by Y. K. Greene
These would hunt for Mitei with the rest of their days and some would probably book themselves appointments with members of her staff for any assortment of stupid reasons in the coming days. But for now there was the song and the joy of purpose. The sweet certainty of knowing exactly what ones position was in the world. This joy was Mitei’s, the song, an attempt to share that joy with all she could. An offering of comfort in the only way that Death was really allowed to give the dying, she could pause a moment to lament that the only time she seemed able to sing like this was in the midst of such great mortal tragedy. Singing was not something she did often, even more rare for her then a chance to sleep. Unlike sleep, singing was a pleasure that was her own and not something she had had to learn with time and contact with the living.
Her body was battered and bruised, perhaps broken seriously in places, but Mitei walked her Path dancing and singing, while those around her slipped easily into death.
***
Cracking one eye open carefully, Leo faced the morning. From the cursory glance that he gave the room he determined that though Mitei hadn’t decided to make another unscheduled appearance the sun had once again decided to rise and surprise him in bed.
Leo closed his eye, briefly contemplated staying in bed, pulling the covers over his head and telling the sun to bug off. After all it wasn’t like he had to work and he didn’t have any real plans for the day, so why couldn’t he just laze about in bed for a few more hours. A nagging voice in the back of his head informed him that he’d already slept half the day away already and he’d be up all night again if he didn’t get up soon. Leo was busily contemplating a compromise with the nagger and himself, something involving a good book and not stepping foot out from under the warm covers, when his stomach weighed in on the discussion and he promptly lost the argument.
Pulling himself out of bed slowly, Leo remembered the towel he’d hung on the screen the night before; it had probably taken off half the lacquer by now, he went to inspect the damage and find something to cover his chest with. As expected the towel was a mess having absorbed a good deal of the dark stain of the screen, though the screen looked none the worse for wear. Leo tossed the towel over his shoulder and selected a gray turtleneck from the pile on the floor. It was wrinkled, but there was no one to notice and besides it was a turtleneck. Turtlenecks didn’t keep a wrinkle or at least that was one of the many excuses Leo told himself to keep from buying an iron or, heaven forbid, actually folding his clothes and putting them away. The mess behind the screen was a source of somewhat contradictory pride for him, one he was as unlikely to give up on as his love of chocolate donuts.
Though, as he dropped his ruined towel in the kitchen trashcan, that whole love of chocolate donuts thing might be out after all, nothing like getting shot while munching on one to quall your appetite for the things. Pulling on the sweater and opening the refrigerator with a grim determination to eat a good healthy breakfast, maybe a few scrambled eggs and toast even, rather than the usual pot of coffee, he even went as far as pulling a couple eggs from their cradle and setting them on the counter in anticipation. Since he wasn’t in a rush today, didn’t have to hustle out the door in a few minutes with his hands full of papers, he could afford the extra time and effort it would take to make himself an honest breakfast, or so he told himself as he ground the beans and set up the percolator.
Somehow by the time the coffee was brewed and in his cup, sweetened and creamed to perfection, the eggs had mysteriously vanished back into their respective cradles in the refrigerator. And there isn’t any bread in the house so I simply can’t make any toast, Leo thought with smug self-amusement as he settled down at the island in the kitchen to sip at his coffee and contemplate the day.
The amusement lasted only a moment before going sour as Leo realized that though he’d decided that he needed to rest up a bit more and would therefore stay away from work for the time being, there was little to keep him occupied with at home. After a while he settled on the grim prospect of going out for groceries. He’d need to cook quite a bit if he was going to be staying at home for the next few days. Leo sipped at his coffee and grimaced, he’d be sure to pick up a cook book while he was out, maybe even make a special trip to the bookstore so he could see if they had a copy of “Cooking for the Bachelor Dummy,” while he was at it.
Somehow he thought, as he was locking his front door, he’d probably end up with a big bag of Top Ramen and a stirring novel or two instead.
***
Feeling rather smug and tired an hour later Leo returned home with not one bag of Ramen but two bags of honest groceries. Ok, so they consisted mostly of bread, hamburger and hamburger helper, but there were only five bags of Ramen way down in the bottom of the bag and that was what really counted, he thought as he dropped the bags off in the kitchen and wandered back out into the living room grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. flipping till he came to a news program, for some reason he wanted to fill the empty condo with the sound of people talking, and headed back into the kitchen already weighing the merits of hamburger macaroni against beefy stroganoff for dinner.
Leo was head and shoulders deep in the refrigerator putting away supplies and taking belated inventory of what he had already that hadn’t gone all fuzzy with new life forms when the newscast penetrated his mind. Pulling out of the fridge too fast he bumped his head on one of the racks and started off a clattering of glass containers. Something about an earthquake, he thought as he wandered back into the living room and sank down on the sofa.
Yes, an earthquake and a big one too by the looks of it, in South Asia, the death toll already estimated well within the thousands. He watched the news footage of the wounded and the homeless with half an eye. So this was what had taken Mitei out of his kitchen in mid-step. For a moment he contemplated another trek to the store for something a little more nourishing than Ramen and hamburgers, something nice, maybe even soothing - and then it dawned on him that he was planning dinner for the person responsible for all those deaths in Asia.
By some trick of fate Leo himself had been spared when Mitei had come for him, but there were people all over the planet who weren’t so lucky and he was sitting here seriously considering feeding the woman! Over the course of the night Mitei had personally killed at least a thousand people, separating parents from children and snuffing out young lives well before their time and here he was thinking that she’d be tired and hungry if she dropped in tonight. Leo starred at the screen no longer seeing the increasingly pathetic images his mind’s eye suddenly full of other images; Mitei sitting by what had almost been his death bed and answering his inane questions. Mitei’s hazel eyes and how they had clouded over when he’d asked about people getting to know her and her eyes again when he’d said he’d be her friend.
Simple words, learned in a thousand hours of childhood play. But those words had lit up the face of a woman more ancient than he could imagine as if that had been the first time she had ever heard them. Leo ran a hand through is hair and over his face, simple words they might have been, words he’d said once often enough. As Leo sat and stared at the television screen still not seeing the images of children being pulled from rubble alive and parents hauled up after, broken several times over and obviously dead, he began to suspect that being friends with this woman was going to be a good deal less simple than it had been to speak the words.
***
Leo spent the rest of the day in a kind of daze. He tossed out everything in the fridge that was fuzzy with mold or that smelled bad, even some cheese that he half suspected had always smelled foul and headed back to the store. He told himself that he was dragging himself back to the store to restock some of the essentials he’d thrown out, but picked out a couple of nice steaks and grabbed a couple of potato’s nearly the size of his head as well. By the time he returned home again he was really beginning to feel tired. There was a brief debate about whether he should troop upstairs and crawl into the bed for a bit of a nap or
if he could manage a few moments on the sofa in the living room as he put away the new rations. Once again his stomach decided the matter and Leo pulled a package of Ramen aside for a quick bite and then, he promised himself, a long nap.
The Ramen turned out alright, still a little crunchy but Leo told himself that that was the way he liked it and woofed it down. Still feeling hungry though, he made a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some hot tea. This turned out to be a culinary masterpiece but despite his stomachs quiet nagging he decided not to push his luck in the kitchen any further, grabbing a few cookies from a jar and heading into the living room for the promised nap.
Lying there and staring at the ceiling the daze lifted just enough for him to wonder what he would do when Mitei dropped back in. He was still contemplating the question when sleep took him.
***
A loud thumping sound coming from the stairs pulled Leo out of his nap an hour later. He snapped awake and grabbed the nearest blunt object that came to hand, the remote; tossing it back down with a grunt he grabbed a stone egg from the coffee table instead. It had a much shorter reach than the remote but was still probably the best weapon he had in the living room, he thought as he moved towards the stairs on bare feet.
The thought was a strange one, but it was quickly lost in the jumble of the day and the immediate adrenaline of the moment as Leo closed in on the stairs and the burglar. He paused just out of reach of them and gathered himself before rushing onto the stairs, the egg raised high enough to pull the muscles around his scar painfully.
All that for not, he thought wincing as he recognized the figure crumpled awkwardly on the stairs. Mitei was lying in a sprawl, all knees and elbows; the suit that had looked so nicely tailored and expensive the night before was now ripped, tattered and stained with dust and unknown liquids. Her bare feet were cut and bruised looking, one pearly toenail seemed to be completely missing and her hands weren’t in much better shape. Her beautiful lips were puffy and there was a split in the bottom one, her eyelids were drawn down over her eyes and there was another puffy bruise under her right one that said she wouldn’t be opening that one anytime soon. The other eye seemed sunken into her face and there was a pearlescent pink ting to the lid that seemed all the color her body could summon for bruising. The only thing about her that seemed to have gone through the day unscathed was her long white hair. It was too fine and wispy to be snarled, naturally seeming to resist all tangles; it laid spread about Mitei’s head on the stairs in incongruous silken perfection.
Seeing her sprawled on the steps like that, pushed some of the more troubling questions of the morning to the back of Leo’s head, he lowered his raised egg to the stairs and gently picked Mitei up. It was an effort, the stair well was narrow and Leo could feel his scar protesting the action, but he finally managed to lift her and carried her to the sofa in the living room. He laid her there, spreading her limbs out properly and assessing the damage again once he had.
Mitei looks bad but nothing seems life threatening, just exceedingly painful. Leo stood over her a moment trying to remember where he kept the alcohol and bandages, when her eyes flashed open. Or one of her eyes flashed open the other was, as he had expected, swollen firmly shut.
“Hello, Leo.”
“Hi, rough day at work?”
She started to smile, then winced and licked her split lip. “Yes, the roughest.”
Leo snorted and headed for the kitchen there was a small bottle of alcohol and some Band-Aids in there, he was pretty sure, remembering all the times he had cut his fool finger before he had given up all but the most modest interest in cooking. Now if he could only remember where he had stashed the things the last time he had put them away. He bustled about the kitchen, slamming more cabinets and drawers than was strictly necessary and cursing loudly all the while.
Leo finally returned to the living room, a medicinal bundle in his arms and regarded Mitei sitting up on the sofa and prodding her face none to gently. He watched as she poked a nail-less finger at her swollen eye and let lose a curse that made his burly words of a moment ago seem like nursery rhymes.
“Stop that.” He said coming up beside Mitei and dropping the whole lot on the coffee table, Leo grasped her wrist as gently as he could and pulled her fingers away from her face. “Don’t you have enough sense to stop doing something if it hurts.”
It hadn’t been a question and Leo wasn’t expecting an answer as he pulled a clean dish towel out of the heap on the table and doused it with alcohol.
“I do not suppose that I have any sense at all Leo.” The response shocked him enough that he came down a bit heavy on the wound he had been about to dab. More shocking than her answer was the rib jarring kick Mitei planted firmly in his stomach with her loud shriek taking second place in the category.
They both drew in hisses of unexpected pain and glared at each other warily, Leo from across the room, Mitei on the couch. “That hurt!” Came identical exclamations.
The double timing was too much for Leo and he broke the glaring eye contact laughing. Mitei’s glare intensified and she clutched her maligned hand to her chest, affronted. Leo pulled himself up from the floor where she had kicked him and winced at the pain, not just in his stomach where she had kicked him but in his chest as well.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he started as he pulled up his sweater to check the scar, make sure he hadn’t ripped it open. “Alcohol stings, but it’s good for you…”
The scar was gone.
“What. Did. You. Do?”
Mitei gave him wide eyes. “Me? You are the one drenching me in painful liquids!”
For some reason the fact that Mitei had healed him, again; brought back all the original horror of the news cast earlier that day. Leo stalked towards her, hands clenched at his side, “why did you heal me? Again? When you’ve spent all day killing other people?”
Mitei blinked her single open eye at him, “I do not understand.”
Something about her ease of posture or maybe that single unflinching hazel eye made Leo unclench his fists. He paced around the table and ran his hands through his hair; finally he leaned against the far wall. The medical supplies lay on the table and though Mitei still clutched her offended hand Leo refused to let himself think about going over there and helping clean the wounds and put on the Band-Aids. After a moment she stuck the finger in her mouth, made a face, the alcohol couldn’t taste all that good, and sucked on it.
Leo watched Mitei suck on her finger, trying to decide what to do with the half formed anger and loathing he was feeling. Finally he shook his head and decided to talk.
“You came to the hospital to kill me.” It was a statement but he waited for her acknowledgement before moving on. “Instead you healed me.”
Mitei blinked at him again and kept sucking on her finger, Leo waited but it became clear that she wasn’t going to reply so he moved on. “Today there was an earthquake and you killed a thousand people –“
“It was more like three thousand people who died,” Mitei interrupted speaking around her finger quietly.
Leo clinched his jaw feeling the raw loathing welling up again. “Why?”
“Why what?”
The question was almost too much for Leo. “Why did you heal me and not them?”
She sat quietly for a moment, sucking on her finger her hazel eye thoughtful. “Leo, I am Death. I cannot heal people.” His body tensed and Mitei raised her other hand to hold him off. “Something has been happening to me lately. But I have no more answers as to what, than I do as to what happens to you after you die.”
Mitei pulled her finger from her mouth and frowned at it a moment before folding it into her palm. Not fast enough to keep Leo from noticing that there was a pale nail on the tip of that finger again. “You’re healing yourself right now and you want to tell me that you can’t do it?”
“Actually,” she sighed, “I do not think I am healing myself. At least not the way you seem
to think I can. This is just part of the whole immortal invulnerability thing… I think.”
Leo crossed his arms and glared at her, “you think?”
“Yes, I think. I already told you things have not been working the way they should for me lately.”
“Like?”
Mitei sighed again and swung her legs off the sofa, now that he was looking for it he noticed that some of the cuts and scrapes on her feet and legs where already gone. “This is going to take a moment to tell. Come sit down.” She patted the vacant section of sofa and Leo glared at her again then skulked back across the room as he realized that all the glaring and pouting were probably making him look about seven years old, perched uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa and sat rigid. Mitei either didn’t notice his rigidity or she didn’t care. Opening her palm and spreading the fingers out flat on her lap she seemed to examine her nails closely before beginning.
“To start with I have not had a lone human assignment in a long time. Five days ago, I had two.” She held up two fingers, both capped by whole nails. There was a small nick on one of them and Leo watched the edges draw together and close before his eyes. “Both of you lived.” Mitei crushed the fingers into a fist and slammed it onto her lap in obvious frustration.
“No one ever lives. Not when I go personally.” She pounded her fist into her lap with each sentence; frustration giving way to confusion in her voice and even a dark hint of fear. “That you both lived is bad, but what happened when I returned to the office was worse. I am stuck in this form!” That last was a barely restrained scream that drew Leo closer where all the talk about how he was supposed to die had not. It was the scream of someone in soul deep distress. It helped to clear away the last dregs of anger and now he could look at Mitei and see the confusion and pain she wasn’t really mentioning. The wounds on her body continued to knit almost as he watched, her right eye was open now though her cheek was still swollen and tinged that faint pink color and she had all her finger nails now.
