One moment, we were in his living room. The next, we were outside.
With just the snap of his fingers, he’d transported us to the place I died. There weren’t even any fancy effects to indicate we did anything except for the slight breeze that ruffled my hair.
He looked around the scene before turning to say something to me, but I beat him to it.
By throwing up.
He stepped aside just in time to avoid it hitting his shoes but he still sent a glare my way before putting on his sunglasses. “You could’ve warned me at least,” he said in that annoying voice of his.
I sent him a glare which he returned before rolling his eyes. He turned his gaze back to the ground and started looking for whatever he expected to find here.
It surprised me to see that everything was already cleaned up. From just looking around from the side of the road you wouldn’t be able to tell someone died here.
How much time even passed since the accident?
“Hey, Death?” I called out. He’d wandered off to the other side of the road when I wasn’t looking. Surprisingly, there weren’t any cars headed this way at all which gave us the full freedom to explore.
“Death,” I called out again when he didn’t reply.
“I heard you the first time,” he yelled back. “Just say whatever you need to say or shut up.”
He was lucky he was so fine-looking because his personality certainly wasn’t doing him any favors.
“How much time has passed since the crash?”
“Almost a day now,” he replied.
I had only been dead for a day and they had already cleaned up any and all evidence of my demise. Whoever was in charge of the cleanup sure had been thorough.
I walked around the grassy patch next to the road pretending I knew what we were looking for. In the end, I just found a whole lot of grass and rocks. I sighed before I started walking towards where Death was scanning the patch of grass on the other side of the road.
I looked both ways before crossing before realizing how stupid it was. I didn’t know if I could die again but I was sure Death would be very annoyed with me if he had to retrieve me again and I didn’t want to deal with that.
I made it halfway over the asphalt when something shiny caught my eye. I walked in the direction of the object and bent down to pick it up.
Upon closer inspection, it was just a torn piece of black fiberglass. Shiny on one side and rough on the other. Death suddenly appeared in front of me, startling me.
I let out a yelp and almost threw the piece away out of reflex. At the very last moment, I managed to grab hold of it again and clutched it to my chest.
“Is it really that hard to just walk?”
He ignored my question and instead gestured for the item in my hand, “What did you find?”
I held it out for him to take it but it quickly became clear he wasn’t too impressed with my find. “Great, you found a piece of plastic.”
“I think it’s a piece of the car that hit me,” I explained. He still looked at me like I was stupid, causing my temper to flare up again. “At least I actually found something, unlike some people.”
“I’ve found plenty of trash on my side of the road, I just didn’t pick it up.”
“What are you even looking for, then? A note stapled to a tree telling you where they went?”
He didn’t seem too inclined to answer me, which made me a lot angrier than one of his snotty remarks. My hands involuntarily balled into fists before I remembered to calm myself down as my therapist had taught me. I refused to let my anger issues get the best of me, not in front of him. So I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to calm down.
Violence is never the answer, they’d always tell me.
Unless you’re trying to win a boxing match.
“Are you always like this?” he asked in an amused tone. I did my best to ignore it. When I felt like I was calm enough to not throw fists at the first sight of him I opened my eyes and blinked up at him.
“What next, then?”
To his credit, he did ignore my major moodswing. But then again, he ignored a lot of things all the time.
“Examine your corpse, I suppose.”
I laughed. He didn’t. I stopped laughing.
“Wait, what?”
“You still have a mortal body left on this earth, in a nearby morgue if we’re going to be precise. Let’s see if we can find anything there, besides trash.”
I didn’t know what to say. I certainly wasn’t ready to face my body.
“With trash I meant you.”
I blinked up at him and within a second the mocking glint in his golden eyes had disappeared. “You can wait outside if you want to,” he offered up.
He must’ve seen the fear on my face, then. I nodded at him but didn’t feel like bantering anymore. I just wanted this to be over with.
“Okay, don’t throw up on me when we get there,” was all he said before he snapped his fingers.
I was glad I didn’t promise him anything because as soon as the scenery around us changed I felt whatever contents my ghost body held come up again. Whether he had meant to warp us next to a trash can or not I didn’t know but I was grateful I had something to hold on to as I threw up in it.
“How am I even puking if my body is in there?” I asked him meekly while pointing toward the brick building in front of us.
“I don’t know,” he said simply, causing me to glare at him.
“Listen,” he started coolly, “I’m just a guy trying to do his job, alright? I don’t make the rules and I sure as hell don’t know all of them. So are you done puking?”
He walked away before I could even begin to answer him, the asshole. Since I didn’t know how to navigate this world as an undead entity I had no choice but to follow him. To my surprise, he didn’t just snap us straight into the freezer or wherever they stored bodies.
Instead, he walked up to the front desk. The girl sitting behind it noticed him right away, and how couldn’t she? The guy was better looking than any model I’ve ever seen. Besides, she hadn’t experienced his personality yet.
He threw her a blinding smile and I could see her eyes light up immediately.
“Hi! Can I help you?” she asked him before he was even able to reach the front desk. I doubted she had even noticed me walking behind him yet.
“Hi, I’m officer McLeod, this is my partner officer Blake,” he said while gesturing to me. Her eyes landed on me but were immediately back on him again. She looked so fast I don’t even think she knows what I look like. “We’d like to examine a body that’s stored here,” he finished.
“Oh, sure! No problem,” she said in a sugary sweet voice while still holding onto that tight smile of hers. “Can I see your badges, please?”
Badges? We didn’t have any.
I was prepared to sprint away as fast as I could but Death just held up a badge. Of course, he could just materialize stuff, I should’ve expected it by now.
The woman glanced briefly at his badge before looking expectantly at me. My eyes shot up at Death because unlike some people in this room, I wasn’t an actual wizard.
“Well?” she said impatiently like I was keeping her from staring at Death some more.
“I- uh,” I started before Death interrupted me. “Your badge, Blake,” he said while pointing at my left hand. I looked down to find myself holding an actual police badge.
I could deal with his wizarding stuff but this was downright getting spooky.
“Right, here you go,” I said as I held it out. She barely even looked at it before nodding and telling us, “It’s in room four.”
Death thanked her with more politeness than I expected him to and I wondered if he had to charge his politeness-meter before he could say something polite.
I followed him down a grimly lit hallway and kept as close to him as possible. It wasn’t that I was scared, of course not. I was just being careful.
“You’re a terrible actor,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah, well, not everyone can pull a police badge right out of their ass.”
His booming laughter filled the hallway and I was sure he didn’t laugh because I was funny. “You should’ve seen your face when you noticed you were holding it,” he managed to get out in between his laughter.
I glared at him like I did a lot lately. I just hoped my skin wouldn’t permanently crinkle in those places.
We stopped in front of a door with a small ‘4’ next to it and my heart suddenly sped up. If my tattered clothes were any indication of how I looked I didn’t want to see it.
He looked as if he was going to say something but he stopped himself. He briefly scratched the back of his neck and I couldn’t help but think he might be feeling awkward right now. If that was even possible.
Eventually, all he said was, “I’ll be right back,” before opening the door and going through.
I managed to yell, “try not to be a creep,” just in time before the door fell closed again and I was left alone with my thoughts.
Death was an annoying asshole, but at least he distracted me from whatever was going on in my mind. I just hoped he’d come back soon.
