charlie.
It's funny how these things end up.. Like little puzzle pieces or shards of glass that I put together to see a whole picture. I've been here a long time. And, I'm not talking about my shift, I mean in general.. I had seen so many long and torturous deaths, what we call 'unfriendly passings' come through that week. I don't know what's going on up there anymore. It had been a long day.
My name's Charlie. The first time I died was during childbirth. It was quick and merciful. I don't think anyone alive remembers me. I was a woman then, but now I suppose I am genderless, since I don't need to procreate anymore. I still look like a woman, though.
I deliver death. They way that people with degrees up there deliver babies.. My skills are far superior to theirs, and they can't even promote me. I've been working for the man long enough to know without having to ask anymore..Anyway, a job is a job. My job is simple, get them out, make it short and quick and on to the next. I am one of the fastest workers in my department. And I work long hours and get tons of overtime.
I stand just outside of the gateway, death's door, the passage way, whatever you want to call it. I make sure you come through and don't go back. Sometimes I'm off getting coffee and the souls go back up..I don't know why they want to stay back so badly, but if I don't stop losing them, I could lose my raise next year.
They are so scared when they come through, they yell and writhe like newborns but they don't really know why.. it's just a changing phase. Losing "everything" isn't anything, this is only the beginning. Moving from one comfortable warm womb to the next.. no big deal.
They say death isn't pretty..but I'm not sure where that came from. It's just misunderstood. I think it is beautifully crafted, a basic transition just like birth that no one understands because your consciousness isn't there to record it to memory. It seems pretty fun from my end. Sometimes it's just ugly though, for those that don't want to leave.. they make it a painful process. Their mortal body is tearing apart from it's soul and then flushing it down into that darkness (or the light for some people) and into the bowels of my office. Those poor people who don't want to let go, make the struggle so tedious. Their mind flips out, and runs through a thousand explanations... begging, trying to understand, screaming, terrible piercing screaming through every cell as it dies. By the time their soul breaks off and spirals down the well towards me, they have gone through their last memories, and it all tumbles out in a lively disoriented sludge. Sometimes gross, sometimes sheer loveliness. Satisfying release. Mucous down a throat. I reach in and attach myself to the lost tendrils and pull it all out. It doesn't come at the same time either. The last moments of terror slide out, some parts still chunky, some pieces intertwined into it's life's memories that spill out like a movie reel in a coil of images. If they would just let go it would be so much easier for me.
Sometimes the passing is quick, and the gateway opens wide and drops their disconnected essence into my presence. When it opens that wide I can see Mandy up top through the opening, and sometimes he gives me a little wave. I wish he would smile. During quick passings we don't have a lot of time to talk, so sometimes it's just a wink or a curl of the lips that I could give him. He doesn't smile back. But his job is much harder than mine. He's so good at what he does.
That night was rough, and I was so glad my shift was almost over. Because time is endless here, they tend to come one at a time, but I prefer the quick ones. Get them over with, you know. When they come and go fast, I have more free time in between and can spend time looking over discarded memories. When one dies, and their body stays up with Mandy, after he has finished tearing them apart and pushing them down, I get to keep the memories. I'm not supposed to keep them of course, but with the extra time in between it makes the night go by faster. Pocketing a few wouldn't hurt the company.. they only remain for a few hours at most before they shrivel away anyway. The memories often go way back to childhood and are mixed up, and the little coil spills and twists like an umbilical cord. When the soul has come completely out, the memory coil remains for a while, drying out like a long unwanted earthworm. One day I will find the memory coil of someone I used to know. Maybe someone would remember me.
That night's tough one was so time consuming. She didn't know she was dying, she didn't want to go. Unfinished business is a bitch, but it's time to move along already. Her journey was so long, that as I looked up the tunnel that she oozed out of, it seemed difficult to make out the opening up top. She slid at a 30 degree angle, and came slowly, choking up and giving reluctance. It's like Labor.. I should really get a degree for this, or an award. But Mandy was pleased, I could tell. I looked up and could barely make him out, as she twitched and turned and fought. He slipped in like a cold chill and drifted into her every cell. Pulling the soul that I needed out, like dropping pieces of meat for me. Mandy is amazing.
He is the darkness that creeps up like an unseen hand and kills the cells that still live. That's Mandy, he's the one who makes it really happen. In the most gruesome of accidents, some parts have died and some just wait in line to go down the plumbing. He separates it all and pushes it down for me. If I look really closely up the long winding vein I can see him kneading and pulling and tearing; Up to his arms in it. He's a true worker. He's the animal that tears the little nuggets out before a meal but never eating, he has the heart of a doctor at the autopsy table, and the caress of a loving mother. He's cold and emotionless, and he is beautiful. Silent and unseen, he haunts everyone. Even me.
At the beginning of the transition it's kind of slow.. the denial stage, the body doesn't know it's going. It can't believe it, and won't believe it. I just wait and look up at Mandy's silhouette. That night I got kind of lost looking at him as he was working.. so serious, a stone pillar in a tumbling wasteland of mire, a master of his craft..a baker making pies.
I got so distracted I didn't see the memory coil explode out in a nasty chunk and hit me right in my line of vision. I tripped a few times on a sequence about her high school friends, and nearly injured myself on the fucking coil. Her memory snapped under my weight, and a good portion wriggled about like a detachable tentacle. She was still in the screaming stage; belting a sick defiant wailing as her mind slipped faster and faster down the tubing like every bad trip I had when I was alive.
She was really falling. By the end her parts were tumbling over me, and I was covered in her, the memories still attached and longer than I had imagined possible..I sure wasn't bored anymore. I gasped a few times, as her voice distorted and started to tear away.. painful to listen to sometimes. The body parts stay up, but the sound stays with you in wretchedness, and comes along with the mind and soul matter.
"Hey Charlie." Mandy said to me staring into the opening, "you got her? She was rough. It's a nasty one, so just be careful." He grabbed more coils of her memory and tossed them through, like tasty intestines. I didn't think it was possible for anyone to have that many memories. They were well defined.. she had dreams, friends of all ages, woes and worries. She had a turbulent and drug filled life. Her last thoughts had included the neighbors cat that she kidnapped, the coffee pot she left on, a husband or someone she loved in bits and pieces with a blurred out face. Writhing children on a playground, either screaming or laughing.. it's all the same at that point. All the faces were blurred out. When you pass the mind erases them.. you remember the people but can no longer see the face because that part of the brain is fried already. Mush. Good job Mandy.
"It's alright hon, I got it." I hollered back to him. It always seemed like I had to yell to reach him, and he could just whisper and I would hear his voice, as if he was in me.. perhaps it was the acoustics, or the effects of the gateway filled with shit. I looked up, and he was still looking down at me. I never noticed him notice me before. Who would? I must have looked like a hot mess.
Our bodies, humanoid and ideal, looked similar to mortal bodies but of course we weren't alive anymore. He was kneeling, and I could see Paramedics behind him, shaking their heads, and leaning over the dead.. the one they couldn't save because Mandy was too darned fast. He was on one knee in an outfit that started out white. His arms were crawling with matter, dripping after a job well done. The colorless residue of a soul sliding off. Bring me every last drop, I thought.
"Mandy, how long have we been working together, now?"
"I don't know... a few decades?"
"Mandy.. why don't you ever come down here..sometime.. You know, to hang out with me?"
"...."
His face was hidden..a true Valkyrie. A soul eater.
"Mandy?"
He belted out in laughter, shaking me and the walls.. laughter! It shook the passageway between us, and caused the soul to slop out in a final cough. As it settled into the tub I keep beneath, I looked up and asked him again as I did every night. He was a seducer for death.. lure them in and destroy. Empty and serious like a military man at work. He gets the call and goes to work for death. He is Death. He is as brilliantly constructed as the human bodies that he obliterates.
"Mandy, I want to meet you. Please come meet me.. I know you're off tomorrow. So am I." I had told him, trying to shake the desperation in my voice. His look was sadness, longing.. perhaps he doesn't really have the day off? I knew we were both off because we both work the other days. Sometimes he doesn't come in, and Tex stands in his place, but Tex doesn't talk to me at all.
"I can't meet you. I never get off of work." He said to me. He was filled with sincerity, but lies. Standing here you see things like that, someone being honest but sugar coating a lie. It's the same every time, but the excuse is different. I can't meet you, because I'm working overtime, I can't see you outside of work because I'll lose my job. etc. etc.
I stood in silence with my head down, and crinkled my eyebrows in disappointment. I had had a bad day. Nothing but slow movers completely ruining my handle time. I had to change something.
"Mandy, listen.. I.. adore you.. you know, everything you do up there. I watch you, it's truly art." I muttered in a stuttering mess. It flew out like drunken puke.
He stared for a long time at me, unnerving me and pulling apart my cells as if he was doing it with his hands. Eyes that gave nothing, torturous and grinding. I wish I could do that to him.. if only...
"Charlie, I know. I know everything about you. I can hear everything your mind says. I know everything you think about me."
Christ. Wow, what a bummer. If I had a pumping heart it would have stopped right then. That's the shitty thing about working with immortal life forms with different roles than you. He had full access. He must have been working with the company a long time. I wondered if he had like a Mind Reader Access card or something or if he learned it as a skill.. Silly thoughts. Shit. He could read my every thought. I am so bottom of the ladder. I am so caught. He can hear me. Asshole...
I tried to control my thoughts.
Mandy smiled. In one night, he laughed and he smiled. A memory coil struggled under my foot.
He squeezed off the remnants from his hands with precision. He didn't use gloves ever, because I think he liked the feel of it on his fingers. A few final drips came down and landed at my feet as he held the smile. He knew what I wanted.
He turned serious again like the flip of a coin. "I haven't seen anyone in longer than I could remember. And I can't remember why. I'm just not supposed to. Meeting people is a forbidden act. You may not come back alive."
"I don't care..." I told him automatically.. it sounded like the right answer, but I guess I didn't think it through. Knowing what I know now, I should have thought it through.
"I'll meet you tomorrow. In the place where Time stands still." He said to me in his whisper that made my hair stand on end. "Have a good night, Charlie."
At that moment he closed the end, or turned out a light or whatever it is he does so that I can no longer see an opening or a tunnel, and so that I could no longer see his shape. At that moment I could have died. If only it was that simple. My shift ended in silence, even as I sat in the sludge that burped and settled. Silent.. even as the coil twitched and flung it's moving pictures.. I noticed nothing else. I almost didn't noticed my shift had ended. Without cleaning up, without looking back, with a smile from ear to ear, I closed up and called in a night.
Even as I give my last breath, I wouldn't have changed a thing. My memory coils short and sweet and wrapped in his embrace like a candy giver. It was then in the place where Time stood that I met him and truly understood death for the first and only time.
My name's Charlie. The first time I died was during childbirth. It was quick and merciful. I don't think anyone alive remembers me. I was a woman then, but now I suppose I am genderless, since I don't need to procreate anymore. I still look like a woman, though.
I deliver death. They way that people with degrees up there deliver babies.. My skills are far superior to theirs, and they can't even promote me. I've been working for the man long enough to know without having to ask anymore..Anyway, a job is a job. My job is simple, get them out, make it short and quick and on to the next. I am one of the fastest workers in my department. And I work long hours and get tons of overtime.
I stand just outside of the gateway, death's door, the passage way, whatever you want to call it. I make sure you come through and don't go back. Sometimes I'm off getting coffee and the souls go back up..I don't know why they want to stay back so badly, but if I don't stop losing them, I could lose my raise next year.
They are so scared when they come through, they yell and writhe like newborns but they don't really know why.. it's just a changing phase. Losing "everything" isn't anything, this is only the beginning. Moving from one comfortable warm womb to the next.. no big deal.
They say death isn't pretty..but I'm not sure where that came from. It's just misunderstood. I think it is beautifully crafted, a basic transition just like birth that no one understands because your consciousness isn't there to record it to memory. It seems pretty fun from my end. Sometimes it's just ugly though, for those that don't want to leave.. they make it a painful process. Their mortal body is tearing apart from it's soul and then flushing it down into that darkness (or the light for some people) and into the bowels of my office. Those poor people who don't want to let go, make the struggle so tedious. Their mind flips out, and runs through a thousand explanations... begging, trying to understand, screaming, terrible piercing screaming through every cell as it dies. By the time their soul breaks off and spirals down the well towards me, they have gone through their last memories, and it all tumbles out in a lively disoriented sludge. Sometimes gross, sometimes sheer loveliness. Satisfying release. Mucous down a throat. I reach in and attach myself to the lost tendrils and pull it all out. It doesn't come at the same time either. The last moments of terror slide out, some parts still chunky, some pieces intertwined into it's life's memories that spill out like a movie reel in a coil of images. If they would just let go it would be so much easier for me.
Sometimes the passing is quick, and the gateway opens wide and drops their disconnected essence into my presence. When it opens that wide I can see Mandy up top through the opening, and sometimes he gives me a little wave. I wish he would smile. During quick passings we don't have a lot of time to talk, so sometimes it's just a wink or a curl of the lips that I could give him. He doesn't smile back. But his job is much harder than mine. He's so good at what he does.
That night was rough, and I was so glad my shift was almost over. Because time is endless here, they tend to come one at a time, but I prefer the quick ones. Get them over with, you know. When they come and go fast, I have more free time in between and can spend time looking over discarded memories. When one dies, and their body stays up with Mandy, after he has finished tearing them apart and pushing them down, I get to keep the memories. I'm not supposed to keep them of course, but with the extra time in between it makes the night go by faster. Pocketing a few wouldn't hurt the company.. they only remain for a few hours at most before they shrivel away anyway. The memories often go way back to childhood and are mixed up, and the little coil spills and twists like an umbilical cord. When the soul has come completely out, the memory coil remains for a while, drying out like a long unwanted earthworm. One day I will find the memory coil of someone I used to know. Maybe someone would remember me.
That night's tough one was so time consuming. She didn't know she was dying, she didn't want to go. Unfinished business is a bitch, but it's time to move along already. Her journey was so long, that as I looked up the tunnel that she oozed out of, it seemed difficult to make out the opening up top. She slid at a 30 degree angle, and came slowly, choking up and giving reluctance. It's like Labor.. I should really get a degree for this, or an award. But Mandy was pleased, I could tell. I looked up and could barely make him out, as she twitched and turned and fought. He slipped in like a cold chill and drifted into her every cell. Pulling the soul that I needed out, like dropping pieces of meat for me. Mandy is amazing.
He is the darkness that creeps up like an unseen hand and kills the cells that still live. That's Mandy, he's the one who makes it really happen. In the most gruesome of accidents, some parts have died and some just wait in line to go down the plumbing. He separates it all and pushes it down for me. If I look really closely up the long winding vein I can see him kneading and pulling and tearing; Up to his arms in it. He's a true worker. He's the animal that tears the little nuggets out before a meal but never eating, he has the heart of a doctor at the autopsy table, and the caress of a loving mother. He's cold and emotionless, and he is beautiful. Silent and unseen, he haunts everyone. Even me.
At the beginning of the transition it's kind of slow.. the denial stage, the body doesn't know it's going. It can't believe it, and won't believe it. I just wait and look up at Mandy's silhouette. That night I got kind of lost looking at him as he was working.. so serious, a stone pillar in a tumbling wasteland of mire, a master of his craft..a baker making pies.
I got so distracted I didn't see the memory coil explode out in a nasty chunk and hit me right in my line of vision. I tripped a few times on a sequence about her high school friends, and nearly injured myself on the fucking coil. Her memory snapped under my weight, and a good portion wriggled about like a detachable tentacle. She was still in the screaming stage; belting a sick defiant wailing as her mind slipped faster and faster down the tubing like every bad trip I had when I was alive.
She was really falling. By the end her parts were tumbling over me, and I was covered in her, the memories still attached and longer than I had imagined possible..I sure wasn't bored anymore. I gasped a few times, as her voice distorted and started to tear away.. painful to listen to sometimes. The body parts stay up, but the sound stays with you in wretchedness, and comes along with the mind and soul matter.
"Hey Charlie." Mandy said to me staring into the opening, "you got her? She was rough. It's a nasty one, so just be careful." He grabbed more coils of her memory and tossed them through, like tasty intestines. I didn't think it was possible for anyone to have that many memories. They were well defined.. she had dreams, friends of all ages, woes and worries. She had a turbulent and drug filled life. Her last thoughts had included the neighbors cat that she kidnapped, the coffee pot she left on, a husband or someone she loved in bits and pieces with a blurred out face. Writhing children on a playground, either screaming or laughing.. it's all the same at that point. All the faces were blurred out. When you pass the mind erases them.. you remember the people but can no longer see the face because that part of the brain is fried already. Mush. Good job Mandy.
"It's alright hon, I got it." I hollered back to him. It always seemed like I had to yell to reach him, and he could just whisper and I would hear his voice, as if he was in me.. perhaps it was the acoustics, or the effects of the gateway filled with shit. I looked up, and he was still looking down at me. I never noticed him notice me before. Who would? I must have looked like a hot mess.
Our bodies, humanoid and ideal, looked similar to mortal bodies but of course we weren't alive anymore. He was kneeling, and I could see Paramedics behind him, shaking their heads, and leaning over the dead.. the one they couldn't save because Mandy was too darned fast. He was on one knee in an outfit that started out white. His arms were crawling with matter, dripping after a job well done. The colorless residue of a soul sliding off. Bring me every last drop, I thought.
"Mandy, how long have we been working together, now?"
"I don't know... a few decades?"
"Mandy.. why don't you ever come down here..sometime.. You know, to hang out with me?"
"...."
His face was hidden..a true Valkyrie. A soul eater.
"Mandy?"
He belted out in laughter, shaking me and the walls.. laughter! It shook the passageway between us, and caused the soul to slop out in a final cough. As it settled into the tub I keep beneath, I looked up and asked him again as I did every night. He was a seducer for death.. lure them in and destroy. Empty and serious like a military man at work. He gets the call and goes to work for death. He is Death. He is as brilliantly constructed as the human bodies that he obliterates.
"Mandy, I want to meet you. Please come meet me.. I know you're off tomorrow. So am I." I had told him, trying to shake the desperation in my voice. His look was sadness, longing.. perhaps he doesn't really have the day off? I knew we were both off because we both work the other days. Sometimes he doesn't come in, and Tex stands in his place, but Tex doesn't talk to me at all.
"I can't meet you. I never get off of work." He said to me. He was filled with sincerity, but lies. Standing here you see things like that, someone being honest but sugar coating a lie. It's the same every time, but the excuse is different. I can't meet you, because I'm working overtime, I can't see you outside of work because I'll lose my job. etc. etc.
I stood in silence with my head down, and crinkled my eyebrows in disappointment. I had had a bad day. Nothing but slow movers completely ruining my handle time. I had to change something.
"Mandy, listen.. I.. adore you.. you know, everything you do up there. I watch you, it's truly art." I muttered in a stuttering mess. It flew out like drunken puke.
He stared for a long time at me, unnerving me and pulling apart my cells as if he was doing it with his hands. Eyes that gave nothing, torturous and grinding. I wish I could do that to him.. if only...
"Charlie, I know. I know everything about you. I can hear everything your mind says. I know everything you think about me."
Christ. Wow, what a bummer. If I had a pumping heart it would have stopped right then. That's the shitty thing about working with immortal life forms with different roles than you. He had full access. He must have been working with the company a long time. I wondered if he had like a Mind Reader Access card or something or if he learned it as a skill.. Silly thoughts. Shit. He could read my every thought. I am so bottom of the ladder. I am so caught. He can hear me. Asshole...
I tried to control my thoughts.
Mandy smiled. In one night, he laughed and he smiled. A memory coil struggled under my foot.
He squeezed off the remnants from his hands with precision. He didn't use gloves ever, because I think he liked the feel of it on his fingers. A few final drips came down and landed at my feet as he held the smile. He knew what I wanted.
He turned serious again like the flip of a coin. "I haven't seen anyone in longer than I could remember. And I can't remember why. I'm just not supposed to. Meeting people is a forbidden act. You may not come back alive."
"I don't care..." I told him automatically.. it sounded like the right answer, but I guess I didn't think it through. Knowing what I know now, I should have thought it through.
"I'll meet you tomorrow. In the place where Time stands still." He said to me in his whisper that made my hair stand on end. "Have a good night, Charlie."
At that moment he closed the end, or turned out a light or whatever it is he does so that I can no longer see an opening or a tunnel, and so that I could no longer see his shape. At that moment I could have died. If only it was that simple. My shift ended in silence, even as I sat in the sludge that burped and settled. Silent.. even as the coil twitched and flung it's moving pictures.. I noticed nothing else. I almost didn't noticed my shift had ended. Without cleaning up, without looking back, with a smile from ear to ear, I closed up and called in a night.
Even as I give my last breath, I wouldn't have changed a thing. My memory coils short and sweet and wrapped in his embrace like a candy giver. It was then in the place where Time stood that I met him and truly understood death for the first and only time.