The day's events recounted in the style of TKJV of the Bible and a story.
From the book of VEDA THE INCOMPETENT, Chapter 11, Verses 1 through 6
AND, in the land of Ralston, adjacent to the Kingdom of Suttle, Veda, daughter of Gary and granddaughter of Bob, did take up a hammer and nails with which to hang her bitchin' new shelf, which, while magnificent and magnificently overpriced, did please her soul, for it would hold many plastic ponies and it was good.
AND Veda, granddaughter of the carpenter Bob, did take her hammer and nails, and Ralston did shake as Veda applied her tools to a wall.
LO! even after much hammering, the bitchin' shelf was still crooked, and the land was seized with dread and afflicted with a multitude of head pains.
WHY, quoth Veda, can I not hang this shelf with the ease of my grandfather, who was a carpenter, and gave unto me his talents?
AND a mighty voice did reply, and her knees did quake with fear: Thou art thy grandfather's grandchild, but thou hast not inherited his talents, for his blood doth not run in thy veins, nor doth his patience still thy hand. To hang thy shelf, take thee the level that was thy grandfather's level and make thee marks to guide thy hammer.
AND Veda did take up her grandfather's level, and she did make marks to guide her hammer, and the shelf, once placed upon the wall, was as straight as it was bitchin'.
Thus endeth the reading.
~~~~~~
Also, I have a story. This is not one of the two stories that I am writing for Katie and Molly (although I am writing them, and they are behaving badly). This is instead a story that I began many years ago--well, last December--and I thought it prudent to finish it before going on to other things (like my ethics paper! which, I should add, it slowly getting done, although it's fighting me every step of the way). It's not a great story, and I must apologize for that. There's too much exposition and character reflection, as is the case with everything I write, so... I am very sorry.
Also also, the theme is friendshippy, so it sort of fits. <3
Also also also, I couldn't be arsed to edit it (I will never be a writer, sob), so apologies on the mistake front, as well!
Title: Days in the Death
Universe: Alex's DeathVerse, post Poly!verse
Principle Characters: Penny, Bastian/Death, Elle/Life
Rating: PG
Words: 4,000+
Acknowledgments and Disclaimers: Penny is from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and belongs to Felicia Day Whedon. Death, Life, Kyle, Miranda, and basically everything that I didn't just make up all belong to Alex, because it is her universe.
Soundtrack: Vienna Teng's "The Tower." The tone only fits with part of the story, but it's a Very Penny song, I think.
Summary: After leaving the City for the Great Beyond with Bastian, Penny starts a new afterlife in the offices of Death. She might miss her friends, but Bastian, perilous office games, and ninjas keep her new existence entertaining. Also, Life and Death are pretty cool people.
*****
The hat was, ultimately, the deciding factor. Life’s offices may have had a strong, thriving community outreach program, but Death had offered Penny a rather large hat with a handsome red feather.
There were other factors involved in her decision to work for Death rather than Life, of course. Penny felt a certain sense of obligation towards Bastian (as Death preferred to be called when he wasn’t in work clothes). He had offered her a job in his office long before she had succumbed to mortality completely; he had delivered silly gifts and cock-eyed smiles and stories that never failed to make her laugh; he had taken it upon himself to escort her out of the mortal realm on his eyesore of a motorcycle, grinning all the while and regaling her with updates on his relationship with Elle (or Life, as she was most commonly known). Bastian had lined up her posthumous job interview and, Penny suspected, influenced Marcus to hire her on. She certainly wasn’t qualified to do much in the way of office work but, with Bastian’s help, her afterlife had fallen into place and all was good.
The hat was just a bonus-the icing on the proverbial cake for those who chose to work with Death. Penny preferred the impressive swashbuckler hat to the sashes that Elle decorated her own workers with. In the eternal battle between pirates and ninjas, Penny was, at heart, a pirate.
Although Penny had been sad to leave the City, her home-away-from-home since that unfortunate episode with the exploding Death Ray, she found it easy to settle into her new environment. Bastian’s boss had warmed up to Penny as soon as she had proved herself an adept filer and utterly undeterred by the minor disasters that occurred, during a good spell, on a bi-weekly basis. Within the first week after her arrival, the imposing stack of intake forms left over from the Black Death (Bastian was a good person, but his ability to keep up with paperwork left much to be desired) had been completed and sorted. It wasn’t the sort of work she was used to-that is, it didn’t involve helping the homeless or gathering signatures for petitions-but it was rewarding in its own way. She wasn’t accustomed to extinguishing small fires or cleaning up after surprise altercations with ninjas, either, but those duties too became second nature.
There were ghosts to deal with, as well. Apparitions, rather-that was the politically correct term, since not all apparitions were ghosts. An apparition could be anything that wandered into the office; sometimes they were shadowy figures with messages (usually unhappy ones condemning something or other that Bastian had done) from Eternity.
The ghosts tended to come in waves. No one, not even Bastian, liked dealing with the ghosts. When he wasn’t in, they would bemoan their fates to whoever would listen-Penny, generally, as Kyle’s skill set seemed limited to making copies and picking out belabored tunes on his sitar, and Margaret performed no function that Penny could ascertain-and complain about the various injustices that they were subjected to. Penny didn’t mind them. Most of the ghosts went back to the Great Beyond without a fuss after a good talk and some genuine sympathy on Penny’s part. The more stubborn ones had to shipped back (and although they folded up nicely, the shipping rates between levels of existence were outrageous), but everyone was much happier when they went willingly.
The office, naturally, was the most fun when Bastian didn’t need to run off and reap souls. His presence did nothing to encourage work getting done, but desk sailing and death parkour were the most incredible games Penny had ever played on any level of existence. Bastian was the best at both, of course, but, with practice, Penny became something of a pro where nautical desktop navigation was concerned. Death parkour was beyond her, however; maneuvering around the ever-dwindling stacks of paperwork, gliding across the office on wheeled chairs, and vaulting over partitions wasn’t so bad, but doing all of it with a bowl of soup in hand proved disastrous every single time. Bastian only laughed at Penny’s abysmal failures and encouraged her to practice.
Kyle mostly just hid under his desk and prayed that the copier wouldn’t be compromised by any of Bastian’s games; Margaret did her level best to ignore any and all fun as if the concept offended her. The interns, on the other hand, were generally oblivious and notoriously bad at getting out of the way.
No one in the office-Marcus included-ever seemed as pleased with Bastian’s shenanigans as Penny did.
For the most part, however, Penny’s afterlife was quite routine. She was perfectly content to file, organize, and set “Doctor Phil” to record during the day when Bastian was out, with occasional excursions to Elle’s office for the opportunity to do some good. The ninjas that worked for Life seemed to know that, in spite of her attractive pirate hat, Penny was not a part of the long-standing interoffice feud. She never saw more than glimpses of them-they were, after all, ninjas-but not a single one of them gave her trouble.
Her workload increased slightly when it was time for Bastian to do taxes. He filed both his own and Elle’s, and the paperwork involved with both was enough to make Penny thankful for her dead status. The IRS, to the best of her knowledge, was unconcerned with taxing the properly deceased.
But with Bastian occupied, the office became busier. Other Deaths were called in to handle his workload. Some of them were temps and Penny spent a good deal of time walking them through their duties (this was technically one of Margaret’s jobs, but the older woman was so unpleasant that visitors to Death’s office went well out of their ways to avoid her and her hawkish glares). Penny didn’t mind-even the most clueless of temps responded well to a little compassion and patience-but intake forms inevitably piled up when she wasn’t keeping an eye on them.
There were other small things for Penny to do on the job. They weren’t things that she had to do, Bastian said, but Penny found it very difficult to sit idly when there were potential tasks at hand. She occasionally fielded calls from Bastian’s garish pink Razr when he forgot to take it with him. Penny frequently checked on the Ebay auctions that Bastian was following, bidding when necessary to make sure he didn’t miss out on anything exciting while he was out reaping souls. It wasn’t difficult work and, in spite of her best efforts, she was typically left with extra time on her hands. Her coworkers were reluctant to talk to her but Kyle, surprisingly, was perfectly willing to engage in paper airplane wars over their cubicle partitions.
Work in the afterlife followed a typical nine to five schedule with weekends off (except when Bastian decided to throw office parties or Elle’s ninjas chose to invade during off-hours). Outside of work, Penny had a shabby apartment in a complex that was only a stone’s throw from the one that Bastian and Elle inhabited. It was nicer than her apartment in Los Angeles, and so she had no complaints. The landlord had even allowed her to adopt two cats and a dog in spite of his initially stringent no pets policy (that policy had changed abruptly after Elle’s stern talk with him which, according to Bastian, had been nothing short of epic). Thanatos and Hypnos, the stunning matching cats from Life, and Geoff, the impossibly interbred and endlessly affectionate dog from Death, were excellent company. Penny’s modest apartment felt quite homey with her three fuzzy roommates, particularly when she remembered to close the blinds to avoid witnessing the constant skirmishes between the forces of Life and Death. Bastian was out of the habit of killing the ninjas and leaving them in the dumpster that Penny could see quite well from her own apartment, but the occasional spat was unavoidable.
For all of her contentedness, however, Penny missed the friends she had left behind. She wondered how Doll was doing in their old apartment full of castoff animals. Were Babbage and Cabbage still getting along? Had John finally become friends with Tiger? Were the sheep still okay in their field? Was Doll all alone, or had she managed to find a roommate? Better yet, had any of her circus family arrived? She didn’t want to think of the young woman who had, for all intents and purposes, become her strong little sister, all alone and trying to maintain a brave face.
There was Chris, too. Leaving Chris behind had hurt more than she might have imagined. Penny had had boyfriends, of course, but Chris-there was something there that Penny wanted to hold on to. He had been so sweet and affable and endlessly kind. What he lacked in brains he more than made up for in heart. Their relationship had been going so well, too! It was slow, of course, and there wasn’t a fiery passion between them, but Penny had felt that they could have made it work. Whatever they had had was slow-burning but sustainable-not the fireworks that had characterized her brief fling with Captain Hammer. After the initial light show, that relationship had fizzled and died. With Chris, though…
She knew that dwelling on what might have been was foolish. After all, she had been dead long before Bastian had come for her on his roaring, toxic-green monster of a motorcycle. Chris had been alive. It never would have worked; there couldn’t have been a happily ever after for them because, inevitably, one of them would have had to leave.
Penny hoped that Chris remembered her. She wanted him to move on and be happy, but it hurt to think that he would go back home and forget that she had ever existed. It was an unkind thought, and one she only entertained when the nights were particularly long and dark and lonely.
All of the others she had left behind were in her thoughts, as well. She wanted to see them again, just for a moment: Rosella with her pretty smile, endless supply of puns, and stubborn unwillingness to let someone else be strong for her when need be; Euphie and her gentle helpfulness and unwavering optimism that hid a sordid past that Penny had only seen the faintest glimpses of; reckless Curt, who could be by turns the lewdest of rock legends and the most thoughtful of friends; Raikov and his surprising but genuine affection; Iroh’s wonderful tea, colorful stories, and comfortingly fatherly countenance-
But Penny was happy. Life-not capitalized-had taught her to appreciate what she could get without dwelling on what was beyond her reach, and death had shown her how many opportunities to give and care and love existed after dying. She hoped to see them again someday-all of them, including Billy and maybe even her Mom and Dad-but she was content with the existence that Bastian and Elle allowed her to enjoy on her way to that final death.
Truth be told, Penny hoped that Bastian would find a way to keep her suspended in this limbo that he and Elle occupied for many years to come. She hadn’t made many friends (it was hard to make friends in a place full of change, dissatisfied spirits, and feuds between pirates and ninjas, she had discovered), but she was very fond of Elle and Bastian alike and cherished every moment she spent with them.
True, the two could be nearly unbearable when they were together. A casual observer who happened to hear their bickering might assume that they were mortal enemies rather than a couple that defied all convention, but Penny knew better. Some couples showed their affection through gentle words and careful touches; Bastian and Elle demonstrated theirs through arguing and refusing to share the blue marker during interoffice meetings. There was something in their sniping-or so Penny fancied-that could only be called love. It was the sort of love that people who had been together for ages and had learned their partner’s minds as well as their own could manage, and she thought it was sweet.
Bastian and Elle didn’t spend too much time together. It made sense; they were both busy and, if rumors were to be believed, certain Powers weren’t too pleased with their involvement. Their breaks tended to occur at different times (a scheduling decision passed down from Eternity, according to Bastian), and so they each had their own circles of friends. Much to Penny’s surprise and delight, both were terribly tolerant of her company and sometimes invited her to tag along with them on walks or unofficial business.
Elle was fond of nature walks. Penny had heard (primarily from Bastian) that Life could be exceedingly scary when necessary, but animals of all kinds-many that Penny assumed were native to other universes, as she hadn’t encountered anything like them at home-approached Elle and let her pet them. In the winter (limbo or not, traditional seasons were observed), Elle and Penny meandered through crystallized forests hushed with a feathery dusting of snow, scraps of bread in hand for the creatures that invariably found them. It didn’t take long for the animals to decide that Penny was just as good at dispensing snacks as Elle, and both Penny and Life usually left the woods with a small string of animal followers looking for something more to eat.
At times, Elle took Penny to her tree. It was a magnificent plant with silvered boughs and delicate buds that bloomed with a touch of Life’s hand. Penny wasn’t allowed to touch, but she was perfectly capable of appreciating the beauty of the Tree of Life with her hands safe in her pockets.
They lunched by the tree sometimes-light lunches of fruits and vegetables-and Elle told Penny about her exploits with Bastian. She told Penny about the disaster of Atlantis in all of its sordid details, shaking her head fondly at the memory of Bastian’s sheepish apology after the ancient civilization sank when his well-intentioned meddling went awry. She talked about the Christmas where Santa kicked ass and she-pretty, petite Life-delivered a righteous smack down.
On days where neither had much to do, Elle liked to talk about more philosophical things-love and mortality, mostly, and the difficulties that came with being a supernatural entity with great powers and no real ability to alter the course of events. Those were quiet days, contemplative and just a little bit sad. Life could be fierce when she needed to be, but it was impossible for Penny to overlook the endlessly caring side of Elle that mourned silently for every life cut short and every heart broken by the ceaseless march of time.
“It’s strange having you here, you know,” Elle confessed one day, examining a fallen blossom from her tree with a thoughtful air. “No matter how much we want to help out the good ones-don’t look at me like that, you know you’re one of them-we don’t usually get a chance. Eternity would be pissed if everyone we liked was waylaid here too long.”
Penny frowned at the rich green grass beneath her feet. “They’re not getting mad at you guys, are they? I thought Bastian’d been getting more notes…”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a quiet, dismissive laugh. “There’s nothing they can do, not really. As long as Bastian and I don’t upset the cosmic balance too much-more than we already have with our situation-it’s not a problem. Besides,” Elle paused to smile up at Penny through her wild blonde hair, “It’s nice to have you around.”
“Really?” In spite of her incredulity, it was a light-hearted question. Penny was more than happy to be where she was, but she couldn’t help but suspect that there were millions of people who were kinder, cleverer, more useful, and all-around better equipped for whatever job Elle and Bastian seemed to think she was ideal for. “But why me?”
Elle seemed to pull Penny’s unspoken doubts out of her mind. “You’re special… something different.” Life sat up from her semi-reclined position to regard her lunch mate seriously. “Bastian saw it first. What happened to you-that got to him. That someone like you could be killed so senselessly and with so much of your life ahead of you…” She trailed off, something sad touching her eyes. It was gone in a moment and replaced by a brilliant smile. “You like it here, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Penny responded immediately. How could she not?
“Then that’s that.” Elle stood, swept the remains of their lunch away with what could have been either magic or dreadfully clever slight-of-hand, and clapped her hands decisively. “Ready to visit that orphanage in Tanzania I was telling you about?”
Penny didn’t need to say yes. Elle always knew the answer.
Bastian, on the other hand, very rarely knew the answer. In fact, he had a habit of misplacing the question as well. Time spent with Death was chaotic, unpredictable, and seldom so tame as taking a quiet walk or sweeping off to some corner of the globe to do some surreptitious good deeds. Bastian had too many interests to stick with anything vaguely resembling a routine, and so Penny seldom knew what she was getting herself into when she volunteered to leave the office with him on his breaks.
More often than not, Miranda shadowed Bastian on his excursions. The black and white deathpuppy was quickly growing into a deathdog, and his spine-shivering howl was a sound imported from the bowels of hell itself. Miranda was charming company, however, always loping alongside his master and smiling a toothy deathdog grin. He had an arsenal of tricks at his disposal and was exceptionally-terrifyingly-good at playing dead.
A common destination was Death’s tree. There was nothing magical about it; it wasn’t Death’s Tree in the way that Life’s Tree was Life’s. Death’s tree was just an old tree with gnarled limbs, knobby roots that twisted for meters in every direction, and a constant lack of leaves that lead Penny to believe that it wasn’t actually alive. Alive or not, though, Bastian loved the tree. He talked to it and hung from its twisting branches like an adorable overgrown monkey. Penny perched on its lowest limbs during their three-way conversations, enjoying the tree-to-English translations that Bastian provided for her benefit.
On days when Bastian was feeling exceptionally artistic, he enlisted Penny to help him make his hideous motorcycle slightly more bearable. They had tried decals, airbrushes, Miranda’s teeth, hammers-anything Bastian could get his hands on, but the motorcycle’s exterior was built well and its sickly green color seemed to repel all attempts at hiding it. Penny eventually took a paintbrush to the beast and, at Bastian’s behest, painted rainbows of simplified flowers on every available surface. The paint, by some miracle, stayed on, and Bastian claimed that the motorcycle’s deafening roar sounded a little happier after its makeover.
He was always thinking of new things to show her: the river Styx and its cheerful ferryman, Wilbur; the waiting-room-like Purgatory that served only to hold souls until they decided they were ready to move on to their final destinations (Bastian was kind enough to rotate the magazines in Purgatory frequently so the indecisive were never short of reading material); the Stairway to Heaven and the much quicker Elevator to Heaven.
Sometimes they took their adventuring to the living world. Penny was almost certain that venturing into the land of the living wasn’t allowed-for her, anyway-but Bastian insisted that no one would mind. They stayed well out of areas where Penny might be recognized, people-watching in cafes across the world and touring the greatest monuments to human achievement. Bastian was always ready to make each destination more exciting than it really was. Penny laughed all the way through the Vatican at his less-than-pious tales about former popes; they were forcibly removed from the Louvre after Bastian’s meddling with centuries-old statues of nudes caught the attention of security guards.
But Penny’s favorite thing to do with Bastian was movie night. Every Friday, Penny cleaned her small apartment and made up a tray of snacks. Bastian arrived at her door after work with that week’s movie in hand-“Steel Magnolias,” “Chocolat,” “The Princess Bride,” “Mama Mia,” “Predator”-and they snuggled up on her overstuffed sofa. On these occasions, Penny kept her apartment exceptionally cold and wore one of her deathproof hoodies (generous gifts from Marcus) to allay Death’s fear of accidentally touching her.
It might have been wiser to forgo touching altogether out of respect for both the natural laws and Elle’s formidable wrath, but Life had given her blessing to the arrangement (“It saves me from watching those chick flicks” had been her exact words to Penny) and Penny was an avid snuggler. Nothing made her happier than curling up next to Bastian and listening to the movie and his commentary by turns. Sometimes he became so engrossed in the movie that she could rest her head on his shoulder-hood up, just in case-without eliciting a response and pretend to be a normal girl.
(Bastian never did have the heart to tell her that he noticed, and so he stayed quiet. It wasn’t as if Elle would be jealous of a little Death-mortal snuggling. She was cool like that.)
Bastian shifted ever-so-slightly to reach the DVD remote, eager to turn “Moulin Rouge” off before anything sad could ruin the ending. If there was one thing Bastian didn’t like-besides ninjas and other things he didn’t care for much-it was fake happy endings that turned into tragedies.
“Mmnph?” Penny asked eloquently, stirring without removing her head from Bastian’s shoulder.
He gave her a goofy smile. “Movie’s done. The penniless poet and the courtesan with a heart of gold ditched France, had lots of babies, sang every day, and lived happily ever after.”
“Good. I like that movie.” She sat up sluggishly. As her brain came back online after its nap, Penny became aware of the drool on Bastian’s shoulder. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
“It’s almost as good as the one where the kid with diabetes is miraculously cured at the end.”
“But with really catchy music.”
“Which makes it cooler.” Bastian stretched his newly-freed arms, evoking a curious look from Miranda at his feet. “Do you have any frozen Coke, Penny?”
She rose and headed for the kitchen, grinning the grin of the well-rested and happy. “As if I’d forget your Coke-sicle addiction. Just-“
“Penny?”
He stopped her in her tracks. Both Penny and Miranda looked at Bastian, heads cocked to the side in an identical gesture. “Yeah?”
“Are you happy here?”
Penny’s answer was a bright, instantaneous smile. She backtracked and perched on the edge of the sofa, saying, “Of course I am. What’s up?”
Bastian mirrored her smile, but he wasn’t as certain as Penny. “Just asking.” She wasn’t lying-he knew from the few poker games he had invited her to that she was an abysmal liar-but there was something about her certainty that didn’t ring true. “It’s a free country. I can ask questions.”
“Yeah, but it’s funny you should ask.” Penny’s grin wavered and then disappeared altogether, replaced by something more contemplative. “Elle wanted to know the same thing.”
“Well, you know… great minds.”
“Should I be unhappy?” she pressed, must to Bastian’s dismay.
He doffed his majestic pirate hat and scratched his head. “No, but no one’d blame you if you were.” That settled, Bastian proceeded to put his hat on backwards. Its blue feather tickled his nose. He did his best to maintain a relatively straight face in spite of this.
Penny gingerly turned his hat the right way about. Judging by her unusually solemn countenance, she was likely thinking. “But it could be worse,” she finally decided out loud, the corners of her lips lifting. “There’re some things-people, more than things-that I miss, but I’m glad I’m here.”
“Even though there aren’t job benefits?”
She responded with another sunny smile and gave Bastian a safe hug, which he returned more than willingly. “What do you call the hat?”
“A fashion statement?”
“And a job benefit!”
“Yarr, me hearty!” Bastian replied with all due enthusiasm. “And a stylish benefit it be!”
Penny laughed and shook her head in much the same way that Elle did whenever she thought Bastian was being endearingly dorky. She had come for the hat, largely, but Penny would stay as long as possible for the company.'
AND, in the land of Ralston, adjacent to the Kingdom of Suttle, Veda, daughter of Gary and granddaughter of Bob, did take up a hammer and nails with which to hang her bitchin' new shelf, which, while magnificent and magnificently overpriced, did please her soul, for it would hold many plastic ponies and it was good.
AND Veda, granddaughter of the carpenter Bob, did take her hammer and nails, and Ralston did shake as Veda applied her tools to a wall.
LO! even after much hammering, the bitchin' shelf was still crooked, and the land was seized with dread and afflicted with a multitude of head pains.
WHY, quoth Veda, can I not hang this shelf with the ease of my grandfather, who was a carpenter, and gave unto me his talents?
AND a mighty voice did reply, and her knees did quake with fear: Thou art thy grandfather's grandchild, but thou hast not inherited his talents, for his blood doth not run in thy veins, nor doth his patience still thy hand. To hang thy shelf, take thee the level that was thy grandfather's level and make thee marks to guide thy hammer.
AND Veda did take up her grandfather's level, and she did make marks to guide her hammer, and the shelf, once placed upon the wall, was as straight as it was bitchin'.
Thus endeth the reading.
~~~~~~
Also, I have a story. This is not one of the two stories that I am writing for Katie and Molly (although I am writing them, and they are behaving badly). This is instead a story that I began many years ago--well, last December--and I thought it prudent to finish it before going on to other things (like my ethics paper! which, I should add, it slowly getting done, although it's fighting me every step of the way). It's not a great story, and I must apologize for that. There's too much exposition and character reflection, as is the case with everything I write, so... I am very sorry.
Also also, the theme is friendshippy, so it sort of fits. <3
Also also also, I couldn't be arsed to edit it (I will never be a writer, sob), so apologies on the mistake front, as well!
Title: Days in the Death
Universe: Alex's DeathVerse, post Poly!verse
Principle Characters: Penny, Bastian/Death, Elle/Life
Rating: PG
Words: 4,000+
Acknowledgments and Disclaimers: Penny is from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and belongs to Felicia Day Whedon. Death, Life, Kyle, Miranda, and basically everything that I didn't just make up all belong to Alex, because it is her universe.
Soundtrack: Vienna Teng's "The Tower." The tone only fits with part of the story, but it's a Very Penny song, I think.
Summary: After leaving the City for the Great Beyond with Bastian, Penny starts a new afterlife in the offices of Death. She might miss her friends, but Bastian, perilous office games, and ninjas keep her new existence entertaining. Also, Life and Death are pretty cool people.
*****
The hat was, ultimately, the deciding factor. Life’s offices may have had a strong, thriving community outreach program, but Death had offered Penny a rather large hat with a handsome red feather.
There were other factors involved in her decision to work for Death rather than Life, of course. Penny felt a certain sense of obligation towards Bastian (as Death preferred to be called when he wasn’t in work clothes). He had offered her a job in his office long before she had succumbed to mortality completely; he had delivered silly gifts and cock-eyed smiles and stories that never failed to make her laugh; he had taken it upon himself to escort her out of the mortal realm on his eyesore of a motorcycle, grinning all the while and regaling her with updates on his relationship with Elle (or Life, as she was most commonly known). Bastian had lined up her posthumous job interview and, Penny suspected, influenced Marcus to hire her on. She certainly wasn’t qualified to do much in the way of office work but, with Bastian’s help, her afterlife had fallen into place and all was good.
The hat was just a bonus-the icing on the proverbial cake for those who chose to work with Death. Penny preferred the impressive swashbuckler hat to the sashes that Elle decorated her own workers with. In the eternal battle between pirates and ninjas, Penny was, at heart, a pirate.
Although Penny had been sad to leave the City, her home-away-from-home since that unfortunate episode with the exploding Death Ray, she found it easy to settle into her new environment. Bastian’s boss had warmed up to Penny as soon as she had proved herself an adept filer and utterly undeterred by the minor disasters that occurred, during a good spell, on a bi-weekly basis. Within the first week after her arrival, the imposing stack of intake forms left over from the Black Death (Bastian was a good person, but his ability to keep up with paperwork left much to be desired) had been completed and sorted. It wasn’t the sort of work she was used to-that is, it didn’t involve helping the homeless or gathering signatures for petitions-but it was rewarding in its own way. She wasn’t accustomed to extinguishing small fires or cleaning up after surprise altercations with ninjas, either, but those duties too became second nature.
There were ghosts to deal with, as well. Apparitions, rather-that was the politically correct term, since not all apparitions were ghosts. An apparition could be anything that wandered into the office; sometimes they were shadowy figures with messages (usually unhappy ones condemning something or other that Bastian had done) from Eternity.
The ghosts tended to come in waves. No one, not even Bastian, liked dealing with the ghosts. When he wasn’t in, they would bemoan their fates to whoever would listen-Penny, generally, as Kyle’s skill set seemed limited to making copies and picking out belabored tunes on his sitar, and Margaret performed no function that Penny could ascertain-and complain about the various injustices that they were subjected to. Penny didn’t mind them. Most of the ghosts went back to the Great Beyond without a fuss after a good talk and some genuine sympathy on Penny’s part. The more stubborn ones had to shipped back (and although they folded up nicely, the shipping rates between levels of existence were outrageous), but everyone was much happier when they went willingly.
The office, naturally, was the most fun when Bastian didn’t need to run off and reap souls. His presence did nothing to encourage work getting done, but desk sailing and death parkour were the most incredible games Penny had ever played on any level of existence. Bastian was the best at both, of course, but, with practice, Penny became something of a pro where nautical desktop navigation was concerned. Death parkour was beyond her, however; maneuvering around the ever-dwindling stacks of paperwork, gliding across the office on wheeled chairs, and vaulting over partitions wasn’t so bad, but doing all of it with a bowl of soup in hand proved disastrous every single time. Bastian only laughed at Penny’s abysmal failures and encouraged her to practice.
Kyle mostly just hid under his desk and prayed that the copier wouldn’t be compromised by any of Bastian’s games; Margaret did her level best to ignore any and all fun as if the concept offended her. The interns, on the other hand, were generally oblivious and notoriously bad at getting out of the way.
No one in the office-Marcus included-ever seemed as pleased with Bastian’s shenanigans as Penny did.
For the most part, however, Penny’s afterlife was quite routine. She was perfectly content to file, organize, and set “Doctor Phil” to record during the day when Bastian was out, with occasional excursions to Elle’s office for the opportunity to do some good. The ninjas that worked for Life seemed to know that, in spite of her attractive pirate hat, Penny was not a part of the long-standing interoffice feud. She never saw more than glimpses of them-they were, after all, ninjas-but not a single one of them gave her trouble.
Her workload increased slightly when it was time for Bastian to do taxes. He filed both his own and Elle’s, and the paperwork involved with both was enough to make Penny thankful for her dead status. The IRS, to the best of her knowledge, was unconcerned with taxing the properly deceased.
But with Bastian occupied, the office became busier. Other Deaths were called in to handle his workload. Some of them were temps and Penny spent a good deal of time walking them through their duties (this was technically one of Margaret’s jobs, but the older woman was so unpleasant that visitors to Death’s office went well out of their ways to avoid her and her hawkish glares). Penny didn’t mind-even the most clueless of temps responded well to a little compassion and patience-but intake forms inevitably piled up when she wasn’t keeping an eye on them.
There were other small things for Penny to do on the job. They weren’t things that she had to do, Bastian said, but Penny found it very difficult to sit idly when there were potential tasks at hand. She occasionally fielded calls from Bastian’s garish pink Razr when he forgot to take it with him. Penny frequently checked on the Ebay auctions that Bastian was following, bidding when necessary to make sure he didn’t miss out on anything exciting while he was out reaping souls. It wasn’t difficult work and, in spite of her best efforts, she was typically left with extra time on her hands. Her coworkers were reluctant to talk to her but Kyle, surprisingly, was perfectly willing to engage in paper airplane wars over their cubicle partitions.
Work in the afterlife followed a typical nine to five schedule with weekends off (except when Bastian decided to throw office parties or Elle’s ninjas chose to invade during off-hours). Outside of work, Penny had a shabby apartment in a complex that was only a stone’s throw from the one that Bastian and Elle inhabited. It was nicer than her apartment in Los Angeles, and so she had no complaints. The landlord had even allowed her to adopt two cats and a dog in spite of his initially stringent no pets policy (that policy had changed abruptly after Elle’s stern talk with him which, according to Bastian, had been nothing short of epic). Thanatos and Hypnos, the stunning matching cats from Life, and Geoff, the impossibly interbred and endlessly affectionate dog from Death, were excellent company. Penny’s modest apartment felt quite homey with her three fuzzy roommates, particularly when she remembered to close the blinds to avoid witnessing the constant skirmishes between the forces of Life and Death. Bastian was out of the habit of killing the ninjas and leaving them in the dumpster that Penny could see quite well from her own apartment, but the occasional spat was unavoidable.
For all of her contentedness, however, Penny missed the friends she had left behind. She wondered how Doll was doing in their old apartment full of castoff animals. Were Babbage and Cabbage still getting along? Had John finally become friends with Tiger? Were the sheep still okay in their field? Was Doll all alone, or had she managed to find a roommate? Better yet, had any of her circus family arrived? She didn’t want to think of the young woman who had, for all intents and purposes, become her strong little sister, all alone and trying to maintain a brave face.
There was Chris, too. Leaving Chris behind had hurt more than she might have imagined. Penny had had boyfriends, of course, but Chris-there was something there that Penny wanted to hold on to. He had been so sweet and affable and endlessly kind. What he lacked in brains he more than made up for in heart. Their relationship had been going so well, too! It was slow, of course, and there wasn’t a fiery passion between them, but Penny had felt that they could have made it work. Whatever they had had was slow-burning but sustainable-not the fireworks that had characterized her brief fling with Captain Hammer. After the initial light show, that relationship had fizzled and died. With Chris, though…
She knew that dwelling on what might have been was foolish. After all, she had been dead long before Bastian had come for her on his roaring, toxic-green monster of a motorcycle. Chris had been alive. It never would have worked; there couldn’t have been a happily ever after for them because, inevitably, one of them would have had to leave.
Penny hoped that Chris remembered her. She wanted him to move on and be happy, but it hurt to think that he would go back home and forget that she had ever existed. It was an unkind thought, and one she only entertained when the nights were particularly long and dark and lonely.
All of the others she had left behind were in her thoughts, as well. She wanted to see them again, just for a moment: Rosella with her pretty smile, endless supply of puns, and stubborn unwillingness to let someone else be strong for her when need be; Euphie and her gentle helpfulness and unwavering optimism that hid a sordid past that Penny had only seen the faintest glimpses of; reckless Curt, who could be by turns the lewdest of rock legends and the most thoughtful of friends; Raikov and his surprising but genuine affection; Iroh’s wonderful tea, colorful stories, and comfortingly fatherly countenance-
But Penny was happy. Life-not capitalized-had taught her to appreciate what she could get without dwelling on what was beyond her reach, and death had shown her how many opportunities to give and care and love existed after dying. She hoped to see them again someday-all of them, including Billy and maybe even her Mom and Dad-but she was content with the existence that Bastian and Elle allowed her to enjoy on her way to that final death.
Truth be told, Penny hoped that Bastian would find a way to keep her suspended in this limbo that he and Elle occupied for many years to come. She hadn’t made many friends (it was hard to make friends in a place full of change, dissatisfied spirits, and feuds between pirates and ninjas, she had discovered), but she was very fond of Elle and Bastian alike and cherished every moment she spent with them.
True, the two could be nearly unbearable when they were together. A casual observer who happened to hear their bickering might assume that they were mortal enemies rather than a couple that defied all convention, but Penny knew better. Some couples showed their affection through gentle words and careful touches; Bastian and Elle demonstrated theirs through arguing and refusing to share the blue marker during interoffice meetings. There was something in their sniping-or so Penny fancied-that could only be called love. It was the sort of love that people who had been together for ages and had learned their partner’s minds as well as their own could manage, and she thought it was sweet.
Bastian and Elle didn’t spend too much time together. It made sense; they were both busy and, if rumors were to be believed, certain Powers weren’t too pleased with their involvement. Their breaks tended to occur at different times (a scheduling decision passed down from Eternity, according to Bastian), and so they each had their own circles of friends. Much to Penny’s surprise and delight, both were terribly tolerant of her company and sometimes invited her to tag along with them on walks or unofficial business.
Elle was fond of nature walks. Penny had heard (primarily from Bastian) that Life could be exceedingly scary when necessary, but animals of all kinds-many that Penny assumed were native to other universes, as she hadn’t encountered anything like them at home-approached Elle and let her pet them. In the winter (limbo or not, traditional seasons were observed), Elle and Penny meandered through crystallized forests hushed with a feathery dusting of snow, scraps of bread in hand for the creatures that invariably found them. It didn’t take long for the animals to decide that Penny was just as good at dispensing snacks as Elle, and both Penny and Life usually left the woods with a small string of animal followers looking for something more to eat.
At times, Elle took Penny to her tree. It was a magnificent plant with silvered boughs and delicate buds that bloomed with a touch of Life’s hand. Penny wasn’t allowed to touch, but she was perfectly capable of appreciating the beauty of the Tree of Life with her hands safe in her pockets.
They lunched by the tree sometimes-light lunches of fruits and vegetables-and Elle told Penny about her exploits with Bastian. She told Penny about the disaster of Atlantis in all of its sordid details, shaking her head fondly at the memory of Bastian’s sheepish apology after the ancient civilization sank when his well-intentioned meddling went awry. She talked about the Christmas where Santa kicked ass and she-pretty, petite Life-delivered a righteous smack down.
On days where neither had much to do, Elle liked to talk about more philosophical things-love and mortality, mostly, and the difficulties that came with being a supernatural entity with great powers and no real ability to alter the course of events. Those were quiet days, contemplative and just a little bit sad. Life could be fierce when she needed to be, but it was impossible for Penny to overlook the endlessly caring side of Elle that mourned silently for every life cut short and every heart broken by the ceaseless march of time.
“It’s strange having you here, you know,” Elle confessed one day, examining a fallen blossom from her tree with a thoughtful air. “No matter how much we want to help out the good ones-don’t look at me like that, you know you’re one of them-we don’t usually get a chance. Eternity would be pissed if everyone we liked was waylaid here too long.”
Penny frowned at the rich green grass beneath her feet. “They’re not getting mad at you guys, are they? I thought Bastian’d been getting more notes…”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a quiet, dismissive laugh. “There’s nothing they can do, not really. As long as Bastian and I don’t upset the cosmic balance too much-more than we already have with our situation-it’s not a problem. Besides,” Elle paused to smile up at Penny through her wild blonde hair, “It’s nice to have you around.”
“Really?” In spite of her incredulity, it was a light-hearted question. Penny was more than happy to be where she was, but she couldn’t help but suspect that there were millions of people who were kinder, cleverer, more useful, and all-around better equipped for whatever job Elle and Bastian seemed to think she was ideal for. “But why me?”
Elle seemed to pull Penny’s unspoken doubts out of her mind. “You’re special… something different.” Life sat up from her semi-reclined position to regard her lunch mate seriously. “Bastian saw it first. What happened to you-that got to him. That someone like you could be killed so senselessly and with so much of your life ahead of you…” She trailed off, something sad touching her eyes. It was gone in a moment and replaced by a brilliant smile. “You like it here, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Penny responded immediately. How could she not?
“Then that’s that.” Elle stood, swept the remains of their lunch away with what could have been either magic or dreadfully clever slight-of-hand, and clapped her hands decisively. “Ready to visit that orphanage in Tanzania I was telling you about?”
Penny didn’t need to say yes. Elle always knew the answer.
Bastian, on the other hand, very rarely knew the answer. In fact, he had a habit of misplacing the question as well. Time spent with Death was chaotic, unpredictable, and seldom so tame as taking a quiet walk or sweeping off to some corner of the globe to do some surreptitious good deeds. Bastian had too many interests to stick with anything vaguely resembling a routine, and so Penny seldom knew what she was getting herself into when she volunteered to leave the office with him on his breaks.
More often than not, Miranda shadowed Bastian on his excursions. The black and white deathpuppy was quickly growing into a deathdog, and his spine-shivering howl was a sound imported from the bowels of hell itself. Miranda was charming company, however, always loping alongside his master and smiling a toothy deathdog grin. He had an arsenal of tricks at his disposal and was exceptionally-terrifyingly-good at playing dead.
A common destination was Death’s tree. There was nothing magical about it; it wasn’t Death’s Tree in the way that Life’s Tree was Life’s. Death’s tree was just an old tree with gnarled limbs, knobby roots that twisted for meters in every direction, and a constant lack of leaves that lead Penny to believe that it wasn’t actually alive. Alive or not, though, Bastian loved the tree. He talked to it and hung from its twisting branches like an adorable overgrown monkey. Penny perched on its lowest limbs during their three-way conversations, enjoying the tree-to-English translations that Bastian provided for her benefit.
On days when Bastian was feeling exceptionally artistic, he enlisted Penny to help him make his hideous motorcycle slightly more bearable. They had tried decals, airbrushes, Miranda’s teeth, hammers-anything Bastian could get his hands on, but the motorcycle’s exterior was built well and its sickly green color seemed to repel all attempts at hiding it. Penny eventually took a paintbrush to the beast and, at Bastian’s behest, painted rainbows of simplified flowers on every available surface. The paint, by some miracle, stayed on, and Bastian claimed that the motorcycle’s deafening roar sounded a little happier after its makeover.
He was always thinking of new things to show her: the river Styx and its cheerful ferryman, Wilbur; the waiting-room-like Purgatory that served only to hold souls until they decided they were ready to move on to their final destinations (Bastian was kind enough to rotate the magazines in Purgatory frequently so the indecisive were never short of reading material); the Stairway to Heaven and the much quicker Elevator to Heaven.
Sometimes they took their adventuring to the living world. Penny was almost certain that venturing into the land of the living wasn’t allowed-for her, anyway-but Bastian insisted that no one would mind. They stayed well out of areas where Penny might be recognized, people-watching in cafes across the world and touring the greatest monuments to human achievement. Bastian was always ready to make each destination more exciting than it really was. Penny laughed all the way through the Vatican at his less-than-pious tales about former popes; they were forcibly removed from the Louvre after Bastian’s meddling with centuries-old statues of nudes caught the attention of security guards.
But Penny’s favorite thing to do with Bastian was movie night. Every Friday, Penny cleaned her small apartment and made up a tray of snacks. Bastian arrived at her door after work with that week’s movie in hand-“Steel Magnolias,” “Chocolat,” “The Princess Bride,” “Mama Mia,” “Predator”-and they snuggled up on her overstuffed sofa. On these occasions, Penny kept her apartment exceptionally cold and wore one of her deathproof hoodies (generous gifts from Marcus) to allay Death’s fear of accidentally touching her.
It might have been wiser to forgo touching altogether out of respect for both the natural laws and Elle’s formidable wrath, but Life had given her blessing to the arrangement (“It saves me from watching those chick flicks” had been her exact words to Penny) and Penny was an avid snuggler. Nothing made her happier than curling up next to Bastian and listening to the movie and his commentary by turns. Sometimes he became so engrossed in the movie that she could rest her head on his shoulder-hood up, just in case-without eliciting a response and pretend to be a normal girl.
(Bastian never did have the heart to tell her that he noticed, and so he stayed quiet. It wasn’t as if Elle would be jealous of a little Death-mortal snuggling. She was cool like that.)
Bastian shifted ever-so-slightly to reach the DVD remote, eager to turn “Moulin Rouge” off before anything sad could ruin the ending. If there was one thing Bastian didn’t like-besides ninjas and other things he didn’t care for much-it was fake happy endings that turned into tragedies.
“Mmnph?” Penny asked eloquently, stirring without removing her head from Bastian’s shoulder.
He gave her a goofy smile. “Movie’s done. The penniless poet and the courtesan with a heart of gold ditched France, had lots of babies, sang every day, and lived happily ever after.”
“Good. I like that movie.” She sat up sluggishly. As her brain came back online after its nap, Penny became aware of the drool on Bastian’s shoulder. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
“It’s almost as good as the one where the kid with diabetes is miraculously cured at the end.”
“But with really catchy music.”
“Which makes it cooler.” Bastian stretched his newly-freed arms, evoking a curious look from Miranda at his feet. “Do you have any frozen Coke, Penny?”
She rose and headed for the kitchen, grinning the grin of the well-rested and happy. “As if I’d forget your Coke-sicle addiction. Just-“
“Penny?”
He stopped her in her tracks. Both Penny and Miranda looked at Bastian, heads cocked to the side in an identical gesture. “Yeah?”
“Are you happy here?”
Penny’s answer was a bright, instantaneous smile. She backtracked and perched on the edge of the sofa, saying, “Of course I am. What’s up?”
Bastian mirrored her smile, but he wasn’t as certain as Penny. “Just asking.” She wasn’t lying-he knew from the few poker games he had invited her to that she was an abysmal liar-but there was something about her certainty that didn’t ring true. “It’s a free country. I can ask questions.”
“Yeah, but it’s funny you should ask.” Penny’s grin wavered and then disappeared altogether, replaced by something more contemplative. “Elle wanted to know the same thing.”
“Well, you know… great minds.”
“Should I be unhappy?” she pressed, must to Bastian’s dismay.
He doffed his majestic pirate hat and scratched his head. “No, but no one’d blame you if you were.” That settled, Bastian proceeded to put his hat on backwards. Its blue feather tickled his nose. He did his best to maintain a relatively straight face in spite of this.
Penny gingerly turned his hat the right way about. Judging by her unusually solemn countenance, she was likely thinking. “But it could be worse,” she finally decided out loud, the corners of her lips lifting. “There’re some things-people, more than things-that I miss, but I’m glad I’m here.”
“Even though there aren’t job benefits?”
She responded with another sunny smile and gave Bastian a safe hug, which he returned more than willingly. “What do you call the hat?”
“A fashion statement?”
“And a job benefit!”
“Yarr, me hearty!” Bastian replied with all due enthusiasm. “And a stylish benefit it be!”
Penny laughed and shook her head in much the same way that Elle did whenever she thought Bastian was being endearingly dorky. She had come for the hat, largely, but Penny would stay as long as possible for the company.'