Death Fish

‘But surely there’s been some misunderstanding here. I was fine five minutes ago!’ The man in the medical gown shifted uncomfortably from left to right, shuffling it down every other second and glancing around furtively in the seconds in between.

‘I assure you Mr. Fletcher, there has been no misunderstanding it’s all here in the book.’ Death prodded the Book with a long, skeletal finger. He was getting rather impatient with this dancing little man.

But Justin Fletcher, however, had never been an accepting sort of man, even in life. An unfortunate trait which was probably the common denominator of his four failed marriages, an endless stream of unemployment and his untimely death when he failed to accept his GP’s advice to stop all that smoking business.

‘Come now,’ he raised his hands imploringly, ‘you can’t begrudge a man for having one last smoke before he gives it up can you?’

Death put three bony fingers to the crown of his skull, ‘No Mr. Fletcher, but we can begrudge you of the 11,495 previous last smokes that you’ve had in your lifetime. It all adds up you see.’

Mr. Fletcher hopped from side to side for a moment evidently in a furious battle with his airy gown. But before he could say another word Death spoke again, ‘Mr Fletcher, I understand that you feel very sorry for yourself at this moment in time, but in the time that you have taken here, 3 million other people have died and have been waiting very patiently for their turn.’

Justin Fletcher looked behind him, and then promptly ran to the next room. Apparently a 3 million strong angry mob can be quite intimidating.

Death heaved a sigh and picked up his quill and ink again, wondering why they couldn’t possibly get a computer system down here like they had Upstairs. New shiny laptops with little wings, and here he was writing down billions of names each year in a mouldy old tome.

‘Oh no,’ they had said, ‘couldn’t possibly get you a computer system old boy, comforts the masses you see. They like the rustic look.’

After an eternity of this thankless job, the only comfort that it brought, as far as Death could see was that it gave the poor bastards time to try and bribe him in every way in the book.

Death’s personal favourite had been when an Indian maharaja had come to the office offering Death all of his concubines for the rest of eternity for just ten more years on Earth. Unfortunately his Excellency had not realized he had died from syphilis.

Breaking out of his daydreaming Death opened the Book, dipped his quill into the ink pot and started to log all the day’s fatalities. He had just reached the 2,999,999th entry when there was a little peck at his shoulder. Turning around Death found Morgue, his assistant Crow perched on his shoulder.

‘What is it now Morgue? Not another lawyer gone up to the Pearly Whites again?’ Death repressed a shudder, that hadn’t been a good day for paperwork.
But Morgue shook his beak, ‘Soul missing, soul missing!’

Death stared; he would have blinked his eyes stupidly for a second were it not for two things. Firstly, Death was not stupid and secondly, he had never had the opposing eyelids to do so.

‘Excuse me, what?’

‘Soul missing, gone through Gates!’

‘Morgue, could you stop using that insufferable repetition and just tell me what the deuce you’re going on about?’ Deaths slammed his hand upon the table causing it to creak and groan beneath him.

‘Dreadfully sorry Master tends to calm the little folk if we birds don’t talk you see. Something of, what do they call it now; oh yes a ‘mind screw’.’

‘I don’t care for which part of the human anatomy it screws, tell me what’s going on.’ Death ground his teeth menacingly, he could certainly do menacing.

‘Oh, w-we-well you see, s-s-Sir, the thing is that whilst you were dealing with the incorrigible Mr. Fletcher, may he burn an eternity in Hell, one of the new entrants suddenly went ‘off the radar’ so to speak.’ Morgue shuffled awkwardly on Death’s bony shoulder. Another crow landed next to him and spoke silently to him.

Death opened the Book and observed the day’s entries. There, right at the end of the page was a tiny name, Lucy Spindle. It was a stationary for a moment, and then the letters promptly danced their way out off the page and out of the book. Death closed the Book slowly.

‘Sire,’ Morgue shuffled a little further off Death’s shoulder, ‘It would appear that the woman has arrived in Meddlestone in England. From what we’ve gathered she’s managed to get back into her former body, how long that’ll last for we don’t know.’

‘And how, pray, in a month of Sundays do Upstairs manage to lose a soul at the Gates, surely you can’t just walk out of here!’ Death flung a set of pearly white fingers in the direction of the far off iron bars.

‘Well, as it turns out, you can Sir.’ Morgue, took a few steps back to avoid the swiping blow that came rushing at him.

‘Eh, what?’

‘You can in fact…walk out of here. You see it all turns out that it’s all built on the Honour System courtesy of Himself, and well…no one ever tried really, they all just went along with it.’ The assistant Crow shuffled nervously off Death’s shoulder and hopped about on the floor anxiously.

Death’s smile widened, an achievement as he lacked the flesh to do it with, ‘And I suppose, dearest Morgue, that Upstairs wishes me, the sovereign of all that is Macabre, the guide to all Lost Souls, the punch line to the ethereal joke…to settle the matter?’ Death’s fingers lingered towards the freshly sharpened scythe beside him.

‘Well, not in so many words, but things being as they are…yes?’ Morgue backed further away, inching his way towards the door. Death had been through 11,999,999 assistant Crows this quarter; he did so favour the scythe when he was mad. He flapped his wings erratically as the scythe cleaved downwards, embedding itself in the rotting oak flooring.

‘When I get back, you, you my fetid carrion friend will be working in Purgatory for a good few millennia!’ Wrenching the scythe out of the floor Death swept his billowing cloak behind him and charged out of the office and through the door.

Death careered through the foyer past multitudes of recently deceased spirits, causing several million to shriek indignantly along the way as they were jostled to the ground by the sharp elbows underneath the black gown. A quick brandish of the gleaming scythe and the injured parties soon fell into a deep silence.

‘Honour system my ass,’ muttered Death as he marched down towards the Gate, ‘Can’t be bothered to check the bloody loopholes more like it. Oh yes, pass it off as something holy and everyone will take a nice juicy bite out of your…’ Death stopped short of finishing his rant. Dark grey clouds had formed just above his head, rumbling with furious thunder. Evidently he had been heard.

‘Oh come off it,’ said Death irritably, ‘you don’t see Mr. Downstairs getting all fire and brimstone with all the bad press he gets. No need to turn on the waterworks.’ He turned smartly towards the Exit, hurrying slightly as a bolt of lightning narrowly missed the hem of his robe.

Brushing mortar off his shoulders Death stood patiently for the next elevator to arrive.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt towards this new system of inter-realm travel. It was less harrowing a journey than the stairs surely, where it would take months for new contingents of the recently deceased to arrive. Quicker also than the escalators, although Death had to admit he had loved the feel of the polished railings underneath his skeletal phalanges. But did it really have to play the infernal Never Ending Story theme tune incessantly? It was a good movie to be sure but Limahl was going to have hell to pay for that one, quite literally as it turned out.

Finally the elevator arrived, carrying with it a fresh bunch of twitching and irate souls. They rushed out gratefully whilst holding their ears, furiously humming any other song they knew to block out the racket. Side-stepping neatly past the stampede Death stole into the elevator and pulled out his treasured life guards for these types of trips, a pair of black fluffy ear muffs with bones on the band.

An hour later he arrived in the realm of the living. As he stepped out he was greeted by the sight of a few hundred more souls looking expectantly and, as he noticed with grim satisfaction, fearfully.

After relishing in it for another moment he stepped aside and indicated into the lift, ‘This part you do alone but I’ll see you up there soon enough,’ Death waited patiently for the last of them to file inwards, ‘and do forgive the backed up paperwork, I’ll be cracking skulls when I get back.’ Chortling heavily at the shocked faces fixed on him, Death turned his back and set off in search of his mystery soul.

He reached into the depths of his robes and pulled out a decrepit and splintered compass. There was no North, South, East or West upon the face of it, just a needle that drifted vaguely from time to time. It was a soul sensitive device, created back in the centuries when Death’s job description entailed personally seeking out soul after soul and bringing them to the Gateway in a horseless black chariot. But after the Resurrection ordeal everyone decided to make it a little more direct.

Invisible to all around him he was free to walk undisturbed through the streets, eyes fixed on the compass, pausing only to pick up the body of dead cat for Morgue along the way.

On and on the compass led him, round and round in endless circles. It was only when he was seriously considering smashing the compass and asking the Tech Team about bugging devices that a small crow landed on his shoulder.

‘Ah, Edward, how are you? How’s the neck?’ Death twirled his scythe theatrically and stored the compass back into the confines of his robe.

‘Still a bit stiff, needed thirty six stitches after what you did,’ Edward squawked haughtily, squatting into the folds of the black velvet.

‘Oh Edward, you’re not still upset about that are you? I feel I was very justified in my punishing of you,’ Death plunged his hand into his gown once more, grimacing as he did so.

‘I accidentally put sugar in your tea,’ sneered Edward, pecking a nearby fly out of the air.

Death pulled the compass, which was now covered in mangled cat, out of his robe, ‘Yes, well, I need to keep my blood sugar down.’

‘BLOOD SUGAR! BLOOD SUGAR! YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE ANY BLOOD YOU POMPOUS OLD SH-’

Death closed his thumb and forefinger on the crow’s beak, silencing him immediately. ‘Edward, I don’t suppose you know where the young lady who’s gone missing is? Miss Spindle? This infernal thing’s not working’ He waved the compass around wildly, gazing at its gyrating needle.

Once his beak was relinquished Edward shuffled off Death’s shoulder and into a nearby tree, ‘Well that’s what I’m here about, you see before you lopped off my head about the sugar incident I meant to tell you that that thing’s been broken since Jesus came up here.’ The bird hopped a foot back as the scythe’s blade came rushing at him, causing the branch he had just been sat on to crash through a car windshield below.

‘And just where, you flea bitten feather bag, is she?’ Death ground his hands around the scythe handle; he was judging just how high he’d have to jump to get a good shot for the jugular.

Edward seemed to notice this and spoke hurriedly, ‘She’s down on Fredrick Street! It’s on the other side of town!’

Death stood still for a moment, then inclined his head and spoke softly, almost serenely, ‘Oh Edward, thank you so very much.’ He’d figured out how high the jump was.

Leaving the indignant squeals of the disembodied crow behind him Death swept through the streets, wishing for once that he wasn’t invisible, wishing that all before him could cower in fear as he marched through the town square in his thunderous wrath. Though he found himself quite glad of it when his foot hit a rising bollard, causing him to crash, face first, in a tangle of robes and cat guts.

Finally he found himself at Fredrick Street; he scoured the rooftops until he found what he was looking for. Barrages of crows were hunkering down on the tiles of number 40, all of them looking rather vexed.

‘Enter at your peril!’ they warned as Death opened the door and entered the house.
As Death shut the door behind him he was hit with the pungent smell of bleach, and also an industrious woman behind a vacuum cleaner.

‘M-m-Miss S-s-Spindle I pre-s-sume?’ Death picked himself up and began to dust himself off, before finding himself being bone-handled into a chair in the corner of the room.

‘Stay where you bloody well are, because I swear to LUCIFER, if you so much as get a single speck of ash on this floor I shall fling this Hoover up your bony pelvis. Understood?’

For the very first time, Death was sincerely taken aback, ‘W-what? Why…why yes I suppose so.’ He curled in his toes underneath the chair and sat resolutely still as reeking Chinese takeaways were thrown into plastic bags, dust bunnies chased out of their holes and finally a large fishbowl, belonging to a rather emaciated looking fish, was placed on the coffee table.

‘Fish food, fish food, where’s the bloody fish food!’ Miss Spindly pivoted around and around, her hands in her hair. Death could almost see her body wearing out
He peered behind his shoulder and found the small can of fish flakes; he offered it up hesitantly to the crazed woman.

‘Ah, thank you,’ she took the can and poured the flakes into the fish bowl. The fish, evidently half starved to death, pecked pathetically at a few morsels. Miss Spindle clapped her hands together, ‘That should do it I think.’

She looked up at Death, who was still sitting rather like a child who was recently told off by the teacher, ‘Was there something you wanted?’

Death stood up, raised himself to his full height…and then walked out of the door, his scythe hanging dejectedly next to him. The elevator was already waiting outside for him. He closed the door and let it drag him away.

He was going on holiday, an extremely long, secluded holiday...he'd heard that Limbo was almost apathetic this time of year.