Death Denied

 

Death tapped one bony toe impatiently. "You're not supposed to be here" he rasped. "You know it, and I know it!"

The man laughed, a full-on hearty guffaw. "No one is actually where they're supposed to be you bone-brained fool. That's the point!"

Death shrugged. "I am, but not through my choice but the choice of others."

"So according to you, where should I be" the man asked, the sentence delivered with the ups and downs of tones and inflections in his voice that resembled that last stretch of a rollercoaster that's designed to separate your stomach from its rightful place in your abdomen and place it firmly in your mouth. 

"Dead, of course" said Death simply. "What else did you think I was going to say?"

"Well, when did I... No wait, when was I supposed to have died?" The man exhaled like a parent watching a child painstakingly covering the entire surface of its high chair in bolognese sauce. 

Death made a strange hand gesture in the air, a mysterious ethereal-looking piece of parchment appeared and he consulted it, "1992" he whispered. "Car accident. Fatal but your passenger escaped unscathed. Remember now?"

The man did remember. The whole scene played back in that shoddy VHS videotape quality that older memories always seem to have. Any icy road, a small hatchback, an uncontrollable skid, the car rolling over and over before striking a Land Rover coming in the opposite direction. The car landing on its wheels facing the opposite direction. The man did remember, and he remembered what came next. 

"You were there" he gasped. "You were there and I ignored you! I'm so sorry, was I supposed to say something? Do something?"

Death nodded. "Yes you bloody idiot, you were supposed to come with me! What on earth do you think I was standing there tapping my bloody watch for?"

The man looked crestfallen. "Well that's the thing, I had no idea. I thought you were just some weirdo."

"And then in 2019. You should've died then too. Remember Florida?"

The man remembered Florida alright. The man remembered what it felt like to finally understand why Americans are the way they are, and the typical English reaction to the place - to feel a sense of sordid guilt because secretly you're enjoying it all far too much. 

"Do you remember the pain? You paced up and down the apartment floor all night. I stood by the fridge and kept catching your eye but you kept on pacing, mumbling, moaning. Did you think I was standing there for the good of my health?"

"I..." began the man but Death continued. "Then in 2020. You obviously weren't taking subtle hints so I dropped you like a stone, remember that? I was there again, right there in the damned room with you and you STILL ignored me. What is WRONG with you?"

"Listen buster" said the man. "You claim that all these times you were there waiting and I ignored you. Most of the time it was not intentional but you're missing something quite spectacularly relevant with your dramatic 'woe is me' act. You have told me that I'm not supposed to be here but you failed to ask the most important question of all. Why I AM here?"

The man put his finger to his lips, beckoned to death to follow him out of the room. There, lying in a bed was a woman - the type of woman who, though beautiful, does not sense her own beauty nor make remark upon it. The type of woman who is stern, firm, driven, sensible but can flip that like you'd flip a coin and be funny, sexy, playful and passionate.

"Point one" said the man. He gestured for Death to follow him again. "Keep quiet bonehead, don't wake her up or it'll be the death of you"

Another sleeper, this time a girl. Her hair was wrapped all around her head and face so it looked like she was wearing a rather hirsuite balaclava. She snored gently, asleep in a position that an artist's maquette would struggle to bend itself into. 

"Point two" said the man. "I am here because of them. Both of them."

Death looked like he had a speech prepared and was about to launch into it but the man put his finger to his lips once more. 

"I'm not going with you without a fight. You've seen what's at stake, so what power, what awesome weapon, what immeasurable force do you have in your arsenal that could possibly wrench me away from this?"

Death stood, aeons of time passed in the tiny glowing specks where his eyes would be, the dark sockets like mini galaxies. Momentarily he reached into his cloak and drew out an hour glass. The man recognised it instantly, it was the small egg timer that had been nailed to his grandmother's kitchen wall for decades, an object that took the man instantly back to his youth, standing at his grandmother's elbow as she cooked sunday dinner or stirred a saucepan of custard, or grilled the most amazing welsh rarebit. Inside the hour glass the tiny green specks of sand trickled, piled up and settled into a perfect cone. 

"This is all." said Death. "This is all you have left. Next time we meet, you won't ignore me."

"Time enough and more" said the man. "Now get the hell out of my house". 

"He never came back" they said. "We lost him somewhere out there, somewhere in the misty veil of insanity, his limbs lifeless and drooping but his mind a maelstrom, a storm, a chaotic scrambled spaghettified mess".