Death

People That Think They're Funny Usually Aren't, Unless They're Comedians

Let's just forget that atrocious prologue, hm?  I think that would be best for both of us. 

I think I'm hilarious, honestly.  Opinions?  Well, I was named after a person who looks at dead bodies all day for a living, so how funny could I really be?  Anyway, you're not here to listen to me rant, so I think I'll start telling you the story now.  For the sake of the story, we'll pretend that I'm not conscious of being here, unless I want to make a comment. Which I will, I assure you.

I was in my room. 

Okay, stop there.  I need to explain this.  Isn't it classic me, stopping the story one sentence in?  Anyway, my room is my baby.  If babies were boxes inside houses, painted purple, and covered with books.  Yep.  It's a dark purple.  My mother had pictures of a bunch of random people put on the walls before I was born.

I loved to look at the pictures on the walls.  They were like windows into those people's lives.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to stop you again.  If you notice any discrepancies between my personality and the personality of the person in the story, you're too perceptive for your own good.  Don't think about it too much, you'll hurt yourself.  After all, how many people do you know that call themselves Mort?

You know what, don't answer that.  It'll just make me feel all lonely inside.

One picture in particular was my special favorite.  The girl in the picture looked to be about my age, and she was smiling.  She had long, purple-tinted black hair and dark green eyes, looking frighteningly like me.  But she was smiling.  What was that all about?  She was happy, looking like that.  I wanted to be happy, too.

The girl wore a white dress and a gray cloak over the dress.  The picture looked too sharp for the time it must have been taken in, if it had been put up before my birth.  All of the pictures were like that, though.

Hey, me again.  Well, duh!  Why did I say that?  Who else would be breaking in to this story to insert meaningless commentary?  After all, I'm not real, am I?  Just a person in your imagination.  And now you know what I look like.

I just think I should apologize for all of this description going on.  It's necessary, I assure you. As necessary as the scene with Captain America and the helicopter was in the latest movie. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And exactly how necessary it was. *wink* Oh god. I'm just going to stop now.

I looked at the picture for a while, dangling my legs. It was my favorite thing to do on the weekends, on the holidays, and after school. Just kidding. I read.

After a few minutes of staring at the picture, I got a little bored. There are only so many things you can do with a single picture. I left the house and walked down the street, humming a funeral dirge. For some reason, funeral music always seemed happy to me. A few passersby on the street gave me some funny looks, and another looked like she was going to burst into tears.

I made it to the pool, one of the more pleasant places in my little suburb. It was this way only because there was usually no appearance from people I hated. They all hated the feeling of sunscreen slime and pee in the water, but personally, I didn't mind, and so I walked through the doors. From a pocket in my enormous black hoodie, I took my pool ID. The lifeguard at the desk didn't look at it, but waved me on.

I walked in, and I looked around.

"Mooooort!" somebody screamed. I sighed, and turned around. A girl with hair dyed white and eerie, light blue eyes was running towards me, a big smile on her face. She wasn't the type of person you would normally associate with dyed hair, save for maybe blonde or a strand of red. She had dyed her hair though, and that was when I had noticed her. Breaking stereotypes and all that. It might also have been the fact that her name was Happiness. Really. Everybody at school thought that she was a bit strange.

I understood. She was trying to live up to her name by being overly happy all the time, just like I was gloomy and scientific and logical because of my name. To make us both happier, she called me Mort, and I called her Ness.

I used to imagine our parents getting together and brainstorming names that would make us miserable. 'Mortician, Happiness, Scientist, Economic, Downer, Idiot.' All about the same. Well, maybe not the last.

"Mort, you're looking pale today," she said by way of greeting. I smiled.

"You're looking bright today," I replied. We walked over to a group of lawn chairs, sending a flock of football players scampering like scared rabbits. We were frightening. I mean, I was thought of as the personification of Death. I was the face of the Grim Reaper, the person that came to take your soul to hell. And Ness was a bad luck charm. Everybody who got close to her, except me, became unhappy. I was unhappy before her, so it was okay.

I'm not as lonely as I seem, huh?  We bonded over our atrocious names, and our hatred for them!  Also, can you see how the sense of humor is similar in the me now and the me then?  Mostly making fun of myself, dark, and of course hilariously funny.