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The Day Death Missed the Bus

By Antony Davies

____________________

This morning, Duane should be about to die. He isn't going to. But he should do. The bus he usually catches to work is full, going at around forty miles per hour.  It isn't going to stop for him.  But, indignant, he steps out to flag it down. The bus, full of commuters, brakes and begins to skid.  Duane begins to dive out of the way. The bus's back end swerves out.

Duane and the bus collide.  

 
He shoots through the air and lands in a skip of bricks and dusty plaster. An hour later, Duane arrives at the Thompson Printing Works in a taxi, crusted with dust, but otherwise unharmed.  One dressing down later and Duane is in his little room, operating his machine: the industrial shredder. Since the introduction of the Data Protection Act, every last unwanted document and piece of imperfect work has to be thoroughly destroyed. This gives Duane a job. An important job, they told him. A very important job.

At morning break, Duane is sitting on the loo. As he reads the sports pages of the Sun, he hears someone in the next cubicle. 

 
"Duane?" comes the voice.

"Hello?" says Duane.

"You are Duane, aren't you?"

 
"Yes."

 
"The one who got hit by the bus?"

 
"That's right."

"Thank God I've found you. I need to buy you a coffee."

"Oh," says Duane. "Okay."

When Duane has thoroughly washed his hands and dried them properly he waits for the other cubicle to open. A seven-foot tall man walks out. He is dressed all in a black robe, with a hood that conceals his face, and he carries a stick taller than him. 

 
"Hello," says the hooded man. He extends a pasty, pale hand. "Pleased to meet you. I am Death."

Duane looks at the hand and smiles. He reaches out and shakes it. "This way to the canteen." And Duane holds the toilet door open.

 
Death mumbles something to himself and shuffles through the door. 

 
In the canteen nobody looks at Death. Nobody looks at Duane either, but this is not unusual. Death likes his coffee-perhaps predictably-black. With two sugars. Duane likes cream in his. No sugar. He is sweet enough.

Death huddles over his coffee and draws Duane closer. "It's like this, Duane. I have a problem. You should be dead."

 
"Oh," says Duane.

"I mean really dead. Totally snuffed out. Crushed, bleeding all over the road."

Duane nods thoughtfully. "I thought something was up."

 
"I missed you. I'm sorry."

 
"Oh that's okay. I don't mind. Can I ask how come?"

"Oh, celestial plane stuff. I don't want to bore you."

"Thanks. So what can I do for you?"

"I need you to jump into that industrial shredder of yours."

Duane sits upright. "Why? Why do I have to do that?"

 
"Well, and again I won't bore you with the details, but when things like this happen, my powers get kind off messed up. I can't kill anyone else until you're dead."

"But I can't jump into the shredder. There are health and safety rules and everything."

 
"Duane, if I can't kill anyone, the world will get so populated it will simply choke itself to... well, not death, obviously. But something bad. Worse than death probably."

"And me jumping into the shredder will help the world?"

 
"Yes."

"Couldn't I take a pill or something?"

"Not really no."

"Why?"

"A couple of reasons. The main one being that your body has to be totally and utterly destroyed. Can't have a home for your soul, you see. I mean you could jump into a vat of acid if you prefer but the shredder is much more convenient and—trust me here—a lot less painful."

"But my friends... my family. I got married."

"I know you did, Duane, and I'm sorry."

 
"To my girlfriend. She married me."

 
"I know. Look. You'd really be helping me out here.  Please.  Just jump into that shredder and make sure it's on full."

Duane thinks about this a moment. "How do I know you're really Death?"

Death chuckles. "I get that a lot. Watch this." Death produces a pack of cards seemingly from thin air. He shuffles them professionally and fans them, asks Duane to pick one. Duane does so. Without looking at it, Death takes it from him, holding it flat in the air. Finally, Death says, "Eight of clubs."

Duane whistles. "Impressive. Well, you're certainly magical I'll give you that."

Death jiggles his hand again and the cards disappear. "Thank you."

 
"But it doesn't mean I can throw myself into the shredder."

Death lifts his coffee with his pasty white hand and it is engulfed by his hood. When he sets it down again, the cup is empty. "Okay. I really don't like doing this, Duane, but you give me no choice."  Death snaps his fingers. "Right," he says. "Now we're both invisible."

Duane stands up, goes over to a woman he likes, and waves his hand in front of Brenda's face. She sups her tea and keeps her eyes on the Trisha show in the corner. "Wow," says Duane.  

"This way," says Death, and leads Duane to a group of cackling middle aged women. "You recognize these ladies?"

"Yes," says Duane. "They're my friends. Donna and Wendy and Jane."  

"Your friends?" Death sits beside them and whispers something in Donna's ear. Duane takes a seat also, watching them intently. They do not react to his presence.  

Donna says, "Did you see Duane this morning?"

 
"Oh," says Wendy, "wasn't he a state. The poor lamb."

"Poor lamb my aunt Freddy's tits. You know what he says? Says he got hit by a bus!"

"I know," says Jane, "but bless him he can't help it. He just lies all the time. That imaginary wife of his! Imagine! A simpleton like Duane. Married!"

"Yeah," says Donna, "that's even less likely than him surviving being hit by a bus!"

 
The clique erupts in a shower of cackling coughs and splutters, heads shaking and hands reaching for another cig. 

Duane looks at Death. "This can't be real," he says.  

"It is real," says Death.

 
"But I invited them to my wedding. They just couldn't find the church."

"They think you're a liar, Duane. They think you're a simpleton. Your friends think you are a simpleton."

"I'm not a simpleton. I got a GCSE."

"In...?"

"Home economics. But some people failed that. It wasn't easy."

Death takes a deep sigh. "Okay, let me try this..."

They leave Duane's cackling friends and enter the manager's office. Mr. Rimpole is eating a bacon roll, ketchup splashing on the desk. Death glides over and whispers in his ear. Mr Rimpole gets up and walks out of the office.

"We have a few minutes," says Death. He produces a video cassette and begins fiddling with the VCR. "Damn things."  

"Here," says Duane, "allow me." And Duane presses a few buttons, takes the video cassette from Death and places it in the slot. "That should do it."

"Thank you," says Death. "Never could get the hang of those machines."

The picture flickers to life. It shows Duane's wife. She is dancing to music at their council flat. There is money all around her and she is kicking notes up in the air. She's wearing a new dress. She's had her hair done.

"She looks happy," says Duane.

Death clouts Duane round the back of the head. "Of course she's happy; you're dead. This is a 'what if...' video. This is her a year after you died. Your insurance money, plus she got to sue the bus people.  Remember I said there were two reasons you needed to do this for me? If you jump in the shredder, it'll look like an accident. She'll get your insurance and she'll get to sue this place. She'll be rich. Happy." Death put his arm around Duane. "But you have to die in that shredder of yours."

Duane wants to be brave. Needs to be brave. "Okay," he says, "I'll do it."

And so Duane goes to his little room with his loud machine. He turns it on full, the setting for really big piles of paper. He places the ladders at the side and climbs. Stands over the gaping mouth of the shredder, the blades spinning, some this way, some that way. All of them ready to devour whatever lands upon them. He looks down at the floor where Death is standing. Death waves his hands, hurrying him up. A clatter overhead startles Duane. A sparrow has somehow gotten inside and is trying to escape through the small window up high. It does not understand glass, has no idea why it cannot fly into the sky. Duane looks at Death. Death is turning his head side to side, appears to be looking around the small room.  

 
"Death?" says Duane. "Are you alright there?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Just get on with it. Go on, jump."

Duane edges close, can feel the wind from the sinning metal, the vibrations through his feet. One last glance at Death. But he isn't there.  

In his place is a young girl. She frowns. "You're not going to jump in there are you?"

"I have to," says Duane. "Death told me to."

"And if Death told you to jump of a bridge, would you?"

Duane's toes poke over the edge. "Probably."  

"Of course you would.  Well how do you know it was Death?"

 
"He showed me a trick."

"The card trick?"

"Yes, and other things."

"What other things?"

"He made me invisible so I could listen to people saying bad things about me. He showed me a video of my wife dancing around and happy ‘cos I'm dead. And I should be dead. A bus hit me."

 
The little girl starts to climb the ladder. "Maybe, you big silly, it was all a joke."

"How...?"

 
"Well, people round here will do anything for a bit of cash. This guy could've slipped your friends a fifty each and told them he was just playing a trick on you."

"But the video..."

She was next to him now, feet dangling over the edge, right above the teeth. "Computer generated. Easily done nowadays. A child could do it. But let's be honest, Duane. You don't actually have a wife, do you?"

Duane looked away from her. "Are you saying it wasn't Death?"

"I can't say for sure. Might be. But there are demons who are always pretending to be each other. It's like a bet the afterlife people have. No one impersonates Death, though. If they tried, well, Death would be one unhappy bunny."

"So it was Death?"

"I don't really know. What I do know is that you jumping in this shredder isn't something Death would suggest. I don't think so anyway. If you were supposed to die when the bus hit you, you would have. That's what I think."

"He did a card trick..."

"And drank black coffee, right?"

"Right."

"He holds the card over the coffee and reads the reflection. It's the first trick you learn when you do die. Fun."  

Duane leaned over a little further. "But the insurance money. My wife can sue..."

"You don't have a wife, Duane. Remember? You made her up when Big Betty was coming on to you. And besides, look." The little girl points in the corner near where the sparrow battles with the pane of glass. A CCTV camera. "They'll know you jumped."

Duane closes his eyes and backs away. He sits down hard on the hood of the
shredder. He tries hard not to cry, but it's no use.  

"Look," says the little girl. "You go get cleaned up, and I'll keep watch here."

"Thank you." And Duane climbs down the ladder and leaves the room.  

The little girl swings her legs, giggling as the breeze from the steel blades tickles her legs. The sparrow, giving up on the window, spirals slowly downward. The little girl holds up one finger, smiling sweetly. The sparrow chirps a couple of times and perches on the little girl's finger. And then it drops into the shredder, stone dead, even before it touches metal.  

____________________ 

Antony Davies says: “I am twenty-nine, currently working in England, although with a little luck and a lot of squeezing of my latent genius, I hope one day to be a citizen of the World, writing wherever the wind blows me (leaning boldly toward the best snowboarding peaks and picturesque skydiving centres).  Currently my favourite country is New Zealand, but I have yet to visit South Africa, Thailand or the States.  Failing this I will be happy to hammer out a living selling quirky novels to people who don't know any better.”