Death

by George Pendle

  I can see now that I was in denial. I was trying to cover up my doubts with a veil of callous brutality. But that is all it was—a veil. As the Horsemen romped across Earth for another century, that veil slowly began to slip. I was carrying out my work faster and faster and with a flamboyance that inspired awe in my fellow travelers, but the nausea was starting to return. Cold sweats wracked my body, and Pestilence swore that he wasn’t to blame. I tried to hide my tremors and continue my work with the same flair I’d been showing of late—juggling souls until they were dizzy, then kicking them callously into the Darkness—but I was losing focus. Life was once again growing inside me, reaching out through my thoughts, turning my once beloved work into a horrible, hateful, and monstrous thing.

  To make matters worse, everywhere I turned, I was reminded of Jesus. People were being eaten by lions in His name, being crucified for saying they believed in Him, hurling themselves toward me all because of Him. What madness had He inspired to get the living to give up their most valuable commodity? I seethed inwardly. Why had He been allowed to have a Life and not me? What made Him so special? Why should He have known what it was like to run through the streets, to scab His knees, to fly a kite, even to fall in love, so the rumor went? It was nepotism, pure and simple.

  Not even the invention of gunpowder could perk me up. In fact, it did the opposite. Propelled by guns, cannons, and bombs, Creation now came hurtling toward me at breakneck pace. I wanted to tell them all to slow down, to stop, to enjoy it! There was no need to fight. There was no need to kill one another. Life was a many-splendored thing that could satisfy all. The fact was that I longed for the Life that they seemed so happy to throw away. But I couldn’t stop them and I couldn’t join them. I was in the middle of a whirlwind of fatality.

  By the twelfth century A.D., I found, to my horror, that human souls had become completely unpalatable to me. I could no longer grin and bear it. My hands now began to shake as I tried to ease a soul out of its body, and when I saw it sitting there, glistening and gleaming with the evanescence of the eternal, I would often gag. The Horsemen began to exchange looks among themselves when they saw me with trembling hands stooping over the bodies, fumbling, unable and unwilling to squeeze their souls out.

  One day, as I fumbled frantically with the soul of an orphan in front of the Horsemen, War put an arm around my shoulder and took me for a walk.

  “What’s going on, old chap?” he said.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” I said unconvincingly. The sweat dripped off my forehead.

  “You can tell me, old boy,” said War. “We’re all in this together, you know?”

  I decided to be straight with him.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked. “What’s it all about?”

  War rubbed his barbed-wire stubble.

  “Killing everybody in the world, I imagine.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “Well, it’d be awfully crowded around here if we didn’t.”

  “But don’t you ever want to stop killing and live a little?” I asked. “Aren’t you curious about Life in all its infinite variety?”

  “Not really,” said War. “Strife, yes. Life, not so much.”

  “But what about the birds and the bees and the coconut trees? The lambs in the field, the cows in the pasture, the kittens, the puppies. What about the puppies?”

  War was staring at me.

  “And the amoebas. What about them? The mitochondria? The box jellyfish? The screech monkey? The blue whale? The closed-bottle gentian? The long-spurred violet? The potato? The tomato? The goshawk? The newt?”

  Puppies: What About Them?

  “What about them?” said War. He was backing away from me slowly.

  “O to be a pilchard—small, silvery and slender, spawned and schooled and then surfaced, salted and swallowed! O to be a persimmon, astringent and tart, a strikingly colored pheasant, a reeve, a reed, a ray…”

  I felt a pressure pushing down on me, crushing me. And now I could feel the dead surrounding me. They pressed up to me. Swarmed over me. A million effervescent souls of pure being clambering on top of me—laughing at me, shouting at me, screeching at me. And something was beating in my chest. Beating so hard. Something wanted to get out of my chest. Through my mouth! But what was it? What was trying to escape? More souls now came flocking toward me. Hundreds. Thousands. The Darkness was quivering, helpless, shrinking, becoming little more than a stain, a tarnish, a tinge. I was being subsumed, subsumed under a mountain of Life.

  I put my head down, shut my eyes, and for the second time in recent years, I ran.

  My Day with Maud

  When I opened my eyes again, I was standing on a beach. The Horsemen were nowhere to be seen—I was quite alone. Small white clouds scudded through the sky. Three children raced across the sands to bathe. White birds swooped down from above. A group of monks in long robes walked in single file down to the sea. The waves thundered, the children shouted, the birds sang out, and the monks lifted up their robes and began paddling gleefully in the shallows. I felt again that great unexplained pounding rising within me, like a jackhammer of affection. I turned my gaze to the ground, partly to control this peculiar sensation, but also because the view was so beautiful I felt I might hurt it by looking at it for too long.

  Somehow I knew exactly what needed to be done. Years ago I had set out hopefully on my earthly mission. I had embraced mindless slaughter, hideous executions, bloody murders, and insane mayhem. I had waded knee-deep in gore, welcomed every deadly innovation, and applauded each new killing device. Now I could barely restrain my contempt for them. I had come to loathe my own morbid nature.

  For the first time in years, the Darkness was nowhere to be seen. I was relieved. There are times when you have to let go of your childish pursuits. The facts were plain: I was sick of existing in a vacuum, outside of time, without companionship. I wanted to live. No. I wanted to live with Maud. I looked in the Book of Endings—her ends were always eye-catching—and found that her latest incarnation was set to die that very decade. I didn’t question the fortuitousness of this timing. I didn’t wonder whether I was being set up. All I knew was that I had to see her.

  I found her dangling precariously above a swamp. Her wimple had caught on a tree branch, a tree branch that was slowly bending toward its breaking point. The horse from which she had been plucked watched peacefully fifty yards away. I felt as if I was standing on a precipice above a bottomless abyss. For the first time this prospect terrified me.

  “Coo-ee!” cried Maud as she gave me a wave, the wimple’s strap cutting deep into her chin. “Here we are again. Although I’m thinking that this time I really might escape. If I could just grab hold of that branch.” She motioned pitifully to a tree branch well out of her reach and flashed me another smile. My whole body was shaking.

  “You know, Maud,” I said, my voice breaking, “I think you might be right.”

  I reached over and pushed the tree branch within her grasp. She looked at me quizzically.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Grab hold of the branch, Maud,” I said.

  “But I’m scheduled to go, aren’t I?” she questioned.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Take the branch.”

  “If you’re teasing me…,” she said, eyeing me cautiously as she grasped hold of it. At that moment the strap on her wimple broke and dropped into the swamp below. The branch snapped back toward me, and Maud swung into my arms. We held each other in silence. I stroked her hair. Yes, I thought, this is right. This is the right thing to do.

  “Things are about to change around here,” I told her.

  Maud looked at me with her big brown eyes. “How exciting!” she said.

  And so it was that on October 5, 1582, I, Death, began saving lives. The Book of Endings told me where and when every being in the world was scheduled to die; I now set out to thwart their ends. I raced across battlefields, pushing soldiers out of the way of cannon
balls, replacing swords with sticks, defusing bombs, waylaying armadas. Like a black spirit of goodwill and benevolence, I snatched poison out of cups, performed the Heimlich maneuver on the choking, freed burning witches, prevented bar brawls, and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on man and beast alike.

  I brokered a truce between the quarreling red and gray squirrels, taught sharks the joys of abstinence, watered parched flowers, and persuaded lemmings that they were still young and had so much to give.

  Lemmings: “If All Your Friends Jumped Off a Cliff, Would You?”

  I raced across the world in a giddy hysteria, preventing meteorites from crushing villages and lightning from striking priests, and even stopping a Flemish pig from floating into space due to a gravitational abnormality in the vicinity of Ghent.

  For ten whole days no one died, and Maud never left my side. She talked to me and encouraged me, she fascinated me and fueled me, and with her I felt that my decision, though sure to bring the weight of Heaven and Hell down upon my head, was the correct one. I wanted everything to live, and to love living. I wanted everything to know how special Life was, how it should not be wasted but embraced and cherished. That was how sick I was.

  After ten days I felt my message was getting through. It felt like a new epoch was beginning, one in which violence had been replaced by friendliness, anger exchanged for tranquility, in which Life was no longer a bauble to be misused, but something to be cherished.

  At the end of that fateful tenth day, Maud and I found a charming hollow behind a little wood. A brook babbled through it and we sat there, letting the leaves blanket us, munching contentedly on the bread and butter we had been given by a grateful farmer whom I had saved from being pecked to death by his scheming chickens. I had never eaten before. I had never had a need to. But at the end of that glorious day I was ravenous. And what an experience it was! Placing things in your mouth! Chewing! Swallowing! Burping! Such unknown sensations thrilled my body. Life drew me ever closer with its soft, sunshiny smiles.

  I had saved a black kitten and a golden puppy from being forced to fight each other in the savage Elizabethan betting halls of London, and Maud and I played with them until the night came and they slept. No one had died. Life was everywhere content. Maud snuggled close to me “to keep warm.” To keep warm! Imagine! Oh, the humanity!

  Glorious, marvelous, wonderful, incredible, extraordinary day! As my companions slumbered I promised myself that I was going to be Earth’s great protector, not its destroyer, and that Maud and I would live happily ever after forever. None would die, all would live. Including me.

  And now, for the first time in my existence my eyelids felt heavy. As night crawled over the sky, I inhaled deeply. A yawn! Maud snuggled closer. The kitten and the puppy slept with their paws outstretched. The trees rustled in the breeze.

  Interlude

  I remember waking to the sound of rushing water. Something warm was dripping down my chin. I lifted my hand to feel my face. It was butter. I had a pat of butter the size of a musket ball stuck to my cheek. It was melting slowly into my mouth.

  My nose was filled with the sweet scent of flowers and my eyes were stuck shut with sleep. I opened them and looked around and saw that I was sitting on the bank of a river with my back against a willow tree. There was no one else around. I knew that something was missing, but I couldn’t place what.

  The sun was shining. A small fluffy kitten slept in my lap. I looked at my clothes. They were covered in crumbs. I smacked my lips with contentment, which sent a rich succulent taste through my mouth. Ah, butter.

  Beside me on the grass lay a golden puppy. It stretched out its legs and rolled its feet, shaking itself awake. It looked at me expectantly. Its tail wagged. I recall smiling at it lazily. I knew that something was missing and that I should be doing something else, but I couldn’t remember what. What’s more, I didn’t care. A large black book lay splayed open next to me. Most of its pages had been ripped out. I saw that a small flotilla of paper boats was bobbing up and down in a pool farther downstream. My eyes began to close again. I shifted myself to get even more comfortable when the puppy barked.

  I shushed it.

  It barked again, and I heard it scamper away from me. I did not open my eyes. Let it bark. Let it run. Let it live.

  I stroked the kitten in my lap.

  I heard the puppy bark again, then whimper, then go silent.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was no longer alone.

  Three dark figures stood before me silhouetted against the sunlight.

  “There he is,” said the one on the left.

  “Is that really him?” said the one in the middle.

  “It must be,” said the one on the left.

  The one on the right stayed silent. He had something in his arms. I shaded my eyes from the sun, but I couldn’t make out their features.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “You don’t know?” said the one on the left.

  “No.”

  “He doesn’t know who we are,” said the one in the middle. “He’s lost his marbles.”

  The one on the right still stood silent. Something was wriggling in his arms.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “We’re here to help you,” said the one on the left. “We’re your friends.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake. I’ve never seen you before in my life. Please go away. You’re blocking my light.”

  “Blocking his light!” cried the one in the middle.

  “Look,” said the one on the left, “you must know why we’re here.”

  The interlopers were beginning to irritate me. I forced myself to sit up.

  “I have no idea who you are or what you’re doing here,” I said. I was feeling sleepy again. “So why don’t you just run along.”

  The kitten stirred in my lap, and I stroked it. I suddenly remembered the puppy. I sat up and looked around, but could not see him.

  “Puppy!” I remember calling. “Puppy, where are you?”

  The three figures seemed to be shaking their heads at me.

  “Have you seen my puppy?”

  By now my eyes were adjusting to the light. The figure on the left was carrying a sword and wearing a helmet. The one in the middle was so thin she almost disappeared into the sunlight behind her. And the one on the right, the quiet one, seemed to be surrounded by flies. And he was holding something. He was holding something that was no longer wriggling.

  Something golden.

  “Puppy?”

  It landed at my feet. It was almost unrecognizable. Its fur hung limply off its now emaciated frame. Its eyes were festering with maggots. And it had an arrow through its head.

  “Puppy!” I cried. My eyes were filling with tears. “Puppy!”

  “Oh dear,” said the one in the middle. “He’s not meant to get like that. Better not tell him about the woman.”

  “How could you?” I howled. “How could you!”

  The three figures stood silently watching me. But I was feeling hot with rage. Burning with anger. I felt as though I was about to burst out of my body in a flaming frenzy of wrath. I staggered to my feet, but the world began to spin. It was so hot. So unbearably hot. My skin itched and crackled. My vision blurred. The world began to spin.

  “Fellas!” I heard someone cry. “Fellas, you almost lost me again!”

  Everything went bright.

  III

  The Clinic

  I awoke in an unfamiliar room. The walls were black. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside until I remembered what had happened to the puppy. And then a sickness entered me, and a familiar cold fell around me.

  I saw that the kitten was sleeping next to me. I picked it up and it purred. It was warm, and I rubbed my cheek against its soft fur.

  “Ahem.”

  There was a man sitting in the shadows across from my bed.

  “How are you feeling?” he said.

  “I feel fine,” I
replied. Everything felt slightly unreal.

  “Hmm,” he murmured, displeased. “Well, don’t worry, it’ll get worse.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll get worse. We’ll soon have you feeling terrible again.”

  “But I don’t want to feel terrible.”

  “Yes, you do. And you will.”

  I looked around. There was a desk and a chair and a closet and a window.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re in a special facility, the oldest in existence, for the treatment of psychological disorders.”

  “Psychological disorders? But I assure you I feel fine.” I rubbed my face against the kitten face again. It comforted me.

  “That is the problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We will need to monitor you carefully, and we will probably need to give you some toxification drugs.”

  I started whistling.

  “And a banshee will be here in a few minutes to wail at you.”

  I smiled.

  “Do you understand? You’re a very lively person. This needs to change.”

  The kitten had woken up and was batting at my leg with its paws.