The Uncertainty of Death Read online

  “Usually only those who are in quite a lot of pain for a very long time sees me in such a pleasant way. But you are not in pain?” He shook his head and she dropped her hand abruptly. “Leo, why are you dying?”

  “It’s in my chart,” he motioned towards the end of the hospital bed. “I was shot.” Of course the chart didn’t make mention that he was shot in a gang war. He hadn’t been participating, he’d actually been on his way to one of his student’s homes; he’d set up a private conference with the boys mother and since their home hadn’t been too far from the school had elected to take his bike there and get some exercise rather than driving, a relatively rare option in L.A. and a decision he regretted. Not that the car would have proven much better protection, on the other hand it might have deflected the one bullet that had actually hit him.

  He didn’t want to tell her that. Didn’t want to mention that he’d seen his student hovering over him after he’d been knocked off his bike, didn’t want to tell her the boy had had a cell phone in one hand and a gun in the other; but he found himself telling her this and more. About the heat in his chest and the pain he could feel lurking just beneath the glaze of the medications. In fact as time wore on he found himself babbling more and more, the realization that his death was just around the corner, finally forcing him to stop and look at her again.

  “Do you look different to everyone? Even the people you work with?”

  “I look the same to my employees, though the effort is tiring. I look like they expect a corporate executive to look, tall, fashionable, expensive and refined. I also look reassuringly normal, brown hair and eyes, nothing special or odd.”

  “Why?” She tilted her head a bit and looked at him, inviting him to come up with his own answer. “Because of the fear factor? You look like what they expect and yet rather ordinary, so that they all don’t break down into quivering masses of butt kissing jelly?”

  And she laughed, a sweet sudden burst of sound that surprised them both. So Death has a sense of humor. That’s good to know - I think.

  “I do believe you have it.” She said when she’d calmed down again, features smoothing back into a tranquility that lent her already ethereal features an agelessness that he hadn’t noticed before. “I do not know why all the dying see me differently. Though I suppose it is something along the same lines.”

  She glanced at her watch again and frowned minutely, Leo’s mind raced to find something good to distract her with, “so do you have any inside info?”

  Mitei looked up and blinked at him. “Inside information about what?”

  “Everything, I guess. I mean, you’re The Death right? What do you know about Gods, Angels, Devils,” he paused when she started frowning harder then before and hurried on. “Hey, I’ll settle for a little info on what’s gonna happen to me after, maybe? Is there a white light and a tunnel or what?”

  Mitei rose, the robe fell in soft folds around her, hiding her hands and the watch. “I am afraid that I know very little. I know you live and then you die, the death part especially,” she winked and Leo smiled in a kind of startled way, did Mitei just make a joke? “I do not know much of anything. I do not know “what’s next” if there is anything, since I do not die. I have met neither gods nor angels, not even a single devil, though I have heard of them. From what I heard, they do not die either. Fall, fade, sleep even, but not die.”

  She paused, leaning over the bed and Leo found himself leaning heavily into his pillows, the first tendrils of fear knotting in his belly. “Honestly, I know little of life either, except that it ends. You see, I am very busy. My purpose is clear and my path is ever present, I do not get detours, vacation time or even a chance for sabbatical.” Leo watched as Mitei placed her left hand on the pillow by his head. The sleeve on her right arm rolled back of its own accord and she extended one finger towards his chest.

  “I know very little, Leo Kaylor, but I do know that your time is up.”

  She touched the tip of her finger to his chest.

  For a moment the cloth of his hospital gown was a barrier between them, then her finger passed right through and he felt its icy touch against his chest. Then several things happened almost at once. Mitei frowned, those expressive hazel eyes growing hooded and distant. Leo felt the chill of that touch spread throughout the heat in his chest, cooling it away so fast it was painful. He was disconnected from his body and attached at the same time, so that he was literally beside himself for a moment watching Death touch him gently and then.

  Leo snapped back into his body with a wrench that cramped his neck and pulled several of his stitches. Death stepped back as if she was the one stunned and gave him a glare that should have killed where her famous touch hadn’t.

  “What was that?”

  She ignored him and pulled the scroll out of the air again, unrolled it and studied it carefully before replying, though she didn’t look up. “It seems that you are no longer on my List.” She glanced up at him and her eyes were hooded again though her voice was as cold as her touch had been, “where are we?”

  “L.A. Municipal Hospital I think.”

  “Then, please come to the L.A. office sometime. I think we could find a position for you,” she produced a business card from the air were before she had held the scroll and handed it to him. “Of course I must ask you not to mention me to others. Not that they might believe you but it does create unnecessary issues.”

  “O-of course,” he managed. He was still more than a little confused and there was a new pain in his chest that the medications weren’t doing as good a job of covering. “What just happened.” He repeated.

  “I do not know.” She said, took a step towards the big window and vanished before her foot could touch the floor.

  Leo blinked at the space where she had been for a moment. Well don’t that just beat all, was the last thing he had time to think before he blacked out.

  ***

  Mitei’s foot come down on rich soil knotted with roots her eyes gazing across a landscape made dim in the autumn sun and half obscured by apple trees. Her mind was still reeling with the effects of her last appointment when she saw a girl fall from a distant tree with a crunch.

  She sighed and glanced at her List, that would be a Ms. Jules Harper my 11:30. A quick glance at her watch showed 11:00, it seemed she would be treated to a quick stroll through the orchard before her appointment. She glanced about herself, there did not appear to be anyone around but she gathered her energy and felt that special tension that was her obscuring herself from the living, anyway, before walking in the direction of the fallen girl.

  As she walked she puzzled over what had just happened with Leo. He had been unusual, not just because of his purple eyes or pretty face. Not even because he had wanted to personalize her, often enough the dying had tried to put a human face on their death, she suspected it was the reason behind some of the myths. No, it was a combination of all these things as well as the weirdness at the end. She did not make mistakes. She had never once gone to someone who was not supposed to die, never stood by their bed and been given extra time. Time enough to answer their questions and actually get to know them, then to have the appointment revoked.

  The path seemed to tug her off towards a small barrow hidden within the roots of some ancient tree. She paused a moment and regarded the tree, placing a palm flat against its trunk. Solid, as firm to her touch as to that of wind, rain and time. Trees were a special pleasure, older than many and usually so calm and joyous. Mitei stroked its bark, she did not think she was here for this tree but she reveled in the break that it represented. It was a rare moment that she spent with nature. Nature almost did not need her presence at all to go about the process; plants, birds, animals, insects and fish they all spent so much time and energy to survive but for some reason when death came to them they did not struggle with the fervor that the humans did.

  Not that they curled up and slipped away without a fight. Far from it, they just fought differen
tly. Mitei puzzled over the difference as she went about her business, trying to keep her mind from coming back to the strange happenings with Leo from distracting from her work, she plunged into the simplicity of her purpose. The question of just why animals were so much easier was an old one, more than few of them slipped through her fingers but not in the way that men would like to believe, by achieving a kind of immortality; but rather dying without her presence there.

  Often with men she felt like a guard, standing with arms folded to make sure that they did the right thing; because, humans seemed the type to cheat. The idea came crashing through while she was gathering a clutch of baby rabbits to herself. Their father had gotten into the burrow and was systematically killing off the lot of them mistaking them for some other male’s get. They screamed like human children as he tore through their ranks and Mitei scooped up another tiny little bunny all fluff and exposed organs, and turned the thought around as she felt its heart stop against her palm. Mitei marveled a moment at its baby soft fur as she put it back and scooped up a litter mate.

  So - men are cheaters, is that why I am here? The thought stopped her a moment. She was Death. Her purpose had and always would be clear; she had never had any questions about her existence. The reasons for her presence had always been so obvious. Without her no one ate, they would all starve in endless pain. Without her the world would quickly become over run with populations of everything. Without Death, some would struggle through life in unbelievable and unending agony from wounds and illnesses.

  She put down the little bunny. The mother had returned and was in the process of driving the male from the burrow, the rest of the litter would survive. She reached up to rub her hands over her tired eyes, but if she was only here for mankind because mankind cheated then…

  Deeply entrenched in her musings she almost tripped over her next appointment before noticing her. As it was she brought her self up just short of it, with one foot planted on the girl’s hair

  ***

  Ugh, what hit me, Jules thought as she opened her eyes, the stuttered light of the orchard making her head throb and bringing tears to her eyes. She blinked them back and could make out a tall shadowy figure standing over her. “Dad –“

  “I am sorry Ms. Harper but I am not your father.” The voice was feminine and low, calm and soothing the kind of tone you’d use when confronting a spooked animal. The woman knelt beside her, now Jules could see the hood drawn up over her features.

  She moved to sit up and felt a tugging on her hair. “I don’t know who you are, or why you’re in my Daddy’s orchard lady. But can you get off my hair so I can sit up.”

  A movement under the hood, could have been a smile or a frown in the shadows created by hood and the orchards canopy, and the woman shifted her weight easing off of Jules’ hair. Now that her head was free she tried to sit up and began to take stock of her entire body for the first time since she’d opened her eyes. It hurt. The pain both sharp and throbbing all at once, Jules could feel the pain radiating from several points all at once; her hip, knee and both elbows were screaming points of agony each trying to scream above the rest to gain her attention. There was an answering ach in her back and a small pain in her neck, a scrape maybe.

  “Oh God.” Jules gritted her teeth, hissed through them, and forced herself to lie still.

  “You fell from the tree.”

  The robed woman pointed up above her and now Jules could see the broken branches and the ladder she had used to climb up. She remembered wanting to make a pie for dinner and climbing into the tree to gather apples. Luckily the falling part still eluded memory. She drew her gaze back to the strange woman.

  “I don’t think I can move. You should go to the house, there’s a phone there –“

  “I am sorry Ms. Harper I cannot do that.” The stranger cut her off absently as she gazed at her watch an antique looking number she pulled from a pocket on a chain. Jules wondered, oddly, what time it was. “Ms. Harper you have cut your neck open. You are going to bleed to death.”

  Jules blinked up at her as the stranger pulled something out of the sleeve of her robe. Is this some kind of joke, she thought, maybe she has a bandage up her sleeve and she’s going to staunch the flow first. But the woman pulled a small roll of paper out of her sleeve unrolling it and gazing at it in what seemed like super slow motion before turning it towards her. After all that pageantry, Jules was expecting something epic or surreal, half convinced that this must all be a dream, but there was only a single line on the paper - her name and a time. The stranger lowered it and then dangled her watch in front of Jules’ eyes so she could see it. The time read as 11:27.

  “I am sorry, Jules Harper. But you will die.”

  Things began to come together for Jules. Suddenly the towering figure in the dark robe and hood, the pain in her body and the stranger’s telling her that she was going to die all began to make terrible sense. All that was missing was the famous scythe really. “You’re Death,” she couldn’t keep her voice from coming out small but its breathy quality surprised her. She really must be running out of strength rapidly.

  The stranger smiled at her from the depths of her hood, “I knew you would come to it eventually. Most do.” She settled on her heels and placed both hands primly in her lap. “I do not suppose you are going to be one of the accepting ones, are you? I am sure you are in a lot of pain.”

  Jules considered the question through the ever increasing pain of what she suspected where broken bones. She was young, there were so many things she hadn’t done yet but she couldn’t deny the pain anymore then she could deny the presence of the Grim Reaper squatting at her elbow.

  “I don’t feel in the accepting mood, no. But I don’t see much point in denying something sitting right next to me either.”

  This won her another smile from beneath the hood. “Good then. I must say you have a lovely orchard.” The stranger leaned forward until her face hovered above Jules’s. Jules wasn’t surprised that despite her being so close she couldn’t see more than the curve of the woman’s lips beneath the hood, the smooth white curve of chin. Before the woman reached out and touched her neck with one delicate finger.

  Jules didn’t know what she had been expecting, but this sudden rush of cold fire certainly wasn’t it. It started at her neck and spread through her body quickly colliding with the pain of each broken bone and exploding in a shower of cold sparks. Painful beyond belief, a pain so thick and weighty she had to struggle with it just to find the strength to scream; but even as she opened her mouth to it was over. Just as well, she only managed a hoarse croak, followed by some barely vocal gasping breaths. She shivered before Death her body an icy numb and wondered if this was what death felt like.

  But before she could ask, Death was reaching for her, hoisting her up and setting her on her feet. Jules stumbled, clutching at the robed figure, certain she’d experience pain or unsteadiness and caught completely by surprise when neither came. Death held her steady as she gained her legs, as solid and unshakable as the tree she’d just fallen out of. It only took her a moment to realize she wasn’t going to suddenly collapse and once she realized that Jules realized something else. She was clutching Death like a drowning man might grasp a scrap of floating debris.

  Jules was quick to release her grip and take a step away from Death. Feeling the heat of a blush rising to her cheeks, she busied herself checking her body over again. Nothing seemed to hurt. Not even the dullest of aches in any of her limbs and her shaky fingers felt no traces of the ragged wound that should have been at her throat. There was blood soaked through her top, still warm and becoming sticky. More blood soaking into the ground where she’d laid a moment before and she could see the damning knife that had done all the damage sticking inanely in the soil. I must have fallen on the damned thing…

  Raising her eyes once again to the still and waiting figure of Death, Jules squinted at her, trying to make out features beneath the hood but the darkness beneath it
was more complete than the darkest of nights. Finally, she asked the burning question.

  “So, what’s next?”

  Death stood a moment, regarding her in silence and Jules felt a tremor of fear though it was quickly being overridden by her steady nature, whatever else might be happening the worst had already come and gone. She had time now, and then some, to have her questions answered.

  “In truth? I am not entirely sure Ms. Harper.” Death reached a hand, the skin unusually pale but definitely fully fleshed, into her hood. She made a gesture that could have been pinching the brim of her nose.

  “Do I follow you somewhere or something?” Something was off here and Jules was determined to get to the bottom of it. But she forced herself to be patient and calm; she didn’t want to risk her chance at heaven because she blew up at Death.

  “Actually, how about I follow you? I would like very much to have a cup of tea and I have no idea which direction your home is from here.”

  Surprised, but still strangely calm, Jules turned and picked up the knife. Wiping it a clean spot of her pants as she walked, she started to lead Death home…

  She stopped, “you’re not asking me to lead you to my loved ones? You really just want a cup of tea? You’re absolutely not after the rest of my family right?” She said, feeling the fear rush up inside her again.

  “No Ms. Harper. You saw my List, you were the only one on it.”

  Jules relaxed again and lead the way to her home. Her father’s home really, he’d made that clear when he mortgaged it to the hilt to send her to school. And he made it clear every time she came back. This wasn’t the life he wanted for her…

  She shook her head and opened the pantry door, stopping to take off shoes all muddy with her blood and orchard loam. Jules ushered Death into the kitchen and pulled out a seat for her, before bustling about setting the water on to boil and pulling two mugs down for the tea. But her shirt was beginning to get stiff and parts of it were sticking to her skin, it was getting more than a little uncomfortable.

  “Uhm – is it alright if I go and change?”