Chapter 23:

Chapter 23:

Death’s Impeccable Plan:

Part I:

The Part That Has Little to do With The Plan That Death Had Conceived:

Death, by contract, was not required to collect every soul on the planet.

Originally, souls were bound to the body until War, Famine, Pestilence or Death himself came to claim it. It never mattered much who actually took the soul, so long as it got done. In those days everyone in heaven was very busy, because so much of the work had to be done on earth.

This changed after the black plague.

The black plague was originally Pestilence’s pride and joy, his masterwork, his Frankenstein’s monster in microbial form.

It soon became his biggest headache.

The sheer number of corpses left behind by the disease made the collection of souls by hand completely obsolete. Not only were there too many, but they were so spread out in the later years, that they needed to ask angels for help collecting all of them. And it was also noted that some angels had to work late into the night with picks and shovels trying to recover lost bodies.

When God’s council brought the matter to her attention at the bi-monthly meeting, she simply smiled and told them…

Well, something that, they surmised, meant “figure it out for yourselves”.

And so they did.

They drafted a new type of soul, and marked each of the new souls with their own expiration date. All of them were set to leave their bodies on their own, and were re-programmed to make the journey to the afterlife unaided. Everyone was pleased, relaxed and happy in heaven. The only things they had needed to do after the new souls had been brought out of beta-testing and released on the open market was to take care of paperwork, which Angels had done happily for centuries.

However, every so often, souls wouldn’t leave even if their expiration date had come, and that was why Death was still (not quite game fully) employed. Everyday, he would receive a list of souls that weren’t going to expire properly from fate, and he would then venture onto earth and dispatch them by any means necessary. And that meant any means….

The street was filled. Cars, buses, people, motorcycles, bicycles; every mode of road transportation was represented in force. Reflected light shone off cars, casting brilliant reflections of the buildings around them. On one end of this intersection was a hill, where the road sloped up. The lights changed as the cars danced through the intersection at slow speeds and pedestrians moved across the crosswalks. On the sun-lit side of the street on the slight slope before the intersection there was a grocery store, and on the opposite side, inconspicuous in the shade was a bench with two figures sitting on it. One was wearing a black hood over their face; the other wore fake All-Stars that were in danger of becoming sandals.

“Where is she?” asked Marshall Oblong, who often came to watch Death at work, especially when it was in a city.

“She’ll be walking in front of that grocery store in a moment,” replied Death, keeping an eye on the store. He absent mindedly removed a black, well polished croquet mallet from the infinite depths of his sweatshirt pocket.

“You’re just gonna hit her over the head? Come on,” said Marshall. He knew that Death’s weapon of choice for any job was always his trusty croquet mallet. He had once said that the standard Scythe seemed more like a formality, something that one took out at house parties as an entertaining trick, but when push came to shove the mallet beat the scythe in all practical situations. Still, Marshall thought that a “Croquet Mallet of Death” sounded far less ominous and cool that the “Scythe of Death”.

“I don’t have to just hit her you know,” said Death, looking over at Marshall, raising an eyebrow, “I know you like to watch my trick shots. I could do one of those.”

“Awwwright. On one condition,” came Marshall’s excited reply, “I get to pick what kills her.”

“Feel free. Pick whatever, so long as it’s not a person,” said Death, returning his focus to the store front across the street.

Marshall looked around for an object. They were sitting on a bench at a bus stop and there wasn’t anything particularly deadly nearby. Marshall grabbed a thumb sized stone from under the bench.

“This,” he said smugly, handing the stone to Death.

Death looked over, unimpressed.

“You sure?” asked Death, sounding almost disappointed. Marshall nodded, not quite as confident in his choice as he had been a moment ago. Death took the stone from Marshall’s hand, “Piece of cake.”

Death resumed his consuming stare across the street. After a few seconds, he saw her.

“There,” he said, pointing to a blonde woman in a navy blue top. Death stood up off the bench and dropped the stone onto his foot, as a sort of tee for it.

Death took aim, crouched, and swung the mallet with all his might.

It bounced across the street harmlessly and came to a rest in front of the store, looking rather innocent. At least, as innocent as any instrument of Death could look given the circumstances.

“You missed,” said Marshall flatly. Death smiled and waited patiently. Marshall doubted himself once again.

He looked back at the rock, now in front of the grocery store. The woman in the Navy blue top was now waiting for the walk sign to say walk. At that moment, a woman who was trying to run her car off of canola oil1 pushed a cart with thirty-two bottles of various vegetable oils out the door of the store. Suddenly, the cart hit the small stone, and tipped into the street, spilling slippery oils all over the lane as a bus was slowing down for the yellow light.

The bus hit the patch of oil, and skidded towards the woman in blue, who had just began to cross the street. When the woman in blue saw the bus, she threw up her arms, but it was too late….

The bus had already stopped.

“You, my friend, are oh for two!” exclaimed Marshall, slapping his hand on the bench.

“Oh just shut up and enjoy my work,” said Death, now slightly irritated.

Marshall looked back. The woman in blue had her hand pressed over her heart, obviously a little scared, but otherwise alright. She took a few deep breaths, and walked backwards two steps to try and calm herself down.

To be totally fair to the man in the car, she was in the shadow of the bus, and he was on his cell phone, the second of which makes it difficult not to kill people.

The woman in blue’s head spider webbed the windshield as her body instantaneously went limp and flew five feet, rolling and bouncing to a sickening crack on the sidewalk.

“Oh… oh…” started Marshall, at a loss for words, “That is so cheap! That’s such a… a… That’s so cheap.”

Death stuck his tongue out at Marshall, and danced a little bit.

“Stick around. After I celebrate a little by collecting a soul, I need to chat with you... captain sucker,” said Death as he moon walked past the now standing Marshall.

“Yeah, whatever… You’re still a dweeb,” said Marshall. He had never been good at comebacks.

Marshall sat down and shook his head while Death proceeded to hammer-time shuffle over to the body, where a crowd of people had begun to gather.

1 A completely pointless effort, because her car wasn’t diesel.