“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
My father used to teach me many things. Everything from sizing up people to running a business. For someone so busy, he never failed in his duty toward me. “Live your life to the fullest Van,” he would often say, “that you won’t leave this earth with a shred of regret.”
I have no regrets, and I’ve never once apologized for anything I’ve done. I’ve had my share of difficult choices, but I’ve always borne the consequences of my own decisions, good or bad.
But the choice that faced me this time was nonsensical; bordering on the insane. It had no precedent, and certainly no amount of experience during my lifetime could have ever prepared me for it.
I had asked the right questions of course. Donnie Hunter’s daughter was no fool, despite everything else that anyone might have said.
“And what good will that possibly bring?” I remember asking.
“You get your wish, Cherie. A chance to come back, a chance to right the wrongs. Most importantly,” said Death with a grin, “you get to see your precious Daniel one more time.”
“Why?” I had asked the obvious question.
“Alas, Cherie, the ‘Why’ is not part of the terms of our agreement,” said Death with an almost comical look on his face. “You do not question my judgement, or my intentions,” he said again, waving his hands with the flourish of a seasoned performer. “I shall reveal those at a time of my choosing. For now, you merely answer, ‘yes’, or ‘no’.”
“Well that makes little sense,” I said. “How can I agree to something I don’t fully understand?”
“Ah, ma Cherie,” Death said again with a smile, ”I had thought you to be smarter than that. And certainly,” he breathed in slowly through his nose, eyes closed as if savoring the moment. “I did not expect you to question benevolence when it raises it pretty little head,” he said, and there was that look of gravity upon his beautiful face once more. “Do not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“And what exactly is the price I have to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?” I asked.
“Why, your immortal soul of course,” Death had said it with a casual nonchalance.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, it is just my immortal soul after all,” I said. There was something comically tragic about the whole thing.
“But you get to stay on, Cherie,” Death said with a gleam in his eye. The darkness was still all around him. What little light there was seemed to bend and contort all around him now. “In exchange for having given up on the judgement of heaven, you shall exist as I do: beyond the confines of your old life, but never quite ascending to the next. You shall receive, as they say, a new life.”
“Fine. I accept,” I said simply.
Death’s face lit up. “Marvelous!” He walked up to me and vigorously shook my hand. I half rolled my eyes again, wondering just exactly what it was that I had accepted.
“What now?” I had asked, staring Death coolly in the eye. I have made some rather large gambles in my life. Retaining ownership of the company was one. My grandmother wanted me to get out of the business, to live my own life outside of Hunter Robotics. “The business ruined your father’s life, dear,” she often said. “He gave every bit of himself to it, and it ate him alive.”
She was right, I knew. I watched my father go from a young man full of dreams and ideals, to a harsh, broken man; someone who had made far too many difficult choices. Donovan Hunter was a man who both was loved, and despised. Hunter Robotics furthered the future of mankind, it was a slogan he had used many times. The marketing minds at Hunter Robotics had come up with it. My father drank his own Kool-Aid of course, not realizing what the implications would be in his own life. There were many who questioned the very ethics of what my Father was doing.
“You’re spacing out again, Cherie. Is that something you do often?” Death snapped me out of my reverie. “It is, shall I say, quite unbecoming of the dead…”
He proceeded to walk toward me, smiling mischievously as he moved behind me. I felt more than a little uncomfortable, knowing who it was that stood behind me.
“You had asked a question, cherie, and I was answering,” he said, walking slowly, purposefully, as he went behind me and placed both hands upon my shoulders.
“I shall make it easy,” he said with a whisper. “I am tired, Cherie,” he said again. “I need someone else to help with my job.” Death looked at me again and tipped his Fedora.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said looking at him again.
“Why’s that?” he asked, a puzzled look upon his face.
“Because it makes you look human,” I had said.
“Is that a bad thing?” Death countered.
“It is, because you aren’t,” I shot back.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist,” said Death.
“Come again?”
“From ‘The Usual Suspects’,” said Death. “Great movie. You should see it. It’s very enlightening, you see.”
“Ok, you go from mentioning a Victrola, to talking about popular culture. Besides, the Grim Reaper watching movies? I am so close to going over the deep end right now, it’s not even funny,” I said. I really wanted to cry in that instant, but the strong part of me wouldn’t allow it. The world would never know Vanessa Hunter to be weak.
“Let’s play a game!” Death exclaimed.
“A game?” I was getting impatient as well.
“Let’s play, ‘What did Vanessa gain?’”
I sighed. “Yes, let’s do that. What exactly did I gain?”
Death moved swiftly; far too quickly for any human. Before I knew, it his hands were at my throat. But it was strange, for I had reacted faster than I thought I could ever have. I had taken his wrists, almost instinctively, and I had never known myself to be physically strong, but I swear, I had taken his wrists with my hand, and hurled him, twenty, no, thirty feet away into the concrete wall., where he struck it with great speed. I had sent Death hurtling into the wall of the alleyway.
Death stood up, dusted himself, the black suit looked considerably worse for wear, but he brushed it off with a more than casual nonchalance, even smiling despite himself.
“What have you done to me?” I asked.
“Nothing, Cherie,” he had responded with an almost innocent smile, “nothing at least, that you haven’t agreed to.” He tipped his hat at me and moved toward me, this time with greater speed. He closed the thirty-foot gap like it was nothing, and he didn’t pull punches this time.
I saw his fists coming at me, but they felt caught in time. I could see every minute detail: his skin, the knuckles when he balled his hands into fists. I could feel the air being displaced around me. It felt unreal; the only thing that made me believe otherwise was that I could feel the ferocity of each blow that I parried, I knew the deadly force behind each strike.
There was a grace in Death’s movements; almost as if I were watching a ballerino perform before a captivated crowd. Every movement was refined, purposeful; executed with a flair that bordered on the erotic, something that awoke something primal in me. I responded of course, with my own movements, answering his attack with a ferocity of my own that took me aback.
I danced with Death.
As the world around me shut down and forgot me, I danced in the valley of the shadow of Death. I found my movements matching his, almost by instinct. Ironically, I felt tragically beautiful; like a gazelle whose life was about to end in the Sahara. Those who have said that there is no beauty in death have never been to the plains of Africa. I found my movements unimpeded by the laws of physics. I felt unfettered by the rules of the mortal world I had left behind. I felt free.
I have practiced Martial Arts since I was little. My father had insisted on it. “You’ll need to know how to defend yourself, Van,” he had said. “I won’t always be around to protect you.”
This experience wasn’t even remotely close to that. The speed at which I had reacted to Death’s attack had no precedent in the realm of human experience. I noticed every little detail. I even noticed water dripping from the gutter to my right, knew that it had rained the night before and had accurately predicted the amount of rainfall that the city had received.
The strangest thing wasn’t that I was noticing all this detail, it was that I was observing all this in the midst of such a heated conflict.
Death reached out toward me with both hands in a surprising show of speed. He took my shoulders and slammed me against the concrete. I braced for the impact; felt the sheer force, as my body connected against the unyielding concrete. I cringed as I waited for my bones to give.
Physics was a rather simple process. When one object collides against another object - all forces being equal - the weaker object gives way to the stronger object. I heard a crumbling noise behind me, the concrete yielding to my body instead of the other way around. I felt no pain whatsoever.
Death moved his face close to mine and smiled. “Yes, dear Vanessa,” he said smiling. “You feel the power, no?”
He set me down. I looked behind me and saw I had displaced a rather large portion of the wall.
Death smiled again. “Now we shall play another game!”
I barely had time to react when I saw Death take off at superhuman speed. I did my best to follow, scrambling behind him in desperation.
I should not have worried.
Within moments, I realized I was keeping up, and not only that, I was barely breaking into a sweat.
We had exited the narrow alleyway and found ourselves back onto the streets of Esplanade Avenue with its quaint homes and rich history. I noticed the night had fully taken over, it was dark everywhere I looked. I didn’t notice any people, but that might have been because of the speed we traveled at. Everything was a blur. I scarcely had the time to notice it myself, but my legs were carrying me upward, along the walls of buildings, homes, over any obstacle that seemed to be in my path. Building, tree, monument or highway, I propelled myself forward with the ease a young girl running along the beach.
I felt reborn. In a way, I had freed myself from my mortal coil. I revelled in my newfound abilities, jumping from building to building, unfettered by the laws of physics.
We crossed Treme at great speed, I barely noticed our passing, and entered the French Quarter. My eyes saw everything and nothing. I found that although I could will my eyes to focus on details, I could just as easily shut off the ability to do so. I knew I wasn’t intentionally observing all this: my instincts had taken over. My vision warped around me. Buildings, lights and colors sped past me and I cared not. I was unafraid too, despite the incredible speed at which I was traveling.
We reached an open area in the French Quarter. Death stopped abruptly as we reached it, and I had to grab onto one of the streetlights for support, stopping myself so I wouldn’t run into the glass walls of a nearby jewelry store. Death stood there, quietly, unmoving. There was not a soul in sight.
It was then that I first noticed something in the shadows just beyond us. I saw it first crawling along the wall of a narrow alley, moving swiftly, sliding down the gutters. It had something in its hands. A small animal maybe? The thing placed the small animal on the pavement and moved in. I heard sounds; gnashing and crunching. Whatever that thing was, it was feeding on the small animal.
“What is that?” I asked, staring at the abomination in revulsion.
A smile crossed Death’s lips. “Your first real-world training opportunity.”
“You’re answering in riddles again,” I said.
Death breathed in deep. “Vampire, Class D. Mostly harmless. Feeds on small animals; or the occasional woman or child.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“They don’t call me Grim for no reason, cherie.”
“How can you know for certain?”
“Only two things certain in life: Death, and Taxes,” said Death as he smiled cheerfully at me.
“Ba dum tsh. And I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Well, dear Vanessa, it’s now or never isn’t it?” Death asked. He looked grim once again. The joke was on me, but neither of us was laughing at the moment.
“What do I have to do?” I asked, afraid of the answer I knew was coming.
“There are those in this world that live beyond death. Spectres, Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts. They live just beyond boundaries of life; just below the judgement of the divine,” Death said slowly, almost as if he were relishing the moment.
“My job…” he paused just then, I wasn’t sure if it was for effect or if he was genuinely reaching for the right words to say. “Our job,” he said finally, “is to ensure that those who live beyond Death are brought to justice.”
“You’re saying I’ve got to kill that thing.”
Death tipped his Fedora at me. “Yes Ma’am.”
I took Death’s coat just then and grabbed him by his bespoke lapels and said, “I’m doing this for Daniel. Don’t you forget it.”
Death winked back at me. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, cherie.”
I breathed in deep, closed my eyes and charged full tilt.
Under the cover of darkness, the creature didn’t appear so repulsive. But as I neared it, I saw the details that the blackness had hidden from me. The creature had pale flesh, almost translucent against the glow of a nearby streetlight. I could see the purple veins popping from its forehead.
The creature noticed my advance. It reared its head - it’s prey forgotten for the moment - as it bared fangs at me. I noticed the dreadful protrusions from its mouth, the spittle spraying from its unnaturally red lips. The eyes were red, glowing in the darkness like cats’ eyes.
It felt like an eternity, but I finally connected. I felt revulsion as my fist came into contact with the creature’s face. I felt its bones fracture against the impact of my blow.
I sent the creature flying into a brick wall. It hit the wall like a rag doll and I thought the fight was over, but it landed on its feet with the grace of a cat. It screeched, a high pitched howl that didn’t sound like any animal I’ve ever encountered, and suddenly I felt afraid. I saw it move with great speed crawling on all fours along the walls of the alley.
I gave chase of course, moving along the walls as I set my sights on my target. The creature was now jumping from rooftop to rooftop as I earnestly tried to follow. It was afraid too, I realized. It was trying to distance itself from me.
I doubled my efforts, moving faster and faster. The creature got desperate; it made its way toward St. Louis Cathedral, with its three tall spires pointing upward at the sky; looking like a miniature castle in the distance. We both paused momentarily as we reached it, standing just below the first spire looking upward at the heavens. The irony was not lost on me of course - two beings beyond death looking up at God’s divine benevolence.
I saw my opportunity arise as I saw the creature scale the walls. I knew the spires would work against it. I only hoped Death was right about the Class D Vampires. I followed closely behind, gradually guiding it toward the first spire in the hopes it would take the bait. The vampire reached the first spire, and climbed.
I smiled. The creature was stupid.
The vampire immediately began to slide downward, losing control.
I quickly scaled the walls, jumping up to meet the creature, flying fifty feet into the air to swiftly to catch the creature as it fell. My right hand closed in upon the creature’s skull, feeling the soft skin again as I cringed in revulsion. I grit my teeth and tightened my grip. I already had a plan - all I had to do was execute it.
I exerted force, my fingernails digging deep into the creature’s flesh. It screamed, a high pitched voice that sounded desperate, but I was unyielding. We approached the concrete street, two hundred and twenty six feet straight down. I slammed the creature’s face into the pavement. I felt flesh and bone yield, the bone fracturing into a hundred pieces as I introduced the creature to the pavement. I already knew it was dead long before it slammed into the concrete. Something within me just knew.
I was breathing heavily, still high on the adrenaline from the conflict.
Death was beside me again. “Well done, cherie,” he said. “And now for the important part.” He handed me a long scythe, black and heavy, a deep, weighted blade protruding from its end.
“It’s coming,” he said, pointing toward the creature that was now a crumpled heap on the street.
I looked at the creature closer and noticed nothing for a moment. Then I saw it. The creature’s body turned hazy for an instant, as if everything around it was getting displaced, its outline shimmering just like Death’s own outline had done when I first observed it. Then it came, a black, hazy, mist. It hovered in the air like vapor, staying just in front of me.
“A soul.” Death whispered it to me. “Go ahead, cherie. Take your scythe and reap the soul.”
For some reason, I needed no instruction. I knew what I had to do. I breathed in deep, pulled the scythe back and swung it at the soul. The ethereal mist caught on the scythe, clinging to it like cotton candy. The scythe glowed brightly for a few moments. Then the light spread to myself. I felt a sudden surge of incredible power, as if every cell in my body were exploding, becoming reborn. I felt like I was about to shoot off into the sky with exhilaration. Then it was over and I was once more left standing on the streets of the French Quarter.
“Congratulations, Vanessa. You have successfully activated.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are now an Angel of Death,” he said smiling. “When you reap a soul for the first time, your latent abilities will activate. The next Class-D you encounter will no longer be a match for you. You now have the powers of Death at your disposal.”
“I thought we were supposed to take souls for judgment,” I asked, puzzled at that statement. The French Quarter had come back to life it seemed. I now saw cars, people, animals. Concerned about someone noticing us, I quickly turned toward the Class-D vampire I had just slain, but the body had already turned to dust on the street and was slowly getting blown away by the wind.
“We are supposed to take souls whose time has come for judgment, cherie. Souls have colors. A light colored soul represents one whose life was lived justly. When it comes time for judgment, that soul is likely to ascend into the life beyond.”
Death took me aside for a moment. “Red souls are for the wicked. They will most likely enter damnation. But,” Death smiled at me and pointed upwards. “His judgment is divine. A red soul must still ascend upward to receive its final judgment. Not all red souls are damned and not all white souls will ascend to the life beyond.”
I nodded. I was slowly coming to understand. “And what about black souls?”
Death grinned. “Black souls are past the judgment of the divine. They cannot ascend into heaven and they cannot be received into hell.” Death opened his palm toward me. “Hand me your Scythe,” he instructed.
I noticed my scythe had contracted, disguised now as a short, black rod; nondescript. I handed it to Death.
“This,” said Death waving the rod at me. “Is our tool. The scythe reaps the souls that are left on this earth. We must purge these souls before they become too many. Too many dark souls upsets the energy balance on this earth. You and I are tasked with setting things right.”
“What color was my soul?” I asked, suddenly feeling a burning desire to hear the answer to that one.
Death handed me back my scythe and placed his hands on my shoulders once more. He was grinning wider than I had ever seen him grin.
“Well, you see cherie, that’s just the thing that makes you special to me. Your soul didn’t have a color.”
----
Ok, what did you guys think of this action update? Action enough for everyone? :D
By the way, I'm still searching for a last name for Daniel. The winner of my last one got a dedication. Pick a nice last name for me and get a dedication (and a shout out if you like)!
Also, who's got a theory on why Vanessa's soul doesn't have a color?
Vote? Comment? Vote and Comment? LOL!