The Death of All Things

by Faith Hunter

  This one is made of odds and ends, and barely seems to cohere as a set. The board is scratched into an old table, lines drawn against the side of a book and gouged out with a pocketknife, the pattern of the squares marked out with scars from hundreds of stubbed-out cigarettes. The white’s king’s rook is a shot glass, the queen’s side is a brass cylinder, the knights a pair of erasers shaped like bumblebees, the bishops an orange and white pill bottle and a tiny upright crucifix, the king and queen a pair of chipped porcelain figurines with golden rings glued, a bit crookedly, to their heads. Black’s side is just as motley: the rooks are flat metal discs—one oval, one circular—the knights a pair of misshapen lumps of charcoal, one bishop a syringe tube packed full of hair, the other a tuning key for a guitar, with the royals a pair of small dollar-store dolls, each with half a rainbow of colored rings settled on its head. White’s pawns are bottle caps—well, seven bottle caps and a cork—each of them different, and black’s are a steady progression of folded paper cranes, monotonically progressing from poorly made to roughly competent.

  There are seven paper cranes.

  Diligent hands work slowly, carefully, to fold the eighth. It is better made than number seven, though still far from perfect, and the creases do not line up quite right, no matter how often she smooths one thumb along each one. The bird takes its somewhat blossom-like shape, and its crafter hesitates for a moment—just a moment—before placing it on the eighth square of black’s second row, adjusting its facing slightly, and standing up to go and get herself a drink.

  She is both surprised and not that, when she turns back towards the table, there is someone there. She pauses, looks Death up and down, and says, “You’re not what I expected.”

  “You were expecting what, tall and thin and bony?” says Death. “All pale, dressed in black, and carrying something off a farm?”

  “I’m not sure what I was expecting.” She pauses. “Aside from not this. Would you like a drink?”

  “Very hospitable of you,” says Death, approving. She is not tall, nor thin, nor bony, nor is she pale or dressed in black. She is a thick-thighed, generously curved black woman whose hair defies containment, she wears sensible shoes and comfortable clothes, and a set of bracelets on her right wrist. She might have been anyone’s aunt introduced at the church social, save that her eyes are full of starlight and her voice, though quiet, sounds like faraway thunder.

  “I did invite you to join me. I’ve got a beer, a bit of whiskey left, the last of the milk. Some orange juice.”

  “Sounds like you’re not planning on staying long,” says Death, pulling up a chair to the board. “You’ve got me playing white.”

  “You always have the advantage, don’t you? Did you want a drink or not?”

  “I’ll have a whiskey, then.”

  She nods. “So, do you get a pale one if you’re white?” she asks, making conversation, as she opens up the cabinet.

  “That’s an interesting question, sweetie,” says Death.

  “Does it get an interesting answer?” The bottle is smooth in her hands, its label scuffed at one corner, and she brushes her fingers over it several times, savoring the sensations of it, before she opens it.

  “I keep my counsel.” Death lets that statement settle with a certain rumbling finality, and then repeats, “Not planning on staying long?”

  “I’m playing chess with Death,” she says, pouring the last of the whiskey. “There aren’t many ways that goes that mean I’ll need groceries tomorrow.” She brings the drink out and hands it over with a little half-bow. “There you go.” She sits, cracking the last beer from the fridge, and lets it hiss.

  Death picks up the glass. “Cheers.”

  “What the hell,” she laughs, and taps the glass with the bottom edge of her bottle. “What’re we drinking to?”

  “What else?” says Death. “Life.”

  She blinks, and then nods. “To life, then.”

  Death studies the board, looks up and studies her opponent, then lightly puts a finger on one of the bottle caps and slides it two squares forward. “Pawn to king four.”

  “It’s a classic opening, I will admit.” She takes a swig from her bottle and sets it on the table next to the gouges marking the edge of the board, then slides one of her cranes to meet the bottle cap.

  “Why a bee?” asks Death, picking up the king’s knight and moving it out past the row of bottle caps.

  “I met this girl once,” she says. “In another lifetime. We lost touch, we both had crazy lives. But she said something to me that stuck with me. Haunted me. How now she left home, there would be nobody would bother to tell the bees she was gone.” She picks up her queen’s knight and moves it to guard her pawn, the charcoal smudging off on her fingers. “I looked it up, you know? That there’s an old custom, or superstition, or something, that you tell the bees when someone dies, if you don’t keep them informed they may leave, or stop making honey, or something like that.”

  “I see,” says Death, and advances the pill bottle bishop to threaten the knight.

  “I always wondered if maybe, when she left, they told the bees she was gone. Lied to them. I wonder if the bees care, you know? About whether it’s true. Or whether it was true enough to count.” She pushes the eighth crane a step forward to menace the pill bottle bishop.

  “I never paid much attention to customs like that.” Death studies the board and takes the knight with the pill bottle bishop. “What’s the charcoal?”

  “Pretty well dead wood, isn’t it? Came from a bonfire. Down on the beach. Don’t know anymore if I was drinking to remember or drinking to forget. Kept some of the wood, afterwards, so maybe it was remembrance. I tried to chip them into dogs, black dogs guarding the way, like, you know, Anubis and stuff, but I don’t think they came out well.” She sighs and advances one crane, claiming the pill bottle and cradling it in her hand.

  “The intent carries, though,” says Death. She nods at the pill bottle. “What’s the story there?”

  She puts the pill bottle down next to the beer, turns it to show Death the name. “Do you remember her? She had half a bottle left when she couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Death is still for a moment, then reaches out to take the bishop back into her hand, her thumb smoothing over the label. “I remember.” She sets it back down, and quietly castles, tucking the porcelain king safely behind a fortress of bottle caps and holding the shot glass carefully before setting it down to protect him.

  She points to the shot glass. “I got that from his apartment. Landlord said anything his friends didn’t take would get thrown out. Nobody else wanted it. Drank himself half to death. Everyone thought taking it would be too morbid. Except for me.”

  “I remember him,” says Death. And then, “You didn’t tell me why you wanted the game. There’s nobody dying here to beg me to spare.”

  “There’s me.” She advances a bishop’s pawn to defend the lone pawn.

  “I don’t see any reason I would take you home with me,” says Death.

  “And that’s why I asked you here,” she says. “To make a deal.”

  “Pardon?” Death looks honestly perplexed, her chin down enough to double, her brow furrowing over those starlight eyes.

  “Ask me the stories.” She gestures at the pieces.

  “You’ve told me a few,” says Death. “And I imagine you’ll tell me more if we keep playing. But if we’re playing for a forfeit, I’d better know the deal.”

  “Well, we’ve done your king’s side,” she says. “The king and queen, they were my grandmother’s. She collected little trinkets. I managed to keep a few when she went. Cancer.”

  Death nods. “And the rings?”

  “Wedding rings. I bought them at a pawnshop. Something died, for them to be there.”

  “Very true. The crucifix?”

  “It’s hard to keep up any sort of faith like this. In this world. I had one, once.”

  Death looks at the crucifix, and then at he
r. “But not Catholic.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Tastes different, a dead Catholic faith. Yours was some other kind.”

  “I suppose you would know, you put it that way.” She pauses and studies the figure. “Other crosses don’t have the death in them,” she says, after a little while. “That one, it’s got death with it. Can’t escape it. Can’t run from it. Got to face it, right there.”

  That appears to satisfy her. “It belonged to someone kept his faith to the end,” she adds, conversationally.

  “Did Jesus come for him, then?” asked her host, bitterly.

  “I did. What comes after’s not for the living, sweetie.” Death quelled further questioning with her tone. “The other rook?”

  “Bullet casing. Nine millimeter Glock. I couldn’t get one from the actual scene, it was all roped off, but I snagged one from a range a bit afterwards where some of them went to practice. No indictment.”

  Death nods, again. “And your side, then.”

  She lays a finger on the round disc. “I had a dog once. When I was young enough to be, well, you know. That person died a long time ago.”

  “And I welcomed him,” says Death, with a kindness that her hostess does not expect.

  The silence, for a moment, is awkward.

  “Not everyone feels they leave their childhood behind in a shroud,” says Death. “But the ones who do, I welcome those kids home. They need rest and caring maybe more than most.”

  She says, after another unsettled pause, “He was a good dog.” She skips over the other lump of charcoal, to the syringe. “Overdose. We never knew whether or not it was an accident. It was hard times.” She skips the royal pieces and lays a finger on the other bishop. “She was a musician. She was amazing. And then she was gone.”

  “And that?” Death points at the other flat piece of metal, the rounded-off rectangle.

  “Joined the Army. Only shot at college, getting somewhere better. Didn’t make it home.”

  Death nods and waits, eyebrows raised, looking at the dollar-store dolls.

  “They were the toppers for a wedding cake,” she says. “Big thing. Couple years later he got cancer.” She rests a finger on the queen. “He didn’t make it.” Then the king. “He…didn’t make it either, but he’s still alive. Well, the body’s still moving. Not much of him left, from the grief. They wouldn’t let him in to say goodbye.”

  Death closes her luminous eyes for a moment, looking as if she’s casting her attention elsewhere, and there is a pause before she clears her throat and says, “The bottle caps?”

  “Favorite drinks. The stuff you’d drink to remember someone by, you know. On anniversaries and when you miss them.”

  “And the cranes?”

  “Wishes. Hopes. Struggling on despite the pain.”

  Death nods. “What’s the bargain you want to strike with me, then?”

  “You keep taking my people,” she says. “I want you to take me, take my life, parcel it up, give it to the rest of us. Give everyone else a little more time. Take me instead.”

  Death shakes her head, sadly. “Oh, honey,” she says. “That’s not how it works.”

  She brings her first down on the table, nearly upending the beer. “I made the board. I called you here. I want you to take me instead of them!”

  Death stands, setting her empty whiskey glass down. “Honey, I told you.”

  “I don’t care what you told me! I worked the spell, I brought you here, I want to play the game!”

  Death moves around the end of the table and drapes one arm around her shoulders. She elbows Death in the belly and does not even get the satisfaction of a grunt, for Death is as inexorable as her reputation. “Child, let me tell you a thing.”

  She grunts, curling her arms around herself, folding into a ball.

  “Honey, I got your back.”

  This is, of course, not the expected thing and she looks up, into Death’s bottomless, luminous eyes.

  “I always got your back. You know it. You’ve always known it, that’s how you knew how to call me. You knew I’d be there for you.”

  “If you’re there for me,” she growls, “why won’t you take my trade?”

  “That’s not who I am.”

  Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m Death, honey, not Killing. I don’t make them go. I don’t have the power to take a life and give it to another. Your life’s yours, nobody else’s, and when you’re done, you’re done. If you’re going to buy any of them another day, you’ve got to do it when you’re living. There’s no trade.”

  Her thwarted rage is near tangible. It sinks into Death’s hair and barely moves a single strand of it. “So what good are you then?” she shouts, trying to make the locks stir and failing entirely.

  “I’m the one welcomes them home.”

  She snorts, mocking. “Home.” The tone is bitter.

  “Home’s the place where, when you go, they have to take you in. Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

  “What home have I got, then?” The anger breaks loose in shouting, with her balled fists clenched, but not daring to try to strike, and through all of the fury Death is unswayed and does not move her arm, leaving it draped around those shoulders with a gentle implacability.

  “You got me.” The thunder in Death’s voice was a little louder now. “You and every other living thing. And you know, no matter what you do, no matter how it goes, I’ll always be there for you. I’ll be ready to welcome you home, as soon as you cross over.”

  Death’s voice is warm, is something like motherly, a voice that, for all its eerie timbre, actually belongs to that generous body and those sensible shoes.

  She looks at Death, looks deep into those starlight eyes, looks for something a little less alien than mortality offered as comfort, but Death is Death, at once alien and utterly familiar. Death has never been far away and she has known this better than most, measured it out in chess pieces and funerals and crumpled paper cranes.

  She swallows back a sob, looks at Death, and finally closes her eyes.

  “It’s all right, sweetie. You know you can come rest, as soon as you’re done fighting. That’s a promise.”

  “But I have to be all the way done,” she whispers. “I have to have nothing left. Because when I go, I go.”

  Death nods, and strokes her shoulder.

  Her lip trembles. “Will I see—”

  “Them again?” Death lays a finger on those lips. “Shhh, honey, that’s not secrets for the living. Is it enough? To know that you got a home to go to when it’s time?”

  She closes her eyes, thinks, and Death strokes her hair. Eventually she whispers, “I have a home.”

  “You got a home. You’re just travelling now. Camping out.”

  The laugh is shattered, awkward, mixed with tears. She goes boneless, cradled in Death’s arms, her head resting on soft breasts, the sobs soaking the colorful, comfortable shirt with tears and snot and likely spit. She cries for a long time, wracked with it, and Death is there, quiet, secure. Death has all the time in the world and no need to hurry.

  “Pick up your bottle, honey. Drink to life. There’s time enough to go home at the end of it.” Death gives her a last squeeze and kisses her temple, then returns to her side of the board. “You always got a home with me.”

  “But you’re in no hurry to see me in your kitchen, is what you’re saying.”

  “Time enough for that later. Right now, yours got no food in it, and you’ve a game of chess to finish before you can go to the supermarket, girl.”

  She nods, settles in, and says, “Your move.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  SHAUN AVERY has been published in many magazines and anthologies, normally with tales of a dark and horrific nature. He also has a fondness for penning satirical stories, especially in relation to fame and media obsession. He has co-created a self-published horror comic, available here:

  http://www.comicsy.co.uk/dbrou
ghton/store/products/spectre-show/ and recently sold his first comic script, details of which can be found here: http://shanewsmith.com/allthekingsmen/contributors/shaunavery/

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  STEPHEN BLACKMOORE is the author of the Eric Carter noir urban fantasy series with DEAD THINGS, BROKEN SOULS, and HUNGRY GHOSTS. He has also written for the Gods Monsters series (MYTHBREAKER), the role-playing game Spirit of The Century (KHAN OF MARS), the video-game Wasteland 2 (ALL BAD THINGS) and the television series Heroes: Reborn (DIRTY DEEDS). His short stories can be found online and in the anthologies DEADLY TREATS and UNCAGE ME. He co-hosts the bi-monthly Los Angeles crime fiction reading series Noir At The Bar L.A. He can be found online at

  http://stephenblackmoore.com

  and on Twitter at @sblackmoore.

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  LEAH CUTTER writes page-turning fiction in exotic locations, such as a magical New Orleans, the ancient Orient, Hungary, the Oregon coast, rural Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many others. She writes literary, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and horror fiction. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Talebones, anthologies like Fiction River, and on the web. Her long fiction has been published both by New York publishers as well as small presses. Read more books by Leah Cutter at www.KnottedRoadPress.com. Follow her blog at www.LeahCutter.com.

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  ALIETTE DE BODARD lives and works in Paris. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories which have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and two British Science Fiction Association Awards. Her space opera books include The Citadel of Weeping Pearls, a book set in the same universe as her Vietnamese science fiction On a Red Station Drifting. Recent works include the Dominion of the Fallen series, set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which comprises The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz, 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, Locus Award finalist), and its standalone sequel The House of Binding Thorns (Ace, Gollancz).