flash fiction #1

Karl

'Karl?'
'Yes sir, Karl Chris, I'm from accounting, level 8.'
'Tell me Karl , how'd an ageless soul, doomed to roam, like yours, end up in middle management of an accounting firm?'
'Oh fuck off! Brio? You son of a bitch, fuck this, fuck you!' The pleasant voice of the accountant was immediately shrill. 'You asshole! I've got a wife, two kids! How long did it take this time?'
'Yisaa, I wasn't looking, you know. I haven't been looking for years. Plus, you killed me first last time.' Brio rubbed his sternum still able to feel the shotgun blast that ended his last life. 'Remember?'
'I was happy. Why are you here?' Yissa's voice was thick with centuries of despise for Brio.
'You know that's not how it works.'
The phone slammed down in Brio's ear. Brio hung up his end and leant back in his chair.
His office was grey. The large window behind him looked out over an equally grey city, sprawling out into the darkening horizon.
In front of him was a glass door in a glass wall looking out at cubicles occupied by his employees.
The office was quiet.
Brio had decided to change, and change the world he was constantly reincarnated into. Every new life it took him until around his tenth birthday for the memories of his past lives to return. And around age thirty he would run across Yissa. They usually didn't live past forty once they found each other.
Only a few times Brio had died naturally of old age, his mind crumbling like a piece of dried coral.
He did not enjoy those ends, but he thought maybe if he could make it to the end, die as humans were intended to die, he'd be freed from this cycle. Allowed to move into the eternal darkness and never have to think or remember again.
But it was not to be. In his next life, when he found Yissa, he tried to explain, speak to him. He just told Brio he was an idiot, he knew a natural death was just a waste of time. There was no point in them suffering through old age.
Then Yissa cocked his shotgun and painted Brio's chest across his front lawn. Brio cleared his throat, sometimes his chest still ached. Whether the injuries carried to his next life or just the pain of the memory, he could still feel it.
'Better than dying alone in a hospital.' He muttered.
Brio sat forward and returned to entering figures into a meticulous spreadsheet. 'I really did need to speak to someone in accounting.'

Above him a woman screamed. Brio sat up. A crash issue from a floor above. He turned to see glass falling passed his window. There was more screaming, muffled yells. Then someone fell. The flailing body of Karl Chris. His brown suit and white shirt plummeted past Brio's window.

Brio stumbled to look down at the body now splattered on the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered, people screamed. Brio could hardly see the messy scene his old enemy had created.
Brio's lips curled into a cruel smile.
'Well done, Yissa. It warms my heart when your death is messy.'