Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (33 page)

The Devil climbed down off the table and stretched his new legs. Nigel, Celina, and Gerald looked at the Devil's new body. It was still a jolly-looking Father Christmas but the look of pure hatred in the eyes was unmistakable.

0m 7s

"I'm alive!" shouted the Devil. "And now you're all going to pay, the whole world's going to pay, it feels so good to be alive!"

0m00s

There was an earth-shattering
boom
and the Majestic Technologies building ceased to exist.

Nigel, Celina, Gerald, and the Devil all died instantly.

Years later, Nigel often pondered the experience of exploding into nothingness. Being in the vicinity of a bomb was one thing, someone could get some shrapnel in the knee, lose a body part, be horribly scarred and that sort of thing. But to be so close to the bomb where people were literally vaporized was quite something else.

To Nigel, it felt like a cross between a sneezing fit and falling asleep in the sun for several hours, all compacted into one millisecond. One minute he was there, and the next minute, he wasn't. His entire body, along with Celina's body, Gerald's body, all the elves, and Santa Claus, ceased to exist in the blink of an eye.

Nigel was surprised that, although his body was gone completely, his essence, or what he presumed was his soul, could still see, hear, and feel quite well. And so the shock waves from the explosion sent his soul flying straight upward, through the clouds, through the Earth's atmosphere where he bounced off a satellite and found himself floating lazily through the dead coldness of space.

It wasn't long before Celina's soul also joined Nigel's soul, and Gerald's soul didn't want to be left out, so that wasn't too far behind. The trio's souls looked very much like their owners' bodies had in their previous life; they were just a lot brighter, sort of transparent with a luminescent glow, and instead of moving they just drifted unnaturally around.

They couldn't speak to each other, as they lacked the physical ability to do so; thinking to each other was also out of the question as there was no longer a brain to work with, but neither of these things seemed to hinder the group, as somehow the souls of the individuals found it incredibly easy to take the complete lack of sound that can only be
not
heard in space and reverse it into noise, which at first sounded like nothing but static on a television; but the more they tried, the better they all got, until finally Nigel's soul said, "Can anyone hear me?"

"Nigel?" said Celina's soul.

"Hullo," said Gerald's soul.

"Celina, Gerald," said Nigel's soul.

The lack of ears didn't appear to hinder the conversation as they weren't even speaking but naturally knew what everyone else was not saying.

"This isn't exactly how I pictured all this turning out," said Nigel's soul.

The large blue and green globe that was the Earth spun slowly beneath them.

"It is quite beautiful up here, though, isn't it?" said Celina's soul.

"Marvelous," said Gerald's soul happily. "What do you think happens now?"

"Well," said Nigel's soul as he floated through Celina's soul, "we all appear to be dead. I couldn't even begin to guess what happens next."

"I thought the dead couldn't die?" asked Gerald's soul.

"That's true," said Celina's soul, "but if we can't die, then what are we still doing here?"

Gas from a nearby planet floated by and collided with a ray of sunlight that had deflected off a bald gentleman's head in northern Cambodia, causing the gas' atoms to realign themselves and turn into a very nice mahogany door with a brass handle. The three souls floated their way over to the new phenomenon to investigate.

The door opened, and a dull light spilled out, instantly swallowed up by the emptiness of space.

Death poked his head out of the doorway.

"What are you all waiting for, get in here!"

Earlier on, in the quaint little bistro, Heinrich had taken Death aside for a chat. Gerald happily sat alone and filled up his wine glass for the third time.

"Look, I really am sorry about everything," said Death.

Heinrich nodded and grinned whimsically.

"I know. And it's okay. You know me well enough to understand that everything's going to work out in the end, right?"

"Well, it usually does."

"Have a little faith, then," said Heinrich still smiling. "You can have your job back, don't give it a second thought. But I need you to do a couple of things first."

Death was ultimately relieved to know that his job was secure and that the Creator of the universe still liked him, even though, while in a drunken stupor, Death may have inadvertently referred to him as a giant baboon's backside.

"Of course," said Death solemnly, "anything."

"Well, first, we have to get our old friend out of that poor cat and back to where he should be."

"I can take care of that."

"I know that you probably could take care of it yourself, but I have something else in mind. Firstly, I need you to deliver two messages and secondly, I need you to abandon everyone, even your newfound friend over there, at a most critical point."

Death nodded slowly, understanding absolutely nothing. He looked into Heinrich's eyes, which twinkled a bright blue and told him everything he needed to know in a matter of seconds.

"Ohh," said Death, nodding more knowingly, "that makes more sense."

Death walked across the room to Gerald and leaned over the table.

"Er, Gerald, Heinrich would like a quick word with you and then we have to be off again, okay?"

Gerald nodded with a ferocity that most headbangers would admire, picked himself up, and wandered over to Heinrich.

The afterlife was not what Nigel expected. Although when he thought about it, he really hadn't thought very much about what the afterlife would look like. But he figured that if he had thought about it, then this would not be what he expected.

"Nigel," said Death, "You're thinking far too loudly."

"Oh, sorry," said Nigel.

When they passed through the door, their souls stretched extremely thin and forced their way through some sort of long tube made of light and beautiful music. For a twinkling moment, Nigel could have sworn he'd seen, out of the corner of his eye, the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra floating around,

The entire thing came to a shocking and sudden halt when Nigel's, Celina's, and Gerald's souls were spewed into nothingness, which quickly turned into an Arizona desert landscape at night. Death stepped out from behind a cactus and grinned.

"Well, how much fun was that?"

Celina's soul looked stupefied. "Which part? The floating in space part? Or the getting blown into little pieces part?"

"I was thinking about the entire experience as a whole, really."

Nigel was certain that if Celina had any sort of physical presence, she would have swung for Death at that point.

"All right," said Nigel's soul, "what now? And why does the afterlife look like Arizona?"

"This isn't the afterlife. It's more like a waiting room. I pick the souls up, bring them here, and then they find out whether they go up or down. Heaven or Hell. Best place in all of eternity, or hot, humid, and swimming in a lake of fire until kingdom come."

"You paint a lovely picture," said Celina's soul.

"And it looks like Arizona right now because I want it to. Sometimes it's a big grassy meadow, sometimes the top of a mountain, bottom of the sea, wherever I feel like it, I guess."

"So we're dead?" asked Gerald's soul.

"As a doornail," replied Death.

"And there's no way around that, then?" asked Nigel's soul hopefully.

"Well, you can't really get blown up and survive, unfortunately."

"Didn't think so," said Nigel's soul.

"I know it's a bit of a downer."

"Bit of a downer!" yelled Celina's soul, "we're all dead! What kind of a plan was that?"

Death continued to smile. "Well, all the elves are gone and you three stopped the Devil from taking over the world."

"Yes, but we're dead. We can't even enjoy it!"

"Think of the people you saved. You died for a good cause. No point worrying about it now."

Celina's soul flew at Death angrily and passed right through him.

Nigel's soul eyed Death suspiciously.

"There's something you're not telling us, isn't there?"

Celina's soul, having lost control, floated upside down. "This isn't how I thought my day was going to go at all," she fumed.

Death wiggled his finger at Celina, much like people do to a baby who has just thrown her plate of spaghetti all over the floor and was gurgling happily about it. Consequently, Celina's soul flipped the right way up.

"Thank you," said Celina's soul.

"All right," began Death, "there are a couple of things I'm not telling you. The Devil has been taught a valuable and much-needed lesson about control and power and he's not going to forget it quickly. All of you helped bring that about in one way or another. Celina here created the elves, Gerald was given the body the Devil should have had, thereby forcing him into a cat. Nigel, you found a goldfish, among other things."