Monday, February 22, 2016

No Bars

"Listen you," The man said, prodding Death in the chest with a finger angrily, "I can't be dead. I have a contract. Do you know who I am?"

"I do." Death answered dully.

"Then you know that I'm a busy man. A popular man." The man was spinning around angrily, gesticulating with both hands. "A powerful man! So when I say I want you out of my house, I mean now!" And he gestured sternly to the door.

"We'll be leaving shortly." Death intoned, his frigid voice frosting the windows slightly with his words.

The man frowned at Death. He placed his hands on his hips.

He paced back and forth before the towering image of the eternal force of Death itself.

He turned his back on Death.

When he turned back, Death was still patiently waiting.

"Well go on. Scat!" He gestured at the black mass of cloaks and bones. He pulled out his phone to call his agent, but found he had no signal. Frustrated, he began walking around the home, holding his phone up above his head. "It's no use. I'm not going."

"I understand the desire to remain." Death said, solemnly. And with that, he lumbered his enormous form to the ground, and sat. He crossed his bony legs before him, and began to pick at the cheap carpet with his skeletal fingers. "There is much yet to see, and taste, and smell. To experience." He pulled a fragment of lint from the fibres of the carpet, and held its exquisite fuzziness between his bone fingers. The sensation was divine to him. "It is a shame to miss it."

The man ceased walking about his home, and poked his head back into the living room, where Death sat. Even sitting on the floor, Death was as tall as a man. His scythe lay next to him.

"I was going to get that dreadful carpet replaced. Came with the house. They had cats."

"I like cats." Death said, absent mindedly.

"I don't like their fur." The man said blandly. He moved into the room slowly, watching Death as he ran his hands across the carpet, enjoying the sensation of cheap fibre and old dust.

He watched as Death sat on the floor, and let his senses drink in the world around him. The cheap, the dirty, the expensive, the sublime, each was equal in the black pits that were the eyes of Death. To experience was to enjoy.

The man had never been to a farm. The thought had not occurred to him until this very moment, and somehow... he regretted it.

"So there's nothing you can do for me, huh?" He asked Death.

Death stopped moving his hands across the carpet suddenly. He turned to face the man beside him.

"There is one thing. When you are ready." His cold voice chilled the air, but was paradoxically kind in the ears of the man.

"You're sure."

"I'm sure."

"What if I sign your scythe for you?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

The man deflated. His options had run out. His phone was useless. His fame was no good. What then did he have?

"All right. Let's get it over with then." He moved towards the door.

Death stood, propping himself up with his scythe. Some of his bones creaked and popped as he did, and he realized he hadn't sat down like that in a really very long time. A note for the future. He moved towards the door, and extended a hand for the man to take.

As they joined hands, the door opened. While they exited, the man looked one last time into his home, and saw his life in things. Most of them were very nice things. Some of them were not so much so.

And he tried to hold on to the memories of each, as they passed into the veil.

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