Chapter Thirty One

It is astonishing how important a man becomes when he dies. - Yiddish saying

Chapter Thirty One

There was an unearthly chill in the recreation room of the Church of Peace of Christ. Somewhere, too low to be audible, but too present to be ignored was a pulsing, thrumming, vibration or energy of some sort none of the priests present had ever felt before. On the floor, carefully laid in chalk powder, were occult symbols and words.

The priest shut his book and said, “It is done.”

One of the other holy men present said, meekly, “Are you sure you did it right?”

“Well, Reverend Bart, this particular material was a little outside my course of study at seminary school. But then, I have been carefully studying it for the last several weeks in preparation. So, yes, I’m sure I did it right.”

Another one of those present said, “How are we going to know when he’s here?”

The chill in the room grew ever colder. The holy men and women present could see their breaths.

As could their guest. Those sweet breaths. So fleeting. So soon to be his to torment, eternally.

“I am here,” a deep and malicious voice said.

“Satan?”

“No, great Satan would not waste his time on the likes of you pitiful fools.”

“Well, who are you then? And where are you?”

“You are looking too high, mortal,” the voice said. The priests looked at each other in confusion. The voice then told them its name, unspeakable in the mortal world. “You, puny humans, may call me Nubbins.”

The demon stepped out of the shadows then, and into the candlelight. He was approximately knee-high, grey, and irritable looking.

“Who are you? We summoned Satan. I’ve never even heard of a Nubbins the demon, little one,” one of the priests foolishly said aloud.

“Little one?” Nubbins said, sounding vaguely amused. He shouted something harsh and painful sounding in the language of Hell, and made a complicated twisting gesture with his hands.

The priest who had questioned Nubbins made a small, pained gasp, clutched at his gut, and fell to the floor, rocking back and forth in utter agony.

“Would anyone else care to comment on my size or qualifications?” Nubbins asked the other priests present.

They all rapidly shook their heads and looked at the floor.

“So, fools, what do you want?”

Nubbins pulled a box of Kools from his cloak and lit one as he waited for an answer.

“Well? I have other business to attend to, and I think you know you don’t want to piss me off.”

“We want you, that is, Satan, well, that is, you, to make people start dying again?”

Nubbins took a deep drag of his Kool, and savored the minty tingle as he exhaled.

“What, you think we did this?”

The priests were gobsmacked.

“Well, uh, yes.”

“Fuck no. Our business model depends on an influx of new souls. Production is at an all time low. If we could get people to start dying again, we’d have done it already.”

“Well, is there someone else you can perhaps influence?”

Nubbins thought for a moment. He took another drag from his smoke, and slowly exhaled.

“Well, maybe one of us could go talk to Death. She’s usually pretty hard to catch, to be honest. Busy schedule, you know. Maybe there’s an arrangement we could work out.”

Nubbins paused and took another drag. “Of course, it’ll cost you.”

“What do you want from us?”

“Oh, you know already. Your souls. Hell, you offered them up just by calling me. You know Jehovah’s not going to be very pleased with you guys at all, don’t you? Ah, but that’s not my concern. Yes, we’ll go visit Death and try to negotiate something in exchange for your souls. See ya!”

And with that, Nubbins vanished before any of the priests could object.

“That sneaky little bastard!” one of the priests said.

“Well, what did you idiots expect? He’s from Hell.”

“I can’t believe they sent a secretary.”

The other priests looked at the one who was still on the floor, now foaming from the mouth.

“Yeah, I’m sure Satan would have been much more cordial.”

#

Outside the Church of Peace of Christ, a group of thirty men, of all ages, wearing soothing dark suits and ties and holding lead pipe, rubber hoses and other improvised weapons, waited.

After they had cleaned up the chalk mess, as well as the mess the priest afflicted by Nubbins made, the remaining holy men and women left the church to find themselves surrounded by a group of angry morticians.

The two female priests screamed, while the others circled around them in a protective huddle.

“What do you want?”

A man in a grey suit that was getting a bit shiny said, “We want our livelihoods back, you bastards!”

“What are you talking about?”

“We don’t know how you did it, but somehow you guys stopped death. Now we’re all out of business. Some of us are living on the streets! And we’re gonna take it out of your asses.”

“But we don’t want people to live forever either. Our business has dried up too!”

A different man, this one wearing a black double-breasted suit with gold-toe socks and no shoes spoke up.

“Whatever. You guys wanted to bring the Kingdom of God to Earth more than you wanted money. We all know it.”

“You think this is the Kingdom of God?”

“Well, it’s not like you haven’t been wrong about him before. Now, we’re decent enough guys, and we don’t like to hurt women, so I’d suggest you let them run like hell, because in thirty seconds you guys are going down!”

The two women tapped one of the priests on the shoulder and said, “Um, yes, excuse me, just need to sneak through here, thanks.”

Then they ran down the street and didn’t look back.

“Look, we’re trying to make people start dying again too!”

“Bullshit.”

“We are, man! We just called up a demon for fuck’s sake,” here several of the priests gasped despite themselves, “to try and get Hell to start killing people.”

Several of the morticians looked at each other, and then they busted out laughing.

“Yeah, right. I knew you guys were used to lying, but that was... that was.. wow. I can’t believe you think we’d believe that.”

“Thirty,” one of the morticians near the rear of the group called.

“And now we’re going to have to kick your asses,” the mortician with no shoes said.

#

Death was in bed under the covers reading a book of extremely gloomy poetry with a flashlight when she heard a lighter click open, and shortly after, could smell a menthol cigarette.

“Who’s there now?”

“Me,” said a cold, deep voice.

Death poked her head out from under her blanket and turned on the light next to her bed.

“Who’s me?”

“Nubbins the demon. At your service.”

“OK. Do I know you?”

“Nope, we’ve never needed to talk before.”

“OK. So why are you here? I didn’t invite you.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got this problem. You see, people aren’t dying. And this is bad for Hell, because we kind of depend on people dying and coming to Hell. Otherwise, we really don’t have any reason for existing and, frankly, torturing one another wore thin several millenia ago. So, you need to get your ass out of bed and start killing these shitheads again so I have something to do and everyone is happy. More or less.”

“I don’t want to. I’m too depressed.”

Nubbins took a drag and looked at her. “You’re too depressed? You’re Death for fuck’s sake. You ought to be the happiest creature in all of creation.”

“Whatever. All I do is a bunch of busywork. I’ll never be done. I’ll never have accomplished anything. I’m a glorified receptionist.”

“Are you complaining to me about having a shitty job? You want to trade? Because I would love to do your job. I get to deal with all the shitheads too stupid to keep themselves out of Hell, plus office politics, plus I live in Hell! So what are you complaining about? Fuck, you are Death. Death is your purpose. Death is your reason for being. Get out there and kill some fuckers!”

“Whatever. Pretty shitty reason to exist.”

“Aw, fuck this. I tried talking to you, now I get those priests souls if you ever get around to killing them.”

“Hephaistos is supposed to be filling in for me.”

“Oh yeah? Huh. Well, he’s doing a pretty shitty job. We haven’t had any new souls in Hell since you’ve stopped killing people, and we usually get a whole lot of them.”

“Bummer.”

“All right, I’m out of here. Have fun moping.”

“Hey, wait!” Death said before Nubbins could disappear.

“What?”

“Could you grab me a pint of ice cream from the freezer?”

“What? Fuck you,” Nubbins said, and vanished.

“No need to be a prick about it,” Death said.

She turned off the light next to her bed again, and pulled the covers back over her head. As she was trying to find her place once more in the poem she’d been reading, she thought a little bit about what Nubbins had said.

Maybe being Death was a great purpose. Maybe having an endless stream of work was, in fact, a good thing. Perhaps what she really needed to do was just get out there and keep doing the best job she could.

Or, maybe she was crazy and should stay in bed eating ice cream. She thought about the many, many meals she’d missed because of her work, not to mention the lack of a social life or a home that felt like someone actually lived there once in a while. She thought about the stupid, idiot suicides that made all of her careful planning and consideration useless.

Yeah, staying in bed with ice cream seemed pretty good. Hep probably had it all under control well enough anyhow.