I was walking along the beach, just on that crappy wooden path that you know the city hasn’t spent a dime on in at least a decade and probably won’t until they’re forced to. Like when a kid goes for a tumble and accidentally scrapes their knee on it and ends up needing stitches because a huge piece of wood stabs in. I shuddered at the thought of it and tried my best to walk carefully and ignore any bumps or waves in the planks. I was bored out of my mind though and had been for a week. You see, I had been laid off from my job at the warehouse. Laid off was the nice way of putting it for the paperwork that gets filed with the Revenue Agency. The honest way to put it was that I was “fucking fired and if they never saw me again it would be too fucking soon!” I hated that manager. I thought I hated them with a fiery, burning passion and I acted like it at work. In the end, when I was told I was fired I just walked out and didn’t say a thing. I was bored.

I have walked up and down this boardwalk probably a half dozen times a day, every day since then. I knew that there was a ripple in the walk from about the fifth store to the eleventh, which made people more likely to go into them since the ripple angled away from the beach. After that though, the sand seeped through the wood planks and seemed to form some form of basic cement which kept them from rippling in the same way and instead caused the wood to do a weird bow shape with every plank, causing huge tripping hazards until about the thirtieth store. Can you even call them stores? They’re not much more than fairly deep closets packed full of trashy touristy stuff, like those ugly hats with the city name on them that no local would be caught dead with. I guess it brought money into the city though and that was enough for a place like this.

I hated this city too. I should have left, but I never could. I got bad grades in school and never thought about college or apprenticing or anything really to get out. I did what almost everyone else did and just got work at one of the warehouses and accepted my lot in life was to be a small-town warehouse worker until the day I died. Guess I was off about that part though. The breeze was nice today and the sun was partially obscured by some light clouds above, marking probably the nicest day of the year yet. The slightly salty smell from the waves crashing on the beach rolled over me and it was nice to finally feel a sense of calm. Then the alarms started blaring and I was rudely disturbed from my daydreams.

There was shouting and screaming and upset and that was scary in itself. What was scarier was the smell of burning plastic and the word “FIRE” being screamed over and over. I ran towards where all of the screaming was and could see the deep grey and black smoke was belching over the roofs of the stores. It was not a pretty sight and I was sure there had to be people trapped inside. I tried to find out if there were and I kept asking people, but no one seemed to have an answer until finally, out a window we could see a person screaming more loudly than anyone below. She was definitely trapped in the building. I knew these apartments though. There were probably two dozen of them, all identical, in a row along the beach and I had friends in school that lived in them. I felt like I was as good a person as any to know how to reach her and get her out and without a second thought, I charged into the only open door.

It was the biggest mistake I could have made, but how was I supposed to know that? Remember all the crap that they teach you in school when you are a little kid? Stop, drop, and roll? Crawl under the smoke? Use a towel to block the smoke under a closed door? None of that felt relevant to me, except maybe that I should have tried to crawl. How can you crawl up the stairs when the smoke feels like it has completely filled the stairwell? I didn’t do that. I ran up the stairs that were right in front of me. I knew that the stairs were narrow and pretty suffocating on a normal day with absolutely no ventilation, but what alternative did I have? I guess I could have done nothing, but that never crossed my mind. I charged to the door that was on the second floor to one of the apartments and banged my fists on the door, yelling at the woman I had seen. I yelled for at least a minute until I started to cough with every breath. I wish I had just tried the handle; it was unlocked.

After I pushed the door open and looked around, I finally realized that I was running blind. The smoke had filled my eyes with dark soot and tears; I was on autopilot and had a basic memory of how the apartment was laid out. I knew that she had to have been in the bedroom, so I headed that way using my hands against the walls, kicking whatever was on the floor, and shuffling my feet to avoid stumbling as best I could. Just as I thought I had reached the door, there was the most horrific stabbing pain in my knee and I shouted again, sucking in even more hot soot. I could feel the spasming in my lungs as I tried to cough it out. It was too hot and too grimy to hack it out, so I tried to suck in as much air instead. I figured I had hit my knee on the corner of a table. It hurt enough to distract me from my path to the bedroom and I felt even more disoriented. But I finally pushed forward and got to the door.

I got in there and the smoke rushed past my body as the air from outside sucked it all in. I saw the woman and she was clearly holding onto a child. I ran forward and yelled at her to follow me. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her; she followed with no hesitation. We rushed out to the hallway, kicking things on the way. Since I was in front of her, I felt all of the tables or whatever they were hitting my shins. It hurt, but the burning in my lungs hurt more. Finally, down the stairs, I rushed her outside and she was grabbed immediately by firefighters. I looked at them, but my vision was beyond cloudy. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. That was the moment I collapsed on the sidewalk.

-----

I woke up right after falling to the sidewalk. I would have sworn no time had passed and nothing should have been different, except maybe a bruise where I hit the ground. It was oddly calm and surreal standing where I woke up. I was standing at the front of a crowd, watching my mom talk into a microphone. Sound took a while to come back, kind of like my hearing had to heal itself, but when it did, I thought I was going to faint. I didn’t, but that has to be because you can’t. You can’t faint when you wake up to watch your own family standing at your funeral. That was something I could have never imagined. In all the movies every funeral takes place on a rainy day where everyone is morose and it seems like even the world is crying. But not the day I was buried. The sun was out, only a few clouds sat in the sky, and the blue was the most vibrant I had ever seen. I heard my mom tell me she loved me and I tried to tell her I loved her too, but no words came out. It was like I was mute. I tried to hug her, tried anything to show her that I was there, but nothing worked. I was the least effective ghost that had ever existed, of that I was certain. What a way to see the end of your life, as a mute and invisible ghost at your own funeral. I wondered how long I would be stuck there. The moment the first shovelful of dirt hit the casket, the world around me suddenly shifted.

In front of me was a stand with people sitting at it, kind of like at the Supreme Court, only these people all seemed to be dressed differently.

I lightly tapped a small bell which had miraculously appeared in front of me. They all stopped talking amongst themselves and turned to look at me. One of them sighed and crossed their arms, another adjusted themselves to sit more upright, but a third smiled kindly towards me. She was the one that spoke.

“Hello. This must be quite a shock to you. I know what questions you want to ask, they have been asked before. I will summarize. We are the ones that are. There are three pairs here. Life and Death. Space and Time. Existence and Nonexistence. We have been since the beginning and we will be until the end. But that is a very long time and since we are all liable to eventually get tired of it, we have the power to transfer our innate selves into another. Since the beginning there have been four to hold the mantle of Life, three to hold the mantle of Space and Nonexistence, two to hold the mantle of Time, and five to hold the mantle of Existence. Only Death has remained since the beginning and it has been a very long time since then. I am the current holder of the mantle of Time, the second of my role. You-” she was interrupted.

“You will be the new Death, got it?” Another called out. “You’re taking too long Time, we have a whole to answer questions, let’s get on with the process.”

“There is no need to be rude, Space. Just because Time has chosen to be polite and answer questions before they are asked is no reason to-”

“Oh shut up, Existence. Just because you think you’re so important, oh ‘I am responsible for all that physically is and ever shall be,’ whatever,” Space replied. I thought he was kind of rude, especially being the only one in a suit. He seemed kind of like a lawyer, but no lawyer would act so much like a child I thought.

“Just what the hell is your problem, Space? Nah, shut your mouth. You talk like that to me and we see just how far Nonexistence goes, huh? Taking a mantle is nothing to do lightly, even if you can’t actually say no. So zip it shut and keep it that way,” another replied. “Hello. I am Nonexistence. You have clearly met Time who was the nice one that started talking to you. The rude jerk is Space, ignore him for now. The one to my left is Existence, you just heard her try to be diplomatic, but Space can’t handle niceness. The two silent ones are Life and Death. I don’t know if you will ever hear Death speak, but Life might grace you with his words. He’s smart, so listen carefully to him.” She smiled at me. That was nice because all of this seemed absolutely insane.

“Whatever Nonexistence. Take your bravado and shove it. Look new-Death. Go over to Life and Death and place your hands on the stickers on the desk between them and get this all over with,” Space answered, raising a middle finger to Nonexistence. I wasn’t sure what to do, but since none of them spoke again I decided to do as I was told. I walked up to the desk between Life and Death. Life seemed like a very casual man dressed in skateboarding clothes. I liked him already. Death, on the other hand, was completely androgenous. I had no idea what to make of them and they seemed happy enough to have me be there. I put my hands on the desk and the two of them reached out and grabbed my wrists.

-----

Everything had ceased to exist and I found myself floating in a white endless void, but I could feel that I had no body and I could see nothing. I wasn’t breathing or existing in the sense of being alive. 

“I’m sorry it had to be like this,” a voice said, neither masculine nor feminine, but very old and tired sounding. “After this moment, you will become Death. The arbiter of all that lives coming to an end. The ultimate judge on how long is long enough. You will work with all of the other mantle bearers to ensure that Death, when it is dealt to that which was once alive, comes swiftly, for it is not good that true Death should come with pain. I have never spoken to any of the mantle bearers myself, but I have also never seen a need. Perhaps you shall, but your silence so far is revealing. Life will guide you, so far as he can. But always remember that the eventuality is that before there was anything, all was Death and when all is finished it shall return to Death. That is your ultimate responsibility.”