Avengers: If Death Were A Good Thing (1/1)

[martianhouse]

Title: If Death Were A Good Thing
Author: schmevil
Summary: Janet in death's casino (As seen in Incredible Hercules).
Character: Janet Van Dyne
Word count: 150

Along with taxes, it's one of the great inevitabilities. Sometimes it's a mercy. Other times it's the sourest of practical jokes. For Jan, it's a waiting room-come-casino, on her way back to life.

Jan pulls the lever again. Lights flash. Bells jingle. Cherry, cherry, orange.

There are too many familiar faces here. She took a long look around, on her way in. Now, her attention is fully occupied by the slot machine. It's either her get-out-of-jail-free card, or the whole of her existence.

It's life, not death, that's supposed to be a gamble. But life, it turns out, has more certainties than death. It ends. It is full up, with pain, and pleasure; tears, and laughter. It ends.

Death does not, usually. Death is: waiting; waiting; enduring the distant laughter of all too real gods; waiting. It's capricious, and strange, and full of unsettlingly tacky decor.

Jan pulls the lever.

END

We know this much
Death is an evil;
we have the gods'
word for it; they too
would die if death
were a good thing

- Sappho