I’ve gotten used to the sporadic ringing in my ears. It’s not the same as the high-pitched noise other people occasionally experience and ignore. I cannot simply brush it off as an insignificant irritation. For me, the intermittent, sharp and pulsing sound in my head is an alarm to get to work. 

I smooth back my hair in the mirror as if it matters, and grab the black suit and the key to the Tesla.

I park at a Shell station, then crawl into the back seat and change into the black suit. A sickly, bearded man leans against a crumbling cement wall about twenty yards away. His aura is green.

This is my guy.

I cross the street without bothering to check for oncoming vehicles. He doesn’t see me approaching.

They never do.

All his belongings, or lack thereof, surround him in a halo. A puff of carbon dioxide escapes his chapped lips and he wipes at his nose with a torn, checkered sleeve. A withered cardboard sign rests on his lap: I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs, I accept cash and food and hugs. In such bleak circumstances, he has an admirable disposition.

A pigeon lands beside the old man and starts nibbling at the crumbs on the sidewalk. He doesn’t budge when the bird hops on his leg. Maybe he doesn’t notice. Maybe he’s already as good as gone.

I reach out my right hand and firmly but gently place my palm on his wrinkled forehead. I close my eyes and force myself to imagine what I have pictured thousands of times before. The blinding-white beam flashes behind my eyelids and heat bolts from my chest down the veins in my arm, through my fingertips and to his forehead.

I don’t know exactly what happens once this fire is transmitted, but I don’t think it hurts.

The man’s once warm skin turns as icy as the December air that encases us. I shove my cold hands in my pockets and hunch my shoulders against the bitter New England wind as I make my way back to the car.

The homeless man was relatively easy – he was practically unconscious when I got to him. Not that anyone is easy per se, but it is somewhat of a relief to come across an old fellow rather than someone with aspiration and belief that a future awaits. He probably knew I was on my way. It’s the younger ones that make my career insufferable. Boisterous, innocent, wide-eyed children, and driven, kind, optimistic adults – those would be the main characters of my nightmares, if I were able to dream. 

Regardless of age or any other demographic, passing people is hands down the most agonizing thing I’ve ever had the misfortune of undergoing, and I wasn’t the luckiest person to begin with.

When influenza takes your father and sister and consequently your mother is stolen by suicide, you think you know death. You think you’ve experienced the worst of the worst. You’re sure there couldn’t possibly be anything more heart-wrenching and horrifying in this world than having the three closest people to you all vanish within a shockingly short, month-long span. You can’t fathom why you were cursed with such a fate and you can’t imagine getting any closer to the terrifying truths of death without dying yourself.

Until one night, on the one-month anniversary of your mother’s suicide, you come face to face with Death himself.

I spent the four weeks after my mother’s suicide cleaning the vacant house spotless, dusting and re-dusting, sweeping and re-sweeping, to the point of sanding down hardwood and borderline insanity. I couldn’t stop except to sleep, which came rarely and in the form of passing out on the coffee-brown sofa for a couple hours before getting back to work again. When the handle to the broom broke, I spent what must have been a week staring at the splintered ends, with my rear melted into the sofa cushion.

I went from one aimless extreme to another equally aimless extreme, while my mind remained a void. My cerebrum was locked away in a dark cell, a coward hiding from my thoughts and memories. I could smell the foul stench of grief and pain as they clawed at the outer walls of the black room, begging to be let in. But I knew that as soon as I let those chamber walls break down, I would crumble along with them.

Some family friends stopped by in twos and threes the first couple of weeks, then one on one (probably thinking that would be easier on me), and eventually, once they realized I wasn’t going to let anyone in, they stopped showing up at all. 

The day I met Death transpired like any other day.

I couldn’t tell you if it was sunny or raining out, for the curtains hadn’t been opened in weeks. I barely knew what month it was at the time, much less the day of the week, but the date is now engraved in the interior of my skull.

It was Thursday, November 12th, 1918 – the day after my 25th birthday.

I had fallen asleep on the sofa as usual and woke up drenched in sweat. I remember being dumbfounded as to why I was perspiring so much when the fire had gone out hours ago. My insides were burning while my skin froze in the layer of wetness.

Looking back, I’m not sure if the sweating or the cold had woken me up, or if I’d ever actually awakened in the first place. Whether it was in a dream or in a moment of consciousness in the middle of the night, I’m not sure, but I know for a fact that my encounter with Death was as real as they get. 

He came to me in the form of an elderly man resembling a skinny Santa Claus, dressed in a wrinkled button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves and plaid trousers without suspenders, so they hung frumpishly low. I didn’t tell him to leave, nor did I interrogate him about what he thought he was doing or how he got into the locked house. I was stunned into silence.

He approached me in a leisurely manner, his feet silent on the normally creaky, wooden floor. The room was dark as a grave, yet he appeared to be backlit, his silhouette outlined with a silver nimbus. 

He spoke slowly and with purpose, in a strong, deep voice that seemed out of place for a withered old man. Looming before my stupefied body, he presented me with a job offer – one which he said very few before me had refused. He was very thorough in the constituents of his proposition and disclosed that, if I agreed to the terms of the occupation, the only way out was through him.

He said the job he proposed was the most difficult and emotionally devastating operation I could conceive – one that invokes feelings as horrendous as those that accompany disease, war, famine, and genocide. He assured me that, while I may think I have endured the worst, the worst is yet to come. But it shall be escorted by tremendous rewards.

The first benefit would be money in the bank to last lifetimes. Anything I ever wanted could be mine – a brand-new automobile, an estate on my own island, a sailboat to travel the globe… you name it.

The second perk would be that of immortality. No wound nor illness would phase me. Decades, centuries, millennia would elapse and I would remain the same 25-year-old man. The only way I could die would be by request. I would surrender my career and pass on.

Perhaps it was his method of delivering the bad conditions first and ending with the good that aided in my rather quick resolution. Figuring he must have miscalculated – that there couldn’t possibly be anything worse than what I’ve already gone through and what I’ve felt the past few months – I accepted his offer.

The God of Death, for lack of a better term, calls himself Thanatos. Nate, for short.

And I am his eternally damned employee.