Deal At Death's Door

It hurts to lose your best friend. It hurts even more when you’re in love with them. I don’t really care, because I’m the one that takes people like that away. I separate lovers, couples, and best friends. I’m not the one that kills them, however. I just take them away, yet I’m the one that is blamed for everything. Does it hurt? Yeah, but I’ve gotten used to the pain. You see, with a job like this, you can’t feel pain. It’s a requirement, so I feel nothing.

          People say the craziest things to try to get me to bring back their beloved. They try to make bargains, or they try to get me to take them with the dead. Some even try to trick me into bringing back their loved ones. Now let me tell you something, I may be stereotyped as many things, but I am not easily tricked. However, on occasion, I do consider some bargains or pleas, just for fun. Sometimes, I actually accept these bargains. I make deals with them. It makes my job a little more entertaining. On one such occasion, I accepted the plea of a young lady, whose best friend and only love had just tragically died in a car accident. The rest of her story can be summarized in one sentence, but that would ruin the point of this story, now wouldn’t it? It would, so I’m going to take my sweet time and tell this story properly, because it is a story worth telling.

          I first saw the girl in front of a grave. She had been lucky enough to evade any and all near death experiences, so I had never seen her before. She was in front of a gravestone that read, “Bentley Michael Carter: October 3, 1899 – December 15, 1918. Gone too soon.” Her eyes were puffed up and red. Her makeup was smeared from the downpour of rain that was currently falling. She was dressed in black from head to toe, and she carried a large bouquet of flowers of multiple colors in her hands, all completely soaked from the rain. She obviously didn’t care about the rain. She was focused on the gravestone in front of her. She was mourning this Bentley who lay dead under her feet. I knew Bentley, because prior to my first sight of that girl, I delivered Bentley to his final resting place. I don’t mean the hole in which his body was thrown into. I’m talking about the final resting place for his soul. Yes, even souls have a final resting place, you’ll find out about it soon enough, I promise.

          This girl interested me. Usually, I wouldn’t pay attention to people; I would just move on to avoid any sense of emotion that might affect me. This girl was different, however. I looked into her eyes and I saw passion. Bentley obviously meant a lot to her, you could see it in her eyes. You can find out a lot about a person just by looking into their eyes and when I looked into this girl’s eyes, I saw passion, heartbreak, and determination. Obviously, the love bug bit her. I’ve heard it is a terrible insect that takes the minds of many unsuspecting young men and women daily. The worst part is that there is no cure once you are bitten.

          The girl placed the bouquet of flowers in front of the gravestone, then collapsing to her knees in the mud, not caring if her clothes got muddy. She didn’t care one bit. She wanted her Bentley back. That was another thing you could see in her eyes. Her head fell into her hands and she started shaking. I didn’t know what was wrong until she had mustered the strength to pick her head back up. You couldn’t tell at first glance, but she had been crying again. Her eyes were redder now, like a cherry tomato.

          Then she called out my name. She screamed it. She tilted her head up to the sky and screamed, “Death! Why have you taken him from me? I’ll do anything, if you would only give him back to me. Please, don’t bestow your heartless actions upon me, return what is mine back to me!”

That’s when thoughts started forming in my head. People judge, that is true. They judge even me. They call me heartless. That hurts. In truth, I am not heartless; I care. I can’t show my caring, however, because then I’d show emotion, which makes my job impossible to complete. So it appears that I’m not caring, when in truth, I am. That comment the girl made, it hurt me. I vowed revenge, and I was going to get it. I decided to bargain with her.