Dealing With Death

Jason opened his eyes slowly and looked up to find himself seated in front of an old fashioned solid oak desk. Behind the desk sat a black silk boxer's dressing gown with the hood up, or at least, that's what he thought until he saw the scythe leaning against the back of the chair. Strangely, he too was wearing a robe, but his was hospital white. His mind cleared quite quickly after that.

"Good morning."

The voice, deep and funereal, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"Er! Good morning." Jason replied, looking around nervously and wondering just who he was replying to. The room he was in seemed to be a large oak panelled and shelf lined study, the shelves filled with row upon row of black bound and gold lettered ledgers.

The figure behind the desk looked up and folded its arms on the blotter before it, skeletal hands protruding gloomily from the sleeves. For some reason the fact that the black hood of the robe seemed empty didn't alarm Jason at all, he simply regarded the dark space inside the hood as if it were a face and waited for something to happen.

"I am Death." The sepulchral voice explained. "And I expect you're wondering why you are here?"

"Death?" Jason raised his eyebrows quizzically.

"Yes, Death. You know, the Grim Reaper. I'm sure you've heard of me?"

"Heard of you, yes. I just wasn't expecting to meet you, not yet at least."

It was slowly dawning on Jason that he was in fact dead.

"Nor would you have, if you hadn't decided to screw your neighbour's daughter just as he was expected home from work."

"Oh, so that's what happened!"

He had a vague recollection of the sound of a door being thrown open behind the bed just as his balls were tightening in readiness to empty themselves into the eager pussy of the flaxen haired and eighteen year old Natalie. There had been nothing he could do about it, his own urge to ram his cock deeper into that warm wet sheath was far stronger than his desire to look over his shoulder at her outraged father, even if the long slim legs locked around his waist and the tensile steel fingers digging furrows into his shoulders would have let him.

"In fact." Death was continuing. "You shouldn't be here yet at all. You weren't scheduled for a good few years, but even the best of us can't foresee everything. The bullet was supposed to miss you and take out Natalie instead, but you both came at that very moment and your bucking and fucking radically improved her father's aim, with the result that you are here now instead of her."

"So she's alive?" Jason was strangely relieved.

"Oh yes! The bullet was pretty well spent when it hit her. She'll have a scar over her left ear, but apart from that she's fine now."

"Fine now?"

"Yes. You both spent a fortnight in intensive care, but while she got better, I'm afraid you didn't. Nine days I spent sitting beside your beds wondering which of you I would be escorting away. That's nine days out of a very busy schedule, I'll have you know."

"Oh! Sorry. So what happens now?"

Jason felt tentatively all around the back of his skull, but everything seemed intact. But then, he supposed, it wouldn't have been very good for him to be trailing bits of brain and bone behind him.

"Well I'm afraid the records at the Pearly Gates aren't as up to date as one might wish, so you'll have to stay here for a while."

"And where, exactly, is here?"

"Here? Didn't you realise? This is Purgatory, it's where everyone stays if either they aren't ready to move on or their destination isn't yet ready to accept them."

"And I guess I fall into the second category?"

"I'm afraid so."

"A bit of a cock up in both senses then!"

"Yes, I suppose so, but look on the bright side; at least you haven't gone downstairs -- not yet anyway."

"That's true." Jason acknowledged, thinking back briefly to a short but happy twenty-seven year life spent mostly drinking and fornicating and hearing the 'not yet' part of Death's words.

"And I'm going to offer you a job that -- if it's done well -- might help improve your chances of not going there when your proper time comes."

The cathedral like voice was beginning to grate on Jason's nerves, but the message sounded hopeful.

"A job?"

The cowl nodded.

"I'm going to assign you to the Unfinished Business (Sexual) Department. Natalie was singing your praises as a lover while she was in her coma." Death paused. "Well, actually she was mumbling your praises, and her parents were not very amused, especially when she described how good your tongue is. Her mother was quite perturbed, judging by the way she wriggled in her seat. Anyway, that's why you're being offered this job."

"But what job? What would I have to do?"

"Yes, of course. You're new here, aren't you? So you wouldn't know."

"Know what?"

"What I'm going to tell you."

That was a conversation that could have gone around in circles for eternity, but even Death couldn't spare that much time and so he went on to give an explanation.

"We have a young lady with us at the moment who is kind of overstaying her welcome. The problem is that she was saving herself, in the sexual sense, for the right man to come along, but unfortunately I came along instead, summoned by a seven ton truck that wanted to occupy the same bit of road as she did, and at the same time. Now she finds it difficult to accept that she's dead and, not to put too fine a point on it, stubbornly refuses to move on until she's had at least one good fucking. She is not prepared to miss out on the experience, she tells me, and I can't change her mind."

The cowl regarded Jason gravely.

"Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to seduce and satisfy this young woman, and to give her that one good fucking that she's waiting for. This offer will self destruct in five seconds, would you be interested?"

"Well, yes, of course I would."

Jason had visions of a beautiful young virgin desperate for him to deflower her.

"You won't have long to do it in, you see I can't be doing with dissatisfied customers stuck around the place for all eternity."

"That's ok. I can cope with that, I'm a pretty quick worker. But what if she doesn't fancy me?"

"Oh, but she will. I can make sure she does. You will appear to her as her dream lover, the very man she was waiting for, so you won't have to worry about that. So, do you want to give it a go? Make her happy enough and you might earn yourself a place upstairs."

"Yeah, ok, why not?"

"Good man. Wait a minute, I've just got to give someone an extra few years -- he's been good to his mother you see -- and then I'll take you along to the department."

Death reached out his bony fingers and turned over a large black hourglass that stood on a shelf behind him.

"Good deeds bring rewards, isn't that what they say?" He asked Jason rhetorically, by way of explanation.

"Right, let's go." With a little clacking and rattling of skeletal parts, Death raised himself from the chair and set off on bare foot bones for the door.

Out of the door they were in a long, seemingly endless corridor that stretched off in both directions, the same dark oak panelling lining its walls. Death turned smartly left and set of at a quick march pace that Jason struggled to match.

"Slow down a bit." He pleaded, quickly running out of breath.

Death looked down at him and the empty cowl nodded in understanding.

"Sorry. I get used to travelling light." He told Jason, slowing down and at the same time peeling back a sleeve to reveal the dry bones of his arms. "I forget you've got all that flesh to cart around."

The corridor had seemed without either beginning or end, but within a hundred yards they came across a junction, the panelled walls carrying direction signs in black Gothic lettering shadowed in red.

'Unfinished Business' the main notice proclaimed, with sectional signs fastened below it. Apparently, to the right were 'Revenge' and 'Forgiveness', while the sign to the left announced 'Sexual' and 'Financial'. 'Everything Else', a third sign told them, lay straight ahead.

Death swung left and Jason followed.

"What do the other sections deal with?" He asked.

"Well, Financial is mostly things like Wills and such like, or people who've salted money away and forgotten to tell anyone where it is."

The corridor seemed to amplify the echo in Death's voice.

"Revenge is what it says, and so is Forgiveness. In both cases it's most often the way people arrived here that triggers off their need for these sections. We get a lot of clients who need a psychic to take a message to those who helped them leave the mortal world, stating that they either do or don't forgive them. You wouldn't believe some of the requests we get, especially from the Revenge Section. It makes a Reaper's bones rattle, it surely does." Death's robe shook slightly at the thought, and a demonstration of rattling bones could be heard. "They're by far the largest sections, and the most clear cut. Almost all Forgiveness clients go upstairs and almost all Revenge seekers are on their way down, though it's not set in stone of course."

Death swung open his arms in an all encompassing gesture as he marched along.

"And obviously, 'Everything Else' is everything else."

Another junction loomed up ahead. This time it was simply Financial to the left and Sexual to the right. They swung sharp right, Jason needing no prompting this time.

Before then now lay another long corridor, but this one had doors set into both sides at regular six foot intervals. Death led the way to the first door on the right and turned the handle.

"This is your apartment." He told Jason, pushing the door open.

It was indeed his apartment, the one he had left behind seemingly only a short time ago to climb into bed with the delectable Natalie. But somehow the dimensions of the inside did not quite match those of the outside. Behind the door his lounge stretched much further than the six feet to the next door. A bemused Jason shook his head and entered.

The apartment was just as he had left it, except that the doors to the kitchen and bathroom were simply not where they should be. The bedroom was there, and off that the shower, but of a kitchen or a toilet there was no sign.

Death must have noticed his perplexed gaze.

"You won't need the other rooms. That's why they're not here."

"Why won't I?" The question was out before he'd thought about it.

"Look. I would have thought you'd have figured it out by now. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you're dead, as in deceased, lifeless, departed, no longer living."

"I realise that."

"Then surely you also realise that you won't need to eat or drink. And if you don't need to eat or drink, then you won't need to indulge in the other disgusting practises that mortals are stuck with."

Jason's brain had been whirring away even as Death spoke, and he came to the right conclusion just as his guide spelled it out to him. Dead men don't eat, drink or shit; it was as simple as that. He nodded his understanding.

"Right, I'll leave you to settle in. Your client is in the first apartment along the corridor. You can start when you like, but I wouldn't leave it too long, she's getting a bit restless as it is."

"My client." The word sounded strange. "Is she, you know, all there? I mean is she complete?"

"In what way do you mean?" Asked Death, to whom not being 'all there' had connotations of insanity.

"I mean..." Jason struggled for the words. "I mean, a victim of a road accident? I mean, I won't have to make love to just a torso or anything, will I?

"Aren't you all there?" Asked Death, a certain amount of contempt in his voice. "You had half your bloody head blown off, but it's all there now, isn't it?"

"Well, yes." Jason remembered his furtive cranial exploration from earlier.

"And so will everyone else be. Think about it, boy. What good would it be to send someone upstairs to play a harp if they don't have any hands anymore? We give people back any missing bits in the admissions suite, before they get this far even."

"Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"Typical." Death sniffed, though he didn't actually have a nose to sniff with any more than he had a mouth to speak with. "You'll remember where to stick your dick I expect though, won't you?"

Death glanced eyelessly at his portable hourglass.

"Right, I'm going to leave you to it. Start as soon as you're ready. I've got to go, there's due to be a train wreck in China in an hour or two, and I expect to get a bit busy. We'll talk again soon."

The door opened and, with an urgent bony rattle from his legs, Death stepped through it and disappeared. Not moved out of sight, but simply disappeared, not there anymore, gone!

Jason stood in the middle of the room, his room, for several minutes, trying to get his head around things. In fact he was still there when a discreet cough, sounding much like a jangle rather than a cough, took his attention back to the still open doorway. There, with only his empty hood and one bony hand visible around the doorframe, stood Death.

"Just remembered." The hollow echo announced. "If you look in the top right hand drawer you'll find some lube and some other things that might help. See you later."

The hand and cowl withdrew and Jason was left alone once again. The top right hand drawer did indeed contain some lube, along with a couple of vibrators, handcuffs, a triple-x film and a feather duster. Perhaps, he thought, the film was so bad that you needed to be handcuffed to watch it, but what the duster was for he had no idea.

"Oh, by the way." Death was back, peering in through the doorway for a second time "Her name is Amanda."

There was swirl of black robe and he was gone again, disappearing before Jason could ask about the duster. Jason pushed the door closed, he could do without the Grim Reaper showing all the persistence of a glazing salesman.

For a little while he mooched around the apartment, but then he got bored. So much of living is taken up with eating and drinking (and the resultant activities), and with staying clean and warm, that not having those things to occupy oneself with can get to be very dull.

He looked for something to do that would keep him busy, but found nothing. He didn't want to watch a film, any film, let alone the one in the drawer, he didn't want to listen to music, he didn't fancy a stroll along corridors that changed length as you moved, and he didn't need to sleep. In fact sleep was something he was very worried about, in case it became permanent.

Then he realised that what he was really doing was putting off the moment when he had to meet the girl he was supposed to seduce. He sighed, slipped the lube into the pocket of the robe he found he was wearing, and set out for her door.

He stood in front of her door, squared his shoulders, and knocked. He didn't need to wait for an answer. As soon as his hand made contact with the door it swung gently open, propelled quietly by the rapping of his knuckles.

"Hello?" He asked nervously, peering around the door.

"I've told you before. Fuck off!"

The female voice was strident and not open to negotiation. Its owner was nowhere to be seen, and the room that faced Jason was another empty living room. He walked slowly and carefully into the room and pushed the door quietly shut.

"Where are you?"

"If you wore your fucking head sometimes, you'd be able to see."

She had mistaken Jason for Death.

"That's not me. Where are you?"

"I'm trying to get some sleep, so I'm in the bedroom. Where else? Now fuck off and leave me alone."

The job was not going to be a walk over, that much was becoming clear.

"You can't sleep, you're dead, remember?"

"So you say. And I told you to fuck off!"

"And I'm not going to."

"So what do you want this time? If I'm already dead then I can't die twice, so fuck you."

She still thought it was Death in person. He advanced into the bedroom, still trying to explain.

"No! You got it the wrong way around. I'm here to fuck you."

She rolled over to look up at him, holding the sheets close up under her chin and with her mouth already forming the next stream of expletives -- but then she changed.

"Robbie! God, Robbie, what are you doing here? You look really silly dressed like a monk."

For a moment Jason felt confused, even more confused than before if that's possible, but then he remembered that to her he'd look like the girl's dream man. He couldn't think which Robbie she'd mistaken him for, but he was willing to lay odds it wasn't Robbie Burns.

"I told you, I'm here to fuck you."

"Then maybe I am dead, because I've just gone to heaven."

"Not yet you haven't. But we're working on it."

"What makes you think I want you to fuck me?"

Jason paused for a moment, and then remembered Death telling him that she'd refused to move on until her dream man had screwed her stupid.

"Look." He began. "You remember seeing the guy in the robe?"

Amanda interrupted before he could continue. "Oh, Doctor Death, you mean? The dude with the empty head, the faceless wonder? The prize anorexic, the walking xylophone, the perambulating boneyard? Is that who you mean? No, can't recall seeing anyone like that." Her voice dripped sarcasm.

"Well, he's gone to an awful lot of trouble on your behalf. Because you told him that you refused to move until you'd had the fucking of a lifetime, he's arranged for me to come here and give you one. Now I don't particularly want to be here, any more than you do, but we both are, and so how about we get on with it?"

Now, that probably isn't the most seductive way to talk to a lady, but then he wasn't in a seductive mood. Apart from that, Death had assured him that she'd be a walkover for the person she saw him as, and anyway he wasn't too sure what was under that shapeless pile of bedding.

"I'm not sure I can now." Amanda looked almost serious. "I mean, I've never done it before, so I don't know how."

"Look lady" Jason was getting miffed, things were going nowhere. "Either you want to try being fucked, or you don't. If you don't, then let me know and I can get back to screwing girls who want it."

Actually he remembered that couldn't get back, but that seemed beside the point at that moment.

"Yes, but I'm a virgin, and it might hurt." She looked suddenly sad and worried. "All the women in my family have a thick whatsit."

"But you've been asking for it." Again, an exasperated Jason realised, he might have chosen his words more carefully. It might have been literally true, but it wasn't the most seductive observation he could make.

"But it'll be hard to break and it'll hurt."

Behind them came that same discreet dry cough, sounding as if a rattlesnake was being embarrassed by its tail. Their heads swung towards the doorway where a black cowl was peering emptily around the opening.

"As a matter of fact." Death announced in his echo ridden voice. "I'd thought of that. So when you came in I just adjusted your hymen to make it easier. It's still intact, you understand, just a bit thinner and easier on the cock. It was no trouble, because that part of you had been under the rear wheel and your whole pelvic area needed repairing."

"Can't you just fuck off and leave us to get on with it?" Their two voices chorused as one. "That's not some thing we needed to know."

"Only trying to be helpful, I'm sure." With a hurt toss of the cowl Death vanished again.

"Let's do it then, before the Bag of Bones comes back and watches us."

"He can't watch." Jason told her reasonably. "He hasn't got eyes."

"He hasn't got ears either, but that didn't stop him eavesdropping." She pointed out. "So come on, let's get started."

Now it was Jason's turn to have a setback. "I can't. I haven't got a hard on."