I got up, went to the window and looked out. He was my friend, yeah, but I closed the window after him nonetheless. I liked him, Death. Not sure I trusted him, though. Besides, everything seems creepier in the middle of the night, am I right?
Back to sleep and the next thing I remember is waking up to my Da screaming. I jumped out of bed like it was on fire and ran down the hall to my folks’ room, saw the old man bent over the bed, hysterical.
Mum had died in the night.
Heart failure, just like Mrs. Haberdash, the piano tutor. Very rare, apparently. Unusual, they said after, when the doctors got to her. I thought but didn’t say, Yeah, tell that to Haberdash. It was becoming his specialty for those more sudden rug pulls, I suppose.
Obviously, I was pissed off. I tried to confront him about it, ask him why he didn’t at least warn me. Told him I thought we were mates. Told him what’s the point of being best friends with someone if they can’t pull you a solid every now and then? Ain’t that what friends are for? Jesus, would it have killed him to do me one favor, and let my ma be alive? I missed her. Cried and cried for days, for fuck sake.
He showed at the funeral, and I couldn’t stay upset. It was big of him, and if I’m being honest, I was glad he was there. So I let it slide, and we came to an understanding about certain things.
“We all go alone, John,” he said during the viewing, when we were sitting in the car park tossing pebbles at the hearse’s hubcaps. “Ain’t nothing changing that.”
“Not you, eh?” I said, not even sure if I was right about that one. “Immortal, et cetera.”
He didn’t say anything.
“And besides,” I continued, “we don’t go alone, do we? You’re there.”
He shook his head, whispered to me quietly as if we were talking during a eulogy. “No one ever sees me, mate. See, I step in right after. Well, sort of. I mean, I’m there when they, you know…”
I nodded, not saying it aloud on account of it’d be bad taste, being Mum’s funeral.
“Anyway, we all go alone. Even me. My job is more along the lines of guidance, see? If it weren’t for me, fuckin’ souls would be stuck in a dead body for eternity, and who’d want that?”
I shook my head, frowned. “Not me, that’s for fuckin sure.”
“Exactly,” he said, and patted my hand with his cold one. I looked at him and he was smiling. I didn’t trust that smile, and I can’t say I rightly believed him about that “not being part of the dying” bit, but what was I gonna do? Call him a liar? He was my best mate. And besides, we all got jobs to do, and not one of us likes ‘em. So I let it drop.
A YEAR LATER he took cousin Bernie, who I used to play lawn darts with, and who’d once put one right through my foot after an argument about whether I had or had not seen his girlfriend naked when she and I played doctor a few years back (I had). When Bernie was killed, I was better about not holding it against Death. Helped that he didn’t need to climb through my room for access, but I also like to feel I’d grown a bit wiser.
Besides, Bernie died in a wreck. Where I come from that’s pretty much natural causes. The roads are shite.
DEATH AND I decided to attend university together, neither of us much liking the idea of having to go it alone, at least that first year. We were both outcasts, see. Me because I was skinny and tall and had a dead tooth I refused to have pulled. He because, well, the obvious I suppose. Although his job never really bothered me (outside of his killing my ma), so our not being all that liked, or popular, certainly aided the strength of our friendship.
At university things went along as they did for anyone. We each made new friends, but stayed close nonetheless. When one of the guys in Death’s new circle hung himself over a girl, some of the others held him accountable, or at least culpable, and he fell out a bit with that group. So it was important to him that he and I stayed tight, as sort of a fall back I imagine, but I had no problem with it. He was my fall back, as well. That’s what best friends are for, init?
It was near the end of our second year that he came to me one morning, head bowed, and asked to speak with me in private. It gave me a bad feeling, and my guts were found to be right a few minutes later when he told me.
Turned out my da was to be taken later that day.
“He’s gonna choke on a lambchop bit,” Death said. “At dinner, alone. I’m sorry. But,” he continued, almost excitedly, “I wanted to give you a heads up, you know? So that you wouldn’t be sore, like last time.”
I nodded and took it all in. I loved my da, and would miss him horribly. I wasn’t sure what the world was going to look like without my parents, both dying so young, so tragically. Still, it was aces of him to tell me ahead of time.
“Can I call him? Just… say hello one last time?”
Death looked at me, met my eyes kinda funny, very serious like. “You can’t warn him,” he said. “It won’t matter, anyway.”
“I know,” I said. “I won’t.”
He kept looking at me a minute, and just as I was getting a creepy-crawly sensation up my spine, he smiled and nodded, put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Sure, mate. I’ll step out, give you some privacy. I got a thing to do, anyway.”
So I called Da, and just asked him how he was doing. If he was holding up all right. It was a nice talk, one of the nicer we’d ever had. We each told the other that we loved them, and part of me wondered if maybe he knew, if maybe… well, he knew who my friends were, didn’t he?
I did inquire, albeit seamlessly into the rest of the conversation, if his insurance was paid up (it was).
I hung up and started packing. A few days later, I was at his funeral, Death at my side.
AFTER A FEW awkward encounters with the opposite sex, and after much comparing of notes, Death and I both found girls to mess with at school. He more than I, however.
Death didn’t have as much trouble with the ladies as I did (dead tooth, etc.). He had the goth girls pretty much wrapped around his finger, and no one ever dared mess with him at parties, and he often had his drinks bought for him at the pub by some bloke attempting to bribe his good graces. But the girls he attracted were thrill-seekers for the most part, and never stuck. He was just another cock, after all, and whenever he’d be dumped we’d get a pint and laugh about it. Still, I knew it made him sad, and that he’d genuinely liked one or two of the girls, so I did my best to cheer him up if I could.
“Don’t matter,” he’d say, after three or four drinks. “Like I always tell you, we all die alone in the end, I can fucking guarantee you that, my friend.”
It made me sad when he talked about death, which I know is stupid, or ironic, but he had a way of speaking on the subject with such authority that it never came off as small talk as it might with other folks. When he spoke on it, he knew of what he was talking about, that’s for damn sure. So it gave some weight, you know? Like a weatherman on about global warming. Just rings more true, yeah? Authorities and such.
