Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.
The Life of Death (Part 3 of 3)
At first, it was just a completely black void. If I hadn’t felt some kind of surface beneath my feet, I couldn’t even have been certain that I was standing on anything. Then, all around me, I was in some kind of wormhole—which is really the only way I could describe it. It wasn’t that I was passing very quickly through a dark green tunnel, but it appeared as if I were standing still and the dark green tube was simply flowing past me. In seemingly no time, I was standing in an urban kitchen. A cockroach stood on the edge of a stainless steel sink. A middle-aged woman hovered over it, a pink, fuzzy slipper in her hand. The roach was not in good shape; it was flat, and its innards were protruding from both its sides. Yet, it was still moving. The oddest thing was that it was encased in a green light, not unlike the green of the “Mortaloscope” and indeed the portal tube I had just been in. Obviously, the green was to indicate the deceased—although the protruding guts were a pretty good hint all their own. I wasn’t quite sure what to do—but I figured the scythe had to be involved in some way. So, acting on a hunch, I touched the blade to the dying roach, and suddenly, the green light surrounding the roach passed into the blade of the scythe which glowed green for a scant moment, then faded. The roach was still. The woman with the slipper used the footwear to push the carcass into the garbage disposal in the sink.
So that was how it worked. I could feel the Mortaloscope vibrating insistently. I took it out and held it in my extended left hand. I touched the scythe blade to it, and was suddenly transported into the green tube portal again. In no time (it seemed) I was in what looked like the southwest desert of the United States. A tarantula had attacked a kangaroo rat, and it remained for me to dispatch the life force of the rat. Which I did. OK, this wasn’t so bad. So I got out the Mortaloscope again, and, once I got into the swing of things, began zipping from ecosystem to ecosystem. So being Death basically consisted of making sure that predator got prey. That’s not too hard or traumatic. Although, I was quickly finding that it could be exhausting.
Until.
After I had dispatched a few hundred million mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, and so on, I suddenly found myself in a wooden shack in what I presumed was Africa. On a straw bed in front of me, shrouded in the telltale green light, was a small child, I would guess no older than four. He (or she—it really wasn’t easy to tell) had obviously starved—and not yet to death. That was what I was doing there. The little figure was really no more than a tiny skeleton that had some dark gray skin draped over it. It was obviously in complete agony—the kind of agony for which death would be sweet relief. And so I touched the edge of the scythe to its little body, the green light was absorbed, and the little body was still. The fact that it was no longer making any noise attracted what I presumed were the child’s parents, who held the little lifeless body and cried over it.
Now I knew what had freaked Dave out—this was heartbreaking. And yet—it had to be done.
I got out the Mortaloscope and continued my rounds. Now I was thick into the human deaths. A not insignificant amount of the elderly, more infants than I cared to think about, a random assortment that cut across all demographic lines. I traveled to Africa, dispatching small children beset by hunger and disease. I traveled back to the United States where a 700-pound man had expired of a heart attack amidst a bed strewn with cupcake wrappers, empty bags of potato chips, and the remains of what looked like a brontosaurus. I visited cancer wards and car accidents. Private homes and public hospitals. If there was one thing that made this job even remotely easier it was taking those who were surrounded by loved ones, who were sad, but wept not the tears of pain but of a good life lived long and full.
I was nearly caught up and I returned to my apartment for a short break before heading out again. Within moments of arriving home, the door burst open and I saw Dave enter the room horizontally a foot or so above the floor. He fell with a dull thud to the carpet. He was immediately followed by a man of average height and what seemed to be of rather indeterminate age; he could have been anywhere between 30 and 70. He was completely bald and his face unlined and, for that matter, devoid of any conspicuous features whatsoever. In some ways, he kind of looked like actor Donald Pleasence, only much more ageless. He was dressed in a white “I Love NY” T-shirt and bluejeans. He was muscular and in good physical shape. As he charged into the room behind Dave, he was not a happy person. More like Donald Un-Pleasence. My assumption was that this was Death. I could see it.
“The point—the whole point—of this exercise was to teach you a lesson,” he berated Dave. He had a deep, resonant voice that scared the crap out of me “And like the miserable schmuck you are, you fobbed it off on someone else.” He looked over at me; I was still wearing his outfit. “Thanks, by the way,” he said to me.
“No problem,” I said, as casually as if I had loaned him a pen.
“This guy,” he kicked Dave’s prone form for emphasis, “is the biggest coward I have ever seen. And I’m eternal.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Dave mewled. “I can’t kill things. Myself, yes. Others, no.”
“Oh, shove it, you pseudo-intellectual putz. You spoiled 21st-century brats have no concept of Death.”
“I’ve read enough philosophy to know...”
Death laughed derisively. “‘Read enough.’ Give me a break. I’m talking about experience, man. You have no idea. You’re all so insulated from death that you have lost all respect for life. It’s all just an intellectual exercise to you. There was a time—just ask the Victorians—when getting something as minor as a scratch could be fatal. Now you slap a Band Aid on and everything is fine. Modern medicine has cured a bewildering number of diseases and other ailments that were lethal to your forebears. And when people do get fatally sick, they’re sent off to hospitals to die and disposed of neatly and cleanly. The funeral industry has expanded to the point where no one need ever actually see a dead body. Its all just an abstraction. So yutzes like you can play your little games with life and death because you have no respect for either. I had hoped that by making you take on the role of Death you could get a little...hands-on experience, some perspective, and maybe an iota of respect.”
He looked over at me. “You,” he said. “I’ll bet you’re a changed man.”
“Damn right,” I said. And it was true. After all I had seen and done, I was not going to take this life for granted ever again.
He took back his accoutrements and was ready to resume his role. He stood over Dave. “So I’m going to make this one final offer. This is the moment you pick life or death. Fish or cut bait. Shit or get off the pot. Because the next time I come out, that’s going to be it.”
Dave wisely chose life.
As he rose to his feet, Dave asked, “So, what’s death like, anyway?”
Death turned toward the door. “I have no idea. That’s like asking a bus driver what lies beyond the bus stop. I’m just the driver.”
And with that he was gone.
I confess, I was profoundly changed by the experience of having been Death, as one would expect, and decided to devote the rest of my life to finding ways to make other people’s lives better. Dave was essentially unchanged, although I never got any more late-night calls. Perhaps he had learned his lesson in that regard.
Every so often, when I walked through a hospital ward, I would feel something unseen brush past me. I think I knew who it was, and was sad that another person had shuffled off this mortal coil.
No comments:
Post a Comment