Hello, My Name is Death

Hello, My Name is Death


Death pondered her options.

It was an odd choice, as it always was. Regardless of whom she picked, all would be seen to by one of her Reapers, and get the same treatment she would have dispensed. But one in particular would get Death Herself, the prime, the original, and She thought that was part of what kept her close to the humans she shepherded to their final destination.

An image formed on the screen; an older man, surrounded by family and beeping machines in a hospital bed. Another formed a moment later, showing her an old truck wrapped around a great oak. Still another showed her chaos and flashes that she knew to be gunfire, as soldiers hauled their dying comrade away from danger he had already succumbed to. An old woman appeared next, looking for all the world peaceful as she passed in her sleep.

Death bounced the soldier's care to Secunda; she knew her oldest Reaper possessed the skill and tact needed. To Tert went the crash victim, to Quad a young girl with leukemia, and to Annie the old woman. Death's fingers slid through her screen, touching the face of the man in the hospital, breathing deeply as she recalled a lifetime's information and memories.

The accident had been bad. Ramón Carlos de Santiago had been a project manager, overseeing the construction of a high-rise, until a careless crane operator had intersected his walking path with a multi-ton steel beam and clipped his head. The brain damage was too much for him to recover from, the doctors said. This was an instance where it had been right… unfortunately.

Death stood, pulled a black cloak off the rack on the wall, fastened it about her neck, and swung her scythe mid-materialization.

--

The beeping machines shut off as the plug was pulled. Doctors pulled tubes and wires from the man, as his husband and adopted children wept, despite knowing what was to come before it happened. Unseen by all but felt by the youngest child, Death appeared, her scythe disappearing into a cloud of dispersing black and silver.

It didn't take long; the man had only been kept alive by machines, his soul bound to the mortal plane by the merest of threads. His soul sat up in the bed his body was trapped in.

"Why are you crying, mi hija?" he asked, reaching out to touch the face of his youngest daughter. His face fell in shock as his fingers passed straight through her, the sensitive child shivering as though dunked in ice water. "What is this?!"

"She misses her padre, Ramón. She can feel you here, but you're also… gone." Death said, drawing her cloak tighter about herself, offering to him her kindest smile as he started and looked up at her with wide eyes.

He crossed himself. "Dios mio! I - how - who are - are you -" he asked, seemingly unable to articulate what he was trying to say.

"I'm Death. Not as scary as you were lead to believe, hm?" Death said, crossing the room to sit at his side on the hospital bed. The little girl sobbing against her father's side glanced up briefly as wind-that-wasn't tickled her senses.

"Death? La Muerte? I can't be dead, this has to be a mistake!" he protested, tears streaming down his face. "Please, don't take me from mi familia… please!"

Death hung her head slightly. "If only it worked that way, friend. I don't typically choose who lives and dies, and I can't return the dead to the land of the living." She said, and waved at the hospital room. "You were in an accident… and they couldn't save you."

"No… no… Dios no!" he cried, and Death's heart twinged for him. She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he flinched away. "Don't touch me!"

Death's face fell, and her hands went to her lap. "I'm not taking you until you're ready to go, you know… but you can't stay here. It'll only cause pain to them," she said, waving to his family, gathered and grieving, "and others."

"I would never cause them pain!" he all but shouted. The lights overhead flickered gently. "Send me back… send me back please…please..." he said, deflating and crumpling in on himself.

Death was silent, then, letting the man sob, the two of them rolling out with the hospital bed as nurses took them deeper into the hospital, to the bay where his body could be taken to the funeral home his family had chosen.

"I can't." she said finally, as the hearse left the loading area. His shade and her own incorporeal form resided in the back of the odd duck of a car comfortably, with little concern for such things as physical limitations. "You have to let go, and let me take you on to the afterlife, else your shade stays here, slowly going mad."

"Going… mad?" he asked, looking up with eyes turned red with shining tears.

Death nodded slowly. "That's how hauntings start. A soul refuses to move on, and ends up dogging those they knew in life, unable to communicate with them. As they get more unstable, they get more powerful - then you get things going bump in the night. Slamming doors, screams, the whole, spooky nine yards. The most unstable can possess the living; being a thing of pure will, souls… well, they can overpower an attached soul for a time." she said quietly. "I don't think you want to do that to your children, or your husband. They all love you so, but your staying around won't help them."

He shuddered. "There is nothing that can be done?"

"You can come with me, and see what the hereafter has in store for you. I think you'll find that there is a place in your Heaven for you." She said, looking up to offer him a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder. "In time, your family will join you there. On all the gods of every reality that ever is, was, or will be, I swear this." She said, her words ringing unnaturally through the air as she provided an Oath, binding Creation itself with her word.

Time had passed around them while they spoke; such a thing was a malleable concept for a God. His family had returned, and now they were in a field of green, standing next to a hole in the earth into which his simple, but fitting coffin was being lowered. All of his friends, all of his family, they were all present in force to watch him be laid to rest.

He was quiet a moment longer, before he nodded. "I will go with you." he said, straightening his back. He turned to face his loved ones, and looked back at Death. "May I say goodbye?"

Death smiled. "Of course!"

She turned away to give him a little privacy, though she could still hear him perfectly well.

"Enrique, mi amor, take good care of them. Be the father I've known you to be - you're going to have to do it for both of us, at least for now." Death closed her eyes and listened, having heard things like this millions of times before, but each time it cut at her anew.

"Jaime, my brave boy, I know, I know that this hurts… but I know that you are strong, and you'll grow up to do things I could only dream of. I am more proud of you than you could ever know already, and there is so much yet to come." She smiled, and flexed what power she could. Bring him back, she could not. Guide his words to them, she could.

"Guadalupe… I love you beyond words, more than the moon and the stars in the sky. Don't mourn me for too long; take the fire in your heart and change the world with it. Give them a grand, wonderful reason to remember the name Guadalupe de Santiago. I may not be present, but I'll always be with you, and one day I want to hear the story of your life. I love you, mi hija."

Ramón appeared at Death's side a moment later. She opened her eyes and smiled sadly at him. "Ready to go?" she asked him.

He nodded. "Yes. I understand that I have an appointment with Saint Peter to make - wouldn't want to be late…"

Death chuckled, then on impulse wrapped him in a hug. "You were a wonderful father. Not perfect, but all the better for the imperfections." she said, disengaging a moment later. She held out her hand, and Ramón took it.

In her other hand formed her scythe, forming a rift in the air with a single stroke. Together did Death and Ramón Carlos de Santiago pass through to the Hereafter, and a sound of bells and singing passed through the rift as it closed.

Back in the cemetery, a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes heard her father's words as a whisper on the wind, and held a teddy bear sown from her father's favorite shirt tighter to her. "I will, Papa."

--

Death reappeared in her office a short time later, and hung up her cloak. She took a moment and smiled. She always liked taking people to their visions of Heaven, or whatever 'good place' their faith ascribed to. It was when she had to take them to 'the bad place', wherever that was, whatever it meant to them, that she sometimes had problems.

Other times, she minded it not in the least. It never pleased her to do so, but it didn't bother her either, on occasion.

"Alright!" she announced happily to the office. "I'm out for the rest of the cycle. Don't let the dead pile up while I'm gone."

"Later, Prime!" her Reapers present chorused, shuffling back to their duties and disappearing as they went to take souls over to the Hereafter.

Death left her office, and took in all of Olympus as she stepped outside. The city was an impossibility written in marble and orichalcum, towers and spires suspended in the air, minarets rising in the near and far distance where gods and godlings worked at their duties. At one end you could see the Parthenon, writ massive to house the original Olympians; on a mountain to your right rose the dwellings of the Egyptians, Ra chief among them; and further away still you saw angels of the Abrahamic flavor flitting about a city in the clouds. Thunder crackled in the valley down below as the sounds of a great feast wafted up from the halls of the Aesir.

Death flagged down Mercury - or more likely, one of his Messengers, given that he was pulling a tuk-tuk through the sky at absurd velocities. "Hey, Merc!"

The lean man angled down through the flying traffic and came to a rest on the curb next to her. "Hey, Death! How's it going?"

She pulled a drachma from her purse and flipped it into his outstretched palm, clambering aboard the rickety-looking contraption. "Eh, about as well as usual. Hera pissed me off… again…"

"As she's wont to, yeah."

"And I saw over… a thousand? Ish? Other crossovers. I think today was better than it usually is. I only wanted to hit her with a memory twice. Ares and Mars on the other hand…" she said with a scowl.

"Also, notably, assholes. Elysium, right?" Mercury said, looking over his shoulder at her.

"As usual, yep." Death nodded.

They rocketed off the sidewalk and banked hard towards the Isles of the Blest. "My condolences, Death. I don't have to do much with any of them - I'm just the messenger." he said, with a crooked smile.

"Boooo." Death groaned. "Seriously?"

"Hey, rock it if you got it." he said. A swarm of griffins banked hard around them, each carrying elfin riders who waved at Death and Mercury as they passed. Death returned the wave. Mercury was busy pulling the tuk-tuk.

They put down a short time later outside a rather cozy cottage on the outskirts of the Fields, near the woods. A sea breeze freshened the air of the sunny isles, stirring the hearts and lifting the spirits of the greats that rested there.

Death hopped off and tipped Mercury again. "Thanks for the lift."

"Hey, it's been the same time every cycle for the last forty-thousand." the God said with a smirk. "At this point, I just make sure I'm in the right spot in time to catch you."

"So not a Messenger then?" Death asked.

"No more than you're a Reaper, hon." he said.

Death smiled and gave his arm a squeeze. "Well, thank you, then."

"My pleasure!" he said, then cocked his head. "Oh, goody, one of my kids needs me. Later, Death!"

"See you next cycle!" she said, waving as he took off again. She turned and walked up to the door, pushing it open and stepping through. "Artemis! I'm home!"

The Huntress Goddess poked her head out of the bedroom. "Hey, lovely. How was the ferrying business today?"

Death waggled her hand as she shucked off her hoodie. Artemis stepped out, looking as young as ever, wrapped up in her favorite robe, her hunting gear arrayed haphazardly on the couch. She snuck up behind Death and wrapped her in a hug, which the Goddess of Death happily leaned into.

"What's it today?"

[] Hera, again.
[] Ares was busy today. Five hundred dead by him alone.
[] Shiva made a star go nova. I had to clean up after him.
[] The same as every day. What about you?