,” said who I presume was Mary Feldstone, “doctors and patients alike are baffled yet cautiously elated by the sheer dearth of deaths. This hospital, which reports an average of 27 deaths a day, has literally had none in four days.”

The report went on to say that at every hospital polled, no one has died. Morgues and mortuaries have, for four days, been devoid of new business.

I didn’t quite know what to make of that. My first inclination was that it was a coincidence. Surely…no, it couldn’t be. These things just don’t happen.

The following day, things got even more surreal. I found a roach in my bathtub that morning and squished it with a magazine. Completely flattened, its guts strewn across the enamel, it nonetheless moved. In fact, it dashed down the drain of its own accord. This was not only odd, but defied all the known laws of biology. I may not be an expert in the life sciences, but I at least know that when an organism has the guts squashed out of it, it tends to slow down a bit.

That evening on the news, the lack-of-death count was expanded to report on the increasing roach, rat, and other vermin problems that were plaguing the city. It wasn’t just the humans; nothing was dying. Call it stubbornness on my part, but I still refused to believe that Dave’s “encounter” with “Death” had anything to do with it.

Until…


I was sitting on the couch watching Live at Five when my apartment door opened. In walked Dave, dressed in a black cloak and carrying a scythe. He threw the scythe noisily to the floor.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t kill things. Myself, yes. Other things, no.”

“Say what?” I asked, knowing I was going to regret it.

“Before Death vanished, he said that I was now ‘in charge.’”

“In charge of what?”

“Dying. The whole not living business.”

My head hurt.

“Haven’t you noticed that nothing is dying? That hospitals are reporting record numbers of non-deaths and that the city is overcome with vermin?”

“Yes, but I just assumed it was one of those freakish things…”

“Yes! Yes, it is one of those freakish things—only it’s far more freakish than you could have imagined! I just can’t kill things. It’s all my fault.…”

This is perhaps the first time I had ever heard of someone who was sorry that he couldn’t kill anything.

“Okay,” I said. “Assuming for the moment that I believe you, that Death bailed on his job and left you in charge of visiting final perdition on everyone and everything…but the roaches, Dave? Surely you could bring yourself to kill them.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But still, they’re living things.” He stared at me.

“You have to do it.”

“Say what?”

“You have to kill things.”

“Me? Are you high? I didn’t kill Death—”

“Or whatever.”

“Or whatever. I mean, this isn’t really my problem.”

“Oh, spoken like a true New Yorker.”

“You’re forgetting the essential point here, which is that I am not Death!”

“Fine, be that way.”

“What way?”

“Stubborn.”

I growled. “Well, where did Death go, anyway? Can we find him? He can’t have much money. I mean, would a preternatural entity have a nest egg of some kind? Surely he hasn’t gotten far.”

“Leave it to you to reduce the basic points of existence to money.”

“That’s because I live in the real world rather than exist in some metaphysical half-life. And call me a Philistine if you must, but at least I haven’t upset the basic laws of existence.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” said Dave, getting increasingly flustered. “What am I going to do?”

“Well, how specifically are you supposed to, um, kill? Just wave your scythe over them, or is it more ‘hands on’?”

“As Death explained it to me, when the signal comes in on the Mortaloscope— Oh, go ahead and say it…”

“‘Mortalosocope’?”

“There’s a more technical name for it, but Death actually does have a sense of humor. Essentially it’s a large crystal.”

He reached into the pocket of the cloak and withdrew a large green glowing rock. It was pulsating quite rapidly.

“And it’s pulsating so rapidly because I’m very behind.”

“Oh,” I said, “so it’s like an answering machine. The speed of the flashing indicates how many messages there are.”

“Exactly. What’s really annoying is that it also has a vibrate mode, which is getting quite painful.”

He rubbed his thigh.

“OK, so when someone or something dies, your rock starts flashing.”

“Yes, and then the scythe allows me to- what are you laughing at?”

“Nothing. Go on. Please.”

“And the scythe allows me to triangulate on the exact location of the deceased and
then, using the scythe, I am supposed to remove the life force from the deceadent.”

“‘Deceadent’?”

“That’s what they’re called, yes.”

“It all sounds amazingly organized.”

“What, do you think death just happens?” he asked me.

“Yes, I kind of thought it did.”

“Well, it doesn’t.”

I really didn’t know quite how much to believe him, but I swear I’ve never seen Dave this earnest—or this worked up about anything. So I decided: I’d do as he asked. After all, since I didn’t even know if it was true—and it likely wasn’t (I mean, who kills Death and then has to cover for him?)—what did I have to lose? So I put on the black cloak, grabbed the scythe, and felt like I was on my way to a Halloween party. I took his pulsating green rock.

“All right. How does this purportedly work?” I asked, feeling like a complete dork.

“Now, you’re probably going to be very busy for a while.”

“So I gathered.”

“Hold the Mortaloscope in your left hand,” he said, and I did. “Extend your left hand, and extend your right hand, which is holding the scythe.” Now I really felt like a complete snickerdoodle. “Now, slowly—slowly—bring the blade of the scythe into contact with the Mortaloscope.”

I did, and as the blade of the scythe touched the rock, the room went dark. I was suddenly not in my apartment anymore. I was—I wasn’t quite sure....

To be continued...