“Happy Birthday, Derek.” With that, his girlfriend placed an envelope in front of him.
Derek didn’t really like parties; he wasn’t a terribly social person, and in deference to that, his birthday was held in his apartment with just him and his girlfriend. His friends would likely bombard him with well-wishes online and presents at work, but for now, it was just Danielle and Derek.
He picked up the envelope and opened it up. It was a pair of tickets to a concert He''d wanted to go to.
“You know, I’m happy and all, and I’m looking forward to going, but...” Derek trailed off. “Would it be bad for me to say that I’m not looking forward to the drive? Downtown is a mess of traffic at the best of times. I can’t stand driving through it.”
She laughed. She had a great laugh. “Good thing you have a girlfriend willing to do it, huh?”
“I have the best girlfriend.” Derek immediately decided.
“Good answer.” She replied back. “If you want to make your girlfriend even happier, you mind heading down to the store really quick and picking up some milk? I think we’re just about out.”
He nodded and scooped up the car keys.
Derek stepped out of the air-conditioned apartment and the heat hit him with a moist, thick impact.
Derek wasn''t used to living in Florida yet.
In the beginning, he’d started working at his job fresh out of college on the west coast of the US, got promoted and told to open a branch in Japan, then was told to open a branch in the Philippines, then in Texas, then Costa Rica, then Colorado. But then the economy started riding a roller coaster, and through no fault of his own, the branches started collapsing.
He was moved to Colorado, and then two years later, to Kansas. Two years after that, Florida.
Florida was where he met Dani, a schoolteacher.
They hit it off right away.
Florida however... Derek and Florida were still eyeballing each other warily across a table. It was always hot, it was always humid, and the air was always unbearably thick. There were times when Derek thought he could reach out with his hand and pull off a chunk of the air and eat it, it was so thick.
He twirled his car keys on his fingers as he headed out to the parking lot, and spent a few minutes shooing away the lizards; tiny little things two or three inches long.
He’d learned that if he didn’t do that, some would find their way into the car and crawl all over the place, including him. It was worse when they died inside the car from the heat.
If there was one good thing Derek could say about Florida though, was that it was perpetually green. So much growth, everywhere. A riot of color, so vibrant and explosive.
In most of the other places he’d lived, everything was dirt brown, concrete gray, and asphalt black.
He hopped in the car and drove to the grocery store, his mind a thousand miles away.
He’d have breakfast with Dani, then head into work, do his thing there, probably get bombarded with presents from his coworkers, head home to a dinner with Dani; same as every other day except with presents. In a few days they’d go to a concert together.
He arrived at the store, grabbed the milk, got in line, and groaned.
An elderly woman stared myopically at the credit card reader just ahead of him, massive glasses perched on her birdlike nose.
“What’s my PIN Number, dear?” She asked the cashier in a trembling voice.
Oh boy.
The cashier eyed Derek with a trapped look of despair. He gave her a sympathetic shrug.
It took a while, but the old woman got squared away and made her way towards the doors, pushing her cart ahead of her like it was her walker.
The cashier scanned the milk, Derek tapped his card, and he wished the cashier a good day. From that last exchange, it looked like she needed it.
He took the milk and winced against the slap of humid air as he stepped out of the store.
When someone opens a cold one and water beads on the outside, it’s because the drink is colder than the surrounding environment. Water condenses on it.
In Florida, people are the cold drink, and the air condenses on them.
He strode across the parking lot, already slipping into the groove of commonplace routine: Go home, have breakfast with Dani, maybe steal a few kisses, go to work, deal with the eight hour slog-
Movement out of the left side caused him to turn his head. A liquor truck was pulling into the parking lot, and the driver-
Derek jolted- he tried to leapfrog out of the way, but the truck turned towards him. He bounced off the grill and rebounded off of it; he hit the asphalt on his back. The milk flew out of his hand and split on the pebbled asphalt in a garish white spray. The wheel ran over his leg and he didn’t even have time to scream as the driver overcorrected and drove across his body, forcing a gush of blood from his mouth.
Strangely, there was very little pain. Maybe someone in the gray matter was asleep at the switch, or maybe this was what shock was like, everything in his body was struck in numb silence.
He could even feel the bump on his head when he hit the ground, bizarrely enough.
He tried to take a breath and realized he couldn’t.
Could he scream? He couldn’t even whisper. The split milk jug was laying nearby, its remaining contents gurgling out of the cracked plastic.
Everything was fading. Derek couldn’t see anything, anymore. Maybe it was white, maybe it was black, He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t see anything.
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What a shitty way to die.
*****
“Well, this is a nice-looking resume.” A voice called out to Derek, and he tried to bring everything into focus.
He was ... where was he? Everything was blurry and indistinct. A fog of white.
Someone was in front of him, but he couldn’t tell who they were. Completely androgynous.
“Looks like you’ve been all over the place.”
Where the fuck was he?
“You’re where old folks go after Florida, hun.” The person replied snarkily.
“Funny.” Derek replied, suddenly remembering that he could, in fact, reply. “So... that’s it?”
“That’s it. You’re dead.” They replied, waving their hand dismissively.
“I ... well. No chance for a do-over? A miracle?”
“No do-overs from me, hun. If you come to me, you don’t really deserve a miracle, if you catch my drift.”
“Deserve?”
The figure nodded. “No close ties at all. Your friends are just co-workers. You haven’t been close to your family... ever.”
“Dani?” He asked hopefully.
“She’ll get over you in a year, tops.” the figure replied with an indifferent shrug. “You’ve made some great strides in your life, but frankly, not a lot of attachments, if you catch my drift.”
“Oh, come on. That can’t be true,” Derek argued.
The figure gave him a patronizing look.
“If you had close friends, close family, if you’d have actually developed a real relationship with Dani... well, you wouldn’t even be talking to me.”
Derek let that sink in, but the wheels were already spinning in his head.
“So... what comes next? Heaven? Hell? Valhalla?”
The figure laughed, a strange, genderless, hollow laugh.
“If you actually believed in them, you wouldn’t be talking to me.” They replied.
“So then... what? Nothingness? That can’t be fair.”
“‘Fair’ he says.” they chuckled again. They waved a hand. “I’m the Great Equalizer. I am the epitome of ‘fair’. Death is always fair. It comes for everyone.”
“So... you’re Death?” Derek asked dubiously. They nodded.
“I’m who you speak to when you care too little and believe in nothing and nobody.” They waved a hand. “If you believed in anything or anyone else, you’d be talking to them, and maybe they’d give you a miracle. They’re in the business of miracles.”
“So... I fucked up.” He replied.
“Who am I to care what you did or didn’t do?” Death replied. “Nobody wanted you, so you came to me. That’s life.” Death chuckled at the joke.
“What do you mean, ‘nobody wanted me’?” Derek blurted angrily.
Death pointed a finger upwards and then downwards. “Them. Gods. Devils. Those that watch the world.” They leaned forward. “If you believed in them, you’d be talking to them. But you didn''t, so you’re talking to me.” they jerked a thumb at their chest. “I don''t do miracles.”
“We can spit platitudes at each other all day. What do you want?” He asked.
“Actually, that was my question to you. You don’t have enough attachments to this world to send you back. I could give you a true death, if you like. Scatter your soul across the endless nothingness. I could give you a rebirth in that world. You’d lose all your memories, everything. You wouldn’t be you anymore.”
“... that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.” Derek admitted, a thread of fear working its way inside him. “I might not have a lot of ‘attachments’ as you say, but I happen to like being me. I’ve been me for as long as I can remember, and I think I’m quite good at it.”
The figure laughed. “Well, it does say here that you’ve got a sense of humor.” they suddenly rattled a folder filled with paper at me.
“Any way I can continue to be me?” He asked.
“What, like, the way you are now? Not in this world, hun. I could send you somewhere else, though. You’d be you there.”
Somewhere else? “What, like a parallel world? Something else in the space-time continuum? A different time? Or would I be an alien?”
They laughed. “So you saw the PBS special on parallel world theory and how it extended into space-time. Good for you!”
“They played it when I was in the hospital when I was recovering from surgery, I didn’t really have a choice. No, but for real. Where are you sending me?”
“It’s not a bad place for someone like you. It’d be a much better place if you weren’t a cynical asshole, though.”
“I prefer ‘constantly disappointed optimist’, thank you very much.” He snapped back, and they went off into gales of laughter again.
After the laughter tapered off, The figure leaned forward. “All right. I don’t mind. Dead is dead, after all, and it’s not like anyone cares what I do with your soul anyway. I’ll send you there. You’ll be born there, live there, and die there. You’ll keep your memories.” The figure tapped a finger on the table Derek just realized they were sitting across from each other at.
“Here’s the thing: You’re a fully developed soul. A baby can’t handle that sort of thing. It’d die in vitro. That’s how these things work. So parts of you will be sealed off for a while so you can grow up in your new body, in your new world. You should come fully awake... say... around puberty. Try not to die this time.”
The figure leaned forward, and tapped their finger on the desk. “Word of advice? Do yourself a favor and believe in something this time.”
*****
Davian opened his eyes and stared up at the tent, his wives nestled closely against his side, the cooling embers of the tent’s fire ticking to themselves as they died.
How long had it been since he’d last had that dream?
How long had it been since he’d last thought of himself as Derek?
How long had it been since he realized that nothing he knew previously was useful in this world, where only the strong survived?
He’d been born into the Clan of the Dragon, had taken in the lore of his tribe, taught to him by his grandfather and great-grandfather.
He’d been sold into slavery to another country by his own father for a handful of coins.
For a while, every day had been a desperate scramble to keep his sanity.
This world couldn’t abide weaklings. A moment’s laxity and something would kill you. If it didn’t kill you, it broke your fucking heart.
This last year with Sheilah was the hardest. There was so much he wanted to do with her, so much he wanted to do for her. He’d even considered raising the banner of war for her.
He wanted to comfort her more, to hold her close and tell her everything she needed to hear, to listen to everything she needed to say. To tell her that things would be alright, even if they wouldn’t.
He wanted to cry with her over his daughter’s death, share his grief with hers.
He wanted to do so much for her, but he couldn’t. When Sheilah came back from her trial- if she came back- he hoped she’d come back- He’d have to hurt her again, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d seen what Caidi’s death had done to her, and he didn’t want to see that again.
It didn’t matter that he was of the First Blood, the leader of the Dragon Clan, leader of the strongest Clan, the leader of the strongest tribe in the strongest clan in all of the Redstone.
Despite being the strongest, he was the most powerless of them all.