Oh, no! I don't mean this now, I mean at home. No one here brings it up too much, and I was the one who talked about it in the first place, so no big. Don't shut up.
Back home I have a few actual stalkers because of some stuff that happened when I was out there, just people who get obsessed with survivors of situations like that. Those are the guys I mean (they're all guys, ugh).
It's actually kind of nice to have someone to talk to about this who's NOT creepy. Feel free to talk about your shit anytime if you want. Promise not to be creepy.
Oh man, I know how that one feels. I run this blog back home and I got a few really, really weird followers. One guy showed up at my work dressed like the grim reaper. He tried to convince me I was dead to lure me into his van. In hindsight, it's embarrassing it almost worked.
Not that it's exactly same as like surviving a horrific tragedy but People are weird
Holy crap that's kind of terrifying. I mean, if you're used to weird supernatural stuff going on it's not embarrassing that you kind of went with it. Wtf was wrong with that guy though? Wow.
People are super weird. And on that note, I bet I totally would've read your blog.
I know, right? Apparently it was full of like lotion and fanfiction, which I guess is better than saws and tarps or something.
Thanks for giving me the Stupidness Out. You're right, honestly the grim reaper showing up at the gas station wouldn't have been the most abnormal thing to happen that week.
He wound up in the blog after that, so maybe that helped make up for the fact that he got super tasered by a cop for it.
The figure was tall, lumbering, the top of his hood nearly touching the ceiling. In his left hand he held a long, black scythe made of dark, knotted wood. The weapon alone was taller than me. His thin body was covered in the floor-length black velvet robe. Where his hands protruded from the cloth, they were covered in gloves, and his face was a dark void invisible below the hood.
He was a rather cliché vision of death, and definitely one of the more ominous presages to walk through those doors (like, easily in the top ten for the month).
“Good morning,” I said, “Can I help you with something?”
The figure of death slowly pointed his right hand at me and spoke.
“Jack. I’ve come here for you. The time has come for you to shed this mortal coil.”
His voice was deep and menacing, like a grossly overweight Darth Vader.
“Really?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh. Well that sucks. Was it the sandwich?”
“Yes. It was indeed the sandwich.”
“Damn.”
Death turned his hand over and extended it to me. “Come, Jack. You’ve done well with your time on this planet. But now we leave the earth to the living.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Don’t I get to play you in chess or something?”
“This isn’t Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure!” he snapped back. “I’m on a bit of a tight schedule, here.” The fact that he didn’t make a “deadline” pun will forever haunt me.
“Hey, I’m not trying to be a bother or anything. I just wasn’t expecting to die so undramatically, you know? After everything I’ve been through, I thought for sure there would be some kind of stupid monster involved.”
“Yes. I’m aware of your history. I’ve been watching you for some time. You and I have been as two ships passing in the night. Never close enough to connect before now.”
I looked around the store for my own dead body, hoping to find that I wasn’t dead face-down in the mystery sandwich. When I couldn’t see myself anywhere, I once again came up with that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.
“Hey! Where’s my body?”
“This world is merely an in-between. An object outside of your seven dimensions. In an effort to make your journey more palatable, I created this reality from your memories. You will not find anything here that doesn’t already exist in your mind other than you and I.”
“Isn’t it ‘other than you and me?’”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t want to sound pedantic or anything, but if you’re the literal incarnation of death, shouldn’t you speak English perfectly? Like, where did you even learn how to speak? Why aren’t you speaking Aramaic or Greek or something?”
“Did you understand what I meant, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Then maybe stop being an asshole about it, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“Nobody likes a grammar Nazi, Jack.”
“I said I was sorry.”
He still had his hand outstretched, but I wasn’t exactly ready or eager to go. He finally lowered his arm and turned to the door, saying, “It is time. I shall lead you to the other side, where you will be reunited with the ones who’ve gone before you.”
“Hang on,” I said, “I have so many questions for you. What was the deal with the glow worm thing that Rita ate? Who is the man in the trenchcoat? What happened to the shapeshifter?”
Death let out a long, annoyed sigh and said “Look, dude. I don’t know the answer to any of that stuff, alright? I’ve got one job. I take you to the other side. You can ask all your questions to whomever is over there. But we need to get moving. Do you have any idea how many people die every day? Literally hundreds! And I have to ferry every single one to the other side, so can we please get on with it while you’re still relatively fresh?”
He held the door open for me and I walked through, imagining how the others were going to take finding my corpse here at the gas station. It’s not like they didn’t have enough warning to prepare themselves, but still, it’s going to suck. In this, my final moment connected to the only world I’d known, the only thing I could think about was Rosa, Jerry, and O’Brien.
I didn’t even realize it, but I had stopped walking about ten steps outside. Death put a warm hand on my shoulder and tried to gently push me forward, but I turned around to face him.
“I have one more question.”
“Whaaat?” he bellowed.
“What’s going to happen to the people I left behind?”
“You should be worried about the ones that left already. Tom, Carlos, Vanessa, every cute puppy that has ever died. They’re all waiting for you on the other side.”
“Wait.” I said, looking up at Death’s shadowy face. “Carlos isn’t dead.”
“He’s not?”
“No. That’s really weird that you don’t know that. It sorta puts everything you’ve said up to this point under suspicion.”
“Hey, look over there!” Death said, pointing with his scythe at a peanut-butter-green windowless van parked next to the gas pumps with the engine still running. “It’s your chariot to the other side.”
“My what now?” I asked.
“This entire reality is a sort of dreamscape created from your mind. And your mind has chosen this vehicle as the vessel to cross into the netherworld. Why don’t you go get in the back, and I’ll drive? You may want to lay down and close your eyes. If it feels stuffy, feel free to take off your shirt.”
“Umm…”
Right then, O’Brien’s cruiser peeled into the parking lot at lightning speed and came to a screeching stop just a few feet away.
“Oh shit. Seriously?” Death muttered to himself.
“What’s going on?” I asked, “Is O’Brien dead too?”
She got out of the car and casually drew her weapon, then said “Hey Jack. What’s going on here?”
Death stepped between us and faced me with his back to her and said, “Jack, this woman isn’t really Amelia O’Brien. She’s a manifestation of your desire to remain chained to this place. You musn’t believe anything she says or you will be trapped here forever.
“Like a ghost?” I asked.
“Precisely.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that was an option to start with? I’d love to be a ghost!”
O’Brien called out to me again, “Jack, is everything okay over here? I tried calling the store but the lines were down.”
Death shoved me forcefully towards the waiting vehicle and shouted, “Shut up and get in the fucking van, Jack!”
“Hey!” yelled O’Brien.
Death turned to her and said, “What are you doing here, lady? Poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong? Everything was going perfectly before you showed up!”
“Mister, I’m going to have to ask you to drop that stupid-ass weapon and step away from the scrawny cashier before I light you up.”
If this really wasn’t O’Brien, it was a damned good facsimile.
Death screamed, “I’m not going to let you ruin this!” Then he raised his scythe and charged.
O’Brien didn’t even flinch before discharging her taser and filling the grim reaper with fifty-thousand volts of neuro-muscular incapacitation. He hit the ground and started flopping like an epileptic fish at the disco.
“This a friend of yours?” O’Brien asked with a single raised eyebrow.
It slowly dawned on me that this probably wasn’t the real Death.
It turned out that the man in the elaborate grim reaper costume was just another overly obsessive fan of my blog that had tracked me down. His name was Gregg Walton, and he had driven all the way here from California after stealing his outfit from a community theatre in his hometown that had used it as the costume for the Ghost of Christmas Future.
The inside of his van contained duct tape, massage oil, and several notebooks filled with what I can only describe as “erotic fan fiction” about me and the other gas station employees. He even included a few comics and sketches and some of them weren’t too bad.
O’Brien had driven out to the area to check on Jerry after a belligerent drunk dial. She was worried he might have overdosed on some new street drug called “Coke Black.” After finding him alive and stupid, she tried contacting me, only to find that somebody had cut the phone lines to the gas station. That’s when she came and found Gregg trying to trick me into the back of his dad’s old Ford Econoline.
[The reply comes after about 20 minutes, during which she read this twice.]
Holy shit, man, you're a really good writer, no wonder you had obsessive fans. Love the use of 'presages' next to 'overweight Darth Vader.' Two thumbs up.
Seriously, though, that is fuuuuuucked. Much as I'd hope the physical manifestation of death was that stupid, the whole massage oil and shirt off and erotic fanfiction thing is creepy as hell.
If you ever want to send me more of these things, I will DEVOUR them. Totally worth the popcorn.
[Then, after a few moments.]
All of that aside, I'm sorry that (almost) happened to you. Seriously messed up.
Of course. If you start one up here, I'll follow it immediately, I'd like to read about all the creepy adventures you have here. Hey, maybe I'll make an appearance!
You know what? I'm even MORE sorry about that, man.
It honestly seems pretty likely, considering this place doesn't seem any less crazy than the gas station was. Just... taller, and with a better custodial staff.
Looking forward to it. And yeah, from what I've seen and heard about both, it seems about right. Maybe the gas station is a little crazier, but then again who knows? At least you're equipped to deal with this place.
Custodial staff. GOD. That reminds me I need to figure out what department to work in. The closest to my profession is facilities, and I am NOT going from architecture to janitorial. Have you picked something yet?
No, I'm still trying to figure that out too. What I want to do and what I actually have the talent to do are two very different things. It seems a little pathetic to get bounced to an alternate universe and then... immediately become a cashier at the gift shop or something.
Right? It's not immediately obvious and the options are all sorta just super specialized or super boring, at least imo. Maybe they'd let you do writing for them, like some kind of idk, internal newspaper with stories about the stuff people have done? You've got the writing chops for it.
Yeah, that's what I did at home. It's pretty much the only thing from my pre-shipwreck life that stuck afterward. Which is a relief because I paid out the ASS for the school.
I really don't think anyone's gonna pay me to write this stuff. Seems a little far-fetched.
( Jim from The Office stares into the camera. )
That's something that could come in handy, though, right? Like, what if they're planning some heist on a building somewhere and need an expert opinion on invading the air vents? Or they're trying to figure out how to blow something up but they're not sure which ones are the right steel beams to use the jet fuel on? I'm pretty sure you'd fit in being one of those people that stands over the map table while somebody else gives exposition about The Plan. Maybe you should see if they have an opening for one of those?
If they're all about collecting creepy magic artifacts and stuff, there has to be at least a little heisting, right? A Building Plans person is a total necessity on every heist team. It's an intense market. There's way more demand than supply. Make them put you on like a retainer or something.
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way more sense
obviously
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It's actually kind of nice to have someone to talk to about this who's NOT creepy. Feel free to talk about your shit anytime if you want. Promise not to be creepy.
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Not that it's exactly same as like surviving a horrific tragedy but
People are weird
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People are super weird. And on that note, I bet I totally would've read your blog.
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Thanks for giving me the Stupidness Out. You're right, honestly the grim reaper showing up at the gas station wouldn't have been the most abnormal thing to happen that week.
He wound up in the blog after that, so maybe that helped make up for the fact that he got super tasered by a cop for it.
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Oh my god. It is better, but I'm not sure by how much. Gross.
There you go, you own that abnormal life, sir.
Okay, enough teasing, you have to tell me this story for real. Unless it's super uncomfortable.
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The story goes thusly: )
The figure was tall, lumbering, the top of his hood nearly touching the ceiling. In his left hand he held a long, black scythe made of dark, knotted wood. The weapon alone was taller than me. His thin body was covered in the floor-length black velvet robe. Where his hands protruded from the cloth, they were covered in gloves, and his face was a dark void invisible below the hood.
He was a rather cliché vision of death, and definitely one of the more ominous presages to walk through those doors (like, easily in the top ten for the month).
“Good morning,” I said, “Can I help you with something?”
The figure of death slowly pointed his right hand at me and spoke.
“Jack. I’ve come here for you. The time has come for you to shed this mortal coil.”
His voice was deep and menacing, like a grossly overweight Darth Vader.
“Really?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh. Well that sucks. Was it the sandwich?”
“Yes. It was indeed the sandwich.”
“Damn.”
Death turned his hand over and extended it to me. “Come, Jack. You’ve done well with your time on this planet. But now we leave the earth to the living.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Don’t I get to play you in chess or something?”
“This isn’t Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure!” he snapped back. “I’m on a bit of a tight schedule, here.” The fact that he didn’t make a “deadline” pun will forever haunt me.
“Hey, I’m not trying to be a bother or anything. I just wasn’t expecting to die so undramatically, you know? After everything I’ve been through, I thought for sure there would be some kind of stupid monster involved.”
“Yes. I’m aware of your history. I’ve been watching you for some time. You and I have been as two ships passing in the night. Never close enough to connect before now.”
I looked around the store for my own dead body, hoping to find that I wasn’t dead face-down in the mystery sandwich. When I couldn’t see myself anywhere, I once again came up with that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.
“Hey! Where’s my body?”
“This world is merely an in-between. An object outside of your seven dimensions. In an effort to make your journey more palatable, I created this reality from your memories. You will not find anything here that doesn’t already exist in your mind other than you and I.”
“Isn’t it ‘other than you and me?’”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t want to sound pedantic or anything, but if you’re the literal incarnation of death, shouldn’t you speak English perfectly? Like, where did you even learn how to speak? Why aren’t you speaking Aramaic or Greek or something?”
“Did you understand what I meant, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Then maybe stop being an asshole about it, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“Nobody likes a grammar Nazi, Jack.”
“I said I was sorry.”
He still had his hand outstretched, but I wasn’t exactly ready or eager to go. He finally lowered his arm and turned to the door, saying, “It is time. I shall lead you to the other side, where you will be reunited with the ones who’ve gone before you.”
“Hang on,” I said, “I have so many questions for you. What was the deal with the glow worm thing that Rita ate? Who is the man in the trenchcoat? What happened to the shapeshifter?”
Death let out a long, annoyed sigh and said “Look, dude. I don’t know the answer to any of that stuff, alright? I’ve got one job. I take you to the other side. You can ask all your questions to whomever is over there. But we need to get moving. Do you have any idea how many people die every day? Literally hundreds! And I have to ferry every single one to the other side, so can we please get on with it while you’re still relatively fresh?”
He held the door open for me and I walked through, imagining how the others were going to take finding my corpse here at the gas station. It’s not like they didn’t have enough warning to prepare themselves, but still, it’s going to suck. In this, my final moment connected to the only world I’d known, the only thing I could think about was Rosa, Jerry, and O’Brien.
I didn’t even realize it, but I had stopped walking about ten steps outside. Death put a warm hand on my shoulder and tried to gently push me forward, but I turned around to face him.
“I have one more question.”
“Whaaat?” he bellowed.
“What’s going to happen to the people I left behind?”
“You should be worried about the ones that left already. Tom, Carlos, Vanessa, every cute puppy that has ever died. They’re all waiting for you on the other side.”
“Wait.” I said, looking up at Death’s shadowy face. “Carlos isn’t dead.”
“He’s not?”
“No. That’s really weird that you don’t know that. It sorta puts everything you’ve said up to this point under suspicion.”
“Hey, look over there!” Death said, pointing with his scythe at a peanut-butter-green windowless van parked next to the gas pumps with the engine still running. “It’s your chariot to the other side.”
“My what now?” I asked.
“This entire reality is a sort of dreamscape created from your mind. And your mind has chosen this vehicle as the vessel to cross into the netherworld. Why don’t you go get in the back, and I’ll drive? You may want to lay down and close your eyes. If it feels stuffy, feel free to take off your shirt.”
“Umm…”
Right then, O’Brien’s cruiser peeled into the parking lot at lightning speed and came to a screeching stop just a few feet away.
“Oh shit. Seriously?” Death muttered to himself.
“What’s going on?” I asked, “Is O’Brien dead too?”
She got out of the car and casually drew her weapon, then said “Hey Jack. What’s going on here?”
Death stepped between us and faced me with his back to her and said, “Jack, this woman isn’t really Amelia O’Brien. She’s a manifestation of your desire to remain chained to this place. You musn’t believe anything she says or you will be trapped here forever.
“Like a ghost?” I asked.
“Precisely.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that was an option to start with? I’d love to be a ghost!”
O’Brien called out to me again, “Jack, is everything okay over here? I tried calling the store but the lines were down.”
Death shoved me forcefully towards the waiting vehicle and shouted, “Shut up and get in the fucking van, Jack!”
“Hey!” yelled O’Brien.
Death turned to her and said, “What are you doing here, lady? Poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong? Everything was going perfectly before you showed up!”
“Mister, I’m going to have to ask you to drop that stupid-ass weapon and step away from the scrawny cashier before I light you up.”
If this really wasn’t O’Brien, it was a damned good facsimile.
Death screamed, “I’m not going to let you ruin this!” Then he raised his scythe and charged.
O’Brien didn’t even flinch before discharging her taser and filling the grim reaper with fifty-thousand volts of neuro-muscular incapacitation. He hit the ground and started flopping like an epileptic fish at the disco.
“This a friend of yours?” O’Brien asked with a single raised eyebrow.
It slowly dawned on me that this probably wasn’t the real Death.
It turned out that the man in the elaborate grim reaper costume was just another overly obsessive fan of my blog that had tracked me down. His name was Gregg Walton, and he had driven all the way here from California after stealing his outfit from a community theatre in his hometown that had used it as the costume for the Ghost of Christmas Future.
The inside of his van contained duct tape, massage oil, and several notebooks filled with what I can only describe as “erotic fan fiction” about me and the other gas station employees. He even included a few comics and sketches and some of them weren’t too bad.
O’Brien had driven out to the area to check on Jerry after a belligerent drunk dial. She was worried he might have overdosed on some new street drug called “Coke Black.” After finding him alive and stupid, she tried contacting me, only to find that somebody had cut the phone lines to the gas station. That’s when she came and found Gregg trying to trick me into the back of his dad’s old Ford Econoline.
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Holy shit, man, you're a really good writer, no wonder you had obsessive fans. Love the use of 'presages' next to 'overweight Darth Vader.' Two thumbs up.
Seriously, though, that is fuuuuuucked. Much as I'd hope the physical manifestation of death was that stupid, the whole massage oil and shirt off and erotic fanfiction thing is creepy as hell.
If you ever want to send me more of these things, I will DEVOUR them. Totally worth the popcorn.
[Then, after a few moments.]
All of that aside, I'm sorry that (almost) happened to you. Seriously messed up.
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I was thinking about maybe starting up another blog here. It kind of helps me keep my head on straight, you know?
Anyway, don't sweat it. That's so, so far down the list of crazy shit I've seen it barely even registers.
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You know what? I'm even MORE sorry about that, man.
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Custodial staff. GOD. That reminds me I need to figure out what department to work in. The closest to my profession is facilities, and I am NOT going from architecture to janitorial. Have you picked something yet?
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You're an architect?
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Yeah, that's what I did at home. It's pretty much the only thing from my pre-shipwreck life that stuck afterward. Which is a relief because I paid out the ASS for the school.
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( Jim from The Office stares into the camera. )
That's something that could come in handy, though, right? Like, what if they're planning some heist on a building somewhere and need an expert opinion on invading the air vents? Or they're trying to figure out how to blow something up but they're not sure which ones are the right steel beams to use the jet fuel on? I'm pretty sure you'd fit in being one of those people that stands over the map table while somebody else gives exposition about The Plan. Maybe you should see if they have an opening for one of those?
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Wait, how often are you expecting us to have to heist a building?
[And then, a few seconds later in another text.]
Scratch that, that sounds like a lot of fun.
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a retainer or something.
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So, how about this. You ask to run an internal newspaper with creepy stories, and I'll ask to be the Building Plans person if there's any heists.
Deal?
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