Death Is A Cool Guy, Part 2

Well, here is part two of my short story "Death Is A Cool Guy". I still haven't come up with another title, nor have I decided how far I want to take this.

When you’re unemployed, the days run together. The only reason I ever look forward to the weekend is because my wife will be home and I won’t have to spend my days alone with the dog. The weekend when by quicker than others, perhaps because I kept wondering about the night I talked to Death. I still wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not.

                Before I knew it, it was Monday and I was alone again. I woke up late, close to noon. There was no point in getting up early when the biggest part of my day was making dinner. I had just finished watching yet another repeat of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. It was the one in which Detective Stabler imprinted his own children upon a victim and got really aggressive towards the suspect. I was feeling hungry so I decided to heat up some leftover pasta.

                I was shoulders deep into the refridgerator, smelling the pasta to make sure it was still good. It wasn’t. I closed the fridge door, resigned to peanut butter sandwich I was forced to eat. When I stood up I saw him. It startled the crap out of me. So much so that I dropped the peanut butter, popping the top off. The dog ignored the tall figure in the black robes and went straight for the exposed Skippy.

                “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you” His voice seemed to echo through my head. He looked down at the dog lapping at the peanut butter. “I hope you weren’t planning anything untoward with that”

                It took me a moment to get his meaning. I half cringed and half laughed. “Well, it’s how I usually get my wife to do it”. Death seemed to chuckle at this. It was hard to tell. “Who are you here for this time?”

                “Nobody. I just found that chair very comfortable and it’s been a long few days. Did you hear about that plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard?”

                I had. “Yeah, I heard there were no survivors.”

                “At least not when I was done with them. You got any more of those Qingdaos?”

                I chuckled “No, sorry man. I have some pot if you want to hit it” It took a minute to hit me that I was offering to smoke weed with the anthropomorphic personification of Death. 

                “Hmm, I haven’t smoked pot in ages. Why not?”

                Thirty minutes later we were both on the couch, surrounded by a thin haze, watching another episode of Law and Order: SVU. This was the episode where Det. Benson almost gets raped but doesn’t. The dog still hadn’t acknowledged Death’s presence. It was as if Death had no image. No smell, no voice. But the dog clearly felt a little comforted by his presence.

                “Is it weird that I’m finding Detective Benson very attractive?” Death hadn’t spoken in about 10 minutes, absorbed as he was by this gripping network cop drama. The words took a minute to make their way through the smoke in the air. When they arrived at my ear, the words were trailing smoke.

                “That depends” I eventually answered, “Do you have a penis?” All of a sudden my curiosity was very piqued.

                “I certainly have a bone for her” I was started to learn that Death could be quite raunchy. But it was honestly too funny not to laugh at. We ended up giggling so hard that my eyes teared up. I couldn’t tell if Deaths eyes were as red as mine. I still couldn’t tell if he had eyes.

                “You know, you seem to have a lot of free time for the Grim Reaper” I blurted out after we had recovering from our giggle fit.

                “A Grim Reaper”

                “Pardon?”

                “I’m A Grim Reaper, not The Grim Reaper. There are a lot of us. Come on, there are almost seven billion people on this planet, one Reaper isn’t enough.”

                “So there are a whole group of Grim Reapers? Is there a Grim Reaper HR Department?” I said with an equal mix or sarcasm and curiosity.

                “Yeah, there’s a whole Administration. But we call our HR Department something else. We call it Collections” He looked at me slowly, waiting for me to get his joke. It took me a minute and, like most things with Death, I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not. “Seriously though, Soul Collection is a big Administration. There are thousands of Reapers”

                I couldn’t help but picture a big office building, shining brightly from the reflections off its glass walls. Cubicles were packed tightly onto the floors with the wide open design intended to stimulate workers. The cubicles are filled with skeletons, some in slacks and polos and other in sundresses because it’s Casual Friday. Skeleton interns were making copies and rushing between the cubicle aisles. The picture made me start giggling again. This made Death start giggling as well.

                We spent the next hour on the couch playing Call of Duty. It turns out Death plays all the time and is even in a league with some of his coworkers. I was sure to get his Gamertag before he left.