The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

Eleven (these events are Twelve in revised scene list)

Death's house was a large Victorian mansion, with many gables and tower rooms, very many attics, hidden stairways, and doors. It was the sort of house novelists set stories of hauntings in. Death was not in love with all things Gothic or Victorian; she had lived long before there were such styles, long before there were Goths, large stone cathedrals, or England, but she thought it was expected of her. Even more so than most Angels, Zerachiel took her tasks seriously.

Morpheus was heading to her house to ask the loan of a vase. Splendor had cut some orchids from the valley of the Acheron for Morpheus, and he could not find a vase in the tower. It was quite well known that Death kept many containers of water about. Her entire house was designed so that spirits she may have passed over were drawn to its center and, so that, with few manipulations, the entire place could be made to keep spirits either in or out, locked up tight. Spirits were drawn to water, but they could be trapped in it.

The bridge was down, the gate of the iron fence was open, and the front doors were stopped wide. This was how Death's house normally looked. The walls were a bit crooked, but that didn't bother Morpheus. He walked over the creaking wooden floor, and rugs past the many doors along the walls. Between doors, there were paintings hung, each was a depiction of death, some quite famous works by Human artists. Morpheus thought someone had told him once that these were not copies, but however the originals of which those created by Humans were always copies.

He came into a large room at the back of the house with many windows that looked out at the Region and the others beyond it. Los Angeles was coming into view. The pyramids were only half built, the sky was black.

Death was standing in this room, populated with many chairs, small tables, and carpets of different styles. She was, actually, feeding a crow that sat on a perch nearby. Morpheus realized the room had many birds in it, and fishes, and also one large, male lion. She wore a voluminous black wool dress shaped with silver broaches. As usual, her hair seemed to defy gravity, as if she were always underwater.

"Morpheus," she said.

"I came to ask-"

"Just who I've been wanting to see. Do me a favor," she said.

"Well, all right but-"

Death took a piece of FAX paper from the table nearest her. She gave it to Morpheus. "Here's a list of certain people who will see their spirit double before they die."

"Doppleganger?"

"In German, yes. It's all in order, name, approximate time, place they can be found, and type of place the double may be seen."

Morpheus looked at the list. "I can do this," he said.

"Thank You," said Death, and then hurried to a tank of piranhas to collect a bird.

Morpheus left. He traveled the world taking on people's forms and appearing to them in specific locations, over lakes, near kitchen appliances, on the tracks of the subway. He followed the list in its chronological order till the end. And then he went back to Death.

Zerachiel herself was in the same room she had been before. This time she was wearing a more fitted gown and large fishbone-shaped earrings in her ears. She was tapping at a large pitcher in which a single white rose and two goldfish stood or swam in water. "Morpheus," she said, "Opium just gave me these two small orange fish."

Morpheus laughed. He looked out the window; it was daylight. He rushed to the glass and looked out. "What is going on, I couldn't have been gone long."