My name is Evan, I am the Angel of Death.

Hey, I didn’t ask to be the Angel of Death, it just got… Bestowed on me. Randomly, one day, I died. Yep, just died. Nothing big and heroic, nothing bang bang you’re dead.

I died in a stupid car crash, just a dumb old, lost control car crash. It wasn’t bloody, it wasn’t a jump off the side of a cliff. My car spun out of control and I ended up in a tree. I died three hours later, twenty minutes before a car came driving down the deserted country road that my car rested to the side of.

So, this Barry guy shows up just as I’m drifting off, and he takes my hand. Naturally, I was a little confused, especially when I climbed from the car and turned to see myself, bled to death behind me. Hmmm… How disturbing.

So, on our way to Purgatory I casually mentioned that he must have a pretty nifty job. Next thing you know, he’s offering me the job. Naturally, I’m curious about the job, and the fact that he offered it up without blinking.

I’m dead, what do I care? I take the job. Yeah. It sucks.

So what, I guess I did ask for it. I just didn’t know what it entailed.

Death isn’t cool. Death isn’t fun. Dealing it out isn’t fun.

So, here I am, Angel of Death, trying my damndest to not hate my job. My boss, well, he’s difficult. The ladies I work with, two opinionated Angel ladies, are hard to deal with some days.

One of them, a younger woman named Evie, is the heart and soul of goodness. She is young, vivacious, and stunning. She is also good hearted and kind worded. The other is bitter and old, and in my humble opinion… Pure evil. She’s like Satan, but she hit the up button in the elevator, instead of the down button. Ironically enough, her name is Lucy. One day I asked her if her last name was Fehr. She glared at me. Apparently, she doesn’t like my sense of humor. She usually comments that it was my jokes that killed me. Some days I have to concur.

I’m sure you are all wondering where this little tirade is heading, well, keep in mind through the story that all roads lead home. This may be hard to follow at some points, hell, it’s hard for me to follow and I lived it. Just bear in mind that at the end every loose end will be tied up. It might not be a neat little package, wrapped in brown paper, tied with a bow, but it will be all clumped together in a generally neat pile of oddities.

It all begins on a rainy Wednesday in August. I know, a random day, but this is a random story. It takes place in a small town in South Florida. Nowhere exotic, mind you. This isn’t an exotic story. All you’ll have to “wow” you in this story is purgatory, a brief description of heaven and a horrifying “too much information” description of hell. Okay, so rainy Wednesday, August 18th, 2004. I’m standing under an overhang outside a not-so-busy mall entrance, with my expensive looking trench coat pulled up over my ears like a detective in black and white movies. All I need is the debonair hat and stylish aviator glasses. In fact, at the moment, I’ve got two early-twenties girls staring at me, and whispering, so I’m feeling a bit like Dick Tracy. Course I could look a bit more like The Mask, so I’m trying not to stare back at them.

“Evan!” I turn to the sound of Evie’s voice. She and Lucy are coming out of the building. They’ve been scouting out this soul we’ve been after for quite awhile. Somehow she keeps escaping fate… Which happens to be Evie. “We found her… Come on. You’re on.” I roll my eyes. I hate this part. This is the part where I get to pretend that I’m shopping for an hour before she slips and falls off of a ladder, and I have to escort her to the gates for her test. The waiting isn’t the hard part. It’s the stupid questions people ask when they die.

It always happens, without fail. Where am I? Who are you? What happened? Why is my neck angled like that? Is that really me? And the one I hate the most. What does heaven look like? Let me tell you, I never answer this question. This question has the potential to be harmful to the recently deceased. If they make it to heaven, they’ll see in just a few minutes. If they don’t, they get to spend an eternity with the knowledge that heaven is this serene, incredible, hopeful place… That they’ll never see.

So, the target was named Audrey. Audrey Stemple. Hello Audrey Stemple, I’m death. I get to take you to heaven now. No don’t run away, I’m not psycho. Watch out for that falling anvil. Squish. Ha. Now that would be entertaining.

Alas, I can’t do that. It would be fun one day to try it though. What would you do if a dashing young man, who looked a good deal like Dick Tracy, without the hat, came strolling up and said, “Hello, my dear, I’m death. You’re going to die in ten minutes, what would you like to do first?” You’d probably run away screaming. Which, incidentally, has happened to me after someone has died. They ran away screaming, ran through a wall, and it took me three days to find the lost soul… Pun intended.

Hmmm, shoe store. What can I do in a shoe store, waiting for this woman to die? “Hi, there, do you have these shoes in a size ten wide, please?” I look at the woman behind the counter. Her nametag says Susan.

Susan looks at the faux snakeskin spiked heel sling back in my hand, then brings her eyes back up to my face. “Um, I’ll have to check, sir.”

“Thanks, Susan.” She vanishes into the back. I turn to survey the store, and the sole occupant of it, now that Susan is gone. Audrey Stemple is about twenty-two, with long red hair and pale as cream skin. A lovely young lady. With a nose ring and a tattoo peeking out from underneath the waist of tailored khaki pants she’s wearing.

She turns to look at me, standing near the counter with an incredible hideous snakeskin shoe in my hand. She smiles brightly, almost real, and says, “That’s hot.” I grinned back.

“I want to look taller,” I reply, confidently. Audrey Stemple nods and moves off to the counter. For a long moment, I find myself thinking that Audrey Stemple should die a dignified death. None of this, I was run over by an eggplant truck crap. But alas, so was not the way for dear Audrey. I wasn’t sure how she was to perish, but I knew it wouldn’t involve heroics, like diving out of an airplane to save a baby, or jumping in front of a car to save a puppy. This was going to be utterly humiliating. And I was going to have to watch.

Behind the counter, Audrey Stemple prepares some of the inventory for shelving by pricing each individual shoe. “Now, is the price per shoe or for the set?” I asked, casually leaning on the counter. Audrey Stemple looks up at me, and smiles, then looks back down at the pricing machine. “Seriously, let’s pretend I’ve never been shopping before. I’m Amish. Explain shopping to me.” I smile, flashing a line of straight white teeth at her.

Audrey Stemple doesn’t glance back up at my dashing grin, but keeps her head serenely bowed over the machine. Instead of succumbing to my natural angelic charm, Audrey Stemple responds with, “An Amish man wearing a knock-off Burberry trench and suede Gucci loafers? I’d more likely believe that my sweet Italian grandmother was a mob boss.”

“You never know, it’s possible,” I reply, frowning.

“Audrey, could you come in here, please?” Susan calls from the back. Audrey excuses herself, and moves toward the door to the back. As she does, I see it, the cord to the pricing machine. She trips, and it happens in slow motion. I watch the cord yank halfway free of the wall, sending sparks to catch the wall paint on fire, flames shoot out of the wall, engulfing the electrical cord. Then… Well, let’s just say Audrey Stemple likes her chicken extra crispy. Hmmm, too bad I was never in the Army. I would have made a good Colonel. Get it? Colonel? Hahah. I know… My jokes could have killed me.