Death Read online

  “Yes.”

  “How is he?” boomed God.

  “Fine.” I didn’t know what else to say. The conversation was getting a bit strange.

  “Such a naughty, naughty thing,” boomed God playfully.

  There was another awkward pause.

  “Well,” boomed God, “what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been trying to work that out myself,” I said. “I feel that I have important things to do, and important things to say, and I want to share them with all Creation, I just don’t know what they are exactly. But I can feel something. My true calling is buried deep inside me, I know it is! I just don’t know how to get at it. Can you tell me? Can You help me understand my true role in existence? Can You tell me what I’m doing here?”

  “No,” boomed God. “I mean, what are you doing here? The Forest of Understanding is strictly off-limits, you know?”

  “Oh,” I said. My enthusiasm had been lanced. “I was trying to find the Tree of Knowledge.”

  “You stay away from that tree,” boomed God. “Why does everyone want a piece of that tree?”

  “But God…”

  “Call Me Lord.”

  “But Lord…”

  “Actually maybe God’s better. Or maybe Sir. What do you think about Sir? Too formal?”

  “Well, they’re all very good, Sir. Lord. God. But what am I meant to be doing? What’s my role in Creation?”

  “Oh, you’ll find out sooner or later. Don’t worry.”

  God hung in the air, shimmering. If a bright orb of blinding light could be said to be examining its fingernails, that is what it was doing. I decided I might as well ask Him my question directly.

  “Lord God Sir? What is ‘die’?”

  “Well,” boomed God, suddenly full of enthusiasm, “die is the plural of dice, and dice are small cubes with marks on them, which you roll. I like to think they impart a certain arbitrary mood to Creation because I didn’t want it to feel that it was too, you know, staged. I’ve been trying to teach the Universe how to play but he is a stubborn fellow and keeps on throwing them down black holes. I think he prefers cards. Perhaps we can play together when you come and visit.”

  “I’m coming to visit?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” boomed God. “Ta-ta.” And the bright light vanished into the trees. I looked down at my chest and saw a laminated card pinned to it. It read HI, I’M…DEATH.

  I felt inordinately depressed, and I had a terrible headache, which I would soon learn were the side effects of being talked to by God. I trudged out of the forest to loud jeers from the Tree of Provocation.

  I was just reaching the outer edge of the forest when a white four-legged creature with a bonelike growth on its forehead trotted into view. It was not like the horse or the bull or the wolf or the deer that I had seen wandering Earth before. It seemed special somehow. It looked at me with large round eyes, thick with eyelashes, and shook its blond mane playfully. It had a laminated tag attached to its horn reading UNICORN. Each letter of the word “unicorn” was written in a different color of the rainbow. Seeing this creature suddenly and inexplicably lifted my spirits. Its sheer loveliness seemed to restore my faith that everything in Creation had a purpose. I went to pat it on the head, but just as my hand reached out to smooth its tousled blond forelock, the Unicorn snapped at my hand with surprising venom.

  I was so shocked that I stumbled backward, tripped, and crashed into a tree. Steadying myself on the tree’s thick trunk, I noticed that it was shuddering all the way up its huge height. Suddenly a threatening, groaning sound emanated from deep within it, transfixing both the Unicorn and me. A laminated tag fluttered to the ground. I picked it up. It read TREE OF MISHAP. I looked at the Unicorn. It was ambling toward me. It seemed to be smiling in a rather sinister fashion, its surprisingly sharp white teeth glistening in its mouth. I felt inexplicably nervous. I heard a snap from far above me in the tree and a hard fruit, the size of a boulder, plummeted down onto the Unicorn’s head. There was a loud crack.

  Well, I couldn’t help but laugh. The moment reminded me of Uncle Hiniel’s Tuesday night skull-crushing sessions in Hell. However, unlike the tortured imps, the Unicorn did not get up and stagger around comically with a completely flat head. Instead, after a few less than droll convulsions, it lay completely still, its legs splayed out beneath it, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, and a dark, viscous liquid oozing from one of its ears. I shouted to it, but got no response.

  It was at that precise moment, as my words faded into the air, that I suddenly felt irresistibly drawn toward the Unicorn, like an iron filing is drawn toward a magnet. It was a compulsion like I had never felt before, but it felt natural. Before I even knew what I was doing, I found myself leaning over the Unicorn’s body. My hand was reaching toward its chest, being drawn closer and closer, when I heard an irritated voice say, “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?”

  Unicorns: Unifriendly.

  The spell was broken. I looked around me to see whether the Tree of Sarcasm was anywhere nearby, but the voice seemed to be coming from the Unicorn itself.

  “Pardon?” I ventured.

  “I said that’s just fucking marvelous,” repeated the voice, louder now. It was definitely coming from the Unicorn, but its mouth wasn’t moving.

  “Hello?” I proffered.

  “Oh! A ‘hello’! That’s what I get, is it, after crushing my skull in with a bloody great fruit.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The Unicorn was still not moving, but the voice was getting louder and louder.

  “Oh, you’re sorry, are you? You’re sorry! Well, doesn’t that make everything better! I’m sorry too. Sorry I ever laid eyes on you!”

  The dark liquid continued to spill out of the Unicorn’s ear. It was so dark and rich, it transfixed me.

  “What happened?” I asked. I had never seen anything like it before.

  “You’ve only gone and killed me.”

  The word “kill” sent a flush of excitement coursing through my body.

  “I’ve what?”

  “You’ve killed me, you prick! I’ve died, I’m dead, passed away, terminated. I am an ex-Unicorn and you’re the reason why, you nonce!”

  There it was again. The word “die.” So this is what God had been talking about with Adam and Eve. I felt warm and fuzzy inside.

  “Oh,” I said, spinning in the enormity of my discovery. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Oh no, thank you very much. You’ve done quite enough already.”

  “Has this ever happened to you before?” I ventured.

  “No, you fucking idiot,” replied the Unicorn. “It’s never happened to anyone before.”

  And he was right. At this early stage of Creation nothing had died—not a fallen angel, not a blade of grass—everything was bright and shiny and new.

  “Well,” I said, vainly trying to placate the creature, “at least you’re the first.” The Unicorn mulled this over.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s some consolation. I’ll probably get in the record books, won’t I? I mean, God did say this was all going to end someday. I just didn’t think it would be the next fucking day.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. But secretly I was thrilled.

  “Listen,” said the Unicorn, “I’m getting a bit uncomfortable here, why don’t you help me out of this body?”

  “How do I do that?” I asked.

  “How the fuck should I know?” cried the Unicorn.

  I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and the compulsion took over once again. My hand reached over to the Unicorn’s body and suddenly slipped straight into it without leaving a mark. I heard a slight popping noise. Instantly I felt as though I had done something right, something truly right, for the first time in my existence.

  “About time!” said the Unicorn, as a thin gleaming luster drifted up from the body. I realized instinctively that it was the creature’s soul. The Darkness, which had been nipping at my heels exci
tedly, leapt forward, spreading in size, enveloping both me and the Unicorn’s soul within itself. The earth began to slip away, and I was left at the center of an utter blackness. Everything receded, became nothing, and I was now gripped by an ecstasy that threatened to overpower me and wipe me from existence. But something held me back, a curiosity about what else I might learn on Earth, and I steadied myself and fought my way out of the Darkness. From inside it I heard the sound of a spectral hoof tapping impatiently.

  “Well, I would say it’s been a pleasure,” said the Unicorn’s soul as it slowly dissolved from view, “but it hasn’t.”

  “Where are you going?” I gasped. I was giddy with revelation.

  “I see a light,” said the Unicorn, its voice growing softer and softer, “a bright light…it’s spelling out a word…two words…the words say…”

  “Yes,” I said encouragingly.

  “…the words say…”

  “What do the words say?”

  “…the words say…Fuck…You.”

  There was a brief whinny of mocking laughter, and then nothing. But I was hardly paying attention. I felt as though a bottle of black ink had been spilled inside me, coating me in a wondrous gloom that shaded my whole being. I had arrived at a moment of illumination, or rather its opposite; a gloaming of wisdom.

  The Darkness sat in front of me looking rather pleased with itself. A strange tingling pervaded my essence, the thrilling chill of my first transmuted soul. The Unicorn’s body lay cold and still on the ground. The edge of the forest surrounded me. Everything seemed to be the same, but I had changed. I could see now that I was not a misfit, that I truly belonged, that I was one with all living things. I could see all of existence balancing precariously on a tightrope above me. My role, I realized, was to catch it. At last I had found my calling.

  I’d be the Death of you all.

  Dead Man Talking

  From that moment on, I was hooked. If this was dying, I wanted more. For the first time in my existence, I knew what I was born to do: not torment, or tempt, or even rend asunder, but to usher, to escort, to shepherd others into the Other.

  Admittedly it took some practice before I became proficient in my trade, but fortunately the fatalities in Eden from accidents alone were tremendous. Trial and error was the defining principle in those early days—after all, it’s hard to live by your instincts when you’re the first of your kind ever to exist. Millions of totally pointless and often contradictory creatures had been created who were quite unsuited to survival. There were root vegetables with claustrophobia, rocks that cried after avalanches, fish that were allergic to water, and vain insects who were so revolted by the way they looked they couldn’t bring themselves to reproduce.

  Self-loathing and stupidity swept through Creation like a plague. Phoenixes forgot to flap their wings, griffons overlooked eating, leviathans beached themselves while sunbathing, and small furry creatures with soft paws picked fights with big scaly creatures with sharp claws. Such literally mindless bloodshed gave me plenty of schooling in my nerve-racking new profession. There was a certain technique for ejaculating souls out of bodies that was not as easy as it seemed, especially when combined with the performance anxiety I felt so acutely during my early days. When dealing with souls, I tried to be as friendly as possible—after all, this was a new experience for us both. But many of the souls were suspicious and peered out at me through the mouths of their dead bodies.

  It Didn’t Know What It Was Either.

  “What?” they’d say. “Afterlife? What’s wrong with this life? No, no, you go on without me.” I’d then have to point out that they had drowned in quicksand, or been torn apart by bears, or otherwise convince them of the hopelessness of their situation before they would agree to come out.

  Most souls, however, were not so much obstreperous as impatient. If I took too long, or if there had been a particularly localized slaughter, say in a meteorite shower, or forest fire, the souls would start to back up, and I’d be harangued by dozens of plaintive voices all telling me to hurry up. Some of the older creatures, such as the mayflies, who had lived full and rich lives, were gentler. “You just take your time, sonny, and don’t listen to them others,” they’d say, as I sweated to find their tiny souls.

  Toughest of all in my early days were the dinosaurs, who were rife with design faults. No sooner had you scooped the head and neck of their massive souls out of their body and finally worked your way down to the tail, then you’d find the head and neck had popped back into the body. What’s more, as their life flashed before their eyes they would often become convinced that they were alive again. Their souls would get up and lumber off, and I’d have to ask the other dead in the vicinity if they’d seen which way they went. I rarely got a straight answer.

  “I’d like to help you, son, I really would,” said one field mouse, who had been killed when a stegosaur collapsed on top of him, “but I don’t think it would be fair.”

  “He did kill you, you know,” I reasoned. “He squashed you flat.”

  “I know, I know,” said the field mouse, “but one must have solidarity with the living on these occasions.”

  This puzzled me a little. I didn’t like to think that it was “me” against “them.” In fact, in my early days, I tried to make dying as pleasant as possible for the recently deceased, before whisking them off into the Darkness as quickly as I could. “Whisk them away to what?” you may ask. I never really thought too much about where they were headed. It was beyond the scope of my job. Sure, there was talk of Salvation and Damnation, but I was hardly going to pay much attention to that now, was I? It was only later when I was shown the Grand Scheme of Things that I found out that everyone was initially supposed to have gone to Heaven, but the place got so overcrowded that half the afterlife was outsourced to Hell. There were complaints at first, but one afterlife is very much like another, give or take an infinite amount of torture.

  When it came to my relationship with the dead, dogs were the exception to the rule. They always seemed to like me, and I liked them. They never argued or complained, but their souls did have a tendency to bound out of their bodies, tongue lolling, tail wagging, and run in and out of the Darkness barking wildly. I’d try to catch them, but they’d think it was a game and dash away from me every time I came close. This happened so often that during my early days on Earth I was constantly surrounded by the souls of ten or twelve dogs who I just could not subsume into the void. They’d all peer at me while I worked, their heads cocked to one side, one ear bent backward, and bark madly when I had freed the soul.

  “Not very dignified, this,” said the diminishing soul of a disgruntled deer, as the dog souls ran around him yapping wildly and snapping at his incorporeal heels. “I mean it’s hardly the blinding light, is it?” I had an idea. I waited until the deer’s soul had disappeared, and checking both ways to make sure no one was watching, I tore off one of the legs of the deer’s body and, waving it at the pack of dog souls, threw it into the heart of the Darkness. The dogs bounded after it, disappearing one after the other, the sound of their barks growing distant and disappearing. There was only the faint sound of the deer’s soul shouting “Hey, that’s my leg!” before silence once again descended on the void.

  Soon my name was on all Creation’s lips, maws, and other vocalizing orifices. I became a blur, zipping from body to body like black lightning. I could deal with thousands, millions, of souls in a day and not feel overworked. But I distinctly remember wondering when I would meet my first human soul.

  Before I carry on, I think I should attempt to clear up a major misconception about my role. I don’t actually kill anyone. I don’t rip out the heart, or squeeze out the brains, or suck out the blood. I don’t pull the trigger, or push the button, or put sharp things where they’re not meant to be. I’m not responsible for you and your loved ones dying. No, you living do a great job of dying without my help. I just turn up once the convulsions have calmed down and the pulse has stopp
ed, and I move the souls along. Yes, some humans are unhappy when they die, and at such moments most are unwilling to admit that they might have been responsible for their own passing in some way. Hence I get all the blame. But it’s not as if I deserve it.

  Admittedly when I hear the same plea for clemency for the millionth time, I may well stifle a yawn, but I do a good job, a necessary job. Call me callous if you like, but it’s difficult to make friends when you’re the point of contact between time and eternity, between the now and the hereafter. Everything, except for me, is just passing through. Yes, of course, there may have been times when I turned up a teensy bit too early to collect a soul and perhaps spooked some of you in your last moments on Earth, but in those situations the worst I can be accused of is impatience. Tapping my hourglass and whistling may not be particularly sensitive, but I’ve got a job to do.

  Suffice it to say that during these early days I didn’t hate Life at all. I had no axe to grind, no sour grapes to squeeze. I was a natural force of Creation. If I seemed unwilling to care about your human feelings of despair and pain, it was simply because I could not feel them. At least not to begin with.

  With all the new experiences I was having, I barely noticed the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve had eventually found what they thought was the Tree of Knowledge. Alas, thanks to Father’s machinations, it turned out to be the Tree of Prudery. They immediately became very resentful about being unclothed, as well as generally disapproving of the nakedness of all Creation. They had begun to clothe all the creatures—great and small—in waistcoats, pantaloons, and gaiters made out of twigs and leaves. But when the animals had begun to eat their garments, Adam and Eve had stopped, offended by what they saw as the animals’ ungratefulness. A nibble on the Tree of Disenchantment, followed by a long luncheon beneath the Tree of Superciliousness, soon saw Adam and Eve find the whole idea of being created by someone else distinctly infra dig. So they absconded from the Garden of Eden in clothes stitched together from laminated tags. God was quite upset. He came to me in a blinding light one night.