Death Defined
"Is she serious with this?"
"Shhhh!!! Just listen," Will admonished.
Jackson rolled his eyes, crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. He didn't believe in all this occult bullshit, but he had promised his buddy Will that he'd go to the psychic fair with him. Will's husband would have otherwise gone, but he was in Seattle to handle some estate affairs for his mother.
"…darkness through which the demons emerge…."
"Come on, dude, you really believe this shit?"
Suddenly the room went quite as the speaker turned her attention to Jackson. "I see we have a skeptic in our midst." Jackson, still with his arms crossed, simply raised an eyebrow. "What is it that prevents you from believing, sir?"
"I believe what I can see. What I can feel. Spooky incantations and dry ice fog are nothing more than parlor tricks."
The gypsy woman smiled, then laughed, and then resumed her presentation as if their conversation had never happened. Jackson slinked back in his chair as the stares of ire from all those in attendance fixated on him.
"You're so straight," Will remarked, as if Jackson's heterosexuality somehow made him closed-minded. That wasn't the case at all. Jackson was simply a cynical agnostic. He firmly believed that his fate was his own to choose, and that there was no overreaching, cosmic being from beyond that influenced his life. Similarly, he didn't believe in ghosts, demons, or the like. He indulged Will because they had been best friends since childhood, and Will loved this stuff.
When the presentation was over, most left the tiny, makeshift theatre exasperated. "That was amazing!" Will exclaimed. Jackson just shook his head. "Jackson, you're impossible. How do you explain what you say on the video?"
"How do you explain what you see in the movies? It's all CGI and special effects, Will. Why do you think they only show you a video instead of a real demonstration?"
Will waved his hand in the air dismissively. "Fine, nilly-naysayer. I'm going to go tinkle."
Jackson snickered. He loved Will, he truly did, especially when Will embellished his flamboyance in a vain effort to embarrass Jackson in public. The truth was that Jackson couldn't possible care less. Will was his friend, and frankly Jackson's straight friends did far more to embarrass him than Will ever could.
Jackson waited patiently for Will to return from the restroom and scanned the floor of the convention center as he did. There were booths all over with self-proclaimed soothsayers, gypsies, Tarot card readers, magicians and more. The smell of incense filled the room, and wide-eyed patrons milled about in wonder. Some ever wore costumes. Jackson shook his head. "Weirdos," he remarked to himself. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around and the gypsy woman was standing barely inches from him. "Jesus! Don't sneak up on someone like that!"
"You will believe," she said simply. "You, sir, will believe." She said no more, turned and walked away. Will returned shortly thereafter, and in the instant Jackson had been distracted, the gypsy woman disappeared into the crowd.
"You ready to go?' Will asked.
"Yeah," Jackson replied, the gypsy woman's words still lingering in his ears.
Later that evening, when Jackson returned home to his apartment, he felt exhausted. In fact, he couldn't remember a time ever feeling that tired. It was barely 9:00 p.m. but Jackson could barely keep his eyes open. He removed his jacket and tossed his keys into the dish on the table beneath the coat. When he turned, he saw it – A Tarot card lying on the counter. The Death card. Jackson began laughing immediately. "Nice try, Will," he remarked aloud. Will had a key to his place and Jackson was confident that Will was messing with him.
Jackson was still chuckling when he entered his bedroom, but immediately stopped laughing when he saw another card lying in the middle of his bed. He shook his head, rolled his eyes and picked the card up to bring it back to the kitchen to leave it with the other. When he went to toss the card onto the counter, however, he realized that the one had had seen there before was gone. Not gone, so much as he was holding it in his hand.
"What the hell," he said quietly. Jackson placed the card on the counter and confirmed that it was indeed the same card. He stepped away slowly, never taking his eye off the card as he backed his way down the hall and into the bedroom. A shiver ran through his body soon as he turned around and again the card sat in the middle of his bed. "Ok Will, not funny!" he called out. When Will did not answer, Jackson began systematically checking every space in the small apartment in which Will could hide. Will was not in the apartment.
Jackson was frightened now, and remembered the gypsy woman's words. "Nah," he said, shrugging off the chill he'd felt earlier. "It's just Will playing tricks."
"Is it?" a voice asked from behind him.
"Damn it!" Jackson yelled as he spun around expecting to see Will sitting there. It was not Will, and Jackson was terrified. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"
Whoever had spoken to him sat at the dining table. Though the apartment was lit, his face was obscured in shadow. Jackson couldn't remember having ever been so terrified. There was something about the mysterious figure that exuded a sinister air. "Jackson. Please, sit down."
Jackson body refused every terrified command to run and instead stepped forward and took a seat across from the shrouded figure. They sat in silence for what seemed like hours, though in truth barely a single minute had passed. All Jackson could think of was Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, in which a knight challenged Death to a game of chess, the stakes of which were the knight's survival. "Are you Death?" Jackson asked as he sat.
Jackson's uninvited guest laughed. "Very good, very good indeed. Yes, Jackson, I am indeed Death, but I am not here for your soul. Not yet, anyway."
Fear coursed through Jackson's veins as if he'd been struck by a bolt of lightning. It was all he could do to quash the quiver in his voice as he addressed Death, in his own dining room. "Why are you here then?"
The figure sat silently. As Jackson's eyes adjusted he could see that the figure appeared to be a man, large in stature. He was dressed in a stereotypical black cloak, his arms crossed such that his hands were concealed in his wide sleeves. The hood that covered his face obscured everything but the figure's chin, the skin of which was morosely grey, and his mouth. His teeth were not fanged as Jackson would have expected, rather it was quite the opposite – they were neatly aligned and perfect white.
"What do you know of death, Jackson?"
"I don't know. You die. You get cremated or buried. That's it."
"So you don't believe in Heaven or Hell?"
"No, I don't. So are you going to carry me back with you to Hell? Is that what this is?"
Again Death laughed. "No, my boy. I am merely the harbinger of death. I am not Satan. Think of me as a chauffeur. I simply take you to your destination, whichever it may be."
"But you said you weren't here to take me, so what then?"
"I have other duties. You are a non-believer, Jackson. I'm here to change that."
Another wave of fear swept through Jackson. "How?"
"I'll show you." Death stood and extended his arms. As he did, Jackson's ears filled with the screams of a thousand banshees and his body ached with excruciatingly debilitating pain. Jackson double over, unable to form even the tiniest sound, and then there was blackness. Death grinned and walked to where Jackson had slumped over the table. He placed his sinewy, grey hand on Jackson's shoulder.
"Come, my boy. It's time to open your eyes."
© J.J. Goodman 2013. All rights reserved.