Death's Rulebook

Chapter 1: A death wish

"This is gonna be awful," I said to Lillian, as I stared at the bright, epilepsy-inducing neon sign of the downtown Brooklyn club. 'Paradise', it was called. As if that somehow made it better.

But it was fitting, considering someone—or according to my notebook—quite a few someones actually, were about to die. Although, judging by the myriad of shady people waiting eagerly in line to get in, probably not all of them had tickets to God's nightclub in the sky.

"No kidding," My colleague Lillian said, her eyes glued to the bald, six-foot-four bouncer with a snake tattoo on the back of his skull, as he argued with a group of older girls.

"This is the frat boy's church. Cheap alcohol, crappy drugs, and let's not forget, girls with no self-respect just waiting to be picked up. Prepare yourself for one very sleazy ride, little Violet," She spat out. She moved to light a cigarette, with elegance only a child from the roaring twenties could possess.

"Poor, poor, Lillian," A wickedly musical chuckle, marked with a hint of a smoker's rasp, filled my ears. I shot our third colleague, Mason, a look. He stood next to us on the sidewalk across the street from the club, the streetlight beam illuminating him like a spotlight. I thought it was incredibly fitting since he'd always wanted to be a 90s grunge rock star.

"Oh, how hard it must be for you to attend a party without pearls and fancy gentlemen in suits for a change. But for the sake of your job, and, oh, I don't know, your undead life, could you maybe suck it? Just for one night?" He blew smoke into her face.

"Is that... tequila?" Lil suspiciously sniffed and waved the gust away with a flick of her hand.

Mason grinned, pulling out a small complementary tequila bottle from his jacket pocket.

"Why yes, my dear, the finest the Mariott hotel has to offer."

"Please don't tell me you stole it." I said.

"What? My reap had already paid for it. And he was dead. Not like he was going to need it anyway."

"Ew, seriously? We haven't even gotten in yet, and you're already fried out of your mind?" Lil snickered.

Mason shrugged, and took another shot from the bottle, before tucking it in the pocket of his prized biker jacket. I never dared to ask him how he'd gotten the thing. Mostly it had to do with the large bullet hole on the right sleeve and his very persistent stealing habit.

"Hey, we're about to waste a whole night cleaning up dead crap. Anything I can do to make that less awful, I'm totally gonna do it."

His eyes wandered across the street to the floor above the club. He grew grim.

I didn't even have to look to know what had put him in such a bad mood. I had felt them from the moment we'd arrived at the club in Mason's crappy Ford Ranger. They hovered over the line of people, imposing and rayless shadows nipping at the crowd's edges, greedily soaking up excitement and life. Even though they were virtually shapeless-all three identical-I recognized mine. George, I called him. Don't ask me how I picked that name, much less how I deduced it was a he. I just did. I couldn't really explain it. I don't think any reaper could.

It was just a special bond we had with them-the embodiments of Death.

Though the Reapers preferred to call them Deadies.

I always thought the name was ill-fitting. There was just something obscene about making the aspects of Death-the beings responsible for the actual killings-into a diminutive. But I guess everyone needed a coping mechanism. Something to make their jobs easier and more light-hearted. Reapers were just the clean-up crew. Our job was to take care of the soul and nothing more. Yet standing by and doing nothing while people died still weighed heavily on us.