Copyright © Renee Mirabito 2011 All rights reserved.
First Published 2011
Published by Smashwords
ISBN 978-1-4581-8049-0
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Smashwords Edition - License Notes
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All characters and events in this publication are fictional, with the exception of those in the public domain. Any resemblance or similarity to actual persons, be they living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Died Happy
So far, my favourite part of dying is death himself. Or herself, for that matter. They all look like accountants, with neat suits and cropped ‘dos. There is a lot of navy and beige around. You know the types I mean. They wander about in flat shoes looking bored, or sometimes sad.
Of course, they didn’t look like that when they come for you. You won’t be collected on your death bed by a banker. Nor will you be collected by your dead wife, brother, or best friend. It will be the guy you worked with that died of a heart attack at 42. The girl you went to primary school with that drowned in a river when she was eight. Maybe it will be the homeless guy you passed in the street on the way to work every morning. He died of an overdose, did you know?
You will know death when he or she comes for you. Not well, but you will know them. I don’t think this has any psychological or emotional significance. It’s really just a human resources problem. There is not enough death to go around up here.
We don’t really know how the recruiting process works. All of us just wake up and kind of know what we do. The same way you might know you want to be a doctor, or a car salesman. Not that many people want to play death. The ones that do though, are always the ones that are angry about death themselves. Oh, and they always hate me.
Death is the girl that got murdered out running one night, or the guy that got stabbed in a bank robbery just shy of his 30th birthday. They always think that they didn’t deserve to die. I guess I didn’t think I deserved to die, but I shrugged it off after a while, like rain on your wedding day.
All of those harbingers of death hang around with you guys mostly. They say they don’t like to commute, but really, it’s because they like to look through your windows. No wonder there are so many ghosts stories around. Death will haunt you like a peeping tom.
They come back up to their offices, in their suits. The children look like adults. The adults look much more sombre than they did when they were alive.
Then there are the logistics guys. They pretty much look like regular people. A bit different from what they looked like on earth, it seems you lose some stuff in transmission. Sometimes you might have the wrong coloured eyes, other times you might wind up a different gender. You can end up years older or decades younger. The good thing is you don’t age once you’re here though.
What else do you want to know? We don’t really have solid bodies, which is fun. They look right, but there is no touch. You have legs, but you can’t walk, you kind of float. I’m like a good-looking version of Casper the Friendly Ghost.
I dated a guy in logistics once, he said he thought it was all about maths. He was talking about pi, I was dying of boredom. Well, I would have been, were I alive. We only lasted a few weeks, the most tedious few weeks of my life. Dating isn’t as fun as it is on earth. There is no sex. What would be the point? There is a weird kind of mutual floating thing, but that’s as close as you get.
So, death looks like a banker, but acts like a sad sack. Logistics all look like regular people you meet down the pub, and act like bankers.
Confusing, right? Not really, it’s probably just that I over-analyze. Which is appropriate, because that’s my job. I select. I scour around public hospitals and mark the people who are going to die. I hover above playgrounds and touch the child who will fall and break his skull. I sent your childhood friend to die in a river. I write scripts, I keep the drama of death in balance.
When you think about it, logistics gets the best deal. They just do the figures and forget the responsibility. Most of you panic, and have no idea what to do. Why would you? So death takes you to where you have to be, like an inter-galactic taxi driver. Some of you come here. Some of you go to other places I have no idea about. Adelaide, maybe.
Logistics do all kinds of calculations that make me want to bang my head against a brick wall. Sometimes they will mention something a bit interesting, like ‘star dust’ or ‘worm hole’, and I’m all ready to get my Doctor Who on. It never lasts, all of a sudden it’s angles and light beams again. Physics was not a strong subject of mine.
There are other people up here, I don’t really know what they all do. I kind of stopped caring after I settled in. You see, I really love my job. I love it much better than anything I ever did on earth. Once I decided to let a man live because I liked his ridiculous mustache. It looked terrible, and was all wrong for his cheekbones. It made me laugh.
Don’t hate me, I have a quota to reach. I work within tight deadlines. Sometimes I will let something nice happen before someone is taken. I will let their husband make it to the hospital in time. I will let them get a last phone call from their sister. I can’t do this all the time. I’m not allowed. We have to keep ambiguity. Things can’t be tied up in neat little bundles. Often I am cruel, but I don’t mind cruelty so much. I enjoy irony immensely. Last month I got a written warning for killing too many people off on the way to their surprise birthday parties. You’re dead. Surprise!
So, for each kind death, I keep one cruel, and another ambivalent. I am not allowed to leave room for catharsis. This would lead to me losing my job. Who knows where I would end up then? I get the feeling there are other places, and that I may not like them.
You probably want to know about God. Everyone asks that. They want to see him, or be judged, or some other line. They think they are going to get to meet the fellow. I never got baptised when I was alive, so the thought never occurred to me on arrival. Everyone is disappointed, because I tell them what they already know.
There is no old dude with a white beard. There is no one to judge you for your sins, except yourself. Believe me, you’ll get a while to think things through. There is no gold star for lighting a candle at church, or for making a pilgrimage. There are people here who will argue with me, and tell you something different. The closest you’ll get to God here is your instinct when something is wrong or right. When you need to change something, or leave it the same. You can choose to acknowledge or ignore it. I’m sure most people have this feeling on earth. If there is a God, he is already in your gut.
There are probably more questions here then there are on earth. I often wonder about suicides, I’ve never met any. If I have, they lied to me. People lie a lot up here. Even me, but mostly I lie to make myself sound more interesting. I did the same thing when I was alive. Everyone here complains about how they died, or something they never got time to do. So I don’t know what happens to the happy people when they die, either. Maybe they’re doing dive bombs with Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Maybe no one dies happy, and we all go wanting a little bit more.
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About the Author
Renee Mirabito lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two dogs. She works as a copy and content writer. You can read her work around the internet on the blogs she contributes to, as well as in lifestyle magazines, both locally and internationally.
A collection of short stories, entitled 'Tails' will be released on April 4, 2011.
http://fiction.reneemirabito.com