IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

So I’m standing there, coming home from work and minding my own business, pulling my keys out of my pocket and thinking about cramming one of ‘em in the lock and turning the little sucker so I can get in where it’s warm and cozy.

Man it’s cold tonight! I thought, finding that elusive dangle of shaped metal pegs at the bottom of my coat jacket, underneath my work badge, my pager, and a recently used hankie. A cold wind howled up behind me and some of it’s icy wisps caught a crack between my neck and jacket collar and shot down my back.

"Ahh!" I whispered, then turned around to witness the wind slapping around the trees, shrubs, telephone lines, a huge black-hooded figure...

WHAT?

I stared straight up in shock. Standing directly behind me was the epitome of Death himself in all his cloaked blackness, an enormous sickle grasped tightly between dirty, gnarled, oversized bones that must have been his fingers. As most people would be in a situation like this, I was speechless, although I did manage to get out an AHHH or two.

"Ahhh....ahhhh..."

"Shut-up!" a deep, gravely voice boomed, not from just beyond the blackness deep within the huge bulbous hood, but from the entire world around me.

This is not happening...I fell asleep at work, yes that’s what happened, I fell asleep at work and this is all a sick dream...

"This is not a dream , Max Poppit!" the voice, again echoing in a loud cacophony from everywhere, boomed into my head.

"Who...who...who..."

"What are you, an owl?" the thing snapped, tilting its two foot round black hole that sat atop its shoulders closer to my face, which, I am sure, was snow white with fear. I peered deep into that black hole, which was shrouded by a dusty wrinkled and thick black cloth, from two feet away. Whatever this thing was, it must have been at least eight feet tall. There was no sign of a face in that hood and it surprised me when the porch light allowed me to see the back of the hood, which meant...

"Ahhh!" I screamed again, "You have no head you have no head ahhh!!!"

Death was silent as I scurried on my porch this way and that like a trapped squirrel, trying to find an escape, but Death was too large. It unfolded its bony hands when I got too close to one edge of it, making me think it would snatch me up and crush me if I even thought about bolting away. It was so huge!

Why didn’t I hear this thing sneak up behind me?

"Because I have always been with you, but now it’s time for you to see your death!" It raised the sickle with both hands, revealing the twin bones of the femur attached to the wrist lining up and disappearing into the wide open arm holes of the cloak covering it’s surreal body. It was going to kill me, decapitate me, and it was going to do it right now.

"No wait!" I screamed, "Wait!"

To my amazement, the sickle stopped on the downswing in mid air.

"What?" Death asked.

I was in shock, finding it hard to believe I was still alive.

"Why are you going to kill me?"

Death paused and the sickle’s blade, though rusted and old, still caught a stray gleam from the porch light. I pictured the sickle at any second swinging down and doing it’s deed, startling me, literally, to death.

Death lowered the sickle then moved even closer in a gliding motion as if it were floating on air.

"I’ll show you why, you pathetic little shit!" Death yelled and I winced at the volume of his voice. I wondered if he realized he really didn’t need to be so loud with me to get his point across. As I was thinking this, however, Death shoved me hard with the hard bones in his knuckles and I flew through my front door, throwing the door down my hallway and into my rec room with a boom.

"OOOWWWWwwwww!" I cried, holding my chest and sitting up amongst a heap of settling plaster, dust and splinters from the front door. "Why did you do that?"

Death glided towards me and reached out with one of his thick-boned hands and wrapped his fingers around the collar of my coat. I thought he was going to throw me somewhere again, perhaps through the ceiling this time, but instead he dragged me across the room and towards my den. Surprisingly, I was still sane enough to be grateful about the den doors being opened so I wouldn’t get smashed through them. As if reading my thoughts, however, Death slammed me to the floor, slid the den doors shut, then picked me up by the collar again and thrust me through the wood and glass.

Mean bastard...

"What?" he boomed again and I realized that he really could read my mind.

"Noth...nothing..." I moaned as I got up from the futon, which was, fortunately, where I landed.

I looked to my left and saw the bay window. For just a second I contemplated running towards it and hurling my body out and running away from the house, cackling like a madman to anyone that was out on the streets about this monstrous thing that was going to take me to the world beyond, but Death had other plans for me. He grabbed my collar again, picked me up and pinned me flat to the ceiling. My buttocks snapped the blades off my ceiling fan and I was sure a large splinter from one of them skewered my left cheek.

"Ow, ow..."

"Now it is time to show you why you must die," Death said, his voice almost subdued, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. He kept me there a second longer, him looking at me with his headless, bony body draped in a robe of nightmarish guise. As I expected he would do, he slammed me to the floor. The wind was knocked from me but he didn’t care. He picked me up again

(oh please not again, just cut my head off instead would ya?)
then placed me in the chair in front of my computer.

Twenty seconds passed in complete silence. During this time I felt the sliver in my ass digging itself deeper into my flesh, but like that really mattered. I thought that maybe he left, but I could feel Death’s bulk emanating it’s presence over my body, engulfing it with a stench of must and decay. So I looked at my computer.

Is this it? I’m dying because I bought a computer?

"Log on," Death said behind me.

"Wha..."

"LOG ON!"

I jumped and my hands slammed onto the keyboard. Death wanted me to log on. Log on? As like in AOL?

"Yes," Death answered, "Log on to AOL!"

Geez I wish he would stop yelling at me!

My hands fumbled along the keys, hitting the "+" sign when I really wanted to hit the sleep button. My hand whisked to the front of my computer, catching the mouse on the side and sending it flailing against the wall where it slammed hard with a hollow thwack! then came bouncing back into place.

"Hurry," Death said, "Or..."

"Yeah yeah I know, or else I’ll die."

After hitting twenty-three wrong keys in sheer terror, I managed to eventually log onto AOL.

"You have mail!" said that cheery little voice, and I wanted more than anything to reach my hand through the screen and wring that little munchkin’s neck.

"I’m...I’m logged on now." There was more silence and I wondered if Death was after me because of all those weird chats I’ve had and the psychotic things I’ve said to complete strangers.

"Compose mail!" said Death.

"What?"

"COMPOSE MAIL!"

"OK OK OK, gee whiz."

I arrow-pointed to the pencil-on-paper logo at the top of the screen and clicked. I waited for Death to tell me who to send to.

"M-A-P-O-P-P-I-T," he said.

"MaPoppit?" I said, confused, "You want me to write my mother a message?" Instantly I shut my mouth and hoped Death didn’t hear me. I felt stupid, thinking that since I mentioned my mother that she would be the next human to receive a visit from our little sickle-carrying friend.

But no, that’s not what Death wanted.

"Yes, your mother. Write her."

"Why?"

"It’s her birthday isn’t it?"

I thought. Oh yeah, it was my mom’s birthday. My eyes widened and suddenly the terror and shock wore just a bit. How could I forget my own mother’s birthday? I turned to look at Death, but the beast had disappeared. As I stared out into the emptiness of the den, with its shattered doors and living room beyond, I realized that I had indeed escaped his wrath.

THE END

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