Death Read online

  Mosquitoes: Guileless.

  “You know what the other creatures of the forest call you,” whispered Father.

  “No,” said the mosquito with its antenna flapping.

  “They call you a sap-drinking sissy.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said the mosquito indignantly.

  “Oh, but it’s true,” said Father, all open-faced and honest. “I heard them myself.”

  “Why? Why would they do that?” said the mosquito, tears shining in its tiny little eyes.

  “They think you’re pathetic. I heard one of the horses say that all that sap has made you stupid.”

  “But I get on so well with the horses,” said the mosquito. “I cool them down with the beating of my little wings.”

  “Oh no,” said Father in mock surprise. “The horses hate you. They say you’re worthless. So do the rabbits.”

  “Not the rabbits!” cried the mosquito.

  “Yes,” said my father. “Those rabbits are two-faced monsters. They say you were a mistake of Creation.”

  “Well,” said the mosquito, wiping its dripping proboscis with a minute leg and drawing itself up to its full, tiny height. “I may only be a mosquito, but I am a proud mosquito. Henceforth I shall drink nothing but the blood of living creatures!”

  “That’ll show ’em,” said Father, before turning his attention to a Tyrannosaurus rex who had been peacefully munching on leaves.

  It was little wonder that Father had been so keen on moving us here. No creature on Earth had built up an immunity to lies yet. It was the golden age of gullibility. All of Creation were sitting ducks for his fabrications.

  Mother was also finding that her own innate skills were blossoming in this new, innocent environment. I found her in a sumptuous glade with a smile on her face.

  “I’ve just made gray squirrels envy red squirrels,” she said.

  I had never thought about it before, but Mother must have been extremely frustrated in Hell. As the personification of Sin among the already damned, she had never really had a chance to show what she was capable of doing. But here, for once, she was looking fit to burst with pride, not just maggots and pus.

  “It just feels right to me to be here at this point in my existence.” She beamed as a red squirrel and a gray squirrel began wrestling on the ground in front of her. “So right.” The grass on which she was standing began to wilt out of sheer laziness.

  Nutsradamus, Famed Red Squirrel Seer and Demagogue, Whose Oblique Utterances Begat Many Apocalyptic Squirrel Cults and Belief in an Eternal Hibernation.

  You may at this point be wondering just how it was that Mother, Father, and I knew the names of all these creatures, having just arrived on Earth. Well, each animal, vegetable, and mineral on Earth had a laminated card attached to it. On this laminated card was typed the phrase HI, I’M… with the creature’s name spelled out beneath it. Of course, such a system had its problems. Many of the smaller creatures could not move because of the weight of the cards attached to them, and a great number of the cards became lost or mixed up. I have it from a good source that “bananas” were originally meant to be called “cycloparaffin,” but Father must have switched the cards without anyone noticing. Once the wrong card had been worn for any amount of time, the name stuck. In fact, back then, if you looked at Earth closely, you could see that it had been finished in a rather ramshackle way. The basics were pretty solid—gravity, atmosphere, sound—but there was still plastic wrapping on some of the trees, and crumbs of manna laced the garden floor from where the Creator had eaten while He worked.

  As it was, my first days on Earth were somewhat anticlimactic. Mother and Father seemed so happy tempting and corrupting that I didn’t want to interrupt them. But the fact was that I hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with myself. I tried to convince cows to take over the world, to rampage across the fields slaughtering all in their wake, to start a new religion of udder worship, to build cities devoted to the consumption of grass, their aqueducts running with fresh milk. I even prepared a pictorial presentation of cows traveling into outer space aboard butter-powered space churns, but the cows seemed unconvinced, and soon returned to wondering how many stomachs they had. The current belief was seventeen.

  Cows: Unambitious.

  I thought maybe I should try something a little smaller and spent an entire morning pouring water on Gold, trying to get him to react. But he just sat there staring at me, completely nonplussed by my suggestions that he should fizz wildly and explode. Things got worse when I tried convincing Helium to get some color in her cheeks, and maybe a little odor. She simply yawned at me languorously and explained that she was a noble gas and, as with all nobility, preferred the inert life.

  By my second day on Earth I was disconsolate and had retreated to a cavern and enveloped myself in the comforting embrace of the Darkness. I was blissfully doing absolutely nothing when I heard the sound of grunting coming from a small copse opposite the cave entrance. I crept over to investigate, curious as to what new horrors my parents might be instigating, but was greeted by the sight of two very strange-looking creatures. At first I thought they were angels, or devils, but they were much smaller and had no wings. Instead they had large protuberant brows that lent them an air of immense stupidity that I would soon find out was thoroughly justified. It was my first sighting of humans.

  The two creatures, who were seated before a large mound of laminated name tags, seemed to be engaged in a fierce debate.

  “Me Adam,” said the larger, hairier one of the two, whom I took to be the male, attaching a card that read ADAM to his chest, before jabbing his finger at the other. “She Adam.”

  “No,” grunted the smaller, less hairy one. She attached a card to herself that read BRACHIOSAUR. “Me Eve,” she said, before pointing her finger at the other. “You Eve.”

  “No!” retorted the large one. “Me Adam. You Adam.”

  “No!” rejoined the smaller one, pointing at herself. “You Eve. Me Eve.” This went on for some time.

  Eventually I plucked up the courage to introduce myself.

  “Hello. I’m Death. Wonderful day, isn’t it?”

  They looked at me uncomprehendingly, then at their pile of laminated cards, and then back at me.

  “You Adam?” said the male one.

  “No. You Eve,” said the female one.

  They looked at each other and suddenly began pulling out each other’s hair. They fought for a bit, and before I knew it they had begun rutting on the floor in front of me. I stood there amazed. I learned later that humans had been created out of dust. It showed. It was hardly any surprise to me that they would go on to eat the Forbidden Fruit. They ate everything—apples, leaves, bark, grass, each other’s feces. They were repulsive creatures.

  Just as I was musing on what I could possibly get them to do that they weren’t already doing, an incredibly bright orb of light filled the sky above me. I had never seen such an intense brightness before, not even when Reginald had been thrown into the Lake of Phosphorous in Hell. It seemed to cut straight through me and sent the Darkness scampering back into the cave. Of course I knew instantly that this was God, because the light had on a large laminated badge that read HI, I’M…GOD. I hid behind a shrub.

  Adam and Eve: Dumb As a Box of Rocks (If the Rocks Were Really, Really Dumb).

  “Adam,” boomed a voice as loud as any I had ever heard.

  “Me Adam?” responded the female.

  “No, you’re Eve, dear,” boomed God.

  “Me Eve,” interjected the male.

  “No. No. You’re Adam!” boomed God in frustration. “Anyway, how are things going? Do you like the place?”

  “Er…,” said Adam and Eve.

  “Well, look, I don’t have much time,” boomed God, “but I don’t want you to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, all right?”

  “Er…”

  “That’s the big green one over there.”

  “Er…”

  “The
one with the big laminated card on it reading TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.”

  “Er…”

  “I just planted it the other day,” God boomed. “It’s over there and I think it really pulls the garden together.” The light pointed to its right, or rather it seemed to point to its right because orbs of light can’t really point. Nevertheless, it made it perfectly clear that despite being completely round, it was favoring one direction over another. Such are the privileges of divinity.

  “Er…”

  “Because you’ve already eaten my Bush of Anticipation.”

  “Er…”

  “And I really wanted to see how that would turn out.”

  “Er…”

  “So don’t touch it!” God paused. He cleared His throat. “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” He boomed. “Or something.”

  “You Adam?” ventured Adam, shading his eyes with his hand.

  “I separated the light from the darkness for this?” boomed God, and the orb of light and its laminated badge receded into the sky. Adam and Eve blinked their eyes and shook their heads as if they had awoken from a bad dream. I stepped out from behind my shrub.

  “Who Die?” said Adam.

  “You Die,” said Eve to Adam.

  “No, me Eve,” said Adam.

  “No, me Eve,” said Eve.

  They both looked at me.

  “You Die?” they grunted in unison.

  “No,” I said. “Death. I’m Death.” But the incident had piqued my interest. I felt something stirring deep inside of me. What was this “die” God spoke of? There seemed only one way to find out.

  First Blood

  The Tree of Knowledge lay in the Glade of Discernment, which was situated in the Woods of Awareness, deep within the Forest of Understanding at the heart of the Garden of Eden. In the glade stood thousands of trees whose fruit all contained some intrinsic facet of experience as well as a healthy dose of vitamin C. There was the Tree of Laughter, its crop shaking mirthfully on the branch; the Tree of Terror, whose shriveled grapes retreated shivering from one’s grasp; and the Tree of Amateur Dramatics, whose fruit sometimes completely forgot what they were meant to taste like and started crying.

  When I got to know the trees better, I found out that God had originally planned on populating the Earth solely with trees, but His ardor for arbor had cooled somewhat when He had discovered the joys of creeping things.

  Creeping Things: Creepy.

  As it was, the history of trees would end up closely paralleling that of humans, with the trees even having their own wooden Messiah; a humble olive tree, whose sap, it was alleged, could heal oak wilt, Dutch elm disease, and spike phytoplasma. But the tree Messiah was betrayed by flora envious of its powers, and it suffered horrible tortures; being whittled, sawed, and carved into the shape of a cross, where, in a remarkable twist of fate, it found itself nailed to the back of the human Messiah. Many orthodox deciduous trees still blamed this terrible episode on the Yews.

  A Yew to a Kill.

  I eventually found a tree with a laminated tag reading TREE OF KNOWLEDGE and grasped one of its rosy fruits in my hand. I could hardly remember seeing anything quite so round, except once when Uncle Lachador had knocked the head off an imp, sandpapered its face off, and used it as a bowling ball at Hell’s popular Rack and Bawl. I bit into the fruit and was greeted by a familiar flavor I could not quite place. Immediately my mind was filled with images of Hell, of the Bottomless Pit, and of my favorite dark chasms of yore. I was once again guarding the Gates of Hell with Mother, and in the distance I could see Reginald being chased barefoot across fields of broken glass, but the more I chewed, the more the images faded away and a bitterness entered the fruit’s taste. I swallowed uncomfortably and was disheartened to find myself back on Earth.

  “Did you like it?” said the tree. “Wouldn’t you like to have another bite?” By now the bitter taste had disappeared and the sweet aroma of the fruit was once again tantalizing me, but I felt none the wiser.

  “Are you really the Tree of Knowledge?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” said the tree.

  I looked at the laminated tag. It distinctly read TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. I pointed this out to the tree.

  “Ah, yes. Happy were the days when I had the correct laminated card pinned to my trunk. Would that I could go back to those days! Ah, but that was far away and long ago.”

  “What are you?” I asked.

  “I am the Tree of Nostalgia,” it replied, “although I’m not what I once was.”

  “But you’ve only just been created,” I exclaimed. “What have you to be nostalgic about?”

  “Once upon a time,” droned the Tree of Nostalgia, “all this was nothing. Nothing as far as the eye could see, long before Creation and all this modern nonsense. I tell you they don’t do nothing like they used to do. Now it’s all ‘this,’ and ‘that.’ I remember the morning sun coming up earlier today. So bright and hard it was! Now it’s all soft and watery. And don’t get me started on the temperature. How I long for the early morning cool, instead of this warmish noon.”

  The tree was clearly mad.

  “Oh, what a thrill I got when you bit into my apple. How important you made me feel. Now everything’s so uncertain, but back then you could be sure of things.”

  “But that was about twenty-five seconds ago,” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, you were so precise and articulate when you said that last sentence,” continued the tree. “Not like now where you’re all wordless. Standards have slipped, I tell you. Things were much better before I started speaking this sentence…”

  The tree went suddenly silent.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I just ran out of things to remember.” It began to wave its branches around frantically. “Help, I’m stuck in the present. It’s horrible! Everything’s new and contemporary! Get away, horrible bright colorful now! Come back sepia-tinted, half-forgotten then! Help! It’s everywhere!”

  The tree was a pitiful sight, so I stepped forward and kicked it hard in the trunk. There was a yelp, followed by a pause. And then, “Oh, that really hurt! You really hurt me! But it was a good pain. An honest pain. I wouldn’t be the tree I am today without having been kicked around a little, let me tell you…”

  As the Tree of Nostalgia yammered on I noticed that the tree next to it sported a laminated tag reading TREE OF NOSTALGIA. Reckoning that they must have simply swapped tags, I picked one of this tree’s fruit and bit into it. It had a sugary, syrupy flavor, and my mind was immediately filled with an image of a small kitten hanging from a clothesline. As the kitten swayed in the wind, it turned to me with its large eyes and squeaked, “Hang in there!” I spat out my mouthful in disgust.

  “What are you?” I cried, my hopes beginning to diminish.

  “I’m the Tree of Sentimentality,” said the tree. “Didn’t you like my ooky-wooky fruit?”

  Behind me I could hear the Tree of Nostalgia droning on, “…such a nice conversation with that person, wasn’t it? You don’t get conversations like that anymore….”

  I heard something clear its throat behind me. The sound came from a small lean tree, whose knots and whorls made it look as if it were wearing a pair of spectacles. It wore a laminated tag declaring it the TREE OF DISMEMBERMENT.

  “The Tree of Knowledge is over there,” it gestured with a branch, “in the Dell of Enlightenment.”

  “What’s this place?”

  “This is the Copse of Schmaltz,” it responded.

  “And what are you?” I asked. “You don’t look like the Tree of Dismemberment.”

  “No, I’m the Tree of Fortuitousness.”

  “No, he’s not,” shouted a tree from across the copse.

  “In that case, who is he?” I asked.

  “He’s the Tree of Deception,” yelled the other tree. “Don’t listen to a word he says.”

  “Actually,” said the bespectacled tree, “I am the Tree of Fortuitousness. That
tree over there is the Tree of Spiteful Interjections.”

  “Oh, you would say that, wouldn’t you! He’s so cunning….”

  The two trees waggled their branches at each other, causing a soft breeze to waft through the copse. I would later learn that such arguments were responsible for much of the Earth’s wind, hurricanes being formed after particularly violent clashes of arboreal opinion.

  Fallen Trees After Debating the Sonic Consequences of Uprooted Vegetation in Uninhabited Woodland Areas.

  I heard a heavy panting noise and saw Father rushing toward me, his arms full of laminated name tags.

  “You haven’t seen me, right?” he said, before hurrying off again.

  “You see?” exclaimed the so-called Tree of Fortuitousness. “That was fortuitous, wasn’t it?”

  “Pure coincidence!” shouted the other. The breeze was freshening, and I was surrounded by foliage of questionable sanity. I began to despair of ever finding the Tree of Knowledge. I was about to follow after Father to ask him if he knew where it was when a painfully bright light appeared overhead, rooting me to the spot. Its laminated name tag now read HI, I’M…COD.

  “Where’s your name tag?” boomed God. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times; if you want to be part of Creation you have to wear a name tag.”

  “I don’t have one,” I replied.

  “Why ever not?” boomed God.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t.

  “What’s your name?” boomed the light, taking out a pen and pencil.

  “Death,” I said meekly.

  “Death? Death? Death? Aren’t you Satan’s son?”