Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) (7 page)

             
“You know these streets well though.”

             
“I guess so.”

             
Samson nodded as if he already knew.

             
They crossed onto the bridge which marked the West end of the town, things became a little brighter on the other side, the council estates turned into middle-class suburban homes for the blue collared workers of the district.

             
There was someone waiting ahead of them in the middle of the bridge, his attention on the blackness below, his head hung low. Michael watched him until he felt Samson’s hand gently squeeze his shoulder.

             
“This is the deal Michael,” he said, stopping him. “I give you immortality. I give you another life, an infinite one. I give you a job, a reasonable pay. You give me your commitment and dedication.”

             
Michael nodded, waiting for more.

             
“What do you say?” Samson asked.

             
“What job?” Michael asked. “I don’t understand, what do I do? Where do I do it?”

             
“You collect the souls of the dead. Like I did with you tonight.”

             
“Like the grim reaper?”

             
Samson smiled broadly. “Something like that, but there isn’t just
one
Grim Reaper, there are thousands in this country alone.”

             
“So why do you need me?”

             
“I need you here.” He opened his arms around him, gesturing to the town as a whole. “I need you to work Brittleside.”

             
“You’re shitting me.”

             
Samson slowly shook his head.

             
“But this place is the fucking pits. What do I get in return?”

             
Samson opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, looking a little puzzled

             
“Oh right, the immortality,” Michael recalled.

             
Samson grinned.

             
“But how does it work, I mean, will I be a ghost?”

             
“Your other life, your
other self,
will still be dead. But you can live a normal life as you did before. Your friends and your colleagues may be a little,” he pondered for a moment, “
different,”
he said with enough emphasis to make Michael feel uneasy. “But everything else will be the same. You can function like a normal person for as long as you want.”

             
“But I’ll be dead. My friends, my family...won’t they know? Won’t they go to my funeral?”

             
“
That
Michael will remain dead. His friends, his family, his job and his memories are with you, but are redundant now.
This
Michael,” he said, gesturing to him. “Will be the same to you and to everyone that matters, but to everyone that
doesn’t
he’ll look like a completely different person.”

             
Michael thought about this for a moment. He had never experienced such clarity in his life, but there was a lot to take in. A lot of thoughts threatened to cloud that clarity. “And my name? I mean this is only a few miles from where I live.”

             
“Keep your first name. Your surname we can change in time, when it matters.”

             
“To what?” Michael said quizzically.

             
Samson shrugged. He seemed to be growing impatient. He peered over Michael's shoulder, towards the middle of the bridge. He checked his watch and then beamed at Michael again.

             
“The surname’s not important,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

             
Michael nodded acceptingly.

             
“So, do we have a deal?” Samson said, stealing another look over Michael's shoulder.

             
Michael turned around to see what he was looking at. “I guess so,” he said, seeing a solitary figure hugging the railings and peering into the blackness below.

             
When he turned back around Samson was gone. He looked around, studied his surroundings. He wasn’t there and there was nowhere he could have run to so quickly.

             
“Is that it?” Michael asked no one in particular. “What do I do now?”

             
Seemingly hearing him, the man in the middle of the bridge shouted back. “It’s too late, you can’t stop me now!”

             
He began climbing onto the railing, steadily lifting his legs until he was positioned on the other side. He leaned cautiously back onto the railing, his legs inches from the edge.

             
“I wasn’t trying to,” Michael called out, finding himself walking towards the man.

             
“Too late!” he yelled.

             
Michael walked closer. The stench of cheap alcohol clawed at his nostrils when he came to within a few feet of him.             

             
“You seriously going to jump?” he asked.

             
The man turned around, glaring drunkenly; his eyes flooded with tears. “Of course! And don’t you try to stop me!”

             
Michael held up his hands defensively.

             
“My life is a joke,” the alcohol drenched despondent droned. “It’s pointless!”

             
“It can’t be that bad mate,” Michael said as warmly as he could. “Come on, let’s go and have a coffee. It’s on me.”

             
The man turned to him. Initially shocked and angry. A gradual sense of pleasant surprise swelled on his face. “Why do you care?”

             
“Because I know what you’re going through. Life can be a bitch, trust me on that. But there’re ways around it. Ways to beat it.”

             
“Really?”

             
“Sure,” Michael stepped forward, smiling all the while. “Even in the bad there’s plenty of good, you just have to learn how to see it.”

             
“I like the sound of that.”

             
Michael was inches away. He reached out for the railing, slowly, as not to alarm. “Now come on, let’s go and have a drink, get you warmed up and cheered up huh?”

             
The man smiled. “Okay.” He released himself from the railings and slowly turned, facing back towards the bridge.

             
“What’s your name by the way?” Michael asked.

             
“Me? I’m--” his foot slipped on the rain soaked lip. Michael saw the horror explode on his face as he felt himself falling backwards. He reached out for the railing; Michael reached out for the flailing hands, neither connected. The man fell backwards. The final thing Michael saw were his feet kicking aimlessly in the dark, before his body disappeared into the blackness.

             
He ran to the edge to look down, hoping the suicidal man had managed to somehow grasp onto the ledge. A heavy splash below indicated otherwise.              

             
“Shit,” Michael spat, staring into the gloom. “What a fucking shame.”

             
“Ian,” a voice from beside him said.

             
The jumper was standing next to him, a look of serenity on his face as he joined him in peering over the side. “My name is Ian,” he repeated. “What’s yours?”

             
“Michael.”

             
“Nice to meet you Michael. Want to go for that drink now?”

4

             
Michael cut a sullen figure as he sombrely trudged towards the centre of town. He took the route that led from its top to its centre, a twisting road that cut down a steep hill and was boarded by a line of poorly maintained houses and hollowed-out shops and businesses.

             
He lifted his head to acknowledge the people he passed. A part time prostitute; a full time drug addict. A kid without a future; a mother without a care.

             
Further down he saw his old friend Del walking towards him. He had his arm snaked over the shoulders of an attractive, intelligent looking woman. They were both smiling, happy with each other’s company, as they strode up the sloping pavement.

             
He hadn’t seen his old friend for years and in that time he had aged, but he had aged well. He was still a good looking man; his youthful sprite had been replaced with wizened handsomeness. The years had treated him well.

             
He didn’t live in Brittleside and wasn’t on Michael’s radar. He had moved to a better place to live a better life and he had someone to live that life with.

             
Michael passed them with a glance and a longing smile, allowing it to linger for longer than he intended. Del gave him a nod in return, a brief and friendly recognition to acknowledge a stranger. He didn’t see the friend he had spent most of his youth with, he didn’t see the spirited young man who had nearly gotten him killed on a number of occasions and yet loved him like a brother, he saw a stranger, a random, insignificant nobody.

             
When he brushed past Michael the sullen reaper released a drawn-out sigh, allowing the memories that had rapidly reformed at the sight of his old friend to fade into his breath and disperse.

****

             
The main street that snaked through the centre of Brittleside was a boarded up shadow of its former self, or so Michael had been told many times. It was how he had always known it to be: rundown, empty, grimy and dilapidated. He didn’t doubt that at one time the buildings had been open and the street had thrived with life and activity, but the only difference between now and thirty years ago were an extra board or two.

             
He checked his timer anxiously. He was late. He was rarely late, but when he was it didn’t usually matter, the dead had nowhere to go, and they couldn’t go anywhere when he wasn’t around to guide them. There was nothing stopping him from going home and leaving a spirit of the recently deceased to wander aimlessly around his own place of death, and it had been known to happen to far more experienced reapers than Michael, but the people at the top, whoever they were, wouldn’t be impressed. He needed to make as many good impressions as he could, otherwise
he’d
be the one stuck patrolling those streets, left to wonder aimlessly around the spot where he allowed his eternal soul to die the night he agreed to immortality.

             
He picked up his pace when he saw the entrance to the park. A night-time rain and a light morning shower had sprinkled the grass with tips of dew that spat at the bottom of his jeans as he walked, soaking them by the time he reached his destination.

             
He saw the body first. The man had been shot a dozen times, his wounds filled with drying blood which had painted the moist grass green underneath his thick figure.

             
He checked his timer again. On it were the vague details of every death he had to deal with in the coming days, every soul that was about to commit itself to the afterlife. The rest, the semantics of death, came through an intuition that coursed through Michael like a second soul. There were exceptions of course, only on rare occasions could he anticipate murder, where the free will of others was involved, and that rarity faded to an impossibility when the hand of immortals, or non-humans, played a part.

             
In thirty years he had been to less than fifty murders, and he had only foreseen two of them: a drug deal turned violent and a drunken domestic which had resulted in a beaten wife stabbing her abusive husband. For the others, the timer flashed him a warning moments before the event, giving him a matter of minutes to get to get to the scene and transport the soul. Although it didn’t matter if he was late. More than once he had taken his time to drag his weary self to the scene after being woken by the dreading chirp of the timer.

             
He glanced around. He expected to see the soul hovering over his body, but there was no one there. If he had wandered off he would return. Like a murderer to the scene of the crime, they always came back, but Michael couldn’t afford to wait around. He had been around enough murder scenes to know that people had a way of ignoring him; it wasn’t that he was invisible, they could see him and he was sure they had, but they seemed almost entranced by his presence. He could step back, blend in with a waiting crowd and chat amongst the people there, but if he was found standing over the body looking suspicious, he was ignored.