Gilly Flower Writings

Death on the Street

By Kathryn Evans

I never expected to meet Death walking down the street one night. But then I also never expected Death to be a gloomy looking fellow with sickly skin and pale, stringy hair. His clothes may once have been nice and impressive, but now they were worn and a little ratty-looking. The cuffs of his sleeves were frayed and his shirt was missing a few buttons. The street lamps did not exactly cast him in the most flattering light, either.

When I saw Death I stopped. He didn’t need to introduce himself because you always know Death when you see him. We stared at each other for a while and then Death sighed. It was the most melancholy sound I had ever heard.

We stared at each other for a while longer before I tentatively asked, “Is there something I can do for you?”  One should always be polite, even when confronted with Death.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” His voice was just as melancholy as everything else about him.

“Forgive me for prying. It’s just that you seem a little down.”

“Well, how would you be if you had to spend eternity taking away people’s lives?”

“Good point,” I said thoughtfully.

“I mean, you get over the guilt after the first thousand years or so. But still, after a while all the screaming and hysterics can really get to you. It’s the worst when they start to beg. It’s not like I really have a choice in this, you know? When it’s your time to go you gotta go and I’m just doing my job.”

“Have you ever thought about quitting?”

“Oh, sure. But who would do my job then? We can’t just have people living forever. Things would get crowded, Medicare would be ridiculous, and who really wants all those old people walking around all the time.”

“I see your point.”

“But it is so hard to find a good replacement. It’s not easy being Death. Some guys think they can cut it, but after taking the lives of a few million people they all break down. The massacres alone tend to wear them down very quickly.”

“I bet. Sounds like a tough job. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

Death gave me a strange look that I didn’t particularly care for.

“You know, I don’t even get vacations,” he said. “I’d give anything to spend just a week in the tropics somewhere. Kicking back and drinking Mai Tais poolside. I really think I could get back into my job if I could just take some time off for a while to relax.”

I didn’t really have a good feeling about where this conversation was headed. Of course, when you are chatting with Death it is hard to imagine that it will end well for you, anyway. But I had the distinct feeling that Death had an idea in his head that did not bode well for me.

Death gave me another one of those strange looks. “You ever thought about going into the business of taking people from this mortal coil?”

“I thought you said most people couldn’t cut it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be for eternity. Just long enough for me to have a little vacation.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I really like the idea of damning people.”

“You aren’t damning people. You are just taking their mortal lives. It’s up to someone else entirely about where they go after that.”

“I see.”

“Look, here’s the deal. I need a vacation, but someone has to do my job while I’m gone. You’ve got a bad deal, anyway, because if you don’t do this I’ve still gotta take you. But this way, you just do some work for me and maybe when you are done I forget about you for a while. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. True, I wasn’t really ready to go with Death myself, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do his job. I thought about every person I had ever known, from my best friend to my highschool math teacher to the kid who sold me coffee every day. I thought about what it would be like to take the life of someone I knew and whether it would be harder than if it was a complete stranger.

Could I walk up to the guy at the corner shop where I buy my cigarettes and say, “Hey, you’re going to have a heart attack and die now.”? What if he had three little kids at home that I had just deprived of the family’s sole income? But if he was going to die anyway, whether I was the one to do it or not, would that make a difference?

And as I considered all of the moral ramifications, I realized that I had already decided to do it. I couldn’t really tell you why, except that I kind of felt sorry for Death. He was such a sad-looking fellow and obviously hadn’t had a break in a long time.

And if it was only for a week or two…

“Alright, I’ll do it,” I said. Because sometimes you just can't turn away Death.