Death: A Life (37 page)

“Er, okay?” I said. After all, some concessions had to be made.

“And there’s just one more thing,” I said. “I want to see Maud.”

“Whatever you say, Alice,” boomed God, and Heaven suddenly disappeared.

I found myself
back on Earth, in the middle of the twentieth century. Could I really be about to see Maud again? I thought about all the years that had passed since our glorious ten days together. Those ten days of forbidden joy in which no one died. Would she still remember them as fondly as I did? I wondered if she had changed. Of course, her physical exterior would be different, I had no doubt, but would Maud’s nature be any different? Would she recognize me? It had, after all, been half a millennium since last we had seen each other. Would we know what to say to each other after such a long time apart? Would there be awkward silences? Would I be tempted by her again into Life?

I pulled out the
Book of Endings
from my cloak and was gratified to see that it had grown a giant appendix. My name was no longer visible. I noticed that instead of the Second Coming, a Second World War was now raging on Earth. You had to hand it to God—He had a sense of humor.

A phantom heartbeat sounded in my chest as I located Maud’s name in the
Book.
It lay alongside many, many others. There would be no showboating this time for my beloved. I found her in a large concrete room, in the middle of Europe somewhere. It was filled with naked people. None of them looked very happy, not even Maud. I was slightly surprised by this. She looked skinnier than she had before; her cheekbones flashed in the dim light. Strangely, it looked as though she had been crying. I had never seen Maud cry before, although I was pleased to see that this only brought out the sparkle in her brown eyes all the more.

“Help me, Death. Don’t let me die,” she hissed upon seeing me. “Let me live, for the love of God, let me live.”

I let out a sigh of relief. It was as if time had stood still. She was still playing the same old game,
our
old game! She was still the same delectable Maud!

“You’ve got to help me live, Death. Like you did before. The last time. You’ve got to let me live again.”

She was good, I’ll give her that. Utterly, utterly believable.

A thick gas began to hiss down from the roof of the room and Maud held her breath, her delicate red cheeks glowing in the dim light. As the other people in the room began to scream and kick up a terrible fuss, I saw her eyes frantically search for an escape route. It was truly as if she wanted to live! Suddenly she noticed an open air vent at the opposite end of the room and clambered her way over the dying to get to it, but as she tried to squeeze herself through it I grabbed hold of her foot and held her back, laughing at her feigned panic. She turned on me viciously. “I’m not playing this time, Death!” she choked. “I want to live!”

I smiled.

“No, no, Death. You don’t understand. I don’t
want
to die. Not this time. Not this time.”

I didn’t know quite what to say. It felt strange. There were none of her usual coquettish looks, no biting of her lip with excitement. Could she possibly mean it? I felt my existence spin on a coin edge. She was joking. She must be. She had to be. Right?

I reached out to touch her face, to try to get some sense of what she meant, but in that moment she turned pale, reeled backward, and started trembling. From her mouth foam flakes erupted, her eyeballs rolled in their sockets, and the blood deserted her face. Raising a loud scream, she wrenched her head to and fro, and then fell to the ground convulsing. It took some time before she was actually dead.

It was a good, classic death, one of her best, yet I felt strangely sad. I freed her soul and stood waiting for her with open arms. But she emerged shivering and refused to look at me.

“Maud, it’s me,” I blurted. “I wanted to see you so much. I was in a clinic and had to be taught to be bad again and then I stopped Gabriel from destroying the world and then I was almost phased out of existence but Creation went on strike and I was reinstated and then I asked to see you and here I am.”

She looked at me with something like rage in her eyes, and the words froze in my mouth. The Darkness enveloped her rather shamefacedly, and she disappeared from view, but all the while her eyes stared at me. Stared at me with something that looked strangely like the opposite of love. I waited for a playful smirk to break on her face, a blown kiss to come from her lips, a wink to show in those lovely brown eyes, but there was none.

I never saw her again.

The End

A
nd so
history continued, much as it had before. The world kept turning, people kept dying, and I kept shipping souls off into the nether. It was good to be at work, good to be Death. The bright illumination of Life seemed to be extinguished within me, and all madcap thoughts of self-love and self-worth were banished from my mind. My world was dark once more, thick with fear, illness, and fatality. But every now and then, when a beautiful sunset took me by surprise, or a fluffy white lamb bounded across my path, the bright monster Life would rear up in me, flaming bright from the buried embers of my past, and I would sit down and scour the
Book of Endings
in the hope that I might find Maud therein. I still didn’t know what to make of our last meeting. At times I thought I understood what she had been saying; comprehension seemed almost within my grasp. But such moments passed quickly, the Darkness would curl around my feet and I would feel deliciously empty again.

I was whirling across Earth without a thought in my head or a care in the world, when a fat cherub appeared in front of me with an irritated expression and a summons to Heaven. I hadn’t been up there since the strike, but everyone seemed quite friendly. Peter said it was a shame about the fight being canceled and gloomily returned to giving his mother a sponge bath. Much of Heaven was empty. I soon found out where they were when a loud cheer emanated from the gigantic stadium that had been constructed to house my demise. Looking in, I saw Jesus, in a spangly leotard, hoisting the Holy Ghost above His head and slamming Him into the canvas. Jesus strutted around the stage, to much applause, while the Ghost lay on the floor groaning, clutching His side in a very convincing exaggeration of pain.

The Parliament of Heaven was empty too. God sat at the head of the hall by Himself.

“They seem to prefer the wrestling,” boomed God, by means of explanation. “Is all miserable on Earth? Good, good. Listen, I need to ask your advice. Ever since Gabriel got back he hasn’t been the same.”

At that moment a naked Gabriel ran across the Parliament floor. His body was painted with blue stripes and he was making car noises.

“The thing is, he always did everything around here. I’m rather lost without him. I don’t suppose you know anyone who’d be able to help?”

“Well, there is one person I can think of,” I said.

I was greeted
by a joyous Mother at the Gates of Hell, where she had returned to take up her old job. The automatic doors that had been installed had been corrupted by Hell’s atmosphere and had started to let demons out on the sly in exchange for a good oiling.

It was quite a reunion. Mother lavished her attention on me, scalding me with hot cups of sulphur and dropping her famed iron scones on my feet, and Father almost remembered my name unprompted. In fact, it took some time before they would let me go in search of the person whom I had come for.

Reginald did not look good. In fact, he looked downright horrible. One of his wings had been torn off at the shoulder, and his left eye had been sewn shut with barbed wire. His teeth had been replaced with razor-sharp pebbles that stuck out at all angles. The top of his head was singed, and his halo had dropped over his head and was now strangling him. He tried to smile when he saw me, but this only forced his teeth through his cheeks. He let out a groan and began scratching frantically at his belly. I inquired what was wrong with him, and he opened up his tunic to reveal that hundreds of tiny imps had made a hole in his stomach and converted it into a disco, complete with mirror ball, illuminated dance floor, and tiny imp DJ.

“And it’s always Saturday night,” he sobbed. I flicked out the imps, tucked Reginald under my arm, and let the Darkness cover him. Soon we were on our way to Heaven.

It was a rather dazed Reginald who awoke to find himself seated at the left hand of the Father.

“Oh Master Death, thank you!” he sobbed. His wings and teeth had been repaired, his hair had grown back, and the disco in his belly had been converted into a chapel, complete with tiny angels praying in it. “I don’t know how I can repay you. One more eon in that horrible, horrible place and I think I might have gone bad forever.”

“Yes, sorry about that,” boomed God, “but you should really strap up your sandals in the future, Reginald. Or should I say, Archangel Reginald.”

Reaching into His eminence, He pulled out a halo brighter than all the others in Heaven and placed it atop Reginald’s head. Reginald seemed to grow before my eyes, swelling in size. For the first time, he looked young and happy and at peace with the Universe. For the first time in countless eons, he looked impressive.

“Now,” boomed God, “go and clean out the heavenly latrines.”

“Wh…what?” said Reginald.

“The latrines, they’ve been blocked for ages.”

“But Lord, would You not prefer I sang You hosannas?”

“No. Now, there’s a mop and bucket in the cleaning cupboard.”

“But Lord—”

“Do hurry up, Reginald,” boomed God. “There’s a good chap.”

And so Reginald sloped off, a strange, broken smile on his face.

“And as for you, Alice,” boomed God. “I’m sorry the thing with that mortal woman didn’t work out. But I think We may be able to provide you with some suitable company. Now, there’s a chance that you…”

As He droned on, my attention was diverted by the naked blue figure of Gabriel. He motioned at me not to make a sound. I saw he was trying to get to a thick green curtain I had never noticed before, which ran all the way behind God’s throne. As God continued to talk obliviously, Gabriel grabbed one end of the curtain and, with an almighty tug, heaved it to one side. Behind the curtain hovered a giant shining divine orb of light.

“Who are You?” I asked.

“Oh, hello. I’m GOD,” HE boomed.

“God?” I asked.

“No, GOD, all capitals.”

“Don’t listen to HIM,” boomed God, suddenly realizing what was going on. “HE’S just a manifestation of Me.”

“No, I am not,” boomed GOD.

“Yes, YOU are, YOU even look like Me,” boomed God.

“Lots of shiny things look like You,” boomed GOD. “Spoons look like You. Are You a spoon?” HE turned to me, “Now look, I created Him.”

“Lies!” boomed God. “All lies!”

At that moment Jesus came into the room still in His leotard.

“Dad?” he beamed worriedly, looking back and forth between the two divine lights. “DAD?”

God? GOD? Spoon?

“Son!” the two blinding lights boomed as one.

I made my excuses and left.