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Chapter Text

The spine of her world finally crumbled when the state funeral home let the technicians go. They dismissed her without pay, without so much as a backward glance, all cold apology and vampire smiles. She had to understand that it was all under control now. Federal data are incontrovertible; the virus cannot exist anymore. Ignore the clotted bodies piled like cordwood in the trucks. They don’t exist either.

So that was it, then. She wandered blind until she stood above the river swelling under the wooden bridge, spitting ice and dirty foam downstream in the churning rapids. The unending noise of moving water filled her with a pounding fear, even as it pulled her steps closer to the edge. She was certain of it now. This time had to be right. Not like all those other failures, but for real, for good.

She ripped off her cloth mask, damp with her own humid breath, and sent it fluttering like a dead leaf into the water below. She didn’t know why she was still wearing it in the first place. In a way it would be simpler if the virus took her. Fewer questions, at any rate. She placed her foot on the lower rail, lifting herself higher. Another step. The cold spray stung her cheeks. One more step would do it. She balanced on her knees and gripped the railing with aching fingers, battling vertigo as she stared downwards.

“That won’t do any good, you know,” a voice said.

Her racing heart skipped several beats. A dark figure appeared at the edge of her vision as if from nowhere, shockingly crisp against the white sleet tapping on the wooden slats. A man stood wrapped in a shadow-black overcoat and hat, no mask, and an unlit cigarette delicately balanced between two fingers.

“What did you say?” she wheezed. The freezing air stabbed at her lungs.

“I said that won’t do any good.”

That voice. She knew it, oh how she knew it, that purring, unmistakable voice. When the figure raised its head she stared back in shock at her idol’s face, the menacing face in old films made long before she was born, the soft face in so many silver daydreams, the sad face shaped by the anguish of war that she copied in pencil scrawls, tracing every line and delicate curve of his dark-eyed, sensuous expression that she too often failed to capture.

Her mouth struggled to form words. “You—you’re dead,” she blurted.

“Close,” the man replied, striking a match against the rusted rail. His cigarette glowed, and the smoke tingled in her nostrils with a sulfurous burning stench, and then something else, like decaying lilacs at the end of summer, or white perfumed lilies rotting into dust.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He raised a hand slowly. The tips of his forefinger and thumb closed on the burning match-head to extinguish it forever.

“I am many things,” he said in a flat voice.

“Such as?”

He shrugged, flicking the spent match over the rail. “Self-doubt. Melancholy. A shadow on one’s heart, or the darkness that exists in every human soul. Perhaps I am death itself.”

Her mouth fell open. Before she could speak, she watched a glimmer in his eye, then a subtle softening of his expression, before he stunned her with a single, sardonic little laugh.

“I’m kidding you,” he said, showing prominent front teeth in a slow grin. “I am only one of those things. You know which, don’t you, Victoria?”

“Uh.” Her voice crackled painfully. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know everybody’s name. Some people know me better than others. But I walk at everyone’s side, all their lives.”

The realization, however unbelievable, was dawning. She considered her options.

“If you really are death itself,” she said, “then you knew what I was trying to do. You’ve come for me.”

“No,” he said, pausing to drag deeply on the cigarette. “I have not.”

He volunteered no more information, and she was too disquieted to ask further.

“How—why do you look like Peter Lorre?” she asked instead.

“Why shouldn’t I?” A mildly hurt expression wrinkled his brow. “Oh, you thought perhaps Death should wear a black robe, and carry a scythe, huh?”

She didn’t answer right away. She was spellbound just watching him raise the cigarette to his lips and exhale a wreath of smoke.

“I’m not sure what I thought. Are you his ghost?”

“No. But evidently, you were thinking of him. You imagined me this way. And uh, I have to say it isn’t bad.” He passed a hand over the lapels of his overcoat and adjusted the collar, pulling it higher over his throat. “You know, for an ageless entity who can appear to be anything, it’s strange how everyone insists on the Grim Reaper. But you have a better imagination than that. Haven’t you?”

She could not answer. Her arms were shaking too much, still clinging hard to the cold metal rail.

“Come down from there,” Death said, beckoning her with a graceful gesture of his hand. “I’m not here to take you. I want to talk to you.”

A shudder went through her. Suddenly she felt the unbidden shock of grief inside, the torn wound that a whole lifetime had failed to heal. Her body went limp and she hid her face.

“I wish you would take me,” she sobbed. “I wish you would.”

“I can’t,” Death said.

“Why not?” she screamed over the voice of the river. “Do I have to stay in this hell just because you say so? If I jumped off this bridge right now, are you saying I would live?”

He glanced away from her, wearing an expression of guilt.

“It is not your time,” he replied softly. “But I don’t want you to be in pain. Please come down.”

“Why do you care?” she spat.

“Come down, Victoria.”

His impossibly large, liquid eyes followed her as she crept down from the rail. All the fight in her, if there was any left, had completely disappeared. She stood trembling on her feet once more, back slouched, breath coming up short.

“I’m sorry. I’m just tired,” she whispered, ashamed of the fresh tears flowing down her cheeks. “I’m so tired.”

“I know,” Death said.

A cool shadow enveloped her as he drew close, like a cloud shrouding the harsh glare of the sun. Together they walked back into the silence of the crumbling city, the roar of the winter river fading behind them.

It took Victoria some time to work up the courage to speak again. She glanced sidelong at her noiseless companion. He stared neither left nor right, just straight on from under heavy eyelids, as calm and dead-eyed (she snorted to herself) as the endless void of space.

“You must be pretty busy these days,” she said darkly. The sarcastic urge was rising in spite of herself. “Was a pandemic not enough, or do you have nothing better to do than talk suicides down from the ledge?”

Death consented to look in her general direction, one eyebrow raised.

“I know your situation,” he said. “I am ashamed of what my house has done.”

“Your house? Oh. House of the dead, you mean,” she said, after a moment’s awkward hesitation.

“It is truly an insult to the both of us,” he continued as if she had not spoken. He sucked aggressively at the cigarette and examined the burning ash. “To treat my acolytes in this world like so much garbage. Unconscionable.”

“Acolytes?”

“Yes. The ones I entrust with duties such as yours. The ones who are not afraid of me.”

Victoria’s head swam. “I’m sorry... I don’t understand. Duties like mine? The funeral home fired me, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I know,” he muttered. “And it is a crime.”

She lowered her head, attempting to hide the tears welling up again. “Nothing I can do about it now,” she said in a choked voice.

“There is,” Death replied. “But we’ll worry about it later.”

His dark eyes seemed to go right through her, penetrating everything within her soul. There was an underlying agitation, a slow boiling beneath the surface of his expression that was difficult to read.

“Can’t you just make things go back the way it was?” she begged. “Why did you have to send a plague?”

“You think I sent it?” Death scoffed. “Talk to my good-for-nothing sister.”

“Your sister?”

“Pestilence. All diseases are her doing.” The shadows under Death’s eyes deepened and he disgustedly exhaled a cloud of fragrant smoke through his nose, dragon-like. “For ages she’s done this to me. Always the same game. Always playing with life to create some new disease, and I’m the one who has to clean up the mess.”

“I honestly didn’t know that.” Victoria’s thoughts sank deeper into a new rabbit hole. Was any of this even happening?

“Now, it would not be so bad if she let it happen naturally, or kept her experiments contained,” Death continued in a low monotone. “But no, she must experiment in the field, and with no control group, either. She lets it all happen at once. And who does everyone blame? Me. Always.”

He shut his eyes and passed a hand over his face. “Yes, I… I have been very busy. And I’m tired, too.”

Victoria waited a polite number of minutes before speaking again. They passed through the grimy pedestrian tunnel under the disused train tracks, and she counted the steady drip of the drain holes in the concrete wall, seeping gray moisture like the interior of a cave.

“You don’t always look like Peter, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. I have many forms. Every person sees me differently, if they choose to see me at all. It has been that way ever since human beings had a name for me, and much longer before that.”

“You were around in ancient times?”

“Of course.”

“What about in prehistory? In those billion years when life was just bacteria in the sea? You were around then, too?”

He nodded once, slowly. “That was a long time ago. I had no name, not even a form, but I was there all the same. Things lived, they died, and I took them.” He stared into space. “It was a little simpler then.”

Victoria thrilled at the tingle that went down her neck. “How do you do it? I mean, how can you be here talking to me, but also finding every single thing on Earth that dies?”

He shrugged the question away as irrelevance. “I am everywhere. Everything alive belongs to me someday. I always find them.”

She gazed at him blankly, entranced but not fully comprehending. A thousand questions battled in her brain.

“What about other worlds with life?” she began. “There are others, right? Are you on those worlds, too? Does everything have souls, and what happens to a soul when you take them? What if—?”

Death’s full lips curved with the barest hint of amusement, but he said nothing. Victoria fumbled and broke off her line of questioning as a wave of embarrassment crashed on her.

“I shouldn’t ask so many questions,” she said, her face growing hot.

“On the contrary. I am happy to answer. I could answer them all at once if I wanted to, inside your mind. Only I don’t like to do that.”

“Why not?”

Death looked evasive as he rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “It has a way of… breaking human minds, if I’m not careful. They tend to go mad.”

Victoria laughed. “What if I’m already mad?” she exclaimed, hoping to see her companion smile again, but stopped short when his expression did not change. His mournful gaze slid towards her in silent reproach.

“I don’t like to impose my will on the living. It is less painful that way.”

Victoria hung her head. “I understand,” she mumbled. “But you are real, right? I’m not in the psych ward again, talking to myself?”

Death took one more puff before lighting a fresh cigarette off the old one. “You tell me. What do you think I am?” he asked, crushing the stub underfoot.

She was mute for several minutes, completely at a loss, but Death was nothing if not patient. He waited quietly.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. Her hand was trembling as she held it out in front of her. She hesitated only briefly before reaching for his arm.

He flinched away and stared at her for a long moment before understanding her purpose. Relenting, he extended a soft pale hand, palm out, and waited. Closing her eyes tight, she lightly brushed her fingers against his. Instantly a bone-chilling cold traveled her entire arm before she broke contact, gasping.

“Well?” Death asked.

“I don’t think I’m imagining things,” she said, rubbing the dull ache out of her bicep. “But I don’t suppose that means anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because I could still be making it up. And I don’t believe in the supernatural. Not really.”

“I am not exactly supernatural.” Death pointed out. “By myself I am a very earthly concept. So is everyone in my family.”

“Hm. You said Pestilence is your sister. How many siblings do you have, anyway?”

“Too many,” Death replied tersely.

“Are they older, or younger than you?”

He inclined his head. “Yes. And by that I mean, age has very little meaning to us. However, if you want to count from when we appeared on this planet, I was first.”

Victoria watched him closely. “Can I meet them too?”

A muscle tightened in his jaw, causing his ears to twitch. “You don’t want to meet my family.”

“Why?”

“Because they are not as forgiving as I am.”

They walked on in silence for a while. Their pace along the deserted streets was slow, unhurried, yet they already found themselves in the heart of the downtown. The stores in the abandoned district glowered at them from broken windows and shuttered doors, every surface slick with runoff and melted slush, while a lingering smell of industrial solvent hung in the dry air. Every so often another person could be seen shuffling by, eyes frozen in a judgmental stare above their masks, and Victoria suddenly felt naked.

“Can they see you?” she whispered to her companion as someone scuttled out of the way, pretending not to be picking through the detritus of the looted shops.

“Yes,” Death answered. His eyes followed the person’s uneven movements across the empty street. “But they won’t always acknowledge what I am.”

“You mean they’re afraid of you.”

Death silently affirmed. “To them I am only the shadow who takes them away to the next world. And then what? I am powerless to help them.”

“What do you mean?

“Think back to the bridge. You thought that in death, you might find peace. But you would not have found it there. Even my world is in upheaval. Souls arrive frightened and confused, not knowing what I am, or who to trust. They follow each other into the dark, and are lost.”

Her heart sank. “That’s terrible. Can’t you bring them back?”

“I told you, they are afraid of me. After I take them, they refuse my help because all they hear are the cries of the other new dead, just as despairing as they are. So many of them, all so afraid. I hate to see it.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

He looked away and shoved his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. “Don’t be. Right now the older souls have taken it upon themselves to comfort the new ones. Only they are so busy greeting the new dead, they have no time to speak to me. The cemeteries have never been so quiet.”

Victoria pondered everything for a while as her thoughts swirled. “I could always talk to you,” she said. “I… I’m lonely too.”

Death smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said, almost to himself. “Yes, I think—”

Before he could finish, a loud bang resounded in the street, and Victoria’s whole body flinched at the noise. She watched in fear as a cloud of white mist engulfed the buildings down the street. She turned around to flee, only to witness an unmarked black van screech to a halt in the intersection and disgorge a number of riot cops. They descended in one camo-colored mass on two unfortunates crossing the street, beat them about the head, and swallowed them into the back of the van. It all took less than fifteen seconds.

Her eyes watered. The smell of tear gas was on her now, filling her mouth and throat with burning phlegm. A riot line was emerging from the approaching cloud, falling mercilessly on anyone trapped in the street. She didn’t know why the goons had chosen to hit an empty street, but a long campaign of random terror had been the norm for a while. Perhaps now it was simply for sport. Her chest ached with dread knowing that she would be caught up in the sweep too, but then a fleeting thought made her go limp. Why resist? She wanted to die only an hour ago. She could have done it this way all along—

A cold hand pressed heavily into her shoulder. Death moved between her and the inexorable riot line, and his image flickered into something else, shadowy and muddied like a damaged film.

“Time to go, Victoria.” His low voice seemed to originate inside her own head over the noise of screams.

“But… what—”

“Go,” Death repeated. “Now.”

She fell back as Death’s image distorted and disappeared entirely. His sickly-sweet, rotted floral odor enveloped her just as another abduction van pulled up at the curb mere feet away. The faceless riot cops poured out, stared right at her… no. They were staring through her. They didn’t see her. How...

Now was not the time to question. She stirred her legs to move and ran, aching, wheezing with asthmatic lungs threatening to choke her. Her apartment was still some twenty blocks away. Time lengthened as in a dream, with the frustrating sensation of struggling through a wall of water that slowed her to a crawl.

By the time she dragged herself upstairs to her own room her knees were trembling and her heart was fit to burst. She fought uselessly against her constricted chest for more air as a blood red shadow of her own retina crept at the edges of her vision. Soon it blotted out her sight entirely as she tottered and collapsed, falling unconscious inside the open apartment door.

Chapter Text

“You cannot stay here!”

“Out of my way, you fool.”

“Please, she needs her rest! Look at her, she is exhausted. No medication. And I don’t know when she last had anything to eat.”

“That’s exactly the point. I told you before not to interfere in my affairs.”

The two voices, one soft and plaintive, the other oily, deep and graveled, slowly pulled her awake. Groggily she sifted through a jumble of broken memories from the day before. Or was it the same day? What time was it, anyway? She stirred fitfully as the voices continued arguing somewhere near the studio apartment door, and realized that someone had placed her into bed, fully-clothed.

“No no, please go now!” The soft voice begged, heartbroken. “Brother told me to look after her, and until he returns, that is what I am going to do.”

“He’s my brother as much as he is yours,” rumbled the graveled voice. “For the last time—”

Victoria coughed and tried to sit up, but her head throbbed excruciatingly with the rise in blood pressure. She pressed her temples, squeezing her eyes shut, and the voices momentarily ceased.

“What’s going on?” she mumbled.

“She’s waking up,” whispered the soft voice, and she recognized it as her idol’s voice again. It had the same timbre, the same curious accent, yet something was different, something timid and high-pitched.

She painfully opened one eye to see two motionless figures staring back. Death’s huge shadowed eyes blinked at her in fear. He looked thinner and more delicate about the face this time, and in place of the heavy black overcoat, he was nearly swallowed up by a shabby, ill-fitting gray suit. The other entity beside him was massive, wide and ponderous in sleek black trousers and a matching silken coat of generous proportions.

“Death?” she questioned, unsure for the moment who was whom.

The little figure cringed. “Not me,” he answered, wide-eyed, and waved to her shyly as he backed away from the bed. “Goodbye, Victoria. Brother will see you later.”

He vanished without a trace in the time it took Victoria to blink.

“Who… what was that?” she demanded, turning to the large figure.

The fat man took his time in answering. He spent a few unhurried moments glancing about the dingy apartment with its cracked, water-stained ceilings and gaping floorboards. He smirked at the sole bit of decoration hanging across the room, a framed reproduction of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, before settling into a seat on the divan. The divan creaked under him.

“I take it you’ve heard the expression ‘sleep is the brother of death?’” he said at last. He gestured with a solid ebony walking stick towards the spot where the little figure had disappeared. “Well. That was him.”

“Sleep.” Victoria smiled. “I should have known.”

“Indeed. Twins, you understand. He was instructed to keep you company while you were, ah, indisposed,” he explained. “As you no doubt heard, dear Hypnos is rather protective of his charges.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She stretched her stiff shoulders and scratched the back of her neck, waiting for the fat man to introduce himself, but he only watched benignly and did not supply a name.

“And you are?” she asked, glaring in suspicion.

He smiled with a secret that he was not ready to share. “Oh come now, isn’t it obvious?” he chuckled. “You’ve already met two of my family. Why don’t you guess?”

She scowled. A sensation of gnawing hunger made thinking more difficult than it should have been.

“Sydney Greenstreet,” she said flippantly.

In return he offered a smug smile, his narrowed eyes almost disappearing into folds of fat. “A good guess, but incorrect. That is merely how I appear to you. Now, what would you say if I told you that I was a horseman, one of four?”

“Oh. I get it.” She curled inward with dread, cradling the ache in her belly. “Famine.”

“Precisely.”

“What a stupid apocalypse,” she sighed. “Since when do the Four Horsemen look like old Hollywood actors?”

“Hmm-hm,” Famine laughed through his nose. He spread his arms, confident and unassailable in his bulk. “Since you started seeing us. I must say I quite like this appearance. Delightfully ironic, wouldn’t you say? Hmm-hm, my brother did say you were imaginative. It never ceases to amaze me; the myriad ways humans choose to perceive what they don’t understand.”

“I understand you more than I care to,” she snapped. “Just leave me alone.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Not when we have important business to discuss,” Famine replied. His jovial tone dropped abruptly into something more calculating.

“What business?”

Famine leaned forward, resting both hands on the walking stick. “You’re hungry, aren’t you,” he said.

She shook her head, but her stomach betrayed her with an unholy growl.

“Of course you are,” Famine continued. “You’re craving a feast right now. A whole feast for you alone. All yours.”

Her mouth watered as she swayed unsteadily. She broke out in a cold sweat watching Famine’s eyes bulge in a snakelike stare.

“And you’re hungry for a great deal more in life, I assure you. I could see it the moment I walked in,” he said in low rumbling tones. “I can give it to you. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Understand that it is already too late for you to resist. From now on, you will walk at my side. Without me, you will feel as though you might devour the entire world, and it would still not be enough to sate you.”

A dragging weakness crawled over her. She tried to get out of bed, but the simple act of sitting upright sapped all her energy. She fell on her side, her vision starting to turn black once again.

“Don’t struggle. It all comes at such a great cost.” His droning voice continued, distorted and muffled as if coming from underwater. “But I need people like you. People to devour the world for me—”

“FAMINE.”

A harsh voice cut through the encroaching darkness, and the weakness retreated enough for her to raise her head. Her chest heaved as a cloying smell of rotted lilac and dead lilies swirled past her nostrils.

“What have I told you, idiot?” Death barked, his black-clad form materializing like a shadow beside the nightstand.

“Oh come now, what’s one acolyte, more or less. Let’s not argue about trifles.”

Death glared in cold fury. “You’re right, we won’t argue. This one is already under my protection. Understand? Now get out.”

Famine lifted his wide shoulders in a little shrug. “Very well, sir. In that case I take my leave.” He tapped his cane on the floor and smiled amiably at Victoria as though nothing had happened. “It’s been a pleasure. Perhaps one day we shall see each other again. Hm-hmm, hm.”

The sound of his oily chuckle rang in her ears as he vanished from sight.

“Are you all right?” asked Death.

“Yes. I’m all right now,” Victoria said, not wholly convinced of it herself.

Death accepted her answer and wearily sat down on the end of the bed. He placed a cigarette between his lips and reached into his coat for a match.

“There are people who worship him, you know,” he said.

Victoria snorted in disbelief. “Who would do that?”

“The ones who call him inevitable. The ones who create scarcity just to increase their own power.” Death stared into middle distance as he lit the cigarette and shook out the match. “They can never be satisfied, not even with the whole world.”

“I think I know the ones you mean,” she said darkly. She turned away, shamefaced at the trembling in her arms.

“Don’t be afraid. He’s gone now,” said Death.

“But I am afraid. I’m afraid of starving,” she said, fighting back tears. “I used to have panic attacks that society would collapse and we would be dragged from our homes, and starve…” She broke off with a disgusted look. “I guess that’s all happening now. It happened and nobody would believe me.”

“Famine won’t touch you.” Death fixed her with a solemn stare. “That is not your death.”

She paused, jolting between relief and trepidation at the other possibilities. “What is my death?”

A faint look of unease passed over his features. He ignored the question and instead turned to the far wall, where he examined the Book of the Dead print.

“I see that you appreciate fine art,” he said. “Seems appropriate for us, doesn’t it?”

Victoria nodded and wiped her eyes. “The old funeral director let me have it when they changed management,” she said. “It used to hang in the waiting room. I don’t think the visitors liked it. They couldn’t figure out what it was.”

“Then they were ignorant,” Death said. “Anyone could tell you what it means. You know, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s the ritual of the afterlife, and the weighing of the heart,” said Victoria, grateful for the distraction. “If the dead person’s heart balances the feather of Maat, then the soul passes into the afterlife. If the heart is unworthy, then it is eaten by Ammit the Devourer.”

“Very good.” He drew thoughtfully at the cigarette. “Quite the imagination they had, to create such stories. The Egyptians didn’t know it, but I accepted every heart. I don’t judge them.”

He blinked and shook himself from his musings. “Are you still hungry?”

Victoria rubbed her abdomen, no longer in agony, but still aching with Famine’s retreating influence. “Yeah. There’s no food in the place, though.” She thought hard about what day it was, and came up with nothing. “I don’t even remember when it ran out. It’s all a blur.”

“Never mind. I think we can do something about that.”

He stood up and motioned for her to follow. She did so, pulling on her coat and wrapping an old scarf around her face in place of a mask, but the precaution turned out to be unnecessary. It was pitch dark when they stepped into the streets, and there was no one to be seen.

She followed Death’s silent tread, sometimes losing sight of him in the darkness, until they arrived at a closed café down the road. No one stirred inside. One of the windows was boarded up, and the front door was firmly locked and bolted.

“I don’t want to break in,” she whispered, but stopped when she realized that Death had already materialized on the other side. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“I thought it might be nice and quiet here. But if you prefer,” he said, politely beckoning her inside, “I can always take you somewhere else.”

Victoria felt her cheeks blush under the scarf. A flood of longing filled her chest when she considered it was once possible to go out like this in the daytime, to mingle with anyone you wanted.

“No no, I like this place. At least I did, when it was still open.” She stepped inside and looked around for the light switch. The tiled floor was gritty with dust under her feet.

“Do you think anyone has been in here lately?” she asked, moving towards the back room. “I don’t want to get picked up for stealing.”

Death took a seat at the counter. “You won’t,” he said, discarding his spent cigarette.

Still wary, but too hungry to care very much, Victoria scrounged in the back room. The place had been broken into and looted some time ago, and most of what remained in the refrigerator had long since expired. With a little patience she managed to uncover a crumpled-up instant coffee bag, a stale tea packet, a half-full box of crackers, some mildly suspicious deli meat and cheese slices in vacuum-sealed packages, and surprisingly, numerous untouched cans of fruit.

“I’ll take these back to the apartment,” she said, gathering all the cans into a plastic bag. “I can put some in the common room downstairs. Maybe, if there’s anyone left in the building… well anyway, someone else might need it too.”

Death inclined his head approvingly. He observed in silence as she heated water in a kettle and munched on crackers and canned fruit.

“Do you, um. Do you want any coffee?” Victoria asked with her mouth full.

Death allowed himself a wan smile and shook his head. With a subtle motion of his hand, like a magician revealing a vanished card, he uncovered a shot glass filled with an inky black fluid swirling like smoke. The glass refilled by itself after he drank it.

Victoria smiled curiously. “What is that?” she asked.

Death opened his mouth to answer when an unfamiliar female voice manifested behind them:

“Not coffee, at any rate!”

Victoria gasped. No one else was visible anywhere in the café.

“Who said that?” she cried. She looked to Death for an explanation, but he merely heaved a deep sigh and rested his chin in his hands.

“Oh, Thanatos, what do you look like? Stop this at once,” the voice said again.

Death’s gaze rolled up under heavy eyelids. “Sister. What have I told you about this?” he glumly inquired.

In answer, a tinkling laugh sounded from the vicinity of the nearest table.

“And what’s this mortal doing here? One of your experiments, perhaps?”

“I don’t keep experiments, Pestilence,” Death replied through clenched teeth. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand what a friend is.”

The voice of Pestilence tutted, pouting invisible lips. “How insulting!”

“Don’t talk to me about insulting,” retorted Death. “This is all your fault, disrupting the natural order.”

“But daahling, I am the natural order,” Pestilence purred. “Or haven’t you been paying attention? Tsk. Sometimes I think I’m the only one in the family who knows how to use my abilities to the full. Besides, I’m not the one impersonating dead German film stars to amuse mortals.”

“Hungarian,” Victoria automatically corrected. “Or Austro-Hungarian… look, if you’re Pestilence, why can’t I see you like the others?” On some level, she considered that it might be inappropriate to speak so casually to dread forces of nature, but very little seemed surprising anymore.

“Oh, it’s confused, the poor thing,” Pestilence said in richly patronizing tones. “I forgot that Thanatos never quite mastered the art of transference as I have.”

“W-what’s that?” Victoria asked uncertainly of the empty air.

“Don’t encourage her,” Death said, but the voice continued:

“Transference, my dear! The ability to manifest purely in someone’s mind. You hear me because I will it so.”

“Only you can’t see her,” Death replied smugly, “because she isn’t good at it.”

“How rude! If I wanted you to, you would see me in any form I chose,” Pestilence continued sharply. “And I could transfer into multiple minds at once, AND in multiple forms at once, if that’s what I wanted. Simple, no? Unless you’re my brother.”

“Shut up,” he muttered.

“He just can’t communicate with mortals in his natural state, can he?” the voice gleefully continued. “No, if he wants to speak to the maggot’s nest, he must become a maggot, one corporeal form at a time. Quite a shame, really. Even now he refuses to speak to me in the proper way. Just listen to him, flapping his gums. Dreadfully slow.”

“You shut up!” Death growled, pounding one hand flat on the counter. “The only reason you know anything about transference is because young nephew Morpheus had to explain to you how dreams work, in painfully simple language, and even then you couldn’t grasp it for about two full millennia. By then you were so frustrated, you killed half the population of Europe.”

“Two-thirds, if you’ll remember correctly,” the voice chirped. “Ah, but those were good times, weren’t they, dear brother? You and I, stalking the land? We had real plagues then. Nowadays, practically all my fun is spoiled before I even begin.”

“Oh, we can’t have that, can we?” Death snorted. “How inconvenient it must be for you! These damned humans, what with their science, and their medicine.” He tossed back another shot and slumped defeated in his seat.

“You may laugh,” returned Pestilence. “But their precious medicine won’t save them now. In fact, this newest experiment of mine may be my greatest achievement yet. I mean it. You thought humans were ignorant in the old days? Just wait until you discover that nothing whatever has changed. Not one little bit.”

“Is that so?” Death replied dully, pretending to examine a drop of the black liquid clinging inside his glass.

“Oh stop, don’t pretend you don’t know. Your whole job is to eat dead things. You’ve seen your share of dead humans, and more than enough of the stupidity that killed ‘em. You used to complain that I would wipe out the entire world because nobody had any way of understanding my real nature. They were ignorant, right? Well, look at them now. Centuries of science and medicine, and they still debate the evils of a mask.”

A mocking giggle escaped her. Death’s fingers tightened imperceptibly around the empty glass.

“It’s absolutely beyond my wildest imaginings!” Pestilence rambled on. “Oh, I should have done this ages ago. Of course I never thought I could get away with anything so subtle, yet so daring. Just think, my new plague either does nothing—or it kills—or it scars a person for life. All chance and contingency. A true gamble, wouldn’t you say? Can’t you just imagine the uncertainty, the delicious confusion? Sure, you might be perfectly safe—or you could end up in the tender care of my dear, sweet brother. Take your pick!”

Her gleeful laughter swelled around them on all sides, growing in harshness and volume, until Death seethed and clapped both hands over his ears.

“Will you be quiet!” he shouted.

“Oh Thanatos, stop being dramatic,” Pestilence sniffed. “You act as though you’re not having fun anymore.”

“Fun?” A nasal, disbelieving laugh burst from him like a sneeze. “I never had fun.”

“Sure you did! You enjoyed your power, same as any of us.”

His dark eyes bulged dangerously. “You think I take pleasure in suffering?” Death murmured deep in his throat.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

With a violent sweep of his hand, Death flung his glass off the counter, sending it shattering on the tiles.

“Maybe you do, you twisted creature, but I don’t. I hate this existence. I HATE it!” he screamed.

Victoria cringed, biting her lips nervously in stunned silence. She watched as Death launched into a furious tirade, all directed at a seemingly empty chair.

“For ages you’ve taken the natural order and turned it all into a petty little game of who suffers most. You and your ‘experiments.’ And the things you get up to with our bastard brother War; it’s disgusting to contemplate! I suppose we really have him to thank for all this. I might even say he’s gotten smart after so many years. Can you imagine? Disrupting every nation in the world just by sitting in one bloated idiot’s ear. You never thought it could be so easy, did you?”

“Oh do be quiet, brother, for Nature’s sake,” sighed the invisible Pestilence.

“I will NOT, you miserable wretch! I take life only to spare it from your cruelty, your—your sadism, all down to its hideous core. You toy with your prey, bringing all the suffering, mangled bodies to me like trophies, and I have to decide if it’s within their fate to die. I have had enough of it, do you hear? Do you?! I...”

His thundering voice tired to a broken sigh, his fury winding down just as swiftly as it began. He slumped and rubbed his forehead, his chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths.

“Are you done now?” Pestilence drawled in an icy tone. “I do believe it’s time for me to leave.”

“Don’t let the door hit you,” Victoria mumbled under her breath.

“I wouldn’t take that tone if I were you, mortal. Remember, you’re no stranger to my glory.”

“Oh? So what? You’re already ending the whole world.”

“Listen, darling, I might as well tell you. You’re not going to be among my honored dead. Brother is nice to them—they die quickly. But not you. Oh, not you.”

“Go away,” said Victoria.

“I’m not going anywhere. Ha, I’m sure Thanatos already gave you his tired spiel, something about clinging to everyone’s elbow for all eternity, or whatever it was. Well, in a more intimate way, I’m the same. I follow you too, only it isn’t a virus. It’s the mental sort of malady. So subtle, so… invisible? Ah yes.”

Pestilence laughed again, a soft, mocking laugh that gradually swelled to an echoing cackle inside Victoria’s head. She winced, blinking away sudden tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

“Why don’t you show yourself! Rotten coward!” Victoria yelled.

The café door burst open with a bang and swung wildly on its hinges, as if blown by a gusting wind. No one appeared. Only Pestilence’s laughter howled unabated over the racket, crashing away into the still night. Victoria leaped from behind the counter, hastening to throw her weight against the open door and lock it tight again.

“Get out of here and stay out!” Death shouted, but his sister was already gone, her laughter fading away into nothingness.

Victoria shuddered. Before she could say anything, she froze at the sound of loud voices in the street. A pack of bored riot cops was enforcing curfew, sloping their way through the abandoned nighttime streets. Evidently they had heard the commotion and were moving in to investigate. They tested the locked door and sniffed outside the front window, clearly deliberating whether or not to put a brick through it.

“They’ve seen us,” Victoria said, hastily gathering up the food. “We need to go.”

“Yes. Better go out the back way,” Death said. The shadowed lines on his face deepened and aged him in a matter of moments. He rubbed his forehead wearily. “I should go too.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Don’t leave me alone!”

“But you wanted to die. Maybe try again? It might be your time,” he answered with a shrug.

“Don’t even say that,” Victoria scolded. “You don’t mean it. Wait, stop!”

Death said nothing. He glided towards the window at a deliberate pace, staring in languid disinterest as the cops threatened to smash their way in. Terrified, Victoria hid under a table and clung to the hem of Death’s coat, ignoring the intense cold that radiated from him like an open freezer.

“Take me with you,” she begged.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Please! Hide me like you did before, anything, just don’t let them take me.”

He did not look at her. His accusatory gaze focused on something invisible far in the distance, eyes flickering only once at the renewed sound of furious bellowing and an explosion of breaking glass.

The lights went out.

Chapter Text

She uncovered her face to impenetrable darkness, and the whole world was still. No sounds reached her apart from a thin, papery whispering of unknown origin, and a faraway drip of liquid like raindrops into a pool. A scent of cool stagnant water hung in the air, but no trace of Death’s odor remained. She was alone.

Alone where? Did it really matter where? Death had spoken of “home” before—perhaps this was it. She sat unmoving for a long time, growing colder and colder, but she did not attempt to stand. Preternatural calm sat in her chest as she thought back to the abandoned café, the riot cops, the plague and the dilapidated city. Everything seemed so far away, so insignificant. The utter darkness soothed her. It would be so easy to lie down and rest. Just to sleep for a little while.

She closed her eyes, surrendering all thought to the motherly darkness, when a new sound broke upon her consciousness; a quick tapping of little claws stepping lively over a hard surface. She looked up as faint twin pinpoints of light appeared, like the eyeshine of some nocturnal creature.

“Death?” she called. Her hands groped in the dark. “Is that you?”

There was no answer.

“Don’t go, please,” she begged, surprised at her own rising sense of panic. All sense of unnatural calm had abandoned her completely. “Don’t leave me.”

She stood up shakily, stumbled, and something small and hairy collided with her arm. Her outstretched fingers met with soft fur and a cold wet nose, and an open mouth that panted foggy breath into the still air. The little creature welcomed her, pushing forward eagerly to lick her face.

But she recoiled, burying her face in the crook of her elbow. The creature’s cold breath overpowered her with foulest stench of rotted flesh, as if every corpse in the entire world resided in a single maw. She pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth, but it did nothing to lessen the smell. She dry-heaved with the taste of death.

“Oh my god,” she said, after the nausea passed. “You didn’t smell like that before.”

The creature sat still, watching her intently with pure black, shining button eyes. Victoria shivered.

“You are Death, aren’t you?” she continued uncertainly.

She squinted as a mysterious light suddenly flashed on, like the incandescent glow of a light bulb on a swinging cord. She and the creature—nothing more than a fluffy little dog with an entirely black coat and an intelligent foxy face—stood together on a bare theater stage, the boards and curtains painted in dull black and charcoal hues. In the background, abstract monochrome shapes responded to the moving spotlight, twisting into the harsh angles of an Expressionist painting.

The unceasing whispering noise in the shadows grew a little louder, more sibilant with urgency. When she turned around to look for the source, she found herself teetering on the edge of the stage, one step away from plunging into a sightless black hole where an audience should have been.

Her head spun with vertigo. Muttering terrified curses under her breath, she backed off several paces and sat down, trembling. Part of her mind screamed to move even further back, but another, more perverse part made her inch forward, slowly, carefully, until she sat with her legs dangling freely off the stage and into unknown space.

There was no telling how long she sat there, the little dog’s nose resting in her lap, as the vast galactic shadows revolved and whispered to her. Time held no meaning, and distance meant nothing. Not even her own limbs were visible to her, and she began to feel bodiless and floating, as formless as the void itself. All that remained of mortal sensation was cold, a deep bone-gnawing cold that grew in intensity and robbed her of all feeling in her hands and feet.

“Death,” she whispered, stroking the dog’s ears. “I’m so tired. Please let me rest here. I only wanted to sleep. You know how it is, don’t you? You saw how bad it is being alive.”

The dog licked her hand.

“You saw how wrong it all is,” she went on, close to tears. “The whole world is falling apart. It can’t go on, not like this. Please. I don’t want to feel pain anymore. I don’t want—”

A bright yellow spark flashed with the hiss of a match striking. Startled, Victoria watched Death’s soft face, now aged and sagging with extra weight but forever and undeniably familiar, appear in the shadows where he perched on the edge beside her. He lit his cigarette and exhaled a familiar scent of dead flowers across the stage.

The dog jumped up and trotted to Death’s side, its stubby little tail wagging. Death’s ears perked as a faint smirk pulled the corners of his mouth.

“What gives, Hades?” he said fondly, mussing the dog’s thick coat.

Victoria smiled in spite of herself. “Hades. That’s funny. I thought it was you this whole time.”

“She is, in a way,” Death said. “She is… how shall I put it. Another aspect of myself.”

“Like a familiar?” Victoria asked.

“Hmm. My harbinger, I think she would prefer,” replied Death, putting the cigarette to his lips. “The black dog, the pale horse, the hyena-woman. Any number of omens that humans created. She is all of them.”

“Her breath stinks, by the way. No offense,” said Victoria, covering her nose again as Hades panted a fetid odor in her direction.

Death shrugged and discarded his spent matchstick into the void. “Well. That’s what happens when you eat dead things.”

Something about his completely deadpan tone made Victoria laugh, and for whatever reason she could not stop. She laughed until she had no air. Her stomach hurt and tears drained from her eyes. Everything was one hilarious paroxysm, a terribly funny asthma attack, until her fit broke off abruptly into a stunned, embarrassed silence, and even the whispers in the shadows held their breath.

“What’s the matter?” Death asked, unfazed.

She looked down and laced her numb fingers together in her lap. “Let me stay here with you,” she said.

Death gazed into space, his eyes heavy and exhausted with a look of regret. “I should never have brought you home.”

“Why did you, then?”

“I said I was forgiving. But you cannot stay here for long.”

“It’s still not my time?”

“No.” He pulled the cigarette away from his lips. “What makes you so anxious to stay?”

She looked away as a sob rose in her chest. “Because there’s no other place for me. Because I don’t belong with living people.”

“Why not?”

She covered her face and rocked back and forth in distress. “I’m so inferior. Something went so, so wrong with me and I hate it. It feels like everyone in the world sings the same song, and knows it from the second they’re born. But not me. I’m the only one who never learned, no matter how hard I try. I might mimic it, or memorize for a while, but it’s all fake and the faking makes me so tired. And everyone can hear right away that it’s wrong, so I can never join them. Except here. In death. We’re all equal in death, right?”

Death watched her sadly.

“Right?” she repeated, a little desperate. “Didn’t you say you always accepted every heart?”

“It’s true,” he said. “But even the hopeless ones don’t exactly offer themselves when I come for them. No, I don’t believe you are quite ready to die. Not even you.”

Several tears spilled down her cheeks and froze instantly. “But you said I was your acolyte. I thought that meant—”

“It means you still have work to do for me,” he said. “Come and sit over here. I’ll tell you about it.”

He helped her to her unsteady feet and placed a firm hand on her back, guiding her to center stage where a pair of plush ebony chairs had silently materialized, with a matching end table set between them. She sat down with some difficulty and wrapped her aching hands in her sleeves, but the temperature had plummeted even more and her coat might well have been made of tissue paper.

Death frowned and reached for something on the end table; an elegant crystal goblet that wasn’t there a moment ago. He flicked the rim, sounding a delicate ting note, and the glass filled with pale grayish water, swirling like mist.

“Forgive me,” he said, taking her hand to secure her unfeeling fingers around the glass. “I don’t entertain the living very often.”

She peered at the murky liquid. “What is it?” she asked through chattering teeth.

“Water of Lethe. It will make you feel better. And help you forget.” Death settled heavily in the second chair and continued to smoke. A rueful smile flickered across his features. “It certainly made me forget something. But not everything, no. Not everything I wanted to forget.” He sighed and gestured at her weakly. “Go on, drink it.”

Hesitating, she touched the glass to her lips, and was surprised to find the water tasted fresh and sweet. She drank more of it, and a hint of earthy taste emerged, like clay soil beneath the roots of trees, or petrichor, or burning autumn leaves. It chilled her throat going down, icy as glacier melt, but after draining the whole glass the sensation of cold itself began to fade from memory, until all pain in her body had released its grip.

“Better now?” said Death.

Victoria nodded, closing her eyes in gratitude. “Better,” she said.

“I told you it helps.”

She relaxed. It was a pleasant sensation, almost like being drunk, with slight mental fogginess and relief from fear. She leaned her head against the plush chair and let herself be hypnotized by the low shifting lights of the stage.

“Can I have another one?” she asked.

Death looked amused as he took the glass from her. “No, that’s enough for you. Too much at once is dangerous, even the dilute stuff.”

The glass filled again, this time with the straight inky black fluid she had watched him drink in the café. He tilted back, drained it all in one swallow and languidly returned to his cigarette, the glass vanishing from existence altogether.

“Not dangerous for you, I suppose,” Victoria said.

Death shrugged. “Oh, I never said that.”

They were both silent for a while, safely ensconced in the changing shadows, as Hades lay patiently at Death’s feet. Death reached down and patted the dog affectionately, looking inward the whole time as he considered his next words.

“Victoria,” he said, putting out his cigarette. “I have enjoyed this time with you very much. You might not know it to look at me, but it’s the truth.”

“Thank you. I enjoyed it too,” Victoria said humbly. “Before you came, I didn’t talk to anyone for months. I mean about something real. That’s sad, I know.”

“These are sad times.”

“Yeah.” She glanced away. “It helps that you look like him, too. Seeing you in Peter’s form, I mean. It makes me feel like I know you.”

“I am glad it was comforting.”

Her shoulders slumped. “But it’s wrong to think like that. I didn’t know Peter, I only fell in love with him through films. He wasn’t even alive when I was born.”

Death’s expression turned wistful. “He had a daughter, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Her name was Catherine,” she answered. “I feel so sorry for her. She died young—but I’m sure you knew that.”

“Poor Cathy,” he murmured. By some trick of the shifting light, Death’s eyes appeared to water as he turned his face away. “She was about your age.”

With a sinking heart, Victoria felt she had trespassed on something she wasn’t meant to hear, and wisely refrained from asking if she could meet departed souls in this place.

“I wish I had known her,” she said instead. “I feel like I could have been her friend.” Her lip quivered and she dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “Damn it. I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t cry all the time.”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because it’s stupid. I don’t know. It’s just like when I used to see a therapist, and I cried for an hour every time I saw her. And every time was the same thing— ‘Oh, what’s wrong? Oh, why are you crying?’ she’d ask me, just like that, with so much fake concern.” She scowled at the memory. “Stupid. I was depressed, that’s why. Why else d’you think?”

Death smiled indulgently. “Perhaps she was not a good therapist.”

“That’s for sure.” She struggled to smile back through fresh tears. “Funny, isn’t it. Today I got better therapy from actual Death than I ever got from a human being!”

Her face fell. A long silence descended between them again.

“The world didn’t have to end like this, did it?” she asked quietly.

Death did not answer.

Victoria frowned. “What’s going to happen to us?” she tried again.

“You mean, to the mortal world.” Death shook his head. “I cannot see the future.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Death stared at her solemnly for a long moment before he rose from his seat. Victoria and Hades raised their heads together and watched him command the stage with nothing more than a slow walk.

“Then listen. Understand what I am about to tell you,” he said. “I cannot let you stay here because you still have much to learn about my nature. I am Death, yes, but Transfiguration, too. And your world is not ending. It is changing. Change is often painful, sometimes unendurable. It is still inevitable.”

“It changed for the worse,” Victoria mumbled.

“So? Was your world any better before?” He raised his voice sharply. “Or kinder? You know better than anyone that it was never created for all people. There is nothing you could have done to stop such a change.”

“It’s not right!” she shouted. Her outburst hung in the air, echoing. She shivered, dreading his rebuke, but Death only fixed her with a cold stare.

“I did not say it was right.” he replied. “I said it was inevitable.”

Victoria hung her head. She watched his feet tread closer on the boards, step by deliberate step, and for the first time felt a twinge of fear at what he might do. Her breath caught as he reached for her, fingers near her throat—and then held quite still as he cupped his hand under her chin, lifting her face to look at him.

“When you return home,” he said in a softer voice, “pay a visit to my house. Yes, I know they fired you. Go back anyhow. Tell them you intend to do your work, and demand your pay. I suspect they will listen—I have not exactly been idle this whole time.” He raised one eyebrow in a sly look. “But if they still refuse, then you will know it is time to start over. Don’t discard your whole life yet. Transfiguration is painful, but I am not malevolent. I simply am.”

She trembled. His light touch was enough to send a cold cascade down the back of her neck. “I’ll try,” she said.

“That is all I ask.” He released his hold and took her hands gently, urging her to stand. “And don’t try to jump off the bridge again, please,” he added. “It’s very troublesome for me.”

“I won’t,” she gulped, caught somewhere between laughter and crying.

Death patted her hand and guided her downstage, motioning for Hades to follow.

“Um. Before I go,” Victoria asked, nervously clasping her hands. “I wanted to say… could you tell Peter that I love him? That a lot of people still love him? If he’s here, somewhere, I don’t want him to think he was forgotten.”

Death shut his eyes, pained. “He knows,” was all he said. He turned away and gestured at Hades. “Now follow her. She will take you home.”

Victoria beamed. She shyly waved goodbye and followed after the little trotting dog, disappearing for good behind a fold of the black curtain. A moment later, Hades reappeared alone and sat before Death with an exuberant canine grin, her little tail wagging furiously.

“Where is she now?” Death asked.

Hades’ tongue lolled out of her mouth.

“Back at the bridge, huh. What?” He furrowed his brow, still intently listening to some silent communication as he searched his pockets for a cigarette that was not there.

“But she is safe, yes?” he said after an expectant pause. “Ah. That’s good. I suppose she will think it was all a dream.” He sighed deeply and gave up the search for his cigarettes. “Perhaps that is for the best. In any case, I hope you’re satisfied.”

Hades stared into his face with featureless shining eyes, now milky white and glowing like distant twin stars.

“Of course I don’t mind making faces,” he argued. “I just don’t know why I had to speak for you. If it’s because you thought she would trust me— look, I’m only saying that if you wanted to stop her from committing suicide, you could have done it yourself.”

The dog cocked her head, snorted, and dissolved into invisible mist.

He smirked. “Totmacher,” he muttered under his breath. He shoved his hands in his pockets, turned on his heel and disappeared backstage, his form melding with the shadows until the whole stage vanished into the void.