Chapter 236: Book 4 Chapter 11.2: Grim Repair

“So, just for reference, next time you decide we’re giving up and dying, try to remember I live through a lot of stuff you guys don’t,” Kim said. She was too sturdy to be crushed by the weight, and did not need to breathe, so where Vell and Hawke had been crushed to death, she had just been crushed. “I spent nine hours buried under a mountain of clone ass.”

“Sorry.”

“Next time you see the guy, just reap him,” Kim said. “He spent his last moments trying to trick you. Don’t give him a chance he doesn’t deserve.”

“Right. Speaking of.”

Vell had recently ended his call with Harley and taken his seat in the lair, which meant it was almost time for Death to appear. He held his breath and did a countdown in his head, and Death showed up right on cue. Hawke didn’t scream this time, but he did whimper.

“Hey, guys,” Vell said. “What’s behind m-”

You can put aside the theatrics. You’re not a very good actor anyway.

“Wh-”

Vell turned around, and saw Death’s scythe already extended towards him.

You and I both know what you must do, Death said. I am merely here to deliver the necessary implement.

“Wait, hold on,” Samson said. “Do you know too?”

My dear Samson, I am Death. When the first Something came into being, I was already there, ready to make it Nothing once again, Death said. The cosmic pinpricks in his eyes sent a chill down Samson’s spine as they turned his way. Do you think a simple recursion of time is beyond me?

“Yeah, that makes sense, actually,” Vell said. Quenay was also aware, as was the mysterious Butterfly Guy that watched the timeline unfold, so it made sense that any cosmic entity of a certain tier could be fully aware of the loops.

“No, hold on, if you know about this time loop, then explain it to me, right now,” Alex demanded.

Death did not so much as look in her direction, much less answer Alex’s question. He returned his abyssal gaze to Vell Harlan and handed over the scythe.

Your recalcitrance is both expected and understandable, Vell Harlan, Death said. But the order is the order, and yours is not the place to grant exceptions. If Slippery Jimbo is desperate to persist, he can continue as a Ghost, Revenant, Wight, or any other manner of undead. So long as he files the appropriate paperwork.

A ten-inch high stack of papers immediately manifested on the table next to Vell. He looked at the stack quizzically.

“Did somebody have to do all that for me?”

No. There was far more, Death said. You have until the end of the day to collect the soul of Slippery Jim. Good luck.

Once again, Death vanished without a trace, leaving Vell with nothing but an infinitely sharp scythe of cosmic power, and a large pile of paperwork. Helena stood up and thumbed through the documents.

“Hmm. I’ve had to fill out a few of these,” she said. “After the fifth or sixth time your heart stops they just want a paper trail, record keeping, you know.”

She shrugged and returned to her seat, leaving Vell to stare at his reflection in the blade of the scythe.

“Boy this feels a lot worse on the second loop,” Vell said. On the first loop there had been a layer of plausibility thanks to the impermanence, but now it was all very real.

“Maybe I can sort of stand behind you and move your arms into the reaping for you,” Kim said. “Like teaching someone to play golf.”

“Or maybe,” Samson added. “We do it firing squad style. Get Death to give us a few fake scythes, we swap randomly, and we all swing together, that way we can all believe we were holding one of the fake scythes.”

“No, no, there’s no loopholes,” Vell said. “It’s Death. And he wants me to do this. I have to do this.”

“Which is a shame, because his theory about possessing a cloned body has some merit,” Helena said. She tapped one of her crutches against the leg of the table repeatedly, shaking it just enough to annoy everyone else sitting around it.

“It’d never work, Helena, you know that,” Samson said.

“Well, after your heart stops five or six times, you have to start believing in something,” Helena said. “Otherwise what keeps it going the next time?”

She stood up and shuffled out of the room without another word, which didn’t do anything to improve Vell’s mood. He took a deep breath, adjusted his grip on the scythe, and sighed.

“I know where he’s going to be and when he’s going to be there,” Vell said. “Just a matter of...waiting.”

***

So Vell waited. Though to avoid anything that could be remotely described as brooding, Vell did not let himself do so in silence. As he often did when he was troubled, Vell called Lee and Harley. He had tried to kill as much time as possible talking about life, the universe, and everything, but eventually they had caught on to the fact he was stalling and asked him what was going on with the daily apocalypse. Vell had reluctantly gotten them up to speed.

“Can he just do that?” Harley asked. “I feel like it shouldn’t be possible for Death to shanghai random people into being the Grim Reaper for a day.”

“I’m hardly random, Harley,” Vell said. “I owe Death a favor.”

“You don’t owe him shit, Quenay’s the one who brought you back,” Harley said. “Tell him to take it up with her.”

“Whatever the circumstances may be, Harley, I don’t think it’s wise to try and cheat Death,” Lee said. “We’ve met Sisyphus, we know how that ends.”

“It’s still bullshit,” Harley said.

“It is indeed bullshit,” Lee agreed. “I’m sorry you’ve been put in this situation, Vell.”

“It’s not all bad,” Vell said. “The scythe keeps people from bothering me.”

“Oh, yeah, you’ve got a scythe,” Harley said. “That’s got to be cool, right?”

“It’s a mixed bag. People don’t bug me, but I’ve also got to lug the damn thing around all day,” Vell said. “And nobody but me can hold it, so I can’t give it to Kim or something.”

“Can you not just summon it?’

“What?”

“Summon it,” Lee said. “Like Thor’s hammer. If the weapon is bound to you in such a way no one else can hold it, it likely has a summoning effect as part of the same binding.”

“I, uh, didn’t think of that,” Vell said. “Is there like a muscle I flex, or…?”

“Just drop the scythe, then hold out your hand and think about it as hard as you can.”

Vell nearly dropped the scythe, and then remembered it had an infinitely sharp blade that could cut through anything. He opted to walk a few steps away and carefully place it on the floor instead. He took a few steps back, held out his hand, and thought of the scythe. Though it did not fly through the air dramatically, the scythe did blink from one place to another in an instant, appearing in Vell’s hand as if it had never left.

“Oh come on,” Vell said. “I spent like three hours lugging this thing around yesterday.”

“At least you know now,” Lee said.

“Yeah, like, when that Slippery Jim guy shows up you can just make it pop out of nowhere and reap him before he sees it coming,” Harley said. Vell let out an uncomfortable groan at the mere mention of reaping. “Oh, uh, sorry.”

“No, no, that’s kind of a good idea,” Vell said. It’d certainly prevent any guilt-tripping from Slippery Jim, at the very least. “See, this is why I need you guys.”

Across an ocean, on the other end of the phone call, Lee pursed her lips. That was not the type of sentiment she wanted to be encouraging. Vell wasn’t even out of the first semester yet, he still had a long year of leading the loopers ahead of him.

“How soon is that target of yours showing up?” Lee asked, looking for a quick subject change.

“Eh, I don’t know, thirty minutes or so?” Vell said. “I don’t actually know how long he was in the lab.”

“Well, you might want to be vigilant in any event,” Lee said. “And I do still have work to attend to, dear.”

“Oh, right, I should let you guys get back to it, huh,” Vell said. “Sorry.”

“No trouble at all, Vell, it’s always good to talk to you,” Lee said. “Do call us later and let us know how everything works out.”

“Yeah, and take a selfie with the scythe too,” Harley said. “You probably look super badass with it.”

“Maybe a little,” Vell said. “I’ll talk to you guys later.”

“Yeah. See you, Vell.”

The phone call ended, and silence returned to the laboratory. Vell anxiously bounced his leg as he sat, causing the scythe on his lap to bounce in time. The soft swish of the infinitely sharp blade slicing through the air was almost hypnotic, and helped pull Vell into the unfortunate trap of getting lost in his own thoughts.

Vell’s thoughts always drifted to some of the things Slippery Jimbo had said -and to the fact he was having a moral crisis over someone named Slippery Jimbo. He was, by all accounts, a liar, a fraud, and a thief, a bad person no matter which way one sliced it (though the mere thought of slicing made Vell’s hands tremble a bit). Yet Vell still struggled with the thought of really ending a life, even a half life. He’d committed a lot of violence over the past few years, some of it both unsettling and heinous in scope, but never in a permanent fashion, and rarely towards anything intelligent enough to speak.

Vell got to stew in that dilemma for exactly thirteen horrifying minutes before the door clicked open.

“Mr. Harlan, are you in there?”

“Yeah, Professor Ervine, still here,” Vell said. Since they were both “men of the open plains”, Ernest Ervine had happily allowed Vell to camp out in the backroom laboratory for a long time. “You need something?”

“Well, not me, but this fine fellow wanted to make use of the labs.”

Had Death’s scythe not been utterly indestructible, Vell’s fists clenching tight around the handle might’ve snapped it in two. Remembering Harley’s suggestion of a sneak attack, he hastily shoved it behind a nearby table as Ernest opened the door a little wider and welcomed in a mass of organs suspended in slime. Slippery Jimbo.

“Well howdy,” Jimbo said. It was subtle, but Vell could detect the faintest hints of a false Texan twang in Jimbo’s voice. Just another layer of deception. “The Professor here tells me you’re quite the horseback rider. I’m something of a cowboy myself.”

“It’s a hobby,” Vell said, making a point to remove any hint of his own Texan accent from his voice. He didn’t have much of one to begin with, so it wasn’t hard.

“Well, even the occasional horseback ride is still good for the spirit,” Jimbo said, his voice noticeably absent any accent. Vell tried hard not to roll his eyes. This whole process was being made slightly easier by Jimbo being an insufferable con-man.

“Jim here was looking for some cloning equipment, and he seems like an alright fellow,” Ernest said. He was always a sucker for some cowboy talk. “And I thought since you were here anyway, you could lend him a hand. You are a man who knows how to keep his ducks in a row, after all.”

“Sure, I can end him -lend him a hand,” Vell said. He felt like slapping himself for that slip-up, but resisted the urge. Jimbo and Ernest were none the wiser about the mistake, and the professor left Jimbo in Vell’s care.

“The professor said you’re Vell Harlan, correct? Man who came back from the dead?”

“The only and only,” Vell said, with audible chagrin.

“Well, as surely as two stars have ever cross-”

“I’m going to guess you want to cheat Death, right?” Vell said. He really didn’t feel like sitting through all that bluster twice. “Why don’t you show me what you’re up to and I’ll see if it works.”

“Straight to business, you are a man of sheer determination, that much is obvious,” Slippery Jimbo said. “Right then, I will get straight to it, you just watch.”

The gelatinous undead got to work pounding at the cloning console, pressing a very elaborate sequence of buttons and dials with odd precision. Vell wondered how Jimbo had learned to operate such a machine, and then realized now would probably be his last and only chance to ask. It was a sincere case of genuine curiosity, and in no way shape or form a stalling mechanism.

“So, Jimbo, where’d a guy like you learn to operate machinery like this?”

“Well, I spent the last few months of my life coping with cancer,” Jimbo said. Vell stifled a groan. “I spent the vast majority of that time researching...alternatives, shall we say. Just happened to bite the big one a little too early, couldn’t put my theories into practice in time.”

Now Vell was executing a cancer patient. Former cancer patient, technically, but it still felt bad.

“It’s very impressive that a man in your condition could do that kind of research.”

“I happen to be something of a scientist myself, Vell Harlan,” Slippery Jimbo said. “Came up just short of attending this very school, in fact, though I did attend a close peer. A sister school, you might even say.”

“Oh really, which one?”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with Patschke-Puck?”

The students of Patschke-Puck had tried to murder Vell and/or his friends on at least three separate occasions.

“Yeah, I’m familiar.”

Vell clenched his fist and thought of a scythe. The weightless blade appeared in his hands instantly, and Slippery Jim was none the wiser. The scythe made a nearly inaudible hiss as Vell raised it over his head and prepared to swing. He held his breath, and held the scythe frozen.

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Jimbo was a liar, a thief, and a cheat. A peer to lunatics and murderers. He was even dead already. Vell wasn’t doing anything except giving him a gentle nudge in the right direction.

But he couldn’t even do that.

“Alright, that settles the first round, do you have any-”

Jimbo turned around, and saw the narrow blade of a scythe hanging over him. Vell’s already somber face cracked into a frown.

“So, uh-”

Vell had been ready and willing, though perhaps not able, to explain himself, but Slippery Jimbo hadn’t gotten the name “slippery” by sticking around when things got hairy. He punched Vell in the face with an unfortunately gelatinous fist and left while Vell was still reeling with disgust. He dropped the scythe and used both hands to scrape the goo off his face.

“God, dude, seriously? That got in my mouth, it’s- huh.”

Much to Vell’s surprise, Jimbo’s slimy shell was not actually disgusting. It tasted good, even, though Vell still spat it out on principle before giving chase. He stormed out of the lab, passing a confused Professor Ervine, and stopping in front of a slime-covered Samson.

“Samson?”

“He went that way,” Samson said, pointing towards the coast. Only when the two of them were sprinting after Slippery Jimbo did he stop to explain himself. “So, uh, turns out his name is a little bit literal.”

“I noticed,” Vell said. “What are you doing here?”

“No offense, but we were all kind of worried you wouldn’t go through with it,” Samson said.

“Well, we’re here, so no offense taken.”

“I tried to grab the guy, obviously didn’t work,” Samson said, as he brushed more slime off his face. “Is it weird that the slime tastes kind of good?”

“Very,” Vell said. “Kind of like carbonated jello, in a good way, right?”

“Yeah,” Samson agreed. “If it weren’t undead dude-slime, I would totally eat that!”

“Maybe I can get Renard to make it,” Vell said. If anyone could replicate the flavors of unholy ectoplasmic flesh, it was his former roommate. “Let me call him.”

“Vell, that’s stalling,” Samson said. Vell mumbled a curse under his breath as he ran. “Call Kim instead, and tell her Jimbo’s headed for the docks.”

They were gaining ground on the undead con-man now, though he still maintained a healthy lead thanks to a lifetime spent running from people in situations just like this. Kim was even faster, however, and thanks to a warning from Vell, she arrived on the docks long before Jimbo could reach them. Vell cast one more glance at Samson’s slime covered form, and plugged another command into his phone. Even Kim’s robotic strength might not be enough to keep a solid grip on Jimbo’s jello, and if he got on board a boat they might lose him. Vell used the complicated mechanism built into his phone case to summon a rune, and tossed the heavy metal slate through the air.

“Kim! Barrier!”

She picked up on his meaning and caught the slate. Kim’s magic skills were rudimentary at best, but still enough to charge the rune with mana and then slam it down on the ground to activate it. A shimmering barrier of force popped up just in time for Jimbo to slam right into it, pancaking his gooey body flat. Kim let out a quiet grunt of disgust as he pulled back, and his organs started sliding back into shape.

“Nice try, bud,” Kim said. “But I- am on the wrong side of the barrier.”

Jimbo looked Kim up and down, and then bolted once again, while Kim stood on the wrong side of the magic wall like an idiot.

“Sorry guys,” Kim said, as Vell and Samson dashed past.

“You were in a hurry, its fine,” Vell said. “It only lasts like a minute!”

Kim resigned herself to standing around like a total dingus for a minute while the chase continued. Slippery Jimbo turned back towards the island’s center, and started heading for one of the lab buildings.

“Samson, go around and try to cut him off on the other side,” Vell said. Samson nodded and broke away, while Vell stayed on Jimbo’s tail and reckoned with what was inside that building. General Science’s. A dangerous division on a good day, and especially problematic with an undead slime-man running through it.

Yelps of panic filled the halls as scared students dove out of the way of Slippery Jimbo’s sprint. His horrific appearance at least cleared the halls well, which Vell took as a blessing. Another small miracle was that Jimbo did not try to dodge and weave through any of the potentially dangerous labs, and just made a straight beeline through the central hallway. Vell still caught glimpses of curious onlookers out of the corner of his eye, including the familiar faces of Freddy, Goldie, and Wataru.

As the undead amalgam of slime and organs raced by, followed closely thereafter by Vell, the three students stopped to share a confused look.

“What the hell was that?’

Wataru bent down and scooped up a handful of ectoplasmic slime left by Jimbo’s passing.

“I think that was about five years worth of potential academic research,” Wataru said. “I’d better get started.”

Freddy and Goldie looked to each other and shrugged.

Meanwhile, Slippery Jimbo bolted out of the door, and Samson dove around a corner just a moment too late to intercept him. He shouted a curse and then kept up the chase as Slippery Jimbo changed directions once again, and dashed towards a new lab.

“Oh, no no no,” Vell said. “You do not want to go there, Jimbo!”

Hearing that only made Jimbo want to go there even more, and he redoubled his speed as he headed towards the Rune Labs.

“Shit,” Vell said. “Samson, keep your eyes low and watch the corners.”

Vell lowered his head, and his pace, slightly. Samson entered first, curious as to what Vell was trying to warn him about.

“There some kind of experiment going on in here? Something dangerous?”

“It’s not about what’s in here, it’s about who’s in here,” Vell said, as he cautiously rounded another corner.

“Why, what’s-”

Samson rounded another hallway corner, looked up, and immediately regretted every choice he’d ever made. He dropped to his knees and covered his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, completely unbidden. Vell realized what was happening and snatched him to drag him back around the corner before he got too much exposure.

“Samson! You still with me?”

It took a moment for the younger looper to regain his bearings, but he did. Samson nodded, and took deep breaths.

“How does she- how does she do that with just her eyes, man?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Vell said. “Deep breaths, think about something relaxing, maybe go get a drink of water. I got this from here.”

Samson wandered off to go reset his brain. Vell pressed his shoulder to the corner, held his breath, and counted to sixty. That was about the maximum duration of Professor Nguyen’s infamous stare.

When Vell finally rounded the corner, he saw the aged Professor leaning on her cane, glaring at a borderline catatonic Slippery Jimbo. She turned a cutting glare towards Vell, though mercifully spared him the full power of her reproachful gaze, so he did not end up paralyzed like Jimbo had been. He had opened the door into her office, much to her chagrin, earning a scolding stare that could level buildings.

“I should have assumed you were involved in this,” Professor Nguyen said. The scolding scowl on her face was even deeper than normal. Time had added a few extra wrinkles to Nugyen’s face, but that only enhanced the horrors of her infamous glare.

“Long story, tell you some other time,” Vell said. He grabbed Slippery Jimbo by the slimy hand and started pulling him away. “I’ll get him out of your hair, and you’ll never see him again. Promise.”

She nodded approvingly and turned back to her desk. Vell stole a glance at the multicolored elephant sitting on her desk, then kept his promise and dragged a still-stunned Slippery Jimbo out of the building and to the beach. He sat the con-man down in the sand and then summoned another rune from his phone. It was a similar barrier rune, but this one, when activated, formed a large dome rather than a wall. He put the bubble around Jimbo and himself, and waited.

“Huh, hm, sorry, ma’am, I never- what?”

Jimbo looked around, saw Vell, and tried to bolt, then hit the wall. Vell sighed, sat in the sand, and waited for Jimbo to realize he had nowhere to run. He slammed a slimy shoulder into the dome a few times, but eventually realized it was futile.

“Well, I suppose you have me at your mercy, then,” Jimbo said. “Before you do anything hasty, I must inform you, the story you’ve been told is-”

“Jim. I know what you did. I know for sure. So don’t try to fast talk me, don’t try to lie to me, don’t try to manipulate me.”

“I am not manipulating you, you are being manipulated by-”

Vell summoned the scythe, held it up for a moment, and then planted the handle in the sand so firmly it could stand on its own.

“We have until the end of the day,” Vell said. “Unless you want to turn into a ghost, wight, whatever, then there’s some paperwork to file.”

Jimbo appraised his options once again. He opted to grab the scythe. He got as far as making a swinging motion before realizing the scythe had vanished from his hands and reappeared in Vell’s. Vell made a show of waving it dramatically before sticking it in the sand again.

“Ah. I’m in quite the pickle, then, aren’t I?”

“You could say that,” Vell said. “You want to keep bashing your head against this, or do you want to sit down and talk?”

Jimbo opted to sit. He stared at the beach in front of them for a while.

“You seem oddly...melancholy, for an agent of Death,” Jimbo noted.

“Man, Jimbo, I don’t want to do this,” Vell said. “I just owe Death a favor, and he’s not really the kind of guy to settle for IOU’s. I have to do this. I hate that I have to do this, but I have to.”

Vell sighed and rested his arms on his knees. Jimbo mimicked his posture in a purposeful attempt to endear himself to Vell.

“You know, you’re clever, I’m clever, we could figure something out.”

“We really can’t, Jim,” Vell said. “I mean, what’s with you? There’s an escape clause already, right, why not become a ghost, or something?”

“It’s an enforced contractual obligation,” Jimbo said. “If you become a ghost you have to complete some unfinished business, a wight has to complete some errand of revenge, so on and so on. I’d rather die a free man- sorry, poor choice of words. I don’t want to live an unlife bound to something.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy for commitments,” Vell grunted. Jimbo poked a finger into the sand. The coarse grains stuck to his gelatinous flesh.

“So, you know what I did, then?”

“Not in detail, but yeah,” Vell said. Kim had rehashed the list of crimes in full, to give Vell a firm reminder of why Jimbo wasn’t worth the pity.

“Then you can probably see the reason for my reluctance,” Jimbo said. “I was not- I am not a good man. Quite the opposite.”

Jimbo poked the sand again, and even more of it stuck to him.

“You’ve gone to the other side,” Jimbo said. “Do you remember anything?”

“No, nothing,” Vell said. “I don’t know if that means there’s nothing over there, or if I lost my memories of it, or something, but I don’t remember anything on the other side.”

“I see.”

Jimbo curled into a ball, and his features were almost lost in the mass of slime his body had become.

“Vell, what if there’s a bad place?” Jimbo said. “Hell, or Naraka, or Hades, or- whatever you might call it. Whatever it is, if it’s there, I- I think I’m going there.”

Vell bit his tongue. In all his self-centered moping, he’d completely forgotten that angle.

“I mean, the sheer number of people I stole from, lied to, cheated, I...Well, it wouldn’t be a very good system if I just got away with all that, would it?”

Jimbo tried to chuckle, but it was only a pathetic, nervous bubbling noise by the time it passed his slimy lips.

“Well, uh, if that’s what you’re worried about, maybe we can make you a ghost,” Vell suggested. “Your unfinished business can be making things right. Helping instead of hurting.”

“But what if I don’t? What if without the fear of Hell hanging over me, all this self-awareness just goes away?” Jimbo said. “Or even if I can keep it together? What if it’s impossible? What if people have passed away, what if I have to repay things like the time and happiness I took, not just the money? I can’t undo whatever years of stress I caused people. I don’t want to be some specter roaming the world forever, stuck on an impossible task.”

Jimbo held his hands out to the vast void in front of them.

“What if I want to be good, and the universe just doesn’t care?”

Vell kept his mouth shut about it, but he believed Jimbo had a point. There was no objective metric to quantify how much good or harm a person had done. Any attempt to “right a wrong” was an imprecise effort at best, and especially so when spread across such a long career of larceny. The fact that Jimbo even thought of it in that way showed surprisingly clarity.

Vell’s thoughts stopped in their tracks, and turned another direction. His forehead started to wrinkle.

“You know what, Jimbo? I think you’re going to be okay. Because I really believe you want to be better.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t believe you’re the final arbiter of these sorts of things.”

“I know, that’s the thing. I’m just me, I’m just a guy, but I believe in you,” Vell said. He waved a hand towards the open ocean, and the sky above. “Do you really think whatever Gods or Spirits or whatever the hell is out there designing afterlives can’t be more forgiving than some random dude on a beach?”

Jimbo looked at the same sky, and the same ocean. He was quiet.

“I think if whoever’s up there judging people can’t see that you deserve a second chance, they have no right to judge you anyway,” Vell said. He planted his fists in the sand. “And I’ll stand by that.”

Vell stood up and grabbed the scythe. Jimbo flinched, on instinct, and then froze as Vell turned the scythe towards the magic walls of the dome. The blade sliced right through the barrier and dissipated the spell completely. Jimbo was no longer trapped. He stayed sitting in place anyway, as Vell planted the scythe in the sand and held out a hand towards Jim.

“You’re worried the universe doesn’t care, well, I think it does,” Vell said. “Because I’m part of the universe, and I care.”

Jimbo took Vell’s hand, and stood up, shedding sand as he did so. The scythe stayed firmly planted in the ground between them.

“You can go, if you want to,” Vell said. He briefly glanced at the scythe. “Or you can, well, go. It’s up to you.”

Jimbo looked at the beach, then back at the campus, towards the cloning labs. It all seemed very far away now, and getting further every second. Jimbo shrugged gelatinous shoulders.

“Well, if I wasted an impassioned speech like that, I’d definitely deserve hell,” Jimbo said. “Thank you, Vell Harlan. I’ve made a lot of people believe my lies. I think you might be the first person to actually believe in me.”

“I’m, uh, a little too trusting,” Vell said with a shrug.

“You certainly are,” Jimbo said. “That’s why it was so easy for me to steal your wallet.”

“What?” Vell snapped, before looking down at his pockets. “Come on, I-”

Vell froze. His wallet was still in his pocket. He looked back up, and saw two empty footprints where Jimbo had been standing, and a small, slimy smear on the blade of the scythe. He grabbed the scythe and looked at that small slick spot. It evaporated almost instantly.

“Huh. See you on the other side, Jimbo.”

Vell planted the scythe in the ground once again and returned to his sitting position.

“Job’s done,” Vell said, to no one in particular. “Come get your scythe.”

A pair of skeletal feet appeared in the same footprints Jimbo had recently vacated, trailing a black robe behind them.

Unorthodox, but effective, Death said. I imagine you hear that frequently.

“You have no idea,” Vell sighed. “So, what was all this for?”

For the purpose of collecting a lost soul.

“Oh, don’t give me that,” Vell said. “You’re Death, the omega, the end of all things, whatever. All this Grim Reaper and scythe stuff is just a visual abstraction for the benefit of mortals. You could’ve collected that guy’s soul without even thinking about it. You wanted to make me do it, I want to know why.”

Death turned the visual abstractions that were his eyes towards Vell Harlan.

I can see why Quenay chose you, Death said. You are remarkably canny.

“I’ve spent enough time around cosmic entities to know they’re always up to something,” Vell said. “So what’s up? Or are you just going to poof away all enigmatic-like?”

No, I believe you have earned the rare privilege of candor, Vell Harlan, Death said. Yes, this was an act for your benefit. I am aware of the game you are involved in, and sought to render what assistance I can provide, within the confines of my station.

“How was this supposed to help?”

Perspective, Death said, his already resounding voice practically rippling the ocean as he spoke that one word. Quenay bids you understand life. And to do that, one must understand Death.

The blue pinpricks of Death’s eyes turned away from Vell, towards the ocean.

For you, Death has only ever been an interruption, he continued. Your resurrection by Quenay, your strange apocalypses here on The Island, all merely a transition from one act of life to the next. You must understand Death as it is for all things.

Death grabbed his scythe and hefted it over his shoulder, offering Vell one final glance in parting.

The End.