Mar. 31st, 2005

Death’s Assistant
By Nathanielle Crawford



“Nervous?” He asked me.

“Of course not. It’s just…there are so many people…”

I was referring to the forty men and women parting the night away in the Gamma Pi fraternity house on the corner of Lake and Fifth. The house was covered in spray paint and several windows on the third floor were smashed. All around the house the putrid scent of urine, alcohol and moist soil controlled the house and the surrounding grounds like a strict military regiment holding a small village under martial law. Even my ethereal senses could pick up the vial odor as if the scent itself had the power to transcend its third-dimensional confines and enter our world.

A mix of AC/DC, Eminem, Linkin Park, and a multitude of other bands and singers both young and old, blared from various speakers in the frat house, trying to come together but like oil and water simply incompatible. The result was something that sounded like a rocket ship exploding mid-launch, loud and damaging to the ears accompanied with a sense of dread and nausea. Standing alone there was nothing wrong with either of the bands, but you’d have to be drunk, high, or both to think any of it sounded good together.

“So what happens now?” I asked Marshal, who stood beside me with his robes and scythe ready to go. “Do we take all of them?”

“Not all. But most of them,” Marshal answered, keeping his focus on the fraternity. If any of his charges tried to leave the party he’d have to chase them down, and even for a being that could move with the speed of thought that wasn’t very efficient. One person dying in the street meant a hundred or more people standing and staring, not to mention the police the ambulance, campus security and the news. When Marshal had a huge job like this secrecy was the way to get it done. “All right Cherub and Watchers here’s how it’s done. I do the hard part. All you have to do is escort them to the Waiting Room. It’s best you not say anything to them because it makes the transition harder. No miraculous recoveries and no glowing stories about the other side, no matter how afraid they may seem.”

I took a glance around me. The others were situated in various portions of the campus, spread out and ready to move in, but they could hear Marshal’s voice clearly as if he were standing right next to them. For many of us this was the first time we’d ever helped Death on one of his big runs. Marshal pulled the hood over his head and assumed his “Business” look. The fleshy delicate hands became hard gray and skeletal, and the physical form he held vanished into nothingness.

As he approached the house, gliding across the ground, impervious to the corporeal confines of gravity and friction we followed him into the frat house. Up the stairs and into through the puke green double doors, into the living room where the worse of the party was taking place. In here the music was even worse than outside, and it was accompanied by stronger and more pungent scents. Beer, whiskey, vomit, piss, sweat, sex and stale pizza were the last things many of these young college students would smell and even as I stood there, watching Marshal carry out his task I knew this wasn’t how they wanted to go.

Marshall approached a girl whose alcohol poisoning was five times above the safety limit. He marked her with a sweep of his hand, shutting down her nerves and senses, and moved on. While her physical form shuttered with the spasm of death Milee, one of the Watchers approached and helped her spiritual form into our dimension. She placed one hand on the girl’s head and another over the heart, slowly massaging the girl’s temples and gripping something I couldn’t see. Gently she pulled the spirit from the body and stood her upright.

“What’s going on?” She asked, as if in a dream.

“Come with me,” Milee said, her voice soft and kind but neutral.

“How did you do that?” I asked. Milee didn’t stop to answer me, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Parry, a Cherub, who was much older than I was.

“Let me show you,” He said, leading me to a couple who had been marked earlier.

One of them was a boy of about sixteen years. His older sister was a student in the college, and for his birthday she fixed him up with the twenty-three year-old girl that lay on the sofa beside him. Both were filled with alcohol and heavily laced marijuana, and it was time for them to come.

Parry stood over the boy and placed one hand on the forehead temple like Milee.

“The body will fight to keep hold of the spirit,” he explained. “And the spirit will unconsciously hold on to its physical form. To make the separation easier it’s best to ease the body’s discomfort.” Parry held his other hand over the heart and made a gripping motion. “You have to do this very gently, or the spirit will be distraught and try to fight you. If the spirit overwhelms you it will be bound to the earth doomed to remain, formless and resentful.”

Parry pulled the spirit out and the boy was on his feet suddenly. He looked around him, seeing the party continue but wondering why he couldn’t feel or hear anything. He looked down at his body as it slumped on the sofa. As his muscle’s failed him the scent of his functions reached my senses, and I had to work hard not to look disgusted.

“I’m dead…” He moaned. “No…no…not like this.”

“Come with me.” Parry said, taking the boy by the shoulders.
“NO!” the boy screamed, pushing Parry’s arm away. He reached for an empty beer bottle and tried to pick it up. A Watcher came over and took the boy’s left shoulder while Parry took his right. “STOP LET ME GO. IT’S NOT MY TIME YET, FUCK YOU!!”

Parry and the Watcher carried the boy away, kicking and screaming. I tuned it out and knelt over the girl. I did what the others did and placed my hands in the right spots. There was resistance as I pulled at the soul, something I didn’t notice with Parry and Milee. It wasn’t that the soul was heavy, but it was like pulling two very powerful magnets apart.

“Don’t struggle with it,” another Watcher coached me. “Her instinct is to resist and cling. Just ease her pain and pull slowly.”

I massaged the girl’s temples gently, moving stray strands of hair from her eyes and wiping the sweat from her forehead. The soul put up less of a fight this way and it made separation easier. I helped the girl to her feet and the watcher approached.

“I’ll take this one,” He said. “Help Marshal with the Russian roulette players upstairs.”

“Russian roulette!?” I replied. “How stupid can you get?”

My comment met with several reproachful stares as watchers and cherubs led their charges from the house. If I’d had a physical form I would have bit my lip.

I went up stairs and found Marshal standing in the doorway of one of the bedrooms. Ten guys were laughing loudly and drinking beer while sitting in a circle on the floor. A few of them could barely sit up straight and one of them was laughing his ass off as he pissed in his Dockers. One of the men held a revolver in one hand and a bullet in the other. I watched in terror while the men looked on as if it were a game of pick-up-sticks. The guy placed the bullet into the chamber and spun it once, closing it.

“This is…” I held my tongue, shaking my head at the incredulity of it all. “This is…”

“Stupid.” Marshal finished for me. He wasn’t bound by the same code of ethics and moral guidelines that I was. “I know and I agree. Turn away.”

The gun had come to a third guy who was wearing a black blazer, tie, button down shirt and dress pants. He was appropriately dressed for the funeral he’d be having later, and yet there was nothing I could do to stop him. Death asked me to turn away, but I could only stop and stare as the man laughed along with the rest and placed the gun to his temple. To the ones who were still standing the sound of the shot was drowned out by the music, but to me and the others it was as if we had been placed in a room surrounded by walls of sound proof glass and we had just heard that shot. The bullet went through the man’s head and pierced the skull of the one sitting beside him. They both slumped to the floor, and a watcher brushed past me to tend to the second spirit. I stood there paralyzed as Marshal went in and pulled the spirit of the first man.

“He just shot himself!” I snapped. “Just put the gun to his head and shot himself! You stupid fu-“

Someone grabbed my shoulders and pulled me out of the room. Moments later I was on the lawn of the fraternity facing Allen, one of the elder Watchers. He appeared to me as in his avatar, a tall grey haired man in gray slacks, a tweed gray jacket with leather patches at the elbows, and penny loafers. His wingspan was spread at full length and he stood just a few inches from my face as I assumed my own lowly avatar

“If you can’t act like a responsible cherub then you don’t belong here,” Allen said, his words lancing across my ego like a rose’s thorns against the flesh. “How humans meet their demise is not our place to judge or criticize.”

“Well doesn’t it bother you that people just throw away life like this?” I asked.

“What bothers me is not what matters. What matters is that we do as we are told.” Allen crossed his arms and lowered his wings. “When we question our cause we endanger our place in the universe. If you want to avoid the fate of the Morning Star you must learn to control that tongue of yours.”

Resentment burned within my heart like a hot coal taken from an open flame. I was nothing like that jerk.

“Your emotions are also a problem. Perhaps we need to clip your wings for a time until you can learn to master them.”

“No Elder,” I replied, softly. “I will take what you say to heart. Forgive my personal failings and give me the chance to prove myself again.”

Allen gave me a sidelong glance as he considered my apology. I tried not to wonder what he was thinking, knowing he would ground me himself if he caught me reading his thoughts. His wings flexed as he scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, you are young,” he said at last. “I suppose it’s one of things we can help you to improve. But remember this in the future, passion and appreciation are different things entirely. Angels can appreciate life, but we cannot have a passion for it, or we lose ourselves completely in the mortal form. Take the evening off to reflect on this and come back tomorrow morning ready to serve.”

With a bow and a sigh of relief I left the campus. A half hour later police and ambulance sirens came together in a chorus that sounded a lot better than the music at the frat house, but did nothing to make me feel any better.

Such a waste of life, I thought. Why do they do such horrible things with their lives and then resent us when they die?

My walk led me down the road as police cars sped past me. Three ambulances followed suit, one within a few seconds of the other. I didn’t even look up, knowing that the drivers wouldn’t notice me.

The sirens could be heard all over the city. In just a few more hours the awful tragedy would appear in the local papers, and on TV and radio stations. The LA and New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the major news channels would be covering these events for weeks to come. There would be police reports and court dates, and expulsions, and fines paid, and no one would forget these events for years upon years to come.

Something caught my eye as I walked past a Barnes ‘n Noble. The store was closed but a well lit display window featured the last five Harry Potter novels, with a poster announcing when the sixth one would come out. A pleasant smile spread across my face as I thought of how happy millions of people would be when it was finally released. The world would be united on that night when the book was distributed to every store with a postal address, and children would be up past their bedtimes, waiting for the release of the book and reading it over and over weeks after the last copy had long been sold.

“Think you’re gonna buy it?”

Death stood beside me again. She chose a beautiful blond haired girl as her avatar, and she wore fairly unremarkable clothes that would blend in with a crowd.

“Everything at the frat house is taken care of?” I asked.

“All wrapped up in time for the cops to show up,” She answered nonchalantly. “The Waiting Room’s going to be a full house tonight.”

I shuttered.

“How can you be so casual about it? Doesn’t it disturb you?”

“Well, yeah,” Death said, managing a perfect imitation of a teenage valley girl. “It bothers me just as much as it would bother any being. I bet you anything Allen felt the same way when he was your age.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“It’s true. Most angels are completely baffled by human behavior.”

“No, I mean I find it hard to believe Allen was ever my age,” I said, half heartedly.

Death chuckled lightly and turned her attention to the display window. We were quiet for a while.

“For what it’s worth,” she said. “You weren’t that bad of an assistant. I actually liked you better than the watchers.”

I laughed. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”