When George Baker died at the age of 76, he was alone in his dirty apartment room located in New York City, on the 10th floor. The only existence that watched him deeply breathe in his last breathe and open his eyes to the dirty grey corner of the ceiling was a sparrow that had somehow ended up there whilst trying to avoid the rain splattering down from a giant sea of roiling grey.
To be more precise, Baker didn't simply breathe in his last breath-he gulped it down hurriedly like taking one last straw before the light whipped out of him in a second.
It was nothing like floating out of his physical body like some lone ghost, walking through the sky on an invisible staircase attached to the bottom of heaven nor hell, nor was there a river Stix and a hollow boatman-how could there be such things, when they were simply legends, fantasies and guesses?
Instead, Baker witnessed a shimmering curtain of utter darkness shrouded in an intense hue of black.
It was as if he was on a train platform. Watching the stained dark of the opposite wall beyond the rail tracks. Trying to catch a light hum of a nearing train ready to burst through the darkness into brief victory before plunging down again. And, most importantly, thinking of random things.
His co-worker's birthday cake, which had had an entire centimeter of icing and powder on top of the main bread. His dog, which was supposed to be having a bad fit of a cold and had begun the lengthy process of fasting out of necessity and never eating anything, even the fur on his grey fur sleeper. His boss, who had claimed that he had caught the flu and couldn't make it to the office for the entire week.
Then, a few more and even more random things.
The cockroach discovered in the numerous folds of his towel. The bakery he had been asked by his co-worker to order the cake from. Alexander the Great, whose face had appeared in the morning paper for some reason.
And death.
Obviously, George Baker wasn't a person of too low intelligence that he knew what had swept him into his arms.
However, he was stupid enough not to figure out where those arms were taking him, nor in which form.
After exactly 5 minutes of thinking of his random things, the sound of something that he hadn't expected to hear came rumbling down the wet darkness towards the space he was staring at on the platform.
The whirr, buzz, and deep bellow of a subway.
Baker wasn't able to believe his eyes as the thing burst out, as typical, out of the dark into its brief victory. Its grey, fading side sped through like some eel, its numerous windows dark and its see-through insides empty.
He felt this low aura of great fear as the thing whistled by, everything dark and hollow about it. Perhaps, it was a nightmare, or some strange illusion when you neared death; but hadn't I already-
His thoughts literally froze when the eel suddenly halted and a steel, vertical line of it formed in front of his very eyes:
The door.
It slid open, slow and cranky as it always had been, and someone stepped off-good grief, so it hadn't been completely empty, after all!-, footsteps light and heavy at the same time. The person wore no pants-just a single piece of a dark gown that was strangely misty and swift.
With a sudden awareness of fear, Baker smelled something musty, something ancient something dark before raising his eyes fearfully to the person's face.
He saw what he expected to see-a a featureless face nearly unqualifying as a face, a thin hood loosened around the unclear outlines of his-no, its-face, bony and not-flesh-nor-bones-hand gripping a black, steel staff, its top embellished with a tiny crow with empty eyes.
Death.
Death gestured to him, his-let's refer to him as if 'he' is a person-empty hand the one to rise and wag lifelessly towards Baker.
The darkness surrounding the already dark Death and his staff had already made Baker try to get smaller, but, what could he ever do? Get smaller for real and become a mouse to run away into the cracks of the tracks? Become invisible to puff into the air? Become a-
Death gestured once more, his hand doing exactly the same wag. However, for some reason, this one felt more forceful, more hurrying.
Almost sighing, Baker let himself walk to get into the train, through the open doors.
The moment his feet stepped on the train, the thin blinked on bright like usual, the typical false lamp flickering a few times before working well.
Death pointed at one of the empty, torn greyish navy seats aligned along the dirty windows, this time with the tip of his staff, the crow at its top bobbing very slightly.
When George Baker sat, the doors closed-exactly at the moment his butt made contact with the seat. Then, before he knew it, the subway was speeding away with unnoticeable swiftness.
YOU ARE READING
A Negative World(A collection of short stories)
Short StoryYou always have a good plot hanging around inside your head. But when you try to write it into a long novel as you always intend it to be, it doesn't necessarily work out. Here are a few short stories that I hoped would go on for a while but turned...
