Warm and Dead
Hello mortals. I stole my favorite reaper’s pen while he’s preoccupied.
I could cast a spell to show you what Thanatos saw that charmed him so badly, but I think the written word is just as powerful.
So here’s how I imagine he would describe his fascination with the living world he immerses himself in:
And one year prior, Kane’s heart was a bitter, frigid cold.
HECATE
THANATOS
“Hello, God,” the haunted mortal groans.
His soul churns awake in the in-between dimension he’s prisoner to, floating delicately along his body like spiderwebs against a tree.
“You haven’t earned that privilege yet,” I purr. “I’m not nearly as fun.”
Slowly, his spirit head raises from the hospital bed, watching the piercing lights blink above.
The room is sterile. Ordinary. Unremarkable.
The human is bizarre. Gifted. Inconsolable.
Enfolding himself in darkness. How unoriginal.
He must have been quite an inferior medical student to have used his talents for this outcome.
I know not how the Fates plan, but I’m intrigued by the incompetence.
The boy’s wrist slipped, barely grazing his hair. He remains for the involuntary psychiatric hold more than his feckless attempt.
His tormented eyes flicker toward me.
My pitiless gaze. My phantom sword.
“Perhaps I’m not real,” I tell him.
In this state, we look alike. Wisps of smoke, remnants of opportunity.
“Maybe I’m a figment of your imagination. You are asleep, after all. This could be a dream.”
I’m a lot older than this boy is. I know exactly what he’s thinking.
Denial. He’s trapped in an inescapable calamity. This can’t be happening, not to him.
And yet, he still surprises me when he asks, with dolorous acceptance, “Where is she?”
“Your God snatched your mother before I could reach her, current whereabouts are beyond—”
“No,” he says, frustrated. “Where is Jade?”
I peer at the human contradiction. Surely he isn’t concerned with the manner of the living, given he just fell on his own sword.
Does he even remember what he did?
“You still concern yourself with the living?”
“She’s my sister,” he says, voice raspy. His hands move to his hair—no doubt feeling the attempt that grazed him—as he searches around, looking for this presumed Jade.
“I imagine she’s in recovery, given she was the one who started CPR on you while you nearly bled out.”
Humans are such fragile creatures. Hit one artery, and blood erupts. Fall at the wrong angle and become permanently disabled. Lose one job opportunity, and pick up a lethal weapon.
But I suppose they’re resilient creatures too. At least his sisters were when they started saving him and called for assistance.
Though I doubt the oldest will feel the same way about ACLS training ever again.
Lucky for him, it’s hard to self-sacrifice in a family of doctors.
The mortal’s eyes glaze over, drifting into the Beyond. He’s quaking with guilt. If he could breathe in this state, he’d be wheezing.
It’s settling in now.
No, you didn’t die.
Yes, I am waiting for you to.
He opens his mouth like he’s about to ask something, but I finish for him. “If you were dead, I’d be hauling you away, not wasting my time conversing. I can see your lifespan. It’s floating above your head. You won’t be spared the mercy of death yet.”
He blinks slowly, processes this revelation.
I continue to hover.
Apollo sent me here to babysit his favorite offspring—not that she needs monitoring, she’s been immersed in tomfoolery since her days at Aether University—but flower child is nothing more than the usual student: overwhelmed, under-loved, and under-appreciated, still trying to remember where to stand in the operating theater without getting in the way.
This mortal is much more interesting.
They say those who feel helpless or burdensome to others are the ones who lose their psyche.
I know something about being predestined myself.
Deliver my souls, Hades says. Go chain Sisyphus, Zeus orders. Babysit my daughter, Apollo commands. Nobody appreciates the work I do.
In many ways, I’m more similar to the residents than they know.
Maybe that’s why I'm so drawn to haunting them.
After all, I’m the only condition they can’t consistently win against.
I am Death.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
Ah, here we go. He is lacking metis, after all. The D.O. is just decor.
“I heard there was a demon possessing a student here,” I tell him wryly. “I wanted to see for myself.”
“How disappointing,” he snaps, “to realize it’s just me.”
Hubris, too.
Charming.
“You’re in the presence of a supernatural being, and you have this attitude?”
He attempts to grab the rail for leverage, but his hand slips through, and he winces.
“What are you going to do? Kill me?” he asks scathingly.
He swipes through the rail he can’t feel again.
This mortal is lucky I can’t be the one to kill him. His insecurity and boldness weave around him like snakes around the caduceus, making him as naively reckless as he is impressively brave.
“Worse,” I threaten. “I’m going to watch you live with the consequences of what you’ve done.”
He swallows and lies back down as much as he can. The room he’s trapped in is bare, like his hope. No decor allowed in the asylum room.
Not that his family would gift him anything. He knows as well as I do that they’ll never forgive him for this.
Especially when his mother fled the family the same way ten years prior.
The wretch lives on, silence punctuated only by the robotic beeps proving the pump inside him still fights on.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub…
“What’s the point?” he grovels to himself. “I don’t have anyone here to live for.”
“Besides the sisters you abandoned?” I remind him. “And your father, who is ‘borderline catatonic,’ as the nurses say.”
“You don’t understand,” he says, scrambling for excuses. His arms cross, but with no corporeal form, he folds himself into a flimsy knot before untwisting in the unseen wind.
“I’m unemployed!” he yells. “I didn’t match! What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I have a useless degree and a debt burden my father refuses to pay off because I went to the wrong school against his will! And it’s my fault I took a shortcut!”
I float closer, and he flinches.
He’s terrified.
Most depressed people are.
“So you say,” I continue, “but what if your reason for living hasn’t met you yet?”
“What the fuck are you, some motivational speaker?” he bites out.
I sheath my sword. “What the fuck are you, a dead man?”
He retreats.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
I leave him to ponder this while he watches the clock. It’s going to be a long time before he decides whether or not he wants to leave.
That’s fine. I’m immortal. I can wait.
The clock ticks. I drift away.
“Make a deal with me,” he dares.
Ah, there it is. The mortal has a hero’s spirit after all. Fascinating.
The desperate ingrate craves to outwit the Fates, as they all think they can do.
“Surgeons compare themselves to gods, not reapers,” I muse. “As neither, you’re useless to me right now.”
“I need to go back to take care of my sisters.”
“The bargaining stage, I see. How textbook.”
“I can’t do this again,” he says, murmuring to himself. “I can’t have this effect on anyone I love ever again.”
“And what’s your bright plan, mortal? Keep running as soon as someone cares about you? I fear your family will make it quite difficult for you to die. Regardless, you won’t remember this conversation.”
“I will make myself remember,” he insists. “I can’t do this again. I can’t do this to anyone else I love ever again…”
And so I watch this strange mortal mumble to himself that he’s never going to get close to anyone else again (which I doubt).
How he’s never going to make the same mistakes (which I anticipate).
And how he’s never going to see me again (which is fine, because I’ll haunt him every time I visit this hospital).
He’s already decided to live, and hasn’t even realized it yet. Plans for the future are taking shape before me, despite the circumstances he told me were so damning seconds earlier.
The younger they die, the greater my prize.
But the older they live, the more entertaining their demise.
Someone who cares so much for others but so little for how their actions affect them is as interesting a paradox as a medical genius who believes himself to be worthless. And this hospital is teeming with many such peoples.
And so, I think I will remain to watch this one grow up. Mysteries must either be solved or abandoned. After all, immortality can get so boring when I already know the ending…