Jury Duty

For Alma

Jury Duty

            A clear sky did little to rival the glimmer that shown in Serenity’s blue eyes. She smiled, further solidifying the feeling in Trevor’s gut that he knew he was making the right choice.

     “Where are we going?” she asked.

     Trevor put his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around, facing her towards the crosswalk leading to the park.

     “I’ll tell you when we get across and away from the traffic.”

     They waited for the sign on the opposite side of the street to change, and with each second they waited, Trevor’s stomach tightened.

     He wrapped his arms around Serenity’s waist and squeezed her tight, feeling her warm hands rub at his arms. His heart was racing; for a split moment he worried that maybe she could feel the pulse from his heart on her back. The sign changed and he forgot about his nerves.

     A cool breeze swept down through the branches overhead, ruffling Serenity’s hair and rushing down Trevor’s back. Gooseflesh prickled out over his skin as they walked across the road. As they neared the edge of the street, the October air settled just enough for him to hear the roar of an engine that made no indications of slowing down.

     Trevor looked to his right at the oncoming car, and back ahead to Serenity. He placed his hand into her shoulder, the last time he’d touch her, and pushed hard. Her head snapped back from the whiplash of his push and she fell down onto the sidewalk. She rolled over onto her back, looking at him with an uncomfortable mixture of surprise and disgust. His heart hurt, seeing that expression drawn on her face, but then his vision flipped as the car plowed into him, sending his body spinning into the air.

     Everything he saw was a blur of colors; blues mixed with browns and grays. For an instant he saw Serenity on the sidewalk, screaming. He couldn’t hear her; the screeching brakes from the car that struck him had muted all other noises.

     After what felt like an eternity in the air, Trevor landed face first in a ditch with a solid thump. He was thankful that he didn’t feel any pain. All he felt was the engagement ring box in his coat pocket digging into his stomach. He wanted to roll over on to his back to rid the feeling, but he found he had difficulty moving. Trevor took in a deep breath, musky from being faced into the grass, and he sighed, ready to push himself over. He never did though. He didn’t notice how he had stopped breathing.

     “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Trevor heard an unknown voice say.

     “Trevor, Trevor open your eyes, oh my God.” He heard Serenity say.

     He wanted to laugh and say that he was going to be all right. The words were on the tip of his tongue. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t speak them though.

     The sounds faded out. Serenity’s voice ebbed away. He felt cold.

***

     “Woop woop! Hey wake up! Heeeey, a fellow American! I think, or you might be British, or some such. Possibly even South African, but they’re technically British, yeah?”

     The grass that Trevor had been face first in a few moments ago had been replaced with a bright orange shag rug. The orange furls curled into his nose, making him recoil from the carpet.

     “Ah, what the hell?” Trevor said as he pushed himself up from the ground.

     Standing in front of him was an older man. He had short gray hair, bright blue eyes, and wrinkles covering his face. He had a toothy smile stretching from ear to ear.

     “You lucky dog, you! American?” the old man said, clapping his hands together.

     Trevor nodded and raised an eyebrow at the man. He looked around the room they were in; it appeared to be a small apartment bedroom. There were posters on the walls of old rock bands from the 80’s depicting band members with long flowing hair and skintight spandex. There was a desk in the corner of the room with a green lava lamp and what appeared to be leftovers of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Off to the side of the desk was a filing cabinet with a coffee maker sitting on top of it. There were two purple beanbags sitting against the other side of the room.

     “Where the fuck am I? Where’s Serenity? And who the hell are you?” Trevor managed to mumble.

     The old man clasped his hands together and smiled. He cleared his throat.

     “My name is Lance Clemens, and, well, uhh,” Lance looked off to the side of Trevor, “I’m the Grim Reaper.”

     The two men stood silent in the room for a moment.

     “Well,” Lance continued, “you’re now the Grim Reaper. I’m done. You’re number ten million!”

     “I’m still not following you,” Trevor replied, rubbing his forehead. “Where the fuck am I, where is Serenity? Is she okay?”

     “Oh yeah, she’s okay,” Lance said. “She’d be the one in here if it weren’t for you. You both would’ve been hit, and whooooo,” Lance made a twirling motion with his index finger, “both flying through the air like a couple of ragdolls, and you would’ve landed on top of her,” Lance punctuated by clapping his hands together. “Smack! You would’ve been all right, paralyzed from the neck down, yeah, but you would’ve been okay. Her, eeeegh.”

     Trevor fell back onto his rear, shaking the lava lamp on the desk.

     “Oh, my apologies,” Lance said in a slightly toned down voice, “I could’ve worded that differently.”

     Trevor didn’t respond. Instead he hanged his head between his knees. With one of his hands, he dug into his coat pocket, looking for the engagement ring box. He managed to relax when he felt his fingers brush against the top of the velvety box.

     Lance walked to the meatloaf dish sitting on the desk. “You want the rest of this?” He said to Trevor.

     Trevor waved his hand.

     “Well, it’s gonna take some time explaining you the job, so, howabout some coffee, yeah?”

     Trevor nodded.

     “Good,” Lance said. He shuffled over to the coffee maker and hit a button on the lid. Trevor noticed how Lance didn’t have to fill it with coffee grounds or even water for that matter.

     Instantly the room smelt of coffee, already sweet and with a hint of spice.

“Heaven’s tools, really interesting. What do you smell? I’ve always been particular for hazelnut.”

     “I, I smell pumpkin spice,” Trevor said. He looked up at the coffee maker and saw that it was dripping a light brown liquid.

     “The gal before me,” Lance said, “she liked pumpkin spice too. You young folk prefer that I guess,” Lance said as he grabbed one of the purple beanbags, throwing it next to Trevor. Lance sat down onto it, sighing.

     “Alrighty, let me start by saying, you’re lucky you’re not burning up in hell right now.”

     Trevor jerked his head back. “What, I’m not THAT bad of a person.”

     “Yeah, but you didn’t believe in God did ya?”

     Trevor shrugged.

     “That’s what I thought. But, like you said, you weren’t that bad of a person. You just didn’t believe in the big man upstairs and that’s a bit of a no-no. Enough to keep you from seeing Peter, the man at the gates, ya know.”

     “Holy shit, that stuff is all real?” Trevor asked.

     Lance laughed, “Of course it’s real you dummy. Anyways, you were on the fence, go to hell, or go to heaven. Well, you were already slated for hell, but you shoving Serenity, that helped a bit. I was on the fence, just like you too, and the gal before me. People like us get chosen to be the Grim Reaper for a bit. Think of it like jury duty. Ten million souls, that’s how many we have to take before we get to go upstairs with the big man, that’s where the real party is at.”

     “Ten million souls,” Trevor echoed.

     “Eh, sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t take that long. Sixty-ish days or so. You’ll be spending a lot of your time in Africa.”

     Trevor looked at Lance in disgust.

     “Ahhh, bad joke, bad joke,” Lance said, raising his palms to Trevor. “Geez, you young ones really don’t like my jokes. The girl before me didn’t like that one either when I asked her if that was where I’d be spending most of my time, and she had already taken her ten millionth. Me!”

     The coffee maker made a fizzing noise.

     “Aha, done.” Lance said. He stood up, opened one of the drawers of the filing cabinet and pulled out two mugs. A Spider-Man mug and a plain off-white mug. “I get the Spider-Man mug,” Lance said as he sat it down and began to pour his coffee.

     Trevor saw how the light brown liquid that was originally in the pot turned into a more darker black. He could smell the hazelnut. When Lance switched mugs, Trevor saw that the liquid turned back to the light brown color that he had originally seen in the pot. Now he smelt pumpkin spice.

     “Here,” Lance said as he handed Trevor the mug. It was warm to the touch, but not too hot.

     “That’s amazing,” Trevor said after taking a sip.

     “Yeah, heaven’s got a lot of other neat little gadgets too. We’re lucky we get the coffee maker down here,” Lance said, bringing his mug up to his nose and taking a big whiff.

     “Gotta say, I’m ready to be done of this job.”

     Trevor looked down into his mug, thinking of Serenity.

     “You’re gonna have to put that on hold for a bit,” Lance said. “You’ll see her again, she’s a good person. Quite the artist.”

     Trevor sighed.

     Lance took a long drink from his mug. “Well, I’m going to head out. Oh, before I go, here.”

     Trevor looked back up to the old man and saw that he was holding a large scythe.

     “What? Where’d you get that? And do I actually have to use that?”

     Lance laughed, “Pffft, no! It’s more of a symbol than anything else.” He tapped the wooden end onto the ground and door appeared on the wall. “There, that’s my door into heaven. I walk through that, and I should be partying with the big man, for you, it’ll take you to your first soul. You don’t have to do much of anything. Just be there, and try to calm them down. Some people take their death pretty good, others, not so much. Another door will appear, and you just tell them to walk through it. They’ll find themselves partying with me momentarily.”

     “And the folks who don’t get to go to heaven?” Trevor asked.

     “Don’t worry about them, they don’t get the luxury of meeting a Grim Reaper. They get the express trip down,” Lance said with a smile. “You got it? Ten million.”

     Trevor nodded.

     Lance handed Trevor the scythe. “If you want, just drop it,” Lance said. Trevor immediately did so. The scythe vanished before it hit the ground.

“You’ll be alright, I’ll be sure to see you again,” Lance said as he opened the door. Trevor could hear laughter and chatter. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” Lance said as he stepped through, closing the door behind him.

     Immediately the room began to shift. The orange rug disappeared and was replaced by hardwood floors. The desk with the lava lamp shuddered and popped. The lava lamp vanished, now replaced by an old lamp that Trevor had when he was a child. The coffee maker and filing cabinet stayed, but the posters on the walls exploded into bursts of confetti. Replacing them were paintings that Serenity had given Trevor over the years that they had spent together.

     He stepped close to one of them, a self-portrait of her, and whispered, “oh my God.”

***

    

Upon stepping through the door, Trevor ironically found himself in the deserts of Africa.

“You’re an asshole, Lance.” Trevor said to himself. He shielded his eyes against the harsh rays of light, looking for whomever it was he came for. The jacket he had been wearing before stepping through the door was gone. He wondered if it was back in the apartment room.

“Hi,” a child’s voice said.

     Trevor looked down to his right and saw a very young boy standing, smiling up at Trevor.

     “Hi there,” Trevor said.

     “Who are you, mister?”

     Trevor took note of how the words he was hearing from the boy weren’t matching up with the movements his mouth was making. He also knew the boy’s name for some reason.

     “My name is Trevor, and you are Behbolo, right?”

     “Yes,” the boy responded.

     Trevor sighed and looked further to the right. Lying on the ground was a very frail looking boy, much skinnier and smaller than Behbolo. With newfound instincts, Trevor understood that the boy lying on the ground was Behbolo’s body.

     Behbolo saw that Trevor was looking over his shoulder. He tried to turn and look but Trevor knelt by the young boy and grabbed him in a firm embrace.

     “You don’t want to look that way,” Trevor said.

     “Mister,” Behbolo whispered.

     Trevor let go of the child and backed away. Behbolo looked at Trevor with large eyes that were way too mature for a child his age.

     “I’m not hurting anymore. Did you give me medicine?”

     Trevor shook his head.

     Behbolo turned around towards his body. Trevor didn’t stop him this time.

     The child turned back to Trevor, now with a look of realization.

     “I get to be with my brothers now?”

     Trevor nodded.

     “And my mother, she’s there too?”

     He nodded again.    

     “I want to go then, I miss them.”

     “They miss you too.”

     Trevor turned and saw that there was a door standing on it’s own in the sand. He walked to it, Behbolo close behind.

     Trevor grabbed a hold of the knob and twisted, pulling the door open. Immediately he heard chatter interspersed with laughter.     

     “Right this way Behbolo, your family is waiting for you.” Trevor didn’t dare look into the doorway; somewhere in his mind a voice whispered that he wasn’t ready for it.

     Behbolo’s eyes were wide with happiness as he took several cautious steps towards the door. A woman’s voice called out for the child, causing a smile to spring forth from Behbolo’s lips.

     “I’m coming!” he said as he ran towards the door. It immediately slammed behind him. The door shook in its frame. Trevor took a few steps away from the door, worried that it was going to explode like the old posters did in the apartment room. Instead, the door crumbled into rocks.

     Trevor shrugged. He closed his eyes, reopened them, and found himself back in the apartment. Sitting on the desk next to his old lamp, was a plate of spaghetti. His favorite.

***

     After eating the spaghetti, Trevor noticed there was a booklet on the desk. He opened it, noting how vibrantly white the pages where. On the very first page was a large number “1” written on it. Trevor rubbed his finger along the ink.

     “Well,” he said, “better get going with this.”

     He walked towards the door, turning back to look at the portrait of Serenity. “You’re doing alright,” he said to her, “I wonder who all showed up to the funeral.” He sighed then turned to walk through the door to his next soul.

     Immediately he was hit in the face with a gust of wind coupled with raindrops. He cleared the water from his face using the sleeve of his jacket. “Oh, there it is,” he said, looking down at himself. “Thought I lost my jacket there for a bit.”

     “Who are you talking to?”

     Trevor looked to his left. There was an older man standing there, he too also wearing a jacket. Trevor looked around.

     The two men were standing on a bridge in what Trevor’s instincts said was London.

     “Charles, right?” Trevor asked, pulling his hood up. It was brutally cold. The falling rain didn’t help a bit.

     “Yep,” Charles said, leaning against the railing of the bridge, looking down to the road.

     Trevor imitated Charles, looking down and seeing a body lying in the middle of the street. He raised his eyebrows and looked back to Charles, who was still looking down, rubbing his chin.

     Charles shifted his glance over to Trevor, “I couldn’t handle it anymore, y’know? The chemo, it wasn’t living anymore. It was just being taken in pieces.”

     “You would’ve died on your own in a few weeks,” Trevor responded. It was strange how he knew so much about a man he just met. It must’ve come with the territory.

     “I couldn’t wait anymore,” Charles said. “It was too painful.”

     “At least you didn’t leave anybody behind,” Trevor said, wincing at how the words sounded. Charles only nodded.

     “So, mom was right, there is an afterlife,” Charles whispered, oddly calm.

     “Yeah.”

     “You’re going to take me to hell?”

     “No,” Trevor said, “I don’t have to deal with people destined for hell. I only help those who are already slated for heaven.”

     “Huh,” Charles said, “they always told me people who kill themselves go to hell.”

     Trevor turned around, putting his back against the railing of the bridge. “I guess you’re a special case,” he said. “I was told the same, about suicide and religion. But I don’t know much of that. I only got this job a couple of hours ago.”

     “Oh yeah?” Charles said, now turned around too.

     “Yeah,” Trevor said, eyeing the door that had appeared on the bridge.

     “I thought the grim reaper was, like, an eternal thing or something, y’know?”

     “I thought so too,” Trevor said as he opened the door. Charles eyes went wide once he saw through it. “Think of it like jury duty.”

     “Jury duty, huh,” Charles said as he took delicate steps towards the door. “I hope there’s no jury duty in there,” he stuttered.

     “Oh,” Trevor said, “there’s not.”

     Charles stepped through, the door slammed, Trevor blinked, and he found himself back in the apartment. The number in the booklet had changed to a 2.

***

     Time went by quickly, as did the souls. A few days had passed, but it only felt as if a few hours had gone by. Trevor had visited a notch above two million souls. Surprisingly, a good handful of them had been people dying from old age or illness, and another handful had been infants.

     On his first occasion with an infant soul, Trevor had stepped through the door, arriving in a hospital. He was standing in front of the newborn nursery, seeing cradles filling the room beyond a window.

     He put his hand against the window and found that it went right through it. He stepped through the wall, feeling something in his stomach churn, possibly the spaghetti. Inside the nursery, Trevor expected all of the babies to be making noises, but instead he could only hear noises coming from one of them, a baby named Thomas. He looked into the cradle holding Thomas, and Thomas looked back up at Trevor with large innocent eyes.

     “Well, uhh,” Trevor whispered to himself, “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get you through that door.”

     Thomas responded by cooing at him.

     “I guess I can try to take you myself,” he said as he bent down, picking up Thomas from the cradle. With the small baby in his arms, Trevor stepped back through the wall towards the door leading to heaven. Carefully cradling Thomas into the crook of one of his arms, Trevor attempted to open the door with his free hand. It wouldn’t budge.

     “It’s a shame that some don’t make it,” a woman’s voice said behind Trevor.

     He screamed in fright, turning against the door.

     Before him was a woman with short brunette hair, dressed in what appeared to be hospital scrubs.

     “Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. This is your first young one then?” She said, nodding towards Thomas.

     “Uh, yeah,” Trevor said.

     “Well then,” the nurse said as she stepped towards Trevor, arms extended, beckoning for the baby. “I’m here to take this little soul through the door, since you can’t yourself.”

     Trevor looked down to Thomas, seeing that the baby was looking towards the nurse. Thomas didn’t seem to be frightened by the new woman. Trevor carefully handed the baby over to the nurse. She smiled at him in her arms, rocking him back and forth with what Trevor saw was years of practice.     

“Stillborn?” Trevor asked.

     “Afraid so, you’ll see more of them on your little gathering, along with abortions and miscarriages.”

     “What will happen to him?”

     “Same that will happen to the other baby souls. We’ll send him back down to Earth, born again, hopefully making it into this world.”

     “Like, um, reincarnation?”

     “Sort of,” the nurse said, gently rocking Thomas in her arms. “His little soul hasn’t had the chance to grow at all. That’s no fair to him, is it? He’ll get another shot at growing, experiencing life, hopefully leaving a positive impact on the people around him.”

     “Amazing,” Trevor whispered.

     “It is, isn’t it?” the nurse said as she opened the door and walked through.

     Trevor met thousands of nurses through similar circumstances. All of them smiling and cheerful as they carried infants from the world back through the door.

     He often saw the same nurses again, even seeing the same brunette nurse multiple times. She always asked him what number he was on.

***

Two million, seven hundred eighty-six thousand, two hundred forty-four. That soul made things a bit more difficult.

     Upon stepping through the door, Trevor found himself in what appeared to be a run down house. There was a girl with brunette hair cowering in the corner of the room. Her breath came in quick rasps.

     Without hesitation, Trevor walked over and knelt by her.

     “Hey,” he spoke softly, “it’s ok, it’s ok.”

     She looked up at him with watery eyes, taking him aback with how young she was. She was probably still in middle school.

     “Can you take me back to my parents?” She whispered.

     “I’m sorry, I can’t-

     “Shhhh,” she pressed her index against his lips. He jerked back, wondering what she was doing. “He can hear us.”

     Trevor looked around the room, spotting the open door that appeared to lead to a hallway. He stood up, wooden floor creaking with each step he took towards the doorway. Past the doorway was another room where a man was sitting, watching television. He had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His dark black hair was slicked back. He tilted his head back, letting loose a blood freezing cackle.

     In the corner of the room, Trevor spotted a transparent plastic bag. The insides were covered in blood.

     “Jesus,” Trevor said. He covered his mouth, hiding back against the doorway, afraid that the man would hear him. He then realized it was impossible.

     “Can you call my parents?” The girl whispered. “Can you get me out of here?”

     Trevor looked back at her round brown eyes. She reminded him so much of Serenity. He had dealt with dying infants, children, teenagers and adults, but it had all been from accidents or diseases. This time, this time, another human being had taken another’s life. Feeling rage fill his stomach and stiffen his spine, he stormed out of the room towards the murderer sitting in the chair.

     “You son of a bitch!” Trevor said while swinging a clenched right fist. It collided solidly into the side of the murderer’s face. He fell out of the chair, spilling his beer and dropping the cigarette.

     Trevor straddled the murderer, anger blinding him. He swung down hard again with a now bruised right fist. It connected with the murderer’s nose, caving it in. Blood seeped out of what was left of the murderer’s nasal cavity and Trevor swung again.

     This time, his fist connected with the wooden floor, breaking the middle and ring finger knuckles.

     Trevor gasped, feeling pain for the first time since he had died. He grasped his hand, cradling it close to his chest. He turned to see that the murderer was still sitting in his chair, sipping on his beer. “What the fuck,” Trevor said.

     “You can’t do that,” Lance said from behind Trevor.

     “When the hell did you get here?” Trevor yelled.

     “Got dropped in the second you put hands on him,” Lance said, pointing towards the murderer with a weathered hand.

     “He deserved it,” Trevor said through gritted teeth.

     “Yeah he does,” Lance said, wiping his mouth. He sighed. “He’ll get his in time though. That’s just how things work.”

     “He’s going to kill more people! He could even kill Serenity!”

     “He could, we don’t know if he will, but you’re right.”

     Trevor was now in Lance’s face. “Why is he still alive then? Why is it allowed?”

     Lance took in a deep breath. “I don’t know, Trevor. No one but the big man knows.”

     “The big man,” Trevor said sarcastically, turning away from Lance. “The big man let that girl in the other room get hacked up.”

     “That’s the world we lived in!” Lance responded with an anger-tinged voice, “God can’t prevent all the bad from happening. How are we supposed to grow if we are handed everything? Huh? We don’t. We would become spoiled. There are evils in this world, and there will be continue to be. That’s a part of life, now stop being an idiot, this is no time for a philosophical debate! Go comfort that girl! She’s scared out of her mind, and here you come trying to be a hero.”

     Trevor’s shoulders drooped. “This isn’t right,” he said.

     “It’s the best we can do, now go stop her from crying, yeah?”

     “Okay.”

     Trevor walked back to the girl, still cowered in the corner of the other room.

     “Is he gone?” She asked with trembling lips.

     “No,” Trevor said, “but he can’t hurt you anymore.”

     “Are you going to hurt me?”

     “No, I’m here to make things better.”

     She wiped away her tears with her bare arm. “Can you take me back to my parents?”

     “I can’t, you won’t be able to see them for awhile. That man in there, he killed you.” Trevor said, the words stinging his throat. It was hard for him to swallow.

     The girl’s face, Belle’s face, curled, and she started crying again. “I can’t be dead,” she said between sobs.

     Trevor took her hand in his, and she squeezed. He winced from the broken bones in his hand, but the pain was soon gone. His bones mended themselves in a matter of minutes.

     Lanced walked over, peering into the room. “You got this?” He asked.

     Trevor nodded.

     “Ok then, I’m just gonna close this door here, if you need anything, Trevor, just call my name when you’re back in the apartment. Try not to do what you did to him again to anyone else though. You know your ticket is riding on how well you do this job, yeah?”

     Trevor nodded again. Lance shut the door, shutting out the noise coming from the murderer and the television.

     Trevor and Belle sat together in the room for several more minutes before she finally spoke again.

     “I’m going to heaven?” She said, between hiccups.

     “Of course,” Trevor responded.

     “Is Skip going to be there waiting for me?”

     “Errmm,” Trevor said, racking his mind for who or what Skip was. He finally got it, Skip was her dog. He thought about whether or not Skip was there in heaven, but couldn’t bring up an answer. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’ve never been to heaven, and I’m not sure if animals are there.”

     Belle sighed.

     “Are you ready to go?” Trevor asked.

     She nodded. A new door appeared on the wall. Trevor opened it. Belle looked in, her brown eyes glittering with the light emanating from the door. A dog barked and she smiled. She ran through.

     The door slammed shut behind her and vanished.

     “I guess that answers that,” Trevor said. He looked at the other door, where the murderer was. “I also know where you’ll be at when it’s your time.”

***

     “Lance!” Trevor yelled when he found that he was back in the apartment.

     “Yep?” Lance said from behind Trevor.

     “Why do you always appear behind me?”

     “Not sure, what’s going on?”

     Trevor took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can handle another one like that.”

     “Like what?”

     “The girl! She was fucking murdered!”

     “Eh?” Lance said as he walked over to the desk where the booklet and plate of spaghetti was sitting. “Oh, spaghetti’s your favorite, huh?” He said as he thumbed through the booklet. “Whoa, you’re in the two millions and this was the first murder you’ve come across?”

     “Yes,” Trevor said.

     “Wow, you’re a real lucky one, a murder was my, uhh, third I think? And I had at least a million or so murders before I was done.”

     “You’re kidding,” Trevor said.

     “You mean you didn’t know about how much crime and killing went on in this world?”

     “Yeah, I mean, I guess, I just never really thought about it,” Trevor responded.

     “Well, get used to it. You’re going to see all kinds of messed up things. Consider yourself lucky though, imagine if you’d have to be the one to deal with Pearl Harbor, huh?”

     “What if I don’t want to?”

     The room fell quiet. Lance walked around the room, looking at the paintings hanging on the walls. There was painting of a waterfall, a deer, a building done in bright colors, and several others. He stopped at the self-portrait of Serenity.

     “Well, I can tell you one thing,” Lance said, pointing up to the portrait, “You wouldn’t ever see her again.”

     “Would she even still love me?” Trevor asked.

     “I don’t know,” Lance answered, “is she worth finding out?”

     Trevor stood and walked out the door to collect his next soul.

***

     Several repetitive trips to third world countries left Trevor drained. It was depressing seeing how people were living while he knew Americans were complaining about the most recent blockbuster movie or what kind of smart phone they had.

     It was strange, how the children living in poverty would be excited to run through the door, while others living in better conditions would be more problematic. It was such a strange experience all together, and at times Trevor would have to ask himself if it was really all real or was he just laying in a hospital bed in a coma.

     It had to be real though; all these people were real. The different faces, their voices, their names. He was around 7 million in, and he was almost certain he could remember all of them. He chalked it up to his new Grim Reaper instincts yet again.

     He paced around the apartment between souls, often stopping to look at the portrait of Serenity hanging above the desk.

     “You’re doing alright?” He would whisper to the portrait. It would only look back, offering no reply to his questions. He grew cold.

     A game of hide and seek gone wrong placed Trevor in the garage of a small suburban family. A young boy, Albert, had decided that hiding in a small mini-fridge would be a good idea. Once inside, he wasn’t able to open the door.

     “Am I going to be in trouble?” Albert asked Trevor.

     Trevor knelt down by Albert; face blank of expression.

     “No,” he spoke softly to the child, “everybody makes mistakes.” He wiped away the tears that had begun to stream down Albert’s face. Walking towards the open door, Albert stopped and looked at Trevor.    
     “What’s it like in heaven?” He asked Trevor.

     “I don’t know.”

***

     People who had been burned alive, starved to death, beaten, killed, all of them wore down at Trevor’s resolve. The souls passed by and he continued to step through the door, hoping that eventually he’d step through and find himself away from all of it.

     “Hey,” Lance said, keeping Trevor from walking through the door into what looked like another hospital. “How are you holding up?”

Trevor sighed, “I’m not even looking at the booklet anymore, I’m just trying to get through all of this without losing my sanity.”

     Lance nodded, eyebrows raised. “I was there for a bit, then the Grim Reaper before me had to come in and give me a pep talk.”

     “Just like you’re doing now?”

     “Yeah.”

     Trevor shut the door, walked over to the small bed in the apartment and collapsed onto it, “Good, I need it.”

     Lance breathed in deeply and exhaled. He grabbed the booklet, cracked it open, and laughed. “Well, shit,” he chuckled.

     “What?” Trevor said.

     “You only have two souls left, why did I even bother showing up?”

     “You’re kidding?” Trevor said, sitting up in his bed.

     Lance tossed him the booklet. Just like he said, the number 9,999,998 was printed harshly on the page. Trevor looked up from the booklet, a smile slowly forming on his face.

     “Go get those last two dead geezers, dumb-nuts!”

     With newfound energy, Trevor jumped out of the bed and ran through the door into the hospital.

    

***

     He knew something was wrong the moment he stepped through. The hospital was eerily quiet. No nurses or doctors wondering the halls. A quick glance out the window told him it was the middle of the night; a quick thought told him it was precisely 4:06 A.M.

     Then the floor shook. Down a hallway, flames erupted from one of the many rooms lining the way. At first it seemed like a small fire, but the flames continued to grow. The walls broke away as shrapnel peeled from the tile floor, launched at high speeds towards Trevor.

     His first reaction was to turn and duck, but many brushes with seemingly dangerous situations had numbed Trevor to these sorts of reactions. He held his ground, watching as the hospital around him crumbled under what he began to deduce to be a terrorist attack.

     Imagine what’d be like to have to deal with Pearl Harbor, huh?

     The flames spreading from the explosion froze in their place, no longer whipping back and forth around him.

     “I was having such a weird dream,” said an older woman, walking out of one of the rooms that had been swarmed in flames.

     She walked towards Trevor, eyes glued to the floor. “It’s a bit hot in there, do you think you can tell the nurse to turn on the air conditioning? I know that I nagged at them to turn it off earlier, but I didn’t think they’d turn on the heater.”

     “No ma’am,” Trevor said. The energy he had from knowing he only had two souls left to take had been cut off. He had made a decision the second he realized how many deaths the explosion would cause. Behind him, the door to heaven presented itself. “You’re a bit disoriented right now, ma’am, but I need you to walk through this door here. Things will make more sense on the other side of it.”

      “Whatever you say, as long as it’s a bit cooler.”

     “It will be much better,” Trevor said, opening the door and patting the older woman on the back as she walked through.

***

     Trevor blinked and reopened his eyes only to see a teenage girl sitting on the floor of the apartment. In her arms was a teddy bear.

     She looked up to Trevor with deep blue eyes. Her lips were quivering.

     “Hey there,” he managed to finally say.

     “Where am I?” the girl asked.

     “Abigail,” Trevor gulped down sticky saliva, “you’ve died in an explosion.”

     “That doesn’t make sense,” she quickly retorted. “I was only supposed to have my appendix taken out, why would that kill me?”

     Trevor sat next to her, taking her hand in his. “Your appendix didn’t kill you, someone blew up the hospital.”

     “Why, why would someone do that?”

     She squeezed his hand.

     “Lance, I need you now,” Trevor said.

     Immediately, Lance walked through the door. He was wearing a pointed party hat and had a kazoo in his mouth. It fell from his lips the second both of his feet had entered the room. Trevor assumed Lance learned what had happened when he crossed the threshold.

     “Jesus, they’re going to be talking about that one for years. It’ll be in their textbooks,” Lance said to himself. His eyes shifted from Trevor to Abigail. “Oh no, she’s your last one?”

     Trevor nodded.

     “There’s going to be thousands just from the hospital,” Trevor said, “babies, children, adults. She’s not going to be able to handle that.”

     Abigail looked to Trevor and Lance in confusion.

     “She’s going to have to though, that’s the deal,” Lance said.

     “Not this time,” Trevor said. He put a hand under Abigail’s elbow, raising her up to her feet. “Lance, can you take her through?”

     “What do you mean? Trevor, she’s the new Grim Reaper, she’s gotta do her duty, ten million just like the rest of us,” Lance said.

     Trevor looked back around the apartment. He saw the self-portrait of Serenity on the wall, smiling back at him. “No, I’ll take her ten million.”

     “On top of the ten million you just took?”

     Trevor nodded.

     Lance sighed. “Give me a second, let me at least make sure that’s allowable.”

     Lance stepped back through the door. Abigail looked back up to Trevor, eyes watery and lips still trembling.

     “I’m really dead?”

     “Really, really dead,” Trevor answered, “It’ll be okay, you’re going to heaven.”

     “Huh,” Abigail whispered, “the date with Aaron is gonna have to wait then.”

     The door swung back open and Lance emerged. “It’s doable, but you’ll have to take her full ten million. You sure about this Trevor?”

     “There’s no question about it,” Trevor said, nudging Abigail towards Lance. “Take her, I’ll get to heaven eventually.”

    

***

     The first thousand were as horrible as he imagined. All of the hospital patients had been extremely distraught, some even forcing him to have to shove them through the door. With each soul walked though, Trevor knew for a fact that he had made the right decision in taking Abigail’s duty. The next ten million did little to wear away at his newfound resolve. So much so that Trevor forced what would’ve been his next successor through the door. “I’ll take your duty,” he had told the red haired man James who had died in a car accident. “Go on, heaven is waiting.”

Years passed by. Trevor continuously extended his time as the Grim Reaper. Each and every time Lance had barged into the apartment, telling him that he could finally turn it over. It even got to the point where Lance said that Trevor could stop whenever he wanted, that he didn’t even have to collect the full ten million.

     Ten million seemed so small to Trevor. His numbers had extended into the billions. Each soul he took etched its pattern into his memory. He remembered all of the faces, all of the names and ways they had died. None of them managed to upset him as much as his first handful of souls he had taken during his first duty.

     The murders ceased to stun him. His ability at comforting souls grew and he got to the point where he could calm down even the most upset soul with words such as “it’ll be okay,” or “your family will be fine”, that Trevor didn’t actually know were true or not. He learned patterns of comforting words to say, and eventually he himself began to wonder if it was a good thing or not that they came so easily to him.  

     “They’ve been talking about you,” Lance had told him in the apartment soon after Trevor had extended his duty yet again.

     “Who?”

     “The angels, even Peter knows about you.”

     Trevor rested his hands on the top of his head. “Is that a good thing?”

     “Well, you’re a bit of a legend. No one has taken as many souls as you. Why are you doing it?”

     Trevor reached into his coat pocket, fingertips grazing the tip of the velvet engagement ring box. His eyes wanted to wander to the portrait of Serenity, but he kept focus on Lance with calm precision that had been sculpted from millions of brushes with the distraught.

     “I’m worried heaven will be a bit disappointing as it is. How many years has it been?”

     “Sixty-seven, you’ve been noticing things changing down there?”

     “On the surface, yes. They get new phones, new televisions, new cars. But they’re all the same, really. The people, I mean. How’s Abigail?”

     “Good, her parents finally joined her, as you should know. You took them.”

     “I remember. Father was first, heart attack. Should’ve let up on the pizza.”

     “He still hasn’t. When are you going to give this up?” Lance asked.

     “Eventually.”

    

***

     It was in a nursing home that Trevor finally felt it. The new information of the new soul that always barged its way into his mind had finally caught his attention.

     He was in the lobby. There were several senior citizens sitting around in wheel chairs. Most of them had been corralled in front of a television.

     “Lance?” Trevor spoke softly.

     “Yes?” Lance answered, emerging from the entrance of the nursing home.

     “I’m going to need someone to take my place after this soul,” Trevor said, walking towards one of the many hallways lined with the elderly rolling around in wheel chairs. He felt the soul pulling at him.

     “I’ll take care of it,” Lance said, walking back through the nursing home entrance.

     Trevor passed by many rooms, his palms becoming sweaty. Finally he arrived at the right room, the nametag on the door reading “S. Coraline”.

     Stepping through, Trevor finally saw her. Serenity was standing by her bed, looking at her own body.

     “It looks like I’m sleeping,” she said.

     Trevor stood next to her, looking at her. Her face had aged and her hair had turned grey, but her blue eyes, they had remained as vibrant as ever.

     “Are you ready to go?” He asked.

     She turned to look at him, a bit spooked at his sudden appearance.

     “Ah,” she said, bringing her hands to his face. “You remind me of someone I know. I can’t put my finger on it.”

     “It happens.”  

     “I think I’m dead.

     “You’re quick to catch on,” Trevor said, “come on, time to go.” He gently grabbed her frail hand in his and led her out of the room, away from her body.

     Down the hallway was the door that would lead to heaven. Trevor gently pushed her forward ahead of him. Together they walked towards the door.

     “Where are we going?” she asked.

     Trevor put his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around, facing her towards the door. She turned back around immediately, eyes wide open.

     “Trevor?”

     He smiled, and turned her back around, gently nudging her towards the door.

     Trevor opened the door for her, chatter once again emanating from it. Light shined brightly through the doorway, blanketing Serenity in a warm glow. Her gray hair turned black and the wrinkles slowly vanished from her face. Here eyes were wide with shock as her back straightened itself. Before Trevor’s eyes, Serenity slowly reverted back to her 27-year-old self. She looked down to her hands; her frail fingers that once held paintbrushes were strengthened to how they had once been all those years ago.

     “Oh my God,” she said, looking up from her hands and back to Trevor. She turned away from the door, quickly walking to Trevor to put her arms around him. She buried her face into his chest. “Where have you been?” She mumbled.

     “Been really busy,” he said, hugging back.

     She looked up at him with her blue eyes. Tears were beginning to form in the corners of them.

     “No, none of that. Too much of that for me lately,” Trevor said, wiping the tears away with his left hand. With the same hand, he reached into his coat pocket, fingers grazing the top of the engagement ring box. “I’ve been meaning to give you something.”

     “In there,” she said, grabbing his arm and tugging him towards the open door to heaven. Together they walked through.