Death Sucks

by Andrew Mallen

  “That was excellent Bobby!” Maria cried from where she stood staring in awe at the Reaper.

  Bobby smiled but kept his eyes on Roger.

  “I tried man,” Roger whined.

  “There’s no trying dude! You do or you don’t. If you want to live, you have all you need to do it. It’s built-in dude, no upgrade needed. If you want out, in your gut if you feel there’s no other way, then just do it, I won’t stop you. Excuses are cheap dude, we all got plenty of excuses. Excuses are just lies we tell ourselves to sugar coat failure or to hide from the truth.”

  Roger stared at Bobby with eyes as wide and as fragile as fine dinner plates. His tears had slowed but the wild look of disbelief remained.

  He must think he’s tripping his balls off.

  “Remember the Angel?” Bobby asked knowing he did.

  “No Bobby,” Maria protested.

  “The redhead?” Roger remembered.

  Who could forget her right?

  “Yeah, she’s here too”

  “Bobby!” Maria snarled.

  “No way, where?” Roger perked up at the idea of seeing the beautiful Angel again.

  “She’s behind you but you can’t see her but that’s a good thing dude because she’s super pissed right now,” Bobby lied.

  “At me dude? Why?” Roger asked, he was clearly distressed by the thought.

  “Yeah bro, at you. Suicide, that’s like the worst thing you can do when you have a guardian Angel.”

  “Bobby! Stop!” Maria demanded.

  “Guardian Angel, really?” Roger looked around pointlessly.

  “Yeah, you see, when you died we were assigned to you to figure out where you belonged, you get it?”

  Roger nodded slowly, his eyelids drooped closed.

  Pills are kicking in. Hurry up dude.

  “When you were zapped back to life by that EMT our mission changed. Now we’re like your guardians, your keepers.”

  “Wow dude, that’s some really heavy shit. I’m high right? This is all like some wild trip right?” Roger slurred and his head drooped slowly toward his chest.

  Bobby extended his scythe and rapped Roger on the top of his head with a solid thud.

  “Ow dude! What the fuck?” Roger cried and rubbed the offended area briskly.

  Bobby shrugged but didn’t apologize, “This is no trip bro. This, my friend, is the cold hard truth. Pain Rog, real pain, like serious fucking agony bro, that’s what you’re signing up for if you do this.”

  “You’re going too far Bobby,” Maria warned.

  “So what’s it going to be Roger Crenshaw?” Bobby asked and pretended he was ready to leave if he didn’t get the right answer.

  “What’ll I do…I mean I don’t know what to do. I got nothing bro,” Roger answered pitifully.

  “We’ll get to that. We’ll help you but right now, right here, you gotta make a choice.”

  Roger stared, a drug addled deer caught in the harsh high beams of reality.

  “Life or death buddy, simplest question ever and all you have to do is pick one and leave the rest to us,” Bobby pushed.

  Roger broke down into unbridled mourning. His nose leaked, his eyes poured, his breathing sputtered as he sobbed and shivered. “I don’t want to die dude….I… I just want…to…to…I just want it be different, ya know,” Roger spewed the melancholy admission.

  “I know dude, I understand, I’ve been right where you are,” Bobby whispered, his own emotions were on the brink of breaking free.

  “Not cool Bobby,” Maria scolded. “You told him too much.”

  Bobby turned to face the angry Angel. “Most, if not all, of what I said he’ll forget by morning. He’s high… he’s a fucking mess. Look at him! We’ll take baby steps from now on, I promise. This was an emergency. I had to be a little rough on him. I didn’t want to lose you….to lose him.”

  Shit. Did she hear it?

  Maria heard the slip but said nothing.

  “Who are you talking to dude?” Roger asked suspiciously.

  “Maria,” Bobby replied. “The Angel.”

  “Bobby!” Maria cried.

  “Oh…cool,” Roger studied the space he imagined she occupied. “Hi Maria, aw…thanks, ya know.”

  Maria smiled despite her best effort to hold on to her anger. “You’re very welcome Roger,” she whispered.

  “She said no problem but that you better get your shit together and clean this place up or she’s going to leave,” Bobby paraphrased liberally.

  “Bobby!” Maria squealed.

  “Oh…okay. Tell her…um…no problem okay. But…but I’m kinda jammed up right now ya know. I can’t really function ya know. Tell her…tell Maria that I’ll clean up tomorrow…first thing.”

  Already under her spell. Welcome to the club bro.

  “Dump the pills and crash out,” Bobby commanded.

  “Yeah, okay…..all of them?” Roger wasn’t into flushing close to a grand worth of drugs down the drain.

  “All or nothing buddy! In or out?” Bobby growled.

  “I’m in dude!” Roger groaned. “All in.”

  Roger pumped himself up, corralled the pills, scooped them up and stumbled purposefully down the hall and into the bathroom.

  Bobby was no fool, following closely to ensure Roger didn’t change his mind. Roger fought the good fight. With one hand poised above the pink commode, its meaty fingers wrapped white-knuckle tight around the deadly opiates, he trembled while the internal battle waged. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his chin quivered, his legs shook. “I…I…don’t think…I can do it.”

  “No problem Roger. Feast on those bad boys and let’s get outta here.”

  Roger’s head spun, his eyes blazing with terror, his face twisted with dread.

  “I’ll be here waiting for you either way,” Bobby said and pulled his hood up, disappearing from Roger’s sight but remaining exactly where he stood to witness the consequence of his ultimatum.

  “No…wait!” Roger cried and rushed through the Reaper and out into the hallway.

  It was empty, his apartment as quiet as a church at midnight.

  “Bobby, you mustn’t! He’ll take the pills!” Maria objected, her face drawn and desperate.

  Roger’s attention dropped to the handful of poison he held.

  “Wait,” Bobby ordered the Angel, stern but he needed to be, for both of them, and for himself.

  “Bobby you can’t mess with a life like this!” Maria cried, livid.

  “Just wait, please?” Bobby asked, his voice remained steady somehow even as the growing fear and doubt he felt threatened to overcome him.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Roger screamed at nothing, turned and shuffled back into the Pepto Bismo suite.

  “Good boy,” Bobby whispered.

  At the commode Roger raised his unsteady fist and released the pills. A few stuck to his sweaty palm but he shook them off and quickly flushed before he could change his mind. His emotions erupted and his wailing echoed from within the walls of the small room and out into the apartment.

  “He’ll be okay,” Bobby answered Maria’s unasked question.

  “You sure?”

  “Nope but he took a big step in the right direction at least.”

  “Poor Roger,” Maria wanted so badly to embrace and comfort the broken man.

  So did Bobby.

  *

  “What now?” Maria asked, she was spent, her face looked drawn and tired.

  “He crashes, we wait,” Bobby replied.

  “Reaper dude?” Roger called out desperately from the hallway.

  Bobby pushed his hood back.

  “Oh shit!” Roger yelped, startled.

  “Go to bed Roger, sleep it off,” Bobby ordered weakly.

  “You gonna be here?” Roger asked.

  Even the dead were welcome in the lives of the lonely.

  “Ya bro, right here,” Bobby assured him.

  “Her too?” Roger looked around when he asked.

>   “Her too,” Bobby said with a smile.

  “Okay….good night I guess,” Roger waved like a little kid and turned to find his way to his bedroom.

  The dead watched him. There was something so lost and so sad about the man.

  Hands on her hips, Maria turned on Bobby once Roger was out of sight. “That was…you…that…I can’t…” she fumed.

  “I know, I know but can you please hold off ripping me a new one for a few hours?” Bobby asked politely. “I’m totally fried.”

  “Ripping a what?” Maria frowned.

  “Yelling at me,” Bobby clarified.

  Maria saw that the Reaper was drained from all the drama and relented, “Okay but we have to come up with some rules or some limits on this.”

  “Yes we do,” Bobby agreed.

  “Ok then,” Maria wanted more but settled for a postponement.

  “Thanks,” Bobby melted into the familiar embrace of the nasty green armchair.

  “Netflix?” Maria asked, uncomfortable with the idea of sitting in silence.

  “Yeah sure. What were we watching?”

  “The pirates,” Maria was turning into a professional binger.

  “Black Sails, right. It’s as close as we’re going to get to the Caribbean I guess.”

  Bobby spied the remote on the floor by his feet, picked it up, dialed in the show and hit play.

  I would have made a shitty pirate. I’m way too soft and much too fond of good old personal hygiene. And those dudes were way too rapey. Fuck that.

  10.

  “An EMT? You’re fucking with me right?” Roger reacted as expected.

  “Hear us out.” Bobby tried to calm him down.

  “Told you,” Maria added her two cents.

  “Hell no!” Roger wasn’t a fan of the plan. “Blood, crackheads, junkies, old people shitting themselves, no way dude, not a chance.”

  Bobby and Maria had spent endless hours mapping out a good life for Roger that would also allow them to investigate Bobby’s theory about Satan and the whole cheating on the pact and plotting to kill God thing. Becoming an EMT fit the bill perfectly. Roger would help others, earn a good living and give purpose to his existence. Bobby and Maria could watch the dying die, spy on their fellow Reapers and Angels, and figure out how and why the system had failed.

  “A doctor then?” Maria proposed.

  “Have you been watching this guy?” Roger snapped.

  “What’s she say? What’s she say?” Roger was always super interested in the Angel’s contribution to their odd conversations.

  “She said she wants you to stop being so fucking stubborn, get off your ass and do something with your life!” Bobby replied, too angry.

  “Bobby!” Maria shrieked.

  “I can’t. Tell her I can’t, tell her it’s not for me, the blood and stuff,” Roger asked Bobby to relay his message even though he’d told the man a thousand times that she could hear him.

  “She heard you dude.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it’s time to put up or shut up.” Bobby sounded like his dad and smiled despite the seriousness of his message. “You’ve been sober for 83 days. You got this place cleaned up and you’re all cleaned up, it’s time to move on my man, it’s time to take the next step.”

  “I can get back into construction no problem, I know a few guys who might take me on,” Roger puffed out his chest when he said it and would gladly work his ass off for minimum wage if it meant the dead would lay off him.

  “We’ve been through that dude,” Bobby groaned. “No more shit work, time to get a grown-up job.”

  “EMT is not a grown-up job,” Roger argued.

  “You have a military background, you’re clean, you’re smart, the course is only four months and you could be riding in an ambulance by Thanksgiving.” Bobby pushed.

  “I’m not big on studying or tests and shit,” Roger admitted. “That kinda stuff kills me, ya’know,”

  “We’re with you bro,” Bobby explained.

  “An Angel is going to help me cheat?” Roger asked with all the doubt the question deserved.

  “No!” Maria cried.

  “We’ll help but help doesn’t mean cheating.” Bobby clarified for Maria’s sake, knowing he’d take the test for the guy if he had to.

  “Papers too, reports, studying, all that stuff?”

  “Yep,” Bobby liked where the way the conversation was going.

  “What about the work, the actual saving people stuff?” Roger asked, clearly scared.

  “You’ll get the hang of it. It’ll be just business once you get the hang of it.”

  “But you guys will be there right, both of you?”

  “Every step of the way.”

  Roger paced the dinghy but debris free living room in deep thought. Maria watched him closely. Bobby watched her the same way.

  “Okay, I guess…let’s do it,” Roger finally agreed to what they’d been pushing for weeks.

  “All right Roger! Stepping up!” Bobby cheered.

  “Good job! Tell him he’s great and brave and that I’m super proud of him!” Maria commanded.

  “Maria says she’s super proud of you, her words, and was wondering if you lost a few more pounds?” Bobby added the last bit as a reward.

  The freshly shaven cheeks that bulged on either side of Roger’s smile flushed. “Thanks Maria,” he spoke to the air. “I did lose another two this week, shedding the beer weight I guess.”

  Maria smiled at the big man. Sober, he was sweet, kind and good natured, even if he had a tendency to make some really bad decisions nine times out of ten.

  “She said it shows,” Bobby continued to fan two fires, Roger’s lust and Maria’s anger. “Oh wow, she winked, I don’t think that’s appropriate Maria.”

  “Stop Bobby!” Maria growled as she stormed across the room toward him.

  Run! There’s an angry Angel on the loose!

  Bobby smiled and laughed, she was even cuter when she was pissed.

  “What is it? What’s going on Bob?” Roger asked, he hated being left out.

  “Nothing dude, just remembered an old joke,” Bobby lied.

  “You better cut it out Bobby, you’d better or I swear I’ll….” Maria was fumbling mad, her words, her feet, even her hair seemed out of her control.

  Bobby nodded at her dismissively. She glared back at him, her eyes burned bright and clear with unfiltered rage.

  Wow, she’s stunning.

  *

  “So what now?” Roger asked.

  “We gotta get to a meeting then when we get home later me and Maria will do some research and get the ball rolling,” Bobby couldn’t wait to get out of the stagnant routine that was Roger’s life.

  “Sounds good,” Roger grabbed a jacket and headed for the door. “Okay if I stay for the eight o’clock as well?”

  “Sure,” Bobby replied and pulled up his hood.

  Three hours of AA was not on his list of ways to spend an evening but he was so happy to see Roger embrace the program and even happier to see him sober.

  “Thanks,” Roger replied as the Reaper disappeared.

  “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” Maria asked while smiling like a proud momma.

  “He’s moving in the right direction at least,” Bobby didn’t want to get her hopes up, sobriety was a slippery slope and Roger had just begun the long, arduous climb.

  One step at a time big guy, one step at a time.

  11.

  Dragging Roger out of bed every morning at five o’clock was a giant pain in the ass. He’d bitch and moan like a teenager, always with the same lame excuses, always trying to get over. Once on the road, after a bagel and a coffee, he’d perk up and chatter on endlessly as he navigated the early morning traffic. EMT training, the real deal FDNY version, was located on Randall’s Island. Saying the small spit of land wedged in the narrow crux of the East River between the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan was difficult to get to was an u
nderstatement of epic proportions. The aptly named Triborough Bridge, unnecessarily renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, was the only way to get there. Traffic sucked, and it sucked hard. The westbound route along the LIE to the Grand Central, passed LaGuardia Airport, through Astoria and over the bridge was a commuter’s worst nightmare come true.

  “Big test today guys, feeling pretty nervous about it, ya’know?” Roger confessed as he took the bridge off ramp way too fast as usual.

  “Ya’know? Ya’know?” Bobby mimicked the overused phrase Roger crammed into just about every other sentence from beneath his hood.

  “You guys studied right? We’re all good right? I don’t want to fail, ya’know? I don’t want to let you guys down,” Roger rambled on, he’d become very comfortable talking to the invisible dead.

  “Answer him, he’s scared,” Maria rolled her eyes.

  Bobby leaned forward, putting his lips almost to the Roger’s ear. Maria was ready with her fingers in her ears. “Relax!” Bobby shouted, to the dead it was a roar but to Roger it was nothing more than an almost undetectable whisper.

  They discovered that Bobby could be heard even with his hood in place, close enough, loud enough, and kept short. One or two words worked best. It proved handy for reigning in the big guy if he was stepping out of line or, more practically and way too frequently for Maria’s liking, when he was about to fill in the wrong bubble on one of the many tests he had taken so far in EMT school.

  “Right, relax, got it. Relaxing.”

  He wasn’t.

  Sweaty, jittery and chatty, Roger was as unrelaxed as usual. “We’re almost there. Good right, relaxed right?” he babbled as his head nodded like a bobble head on the dashboard of a monster truck.

  “His heart’s going to explode before he finishes training,” Bobby said, genuinely concerned.

  “Bobby! That’s horrible!” Maria nagged.

  “Not if it’s true.”

  “And is it?” she went into schoolteacher mode.

  “It could be.”

  “But it’s not and you shouldn’t say stuff like that. Poor Roger, he’s trying and you should be nicer to him.”

  Old dog, new tricks girl. Maybe you should throw me a bone.