Contractual Misconceptions

The glaring lights of the hospital were somehow softened. It was a nice change.

Edgar sat up, and swung his legs off the hospital bed for the first time in a long time. It felt nice. He stretched out fully, and nothing cracked or spasmed. He hadn't gotten a good stretch like that in decades. Again, it was nice.

He stretched every muscle, turned every joint, wiggled every toe. Everything felt... fine. Nice.

But eventually he ran out of body. And he had to address the elephant in the room. Without looking at him, he spoke.

"You look about like I'd expected."

"Thanks." came the icy rumble of Death, waiting patiently by the door. His enormous black frame draped in dark robes looked too massive to even fit in the door, but nevertheless here he was. "I try to fit in, change with the times." He plucked at an imaginary hair on his scythe, to keep busy.

"Oh yeah?" Edgar raised an eyebrow. "Guess you haven't had to change much recently, huh?"

"Oh, almost constantly." Death grinned back, an expression that was lost on Edgar, to whose perspective Death appeared to be constantly grinning due to his skull face. "As recently as the seventies I was wearing these big ridiculous antlers."

"Back when everyone had afro's and bell bottoms?" Edgar asked incredulously.

"Oh goodness no," intoned Death, "The actual seventies. The year seventy." Death chuckled, a rolling, thunderous sound that filled the room with shudders of cold.

"Ha Ha..." Edgar laughed politely.

There was a brief silence while Death reminisced about his old antlers.

Edgar looked down at his body, lying peacefully on the hospital bed that he had been confined to for some time. It made him smile. He wasn't sure why.  He stood up, and cleared his throat.

"Ahem."

Death startled slightly, falling out of his reverie.

"My apologies. I get nostalgic sometimes, Edgar."

"No worries, it happens to us all."

Death's skeletal hand snaked out of his robes, and opened the door beside him. "Ready to go then?"

Edgar looked back at what had been his body, and a pleasant smile again alighted his face.

"Yes. I think so." He said, as he marched out the door with Death close behind, gracefully slipping his impossibly large frame through the small door. The two marched quietly down the hospital corridor as it began to stretch away into something eternal and unknowable.

"So if you don't mind, can I ask you a question?" Edgar looked up at Death.

Death didn't look down, but replied in a polite fashion he had honed over millenia.

"There are many answers coming to you very shortly, and I'd hate to ruin the surprise." His icy voice answered in a paradoxically warm manner.

"No no, not that... I was just curious about you. What's it like, having a job where you, you know... kill people?" Edgar asked with increasing akwardness.

Death sighed and stopped in his tracks. He turned, and the empty sockets of his ancient skull took in the fullness of Edgar. The infinite blackness bored into his soul, and Edgar fidgeted quietly.

"Why does everyone think that I kill people?" Death muttered, exasperated.