(TERRIBLE GRAMMAR WARNING)
1. The passing of Gerald Farimir Gunter.
Over the centuries, humans have invented various words and phrases to describe death; the black abyss, the eternal sleep from which none wake . . . and so on with the bleak imagery. But the reality is much less morbid and irrational. It would be far more accurate to describe death as a sixteen year old boy that was constantly in a foul mood . . . because Death was in fact a sixteen year old boy who liked to frown and scarcely gave anyone a grin. When he did smile it was in most probability to laugh at a small child fall down an escalator at the super- market. It could be safely said, Death was a troubled, bored and misunderstood young man. But his boredom was soon to end on what would seem to be the worst day of his life.
It rarely ever happened, but Death was lost. The rain beat down upon his angry figure as he struggled to read the map he’d taken from a passing tourist. His jaw was clenched tight, on the verge of shattering each of his teeth. He struggled to recognize even which continent he was on.
“Ok, so I want to get to Gurder Street, and I’m over here at Boscov Avenue.” He frowned.
“Why does that sound so familiar" He pondered,"Boscov- Oh Lucifer's cockles! -” he cussed and cussed and cussed some more. “I’m going around in circles! Well this is fantastic! Best day ever!”
He stormed angrily down the Avenue, mumbling profanities all the way. “I don’t even care anymore . . .” he pulled out his list of souls he had to harvest before the day was out, mumbling a few more cusses as he went. He drew a line of blood angrily across the name, ‘Gregory Alan Finch.’ “There!” he announced triumphantly. “His soul has been harvested, his name is crossed out, and it’s done.”
Evidently, Death just couldn’t be bothered anymore. He set down the scythe he was burdened to carry and plonked himself down on a nearby bench.Obviously he had stopped caring about the cold wind and rain which beat down upon him, his anger, it seemed, was keeping him warm.
“Now then who’s next . . . Patricia Harriett Cook . . . oh come on she lives at the same address?!” He sighed, looked around cautiously, and crossed out her name as well.
“JOHNNY!” Death jumped in shock at the sudden outcry of his name.
“AH! Who’s there!” He looked over his left shoulder to see a Demon- Monkey perched on the back of the bench, regarding him with his lazy emerald eyes. “Oh, it’s you Gerard . . . what the hell do you want?” he said in his usual way. Gerard twitched his long ears. “Oh I was bored back in Hell, I thought I’d see how you were going today.” His long tail grabbed death’s list, unfurling it in front of his own eyes.
“. . . 500 souls already Johnny?” He sucked on his pointed teeth.“That’s impressive, the others have only harvested around 150!” his lazy eyes slid slyly to Johnny’s face.
“Yeah well, I’m talented, what can I say.” He mumbled bitterly.
“How many of these souls did you actually harvest Johnathan?”
“All of them! You stupid monkey! I’ve just come back from . . . hum . . . Gurder Street!”
“That’s an impressive lie, Gurder streets all the way in the Southern Region! And here we are in . . . Pete . . . in the northern region! Wow! You are talented!”
“What are you talking about?! I wouldn’t lie!”
“I’ve been following you Johnathan . . .”
“ . . . Alright! I didn’t do it . . . you stalker . . .” he added spitefully.
“I wasn’t bothered to walk from the last harvest sight so I thought I’d try and teleport to Gurder Street as well . . . I guess I must’ve over shot by a couple thousand kilometres or something . . .” Gerard sighed heavily. “So what big deal! I’ll do it tomorrow!”
“ Well, the point is to do it before midnight Johnathan, if you don’t then-“
“The world will be out of balance yeah yeah, they taught us all this in prep school.”
“ Well yes that, and I was going to say you’ll lose your hood and face your final judgement, which we both know you will most likely fail.” Johnathan crossed his arms tightly across his chest.
“I forgot about that.”
“Hmm, yes, how many have you actually done?”
“. . .Just about Fifty”
“Great! Only another five hundred to go. You’d better get cracking Johnathan.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it, I always do.”
“And you always say that”
“You know I could get all those souls easy Gerard! It’s that I’m so damn sick of this position! When am I going to see some real action instead of having to deal with these idiotic humans all the time!”Gerard sighed heavily, a tiny flame igniting where he exhaled.
“I’ll tell you what Johnathan, if you can harvest 5000 souls before next Wednesday, then I’ll think of promoting you to . . .hum . . . senior . . office . . . guy . . .”
“Really!” Gerard was surprised by the amount of excitement in Johnny’s eyes. He felt a pang of guilt, rare for a Demon-Monkey.
“Uh, yeah sure.”
“I won’t let you down!”
“You better not, by the way, you have dog excrement on your shoe.”Gerard snapped his fingers and dissapeared from reality. Johnny glanced down at his shoe, which was indeed caked in canine excrements. He guessed he must have stepped in it and not noticed in his enraged state.
“Aw, Bifron's boffle. . .” It was the cherry on top of a perfect day. Johnny sighed heavily. He sometimes envied the souls whom he harvested, at least they only had to deal with Demon-monkeys whilst they were passing through head office.
Gerard was the Demon who had employed Johnny to his ‘dead’ end job in the first place. Gerard would appear to be a normal human, onyl except he had long floppy ears,sharp canine teeth, and a monkey tail, which trailed out behind him. Johnny wasn't sure if he really liked Gerard.He was nicer to him than most other Demons and he had known him since he was born into hell by his human mother . . . but then he was always bothering him to 'work' which caused a confliction of feelings. All Johnny really wanted to do was explore the world from which his mother came . . .
Johnny searched his list for a soul who was within close reason, figuring that if he wanted to get promoted he had better start small. “Gerald Farimir Gunter . . . hmm must be German.” He read “Number nineteen Boscov Avenue!” he peered carefully at the list. “Ok so he lives on this continent as well, perfect!” Johnny looked up and down the Avenue for number nineteen, and eventually found it right in front of him. “Great!” Johnny walked across the road, trying to wipe as much of the faeces onto the pavement as he could manage. He could tell the resident was old just by looking at how well kept the lawn was. He found generally the only people who had time to keep such a nice lawn were the forever alone, and the retired.
“Hello, Death here!” He called, knocking on the fly-screen door. He saw the silhouette of an old man come limping towards him. “Where the bloody hell have you been!” roared the old man through the flyscreen. “I slipped some draino into me tea, thinking, “oh, this’ll end it!” and I go and live an extra three hours! The service around here is horrible!” Johnny peered past the fly screen into Gerald’s house and could see his body, face down at the breakfast table.
“But you are dead, see there’s your body, you are just a spirit now.”
“Still! Keep us bloody waiting don’t you!”
“Alright Alright, you can complain to one of the Demon -Monkey’s when we pass through head office, but for now I just need to-“ Johnny found the oldman being rather resilient, not allowing him to open the flyscreen. “Could you let me in . . . you’ll find that if you resist it’ll impact upon your final judg-“
“I don’t bloody care about that! I’m not letting you into my house because you're all wet and covered in dog crap!”
“But you’re dead! Why does it matter!”
“I don’t want whoever finds me to think I shat myself when I carked it now do I?” Johnny growled and slammed his scythe down on the front porch. “Fine! Wait here!”
“Hurry up will you!”
Johnny could see into the apartment block next door; there was a washing machine, spinning like a great beacon of hope. A plan hatched in his mind.
(2. Lee Reason, The Timid Young Fellow)
