Death Angel

Chapter 3: Training Day

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

My father used to teach me many things. Everything from sizing up people to running a business. For someone so busy, he never failed in his duty toward me. “Live your life to the fullest Van,” he would often say, “that you won’t leave this earth with a shred of regret.”

I have no regrets, and I’ve never once apologized for anything I’ve done. I’ve had my share of difficult choices, but I’ve always borne the consequences of my own decisions, good or bad.

But the choice that faced me this time was nonsensical; bordering on the insane. It had no precedent, and certainly no amount of experience during my lifetime could have ever prepared me for it.

I had asked the right questions of course. Donnie Hunter’s daughter was no fool, despite everything else that anyone might have said.

“And what good will that possibly bring?” I remember asking.

“You get your wish, Cherie. A chance to come back, a chance to right the wrongs. Most importantly,” said Death with a grin, “you get to see your precious Daniel one more time.”

“Why?” I had asked the obvious question.

“Alas, Cherie, the ‘Why’ is not part of the terms of our agreement,” said Death with an almost comical look on his face. “You do not question my judgement, or my intentions,” he said again, waving his hands with the flourish of a seasoned performer. “I shall reveal those at a time of my choosing. For now, you merely answer, ‘yes’, or ‘no’.”

“Well that makes little sense,” I said. “How can I agree to something I don’t fully understand?”

“Ah, ma Cherie,” Death said again with a smile, ”I had thought you to be smarter than that. And certainly,” he breathed in slowly through his nose, eyes closed as if savoring the moment. “I did not expect you to question benevolence when it raises it pretty little head,” he said, and there was that look of gravity upon his beautiful face once more. “Do not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“And what exactly is the price I have to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?” I asked.

“Why, your immortal soul of course,” Death had said it with a casual nonchalance.

I rolled my eyes. “Well, it is just  my immortal soul after all,” I said. There was something comically tragic about the whole thing.

“But you get to stay on, Cherie,” Death said with a gleam in his eye. The darkness was still all around him. What little light there was seemed to bend and contort all around him now. “In exchange for having given up on the judgement of heaven, you shall exist as I do: beyond the confines of your old life, but never quite ascending to the next. You shall receive, as they say, a new life.”

“Fine. I accept,” I said simply.

Death’s face lit up. “Marvelous!” He walked up to me and vigorously shook my hand. I half rolled my eyes again, wondering just exactly what it was that I had accepted.

“What now?” I had asked, staring Death coolly in the eye. I have made some rather large gambles in my life. Retaining ownership of the company was one. My grandmother wanted me to get out of the business, to live my own life outside of Hunter Robotics. “The business ruined your father’s life, dear,” she often said. “He gave every bit of himself to it, and it ate him alive.”