Chosen by Death

Chosen

(A/N: The cover photo is not mine; I found it on Deviant Art. Also, I entered this in a local teen works magazine competition. Regrettably, I didn't get to go the awards ceremony. The comp said it can only have 1500 words, but I'm still gonna keep going on here after what I entered. I just couldn't wait to get this story down! It's SO good! I might be biased, though...)

"You know how you go to the pet store or the shelter, and you see that one dog or cat or whatever? And you just know that's the one for you?"

"Yeah... s-sure," I said, not really listening. I was still trying to process that I was in a room with Death himself.

He continued pacing around the morgue, talking with his hands almost as much as his mouth. "I thought it would be enough. A dog to play with, and make this whole 'Undertaker' deal not so lonely. But every time I got one, it ran away. So I got a cat, because they're supposed to have 9 lives - the perfect pet for Death, right? - but it ran, too." He stopped, wistfully passing a hand over the body he was standing next to. "I guess normal pets won't cut it for a guy like me."

He turned to face me directly for the first time. A slow, hollow smile crept over his face. "Hopefully you will."

I blinked as Death walked closer, his black robes dragging silently behind him. "What?" I asked.

"I want you," he said, his long, skeletal face no more than a foot from mine, "to be my pet." That hollow smile took on a, somehow, sickening air of love and compassion as he spoke.

The door opened, and a medical examiner walked in. She spotted me, glanced around, then asked if I was lost. She hadn't seen Death in her glance of the room, and when I turned to look at where he had been, he wasn't there. "Yes," I told her slowly, dazed and confused. "I need to get back to triage. My friend broke his arm."

The M.E. smiled kindly (1,000 times more kindly than Death's smile had been), and told me the elevator was down the hall to my left, and triage was on 1. I thanked her as I walked quickly out the door, and began running over the whole scene again in my head.

My friend had broken his arm, and I was getting him some apple juice from the drink machine. I had noticed something out of the corner of my eye down the hall, and decided to follow it. I chased it down the stairs, saw it - something black and flowing - go into the swinging doors of the morgue, and ran to catch it. When I opened the doors and saw all the bodies... That's when I saw... No. My mind must have played tricks on me and personified all the "Death" that was in there. I hadn't actually met Death, and wasn't being involuntarily volunteered to be Death's pet. At least, I tried to convince myself it was the truth.