Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish

by Andrew Buckley

  Celina froze in place. The thought of moving was of great appeal but her legs had other ideas and wanted to stay firmly rooted. She heard the door creak open, then a set of quick footsteps entered the room. She had to hide, she had to hide, why the hell weren't her legs listening to her?

  The dining room door swung all the way open; light spilled through the kitchen doorway. The short, quick footsteps of oncoming evil got closer and closer until, silhouetted in the doorway, a man appeared. A short man. Three feet tall, dressed in traditional elf clothing from the jingle bell on his hat right down to the pointy shoes that curled at the ends. A maniacal grin smeared across his mouth.

  Celina, having hidden herself in the walk-in freezer, could see the elf through the crack she’d left in the doorway. The elf, a half-crazed look in his eyes, moved quickly around the work table that sat in the centre of the kitchen. He climbed up on the counter and started opening cupboards, spilling canned foods and all sorts of other packaged goods out on the floor. He then proceeded to go through the kitchen drawers, emptying them as he went. There was such a determined look on his face that anyone watching him would have said, "Well, I'm sure he knows what he's looking for and he's bound to find it, I mean look at the little fellah, he's so determined."

  The determined elf seemed to be getting more frustrated as he came to the last of the cupboards and obviously did not find what he hoped to find. He swung open the fridge door and added its contents to all the other stuff that sat on the floor in a messy heap. The elf stopped and looked around the kitchen until finally settling a mean-looking and still quite crazed eye on the freezer door.

  Inside, Celina had been watching the ransacking of the kitchen with complete horror and a touch of confusion. Why was the elf destroying the kitchen?

  There was a scratching sound at the freezer door. Celina stepped back and looked around the freezer. Pieces of meat hung on a rack, sacks of frozen peas were stacked haphazardly into one corner, boxes were stacked in the other. The scratching continued. Celina could see the elf in the reflection of one of the metallic kitchen cabinets.

  Outside the freezer in the kitchen, the elf was leaping at the handle to the freezer, completely oblivious to the fact that the door wasn’t completely closed.

  Due to having a bad case of being short, this task was proving difficult. The elf stopped and stared up at the door. His maniacal smile twisted into a half-smile and then dropped completely into a frown. The elf ran back into the dining room and returned quickly, carrying a chair. Hopping on the chair next to the freezer’s edge, he opened the door and swung it wide.

  A rush of cold air hit him in the face as he hopped down and walked into the freezer. His nasty, beady little eyes quickly took stock: frozen peas, frozen carcasses of dead animals, boxes of bad, frozen food often found in crappy cafeterias. The elf reached into his pocket and pulled out a two-way radio; he clicked the button once and spoke into the microphone.

  "This is Cuddles calling Fluffy, come in Fluffy, over."

  There was a mess of static and then a gruff voice came back. "Fluffy here, go ahead Cuddles, over."

  "I'm in the kitchen, no lemons here, over."

  "Did you try the cupboards? Over."

  "Yes Fluffy, tried all the cupboards, no lemons, over."

  "How about the freezer? Over."

  "Nope, no lemons in the freezer, over."

  "Are you sure you checked all the cupboards? Over?"

  "Dammit, Fluffy, I checked everywhere, no lemons, none."

  There was a momentary pause while Cuddles' eyebrows twitched spasmodically.

  Static.

  "You didn't say over. Over."

  "Go to hell, Fluffy, over."

  "Very well, proceed back to operations, over."

  Cuddles the elf swore to himself, stuffed the radio back into his pocket and then left the freezer, shutting the door as he went.

  The stack of frozen peas shifted slightly and a bag from the top raised itself off and threw itself to the ground. Celina's extremely cold-looking head managed to motivate the rest of her body to stand up and start moving again. She shook off the bags of peas and stood up, teeth chattering incessantly.

  "L-l-lemons?"

  Eighteen.

  No one captured Death, no one! And if they did, they'd definitely never ever consider tying him to a hospital bed. That was, until recent events had taken place, causing Celina to hide in a freezer, Nigel to get fired, a penguin to turn into a man, a goldfish to predict the future, and all people in the world to stop dying. And where was God in all of this?

  There was a very good chance that at this particular moment, God was serving wine at a small restaurant a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus. Death was not too concerned with God's whereabouts at this point in time. He was more concerned that someone had him tied to a bed in a rundown-looking hospital in the Bahamas.

  Gerald, tied to the bed next to Death's, was less concerned with anything and was happily busy watching his toes wiggle, an altogether new experience that he'd recently discovered after being manhandled by a group of large male nurses and then tied to a hospital bed. He was equally overjoyed that no one had mentioned anything about sending him away on a boat.

  "I demand to see the doctor in charge!" shouted Death for the umpteenth time.

  "Have you ever noticed how nicely my toes wiggle?" asked Gerald of the gentleman dressed in the black robe tied to the bed next to him.

  Death was forthright with his answer. "Piss off!"

  "Hmm," said Gerald. That altogether new phrase didn't seem to be in his vocabulary. He'd have to remember the words and try them out sometime.

  Death got a bit perplexed at this point, and it had nothing to do with the naked, toe-wiggling gentleman to his left. In angelic form, Death was quite powerful. He had been in a few battles and had held his own each time. He'd even been in some nasty bar fights and had come through unscathed. He was an Angel. At least, he was, until he quit. It had never occurred to him that certain strengths would probably leave him after a while. As hard as he tried, he could not break the straps that tethered him to the bed. His ability to have people forget who he was appeared to be intact and was reinforced when moments later Barney the nurse walked in, followed closely by Dr. Ranja.

  "We caught this man outside the hospital," said Barney, pointing to Gerald. "He was all naked and out running, seems a bit confused."

  Barney then looked at Death.

  "I don't know who that is, but he looks a bit pale."

  Barney had been one of the nurses who had restrained Death to the bed, but the instant he had left the room and lost sight of Death, the memory had begun to fade until it no longer existed. No one should see Death until it was time for each of them to see Death.

  Dr. Ranja looked at both patients, perched on a stool, took out a pen and notepad, and smiled comfortingly. It had taken him years to figure out how to smile comfortingly. The first three years as a doctor, he found his smile had inspired nothing but fear and a small sense of loathing; the following seven years, he'd tested out several different smiles, until he finally sat himself down in front of a mirror for sixteen days and figured it all out. It ended up being a simple matter of squinting his eyes slightly and raising the left corner of his mouth just a touch higher than the right. Voila, comforting smile.

  "Now," he began with the utmost confidence, "let's start with your names. You in the black robe."

  "Death incarnate. And you are?"

  The doctor sounded out the words slowly as he wrote them down.

  "De-a-th in-ca-rn-ate. Good, good. And the naked gentleman?"

  Gerald stared at the doctor for a moment, trying to focus on what his name was when he was a penguin, as he presumed it still applied now.

  "Gerald," he said, and then added quickly, "I used to be a penguin, you know."

  Dr. Ranja nodded enthusiastically.

  As a quick afterthought, Gerald added, "But I'm not crazy."

  "Yes, yes, excellent
, of course you're not crazy. Used to be a penguin, that's good." Dr. Ranja suddenly re-noticed Death and although he looked slightly familiar, the Doctor couldn't quite remember seeing him before.

  "Ahh, and you in the robe, what's your name?"

  "Does it matter? I mean, really? You have to let me out of here."

  "Really?" said the doctor, "and why would that be?"

  "Because it's all gone horribly wrong, people aren't dying, that's not the natural order of things, the world will be overrun with people, I have to stop it. I have to find God and set it straight."

  The doctor nodding as if he knew exactly what Death was talking about.

  "Yes, I understand completely. My dear beloved wife is very spiritual. I expect her home any day now. She just nipped out to get some milk."

  "No, she hasn't!" snapped Gerald. The denial surprised both Death and the doctor and even Gerald himself, because he wasn't quite sure where the words had come from. He had spoken them, but the words were just something that had popped into his mind.

  Several thousand miles away, a prophetic goldfish was having a bit of a fit, thoughts and words were flying at him fast, and he couldn't help but swim around in small circles quickly and fling them out of his head as fast as possible to the person who needed them. The person, in this particular case, was Gerald.

  The doctor's smile dropped off his face and rolled somewhere under the bed. This was momentary, as he regained control of himself and grinned at Gerald while the thought of Death leaked from his memory. He began calmly.

  "I'm sorry, what was that?"

  Gerald shook his head but more words appeared and he couldn't help saying them. "She's run off with a one-legged Polynesian midget!"

  The doctor let out a nervous titter.

  "That's ridiculous," he said with a small amount of confidence. "She's just nipped out for some milk."

  Death chuckled as only Death could.

  Dr. Ranja's face began to turn a little red but his composure held firm.

  "And you, whoever you are, what exactly are you finding so funny?"

  Death stopped chuckling, and looked first at Gerald, and then to the doctor.

  "Well, it's funny, isn't it," said Death, "your wife's run off with a one-legged Polynesian midget, and you're in denial about it."

  The doctor maintained his composure for all of three more seconds before exploding like a large, angry volcano. "How dare you, how. . . I . . . it's . . no she didn't!"

  This was all Death needed. He mustered what little supernatural strength he had left and ripped the restraints off his bed.

  "Oh no you don't!" said Dr. Ranja.

  But it was too late. Death sprinted out the door and ran down the hallway, quickly ducked into a nearby office, and closed the door. He counted to twenty, and then stepped calmly out into the hallway.

  A livid looking Dr. Ranja ran past in search of someone who had just insulted him, he was sure of it, he just couldn't remember who had done the insulting.

  Death walked back up the hallway and back into Gerald's room.

  Gerald still had a big grin on his face as he found that experiencing everything for the first time was rather fun.

  "You're back!" said Gerald.

  Death ripped open Gerald's restraints and pulled him to his feet. "You, my friend," said Death, "are coming with me."

  "Why?" said Gerald happily.

  "Because throughout the duration of our fifteen-minute friendship you haven't forgotten who I am. And that is a rare trait indeed."

  "Excellent!" said Gerald, "where we going?"

  Death threw Gerald a nurse's uniform that sat on a nearby shelf.

  "To London, to find the Creator of the Universe."

  "Splendid!" said Gerald.

  Funnily enough, London was exactly the place where Nigel was currently trudging. After trudging along the Thames for a while, it occurred to Nigel that he had yet to eat. After being hung upside down off a building, and then all those people not dying, and that unfortunate business with the bird, Nigel realized that he was extremely hungry and so he proceeded to his favorite restaurant, not a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus.

  It was a quaint little bistro that had no name because the sign had fallen off years before in a thunderstorm, and some local kids nicked it to use as a coffee table in their new apartment. Since then, the owners never deemed it necessary to replace the sign, as all the people who entered the bistro were regulars. In fact, there hadn't been a new customer for years.

  The exterior of the bistro looked run down, the paint was chipping, and the door made an ugly squeaking sound, and it didn't really look like they ever cleaned the windows at all because the glass looked kind of murky in a semi-classy sort of way. This shabby appearance could have been the very reason why there were never any new customers. Or another possible reason, however implausible it seemed, could be that this was the part-time getaway hangout of the divine Creator of the universe. But the thought never really entered into anyone's mind, let alone their imagination.

  The interior of the restaurant was completely the opposite of the outside, as it was, in fact, the inside. And it was quite a nice inside, very classy. The whole place was two floors, well-decorated, warm colours, and the sort of lighting that made it feel like it was night time no matter what time of day it actually was. A spiral staircase led up to the second floor, which was smaller than the first but quite quaint, with little windows looking out at the bustling London street life; which could quite often be interpreted as a homeless gentleman peeing on a lamp post. Such sights were not rare in London.

  The bistro owners, Marge and Bernard, remained absent from sight, as they were always in the back kitchen cooking away. The front staff included one waitress, one waiter, and a wine waiter named Heinrich who, despite his name, was not German.

  Nigel wandered in and headed straight up the stairs to his usual table in the corner next to a small window that allowed the patron a bird's eye view of the massage parlor across the street, which was actually not a massage parlor but a bordello. Interesting people, mostly businessmen trying to look nonchalant by hiding behind their papers when ducking into the establishment, could often be seen.

  On a normal day, this amused Nigel to no end, but business appeared to be slow today.

  The waitress, a sultry-looking girl who looked to be between eighteen and forty-seven depending on what day it was, popped up next to Nigel's table.

  "What can I get ya, m'dear?"

  "I'll have the usual and a large bottle of wine to go with my large headache caused by my large boss who it's come to be my opinion is nothing more than a large ass!"

  "I'll send Heinrich right over, love."

  The waitress vanished and left Nigel alone with his thoughts. He was the only patron on the second floor, which, in Nigel's opinion, was a good thing as he really didn't feel like talking to anyone at the moment. Until Heinrich showed up.

  Heinrich was an unusual person. No matter what mood Nigel was in, Heinrich could always calm Nigel down, cheer him up, straighten out his thoughts, or even inspire him. Heinrich’s face had a calming effect that felt very much the same way that people did when they were three-years-old and sick but everything was fine the second their mum came in with a warm blanket and said to stay in bed and watch cartoons all day. Nigel had been coming here for years and had found Heinrich to be the best person to unload problems onto as, at least it always seemed, all he had to do was wave his hand, pat Nigel on the back, and everything would be fine again.

  Heinrich always looked to be young, in an ageless sort of way. His face seemed impervious to the effects of the years or stress and always shone with a child-like gaiety that most people left behind when they graduated from elementary school. Along with all these remarkable abilities, Heinrich could also pour a glass of wine with such accuracy that he never once spilt a drop. Nigel, lost in his recollections, never even noticed Heinrich until he stood right next to him holding a bottle of the restaurant
’s finest red wine.

  "Oh, Heinrich, how are you?"

  Heinrich eased into a friendly smile and raised an eyebrow.

  "The day's shaping up quite nicely. By the look on your face, I'd say you're not doing too well."

  Nigel gave a sort of plagh sound and pushed his wine glass toward Heinrich, who proceeded to flawlessly fill it. Heinrich nodded knowingly and pulled up a chair.

  "Why don't you tell me about it, then?"

  Nigel savored the smell of the wine for a moment before taking a gulp. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and let out a sigh.

  "I've been walking around trying to figure it all out, the dead people not dying, the nervous ducks, me getting fired, the elf warnings, the powers that I once had, we've been over that before, the first time we met, I think?" He let out another sigh. "I can't help thinking that there are too many strange, random events, that maybe they're all connected. I think I'm supposed to be the one figuring it out. Things always happen for a reason but I don't know where to start."

  Heinrich shrugged.

  "The most random things can often be connected, even at a very remote level. The best place to start is always at the beginning. Which really is just common sense; if we started things like this at the end, there'd be nothing to figure out. I'm sure everything will turn out okay in the end." Heinrich stood, patted Nigel on the head, dropped a napkin on the table, and vanished.

  This wasn't quite the advice or response he had hoped for. In the past, Heinrich sat and they spoke for hours; this time, he hadn't even had chance to get to the part about his gambling problem.

  Well, this is turning out to be a rather disheartening da—Nigel stopped in mid-thought. He had picked up the napkin Heinrich had dropped with the full intention of wiping his brow when all of a sudden he noticed the writing on the back. Heinrich had left him a note.

  My dearest Nigel,

  I apologize for the inability to talk with you openly but unwanted eyes and ears are observing us. There are many things happening which you will soon understand to be important. However, in order to discover them, you are going to have to stop prattling around, forget the gambling, forget your lack of employment, and get back on the right path. In order to accomplish this I can offer you two pieces of advice. 1) Go home and check your messages. 2) If you see any black cats, kick them as hard as possible. This last one is extremely important and must be followed to the letter.