Death

by George Pendle

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That,” said Peter, “is the Grand Scheme of Things.”

  “It looks rather messy,” I said, trying to make sense of it.

  “So are Things,” said Peter coldly.

  The clouds became thicker and began to reach up to our waists. Suddenly I heard a yelp, and sweeping the clouds away, I saw that I had stood on a baby angel with little feathery wings. I brushed more clouds away and saw that the floor of Heaven was littered with them. The baby angel I’d stood on began to cry, and Peter swiftly picked it up and began rocking it back and forth in his arms.

  The Grand Scheme of Things (detail).

  “Coochie-coochie-coo,” he said to it, before turning to me. “We’ve got to make it quiet, otherwise…too late!”

  From all around us the sound of weeping and sobbing slowly emerged. At first there were only a handful, but more and more joined the choir, until thousands of squeals and wails began to pulverize our senses. It was an unstoppable waterfall of caterwaul. I had heard much bawling in my existence, but the sheer intensity of this was horribly new.

  “What are all these babies doing here?” I shouted to Peter as we broke into a run. He flung the baby he had been coddling into a cloudbank.

  “We call this the Field of Screams. You know how high infant mortality is,” yelled Peter over the thundering waves of crying. “At least fifty percent of the total population of the dead are babies at the moment, and since they died before committing a transgression, we get stuck with them. Gabriel has been talking about making gurgling a sin, but I don’t think it’ll get through Parliament.”

  Eventually the crying died away and we came to a vast building.

  “Regard,” said Peter hurriedly, as we swept inside, “the magnificence of the Parliament of Heaven.” Inside, gray corridors led on to gray rooms. The ceilings were exceedingly low. But from somewhere inside the building emanated an unmistakable dazzling light. Peter ushered me into a small antechamber and said we had to wait. I was not the only one there to talk to God, it seemed. I recognized Job talking to what seemed like a heavenly advocate.

  “Why am I still covered in sores?” he whined. “I mean, what kind of Paradise is this?”

  Across from him sat Diogenes complaining to another advocate that he had lived in a barrel throughout his life, and that it seemed somewhat unfair to have to do so in Heaven, too.

  “I mean, a life of self-sufficiency and poverty meant something on Earth, but isn’t it rather beside the point up here?”

  Eventually a heavenly page beckoned us inside. The main chamber was much larger than I had expected. Lining either side of the room were rows of benches on which hundreds of angels sat or stood, shouting and singing frantically at one another. It was mayhem. Feathers flew in the air, and I had to duck on numerous occasions as angels swooped overhead, dropping reams of parchment behind them. At the far end of this maelstrom stood a throne on which hovered the unmistakable blinding white light of God. Gabriel stood to His left, signing pieces of parchment frantically and shouting orders to the cherubs that swarmed around Him. God looked displeased. Jesus slouched in His chair to the right hand of God with His fingers in His ears. An argument had obviously just taken place.

  I would later appreciate that God’s biggest problem was that He inhabited everything. Therefore, when He argued with something, He was really arguing with Himself. Jesus took full advantage of this.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Jesus,” boomed God.

  “No, You shouldn’t have done that, Daddy,” beamed Jesus.

  “Call Me God when We’re in company.”

  “Are You speaking to Yourself again?”

  “No, I’m speaking to You. Job was very upset when You suggested he learn to like his boils.”

  Jesus started slapping His own face. “Stop hitting Yourself!” He beamed at God.

  Jesus and God: Sometimes They Sulked for Hours.

  “Ghost! Ghost!” boomed God.

  From out of the corner of the room came a thin white emanation that looked rather like a torn bedsheet.

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Will You kindly take My son to His room?” boomed God.

  “But He never listens to Me,” bewailed the Holy Ghost.

  “Of course not,” beamed Jesus, “You’re Him.”

  “No, I’m not,” bewailed the Holy Ghost, and then, noticing an inquiring expression emanating from the blinding white light who was all things, swallowed embarrassedly.

  Peter took this moment to cough and introduce me. “My Lord, Death is here to see You.”

  The vast blinding emanation seemed to turn toward me.

  “Why, hello, Death. Long time no see. As you can see, I just couldn’t stay away. The creeping things called out to Me. Anyway, what brings you here?”

  “Well, Lord God Sir, it’s Him.” I pointed to where Jesus had been, but He had disappeared from His chair. I looked around and saw Him hiding behind God’s light sticking His tongue out at me.

  “Him,” boomed God. “He’s My great new direction for Heaven, if only He’d learn to control Himself a little. I know, I know, I am too indulgent. But He is My only child after all. What’s He been getting up to?”

  “He’s been pretending to be human, Lord God Sir,” I said.

  “Ah, yes,” boomed God. “I let Him take human form every now and then. He gets so bored here in Heaven. You know how it is with children. Anyway, I’m sure whatever He did can be cleared up in a jiffy.”

  “I don’t think so, Lord God Sir. He was telling people they should eat Him. I think He might have started an epoch-changing religion. Look at the Book.” I showed Him the date change, and the emanation of light seemed to rub what might have been its chin.

  “Hmmmm,” God boomed, and looked toward Jesus, who was by now making parchment airplanes and throwing them at me.

  “He was acting like some kind of candyman-cannibal god, God. I mean, getting people to eat you? Come on. It’s crazy. So, You see, O Lord, I really think You should step in and do something before the humans get too worked up about it.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” beamed Jesus. “I’m sure they’ll all forget about it soon. Man is but grass, You know.”

  “No, he’s not,” I blurted. “He’s taller, less green, and doesn’t photosynthesize. Grass is but grass.” I turned to God. “How can You just sit there and let this happen?”

  As soon as I said these words I regretted them. One should never underestimate a parent’s love for his or her child (especially if that child happens also to be the parent).

  “Do you not think that I knew this would happen, Death?” boomed God with slightly more irritation than I would have preferred. “Do you not know this was foreseen?”

  “Of course I knew You knew God, it’s just that—”

  “Through His death”—the divine light gestured at Jesus—“all mankind shall be redeemed.”

  “But He didn’t even die,” I squeaked.

  “Yes, I did,” beamed Jesus. “You saw Me.”

  “You winked at me,” I countered. “That’s not dying, that’s pretending. And besides, if You were dead, why were You running around asking everyone in Jerusalem to poke their fingers into Your side?”

  “My son’s sacrifice,” boomed God, who didn’t seem to be listening to me anymore, “has saved mankind from original sin.”

  “But—”

  “He paid for the sins of mankind through His blood, through His sacrifice.” Jesus was just sitting there grinning; the argument between the two of them was forgotten.

  “But—”

  “Through the sacrifice of His blood,” boomed God, “the torture of His body, He redeemed mankind through His sacrifice. Do you understand, Death? Do you understand the meaning of sacrifice?”

  Something inside me snapped.

  “What is it with You and sacrifices?” I shouted. “Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice! Don’t get me wrong, I love dead things, they�
�re my whole Life, but You’re obsessed. Why can’t You do anything without something dying first? Do You get some kind of perverse pleasure out of that? Why do You want everything to die before it reaches Paradise? And why do You insist on showing Your power and majesty through earthquakes, disease, and flooding? Why are You always killing things? What is it, exactly, that You’ve got against Life?”

  The angels in the main hall of the Parliament fell silent. I felt Peter inching away from my side. Jesus sat up in His throne, a look of smiling disbelief on His face. I felt a peculiar sensation in my belly.

  “He’s gone wrong,” beamed Jesus.

  “You have gone a bit strange,” boomed God, eyeing me carefully. “What’s all this talk about ‘my whole Life’? You don’t have a Life. That’s your whole point, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. He was right. What was I talking about? Why should I care if things were sacrificed or not?

  “And only the other day,” continued God, “Gabriel was telling us about certain irregularities concerning your souls. What do you have to say to that?”

  I didn’t know what to say. The whole Parliament was now listening intently.

  “Perhaps I can refresh your memory,” said Gabriel, stepping forward, his voice like poisoned honey. “We’ve been auditing the souls you sent us, Death, and we’ve found quite a few discrepancies. Numerous examples of souls turning up late, or, on one or two unforgivable occasions, early.”

  A murmur rang through the angelic audience. Gabriel began to stalk back and forth in front of God. God was now viewing me with cold detachment. Jesus clapped His hands together in excitement and drew His knees up beneath His chin.

  “Got an eye for the ladies have we, Death?” thundered Gabriel.

  There was much angelic muttering.

  “Do you scratch their backs if they scratch yours?”

  There was uproar in the chamber. Salaciousness was obviously a prized commodity in Heaven.

  “Oh, very droll, Gabriel!” boomed God. “You’re so much better at this than Michael was.”

  “Or should I say slap their backs?” continued Gabriel, a grimace of satisfaction playing on his lips. He turned to face me. “Some have been wondering whether the human known as ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage’ threw herself onto her funeral pyre or whether she was pushed. You know how these little things mean a lot to us, don’t you, Death? With one she’s saved; the other, she’s damned for all eternity.”

  Happy Days with Maud.

  I lowered my gaze. I could still remember the arch of Maud’s back beneath my hand, her arms thrown joyfully in the air, that go-hither look in her eyes as she was enveloped in the flames, her skin bubbling and bursting, her attendants running frantically around her. Oh Maud! How I wished you were with me now.

  “If you admit that you gave her a little push, she’ll be saved, you know,” said Gabriel. “She’ll be able to spend the rest of her days in Paradise. Of course, you will be condemning yourself to extinction, but of course, is that not what sacrifice is all about?”

  Gabriel turned obsequiously to God and bowed. A smattering of applause sounded through the Parliament.

  It was all so absurd. Why did it matter if she fell or if she was pushed? Didn’t the forces that ruled the Universe have anything better to do than quibble over the final destination of some poor girl’s soul?

  “We found a handprint on the back of her soul, you know,” said Gabriel, eyeing me carefully.

  For the first time in my existence, I believe, I felt terror.

  “But,” said Gabriel, unable to draw a reaction from me, “it was indistinct. You didn’t by any chance…help her on her way, did you? Maybe she was taking too long, being too indecisive, and you gave her a little…boost?”

  I shook my head in denial. It was all I could do. In front of me, God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost huddled together until they seemed to merge into one being—a blindingly bright bedsheet with a beard. They separated and stared long and hard at me.

  “You are dismissed for now,” boomed God. “But don’t go leaving Earth anytime soon. We’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  As I hurried away, out of the Parliament, I heard a voice shout, “Jesus reigns in Heaven, bitch!” It was followed by the sound of a somewhat muted slap, as of a high five being performed between a ghost and a man with holes in the palms of His hands.

  I stepped outside onto the cloudbanks and felt something trickling down my forehead. It was thick with perspiration. I was stunned. I had never sweated before. Only living things sweated and I wasn’t….

  Suddenly I felt incredibly claustrophobic. The entire Universe stretched before me and yet I felt hemmed in by a monstrous, arbitrary feeling. I wanted to get back to Earth, away from this infinite inhumanity. I wanted to be surrounded by Life again, the dirty, doomed Life that I knew so well, where no one was all-knowing, where you could only be in one place at a time, where when you were dead, you stayed dead.

  I stared frantically at the fields of screaming babies, the peepholes into Hell, the flagellants’ chambers, the thousands of angels balanced on the head of a pin.

  I had to get out of there right away.

  Addicted to Life

  Back on Earth I was wracked with doubt. What meant this endless procession of nights and days wherein I moved as if I had some useful purpose? Why was I forced to eradicate the things that made me happy? But in that question lay the real problem. Why was I trying to be happy at all? Ah, Life! That cursed bright flower had already thrust its roots deep within my being.

  How I wished that I had the possibilities offered by even the most meager of human lives. The thrill of walking the tightrope of existence, of being in time, being in peril, being in the wrong, being in over one’s head, being in love. But being, it seemed, was not within my range.

  The sight of a scarlet battlefield, which in the past had inspired in me a heightening of the senses, now seemed a dull and sterile prospect. Was it that I was bored? Once you have sent a billion importunate souls into the hereafter it would seem only natural to become jaded. But I knew what troubled me was something more than just otherworldly weariness. The act of freeing a soul from a particularly mangled corpse began to disgust me. I even began to look away when scooping out the soul. Coupled with the physical revulsion was the nausea of moral uncertainty I now felt. It had suddenly occurred to me that it might not be all that pleasant to die. After all, you didn’t die when you were ready; there were no announcements, no invitations, nothing. One moment you were on Earth and the next you were gone. It was all very depressing.

  Why was I always finishing things, never starting them? I longed for new beginnings, not old endings. It was hardly surprising that I should begin to wonder whether I should retire; or rather, whether I could.

  What, though, were my prospects? I supposed I could return to Hell, but the gates were now automatic and needed no guarding, and the very thought of working for Father buying and torturing souls sickened me.

  It was then, faced with the futility of my situation, that I began having mad, foolish thoughts. I started imagining Maud and myself sitting in a buttercup field, plucking up the kisses that grew upon our lips, with the sun streaming down and the buttercups singing to us in their strange buttercup language. We would put our heads down deep in the flowers and luxuriously follow the activities of the tiny insects crawling here and there in the forest of grass. And when the sun grew too hot, we would go into the woods where bluebells blanketed our every step. And we would be full in the completeness of our love, happy in the oneness of our being, and hopeful, one day, of seeing a little Death stumble into the world.

  It was mad, but I just couldn’t shake it. I was Death, Destroyer of Life, and all I wanted was a cottage by a stream, a pot of hot soup on the stove, and someone to love me. I was emptiness incarnate, but I wanted to fill the void that was my being. Almost against my will I found myself collecting living things. I kept the souls of dead puppies just inside the Dar
kness so that no one could see them, and whenever I had a spare moment I would play with them. Yes, it was mad. Yes, it was obscene. But my hands started to shake with excitement when I held and stroked their soft, plush hair. I kept telling myself that an understanding of Life was fundamental in understanding myself. But who was I kidding? I was hooked deep. The monkey was on my back, and I didn’t even realize it. I was chasing the wizard and riding the dragon and thinking it was fine. It would take me many years to admit what I now know for sure.

  I was addicted to Life.

  I don’t know whether I had become more sensitive, or whether I was being tested in some way, but a sudden surge in dying helped me momentarily focus on my work and push these troubled thoughts to the back of my mind. It was the Romans who were largely responsible for this boom in dying. Never before in the field of human conflict had so much blood been spilled from so many by so few. Not only were the Roman soldiers equipped with the latest Iron Age weapons—iron filings to blind the enemy, branding irons to scald the enemy, clothing irons to rapidly de-crease the enemy—but they were also extraordinary trainers of war animals. After bombarding an enemy for days with lettuces and other greens, the famed War Tortoises of the Ninth Legion would be unleashed, creatures famed for the exceedingly slow but unstoppable swathe they cut through enemy lines. Looking back on it, I marvel at the Romans’ ingenuity, but at the time the sight of a soldier being slowly masticated gave me the shivers.

  The Dread Roman War Tortoise: One Hundred Feet Long, Sixty Feet High, Lapsed Vegetarian.

  The Roman engineers were no less brilliant. They defeated the underground kingdom of Carthage—so long a thorn in Rome’s side—by first raising it to the ground and then destroying it. What’s more, the bloodthirstiness of the average Roman citizen was unequaled. Orgies mingled with executions, wine with poison. It was a bloodbath, a slaughter sauna, a Jacuzzi of gore.