“I don’t know if there is a Heaven, or Hell, or Purgatory, or anything in-between, beyond or under.” the diver begins. “As far as I’m concerned, there is only the universe. And the pipe. And wherever the pipe leads to.”

“And the pipe has a spill.” I murmur.

“The pipe has a spill, yes.”

We’ve driven over to a Taco Bell. Dee and I in the camper. The diver in that 1987 Fiat Punto. They said that, although they themselves can teleport, they can’t do the same for large objects. And they apparently need the car, for some reason. Maybe they’re just into whatever bizarre aesthetic they’re going for here.

The fact that the staff doesn’t seem to even so much as acknowledge their presence lends some credence to the idea that they are… whatever they’re trying to say they are.

Dee and I aren’t as fortunate to escape the glances, though.

“I’m sorry to interrupt—but why are we here?” Dee asks.

“Tacos.” the stranger says.

“I’m extremely doubtful any of us actually need food.” she points out.

“It’s not about nutritious value.” they say. “Whenever there’s a tense situation, I’ve found that the mere presence of tacos helps alleviate some of the stress.”

I chuckle. “Okay, Freud.”

“Rest assured, Jacob, I’m the only one who has ever viewed your mother as a sexual being.”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“I’m just trying to break the ice.”

“By talking about how you apparently fucked my mom?”

“I’m glad it’s apparent.”

Dee is awkwardly trying to shove tacos in her mouth, refusing to make eye contact with either of us. I’m not sure she’s figured out how to swallow. Nor am I sure she cares, at the moment.

I bury my head in my hands. “Okay. Let’s back up a bit. Fine, let’s say you made me or whatever. Let’s say I’m like this because of you. That doesn’t mean anything, because I still don’t understand anything. Who are you? But, like, actually? Not ‘maintenance man’ – I want a straightforward answer. No metaphors.”

The stranger taps their scythe against the ground, thinking. “I’m not being metaphorical.”

“But you are vague.”

“It should be obvious. You are my spawn. You see ghosts. Your own death has been beyond even the abnormal nature you’ve witnessed. Ergo, whatever I’m talking about here has to do with people dying. I told you about a pipe. I told you there is a spill. You know that there a lot of ghosts currently roaming the Earth, possessing objects. Do you think it’s really been like that for hundreds of thousands of years? Can you even begin to imagine the sheer number of walking corpses that would be walking around at this very moment if that was the case? Come on, I shouldn’t have to spell it all out, should I? Who am I? I told you – I’m the maintenance man.”

I look at the scythe. “You’re Death.”

“Sure. If it makes this any easier for you.”

“Bull—shit.” Dee says, likely trying to deal with a taco now stuck in her throat.

I look at my hands. “What’s happened to me?”

“I cheated.” Death says simply. “The best analogy for the core… process of dying is that of a computer system. When a human being dies, their soul is sucked into the pipe. The body remains. The ‘system’ flags the body as a person’s remaining physical presence, and doesn’t bother with it anymore. I made it the other way around for you. I sent your flesh into the pipe. Your soul stayed behind. The system then had no choice but to flag it as a ‘physical presence’. Souls, by definition, are not physical. So, the system compensated and made you into what you are now. Instead of. The usual.”

“Whoever made all this doesn’t seem like too good of a programmer.” I remark.

Death leans in their seat. “You’re telling me.”

“And you’re the reason I can see and talk to the dead? But what about Mom? I think she could also seem them, but when she died this didn’t—”

“She probably got a gift or two while she carried you. Certainly not something I planned for. Or that had much of a difference in the long run.”

“Why her?”

“Had to be someone, Jacob.”

Had to be someone.

“What exactly are you asking of me?” I relent.

“I already told you what I want.”

“Juice, come on. Let’s be real here.” Dee interrupts. “Look at this – this person. Look at them! Death? Pipe? Hello? Is any of this shit making sense to you here? ‘Cause it’s not to me. Why would your Mom even bang some freak walking around in a diving—”

“The same reason nobody’s paying any attention to me right now. They see me differently.” Death shrugs. “Frankly, I can’t be bothered to care whether you believe me or not. Jacob is all that matters.”

“Juice, listen to me.” Dee spits out the last of the tacos and grabs my wrist. “He’s just messing with you, alright? I don’t know what the game here is, but come on. There’s another explanation. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure as hell not gonna trust some rando we met in the middle of an abandoned casino; a casino that was probably inhabited by some other crazy assh—I mean, for all we know, this guy could still be pr0c! Or working with Bobby to mess with us! Or both! No, I don’t know how he moved so quickly back there, and I don’t know how nobody in this fucking Taco Bell isn’t paying attention to him, but, but—”

The light of Death’s helmet increases, as it slowly – and deliberately – turns to face Dee.

I squirm in my seat. That same unpleasantness from the ice baths suddenly returns. It’s like the room’s temperature has started to drop.

“Your real name is Selene Gustavia. You jumped off the New Order Bridge. Although the underlying cause was a long battle with depression, the trigger for the final act was your boyfriend asking about the mark on your face. You remember, right? You got home. He was making tortellini. Wore that apron you gave him for his last birthday. He looked good in it, didn’t he?”

Dee’s expression turns from frustration to mortified stillness. “Wait.”

“He leaned in to give you a kiss. You tried to angle your head, so he tries the other cheek. But he noticed it. You’d put make-up over the handprint, but he’d still noticed it. That’s how bad she’d slapped you. And he asked. Being the caring boyfriend he was. He did the one thing caring boyfriend did. The one thing he shouldn’t have. And that was that. That was enough to seal it all, wasn’t it? After all, you couldn’t possibly tell him the truth. And that broke you. Because—”

She stammers. “Stop.”

“—Because the truth was that you had been confronted by the wife of the married man you were seeing, unbeknownst to your boyfriend.”

“Stop!”

“Because the truth was that, for all the love you might’ve had for this one man, there was a certain emptiness that came alongside being with him. Scared that the emptiness would only get worse, you never left him, and instead chose to—”

“Stop! STOP! STOP already – STOP! For the love of God!” Dee shrieks, slamming her fists against the table.

“Your past is written all over you. Shell or no shell. Remember that. Know you can never run from it. I’m sorry, Selene.” Death adds, eventually falling silent.

I glance outside the window, trying not to think about the stares we’ve brought back on us.

My gaze stops at the Fiat Punto.

For a brief moment, it almost seems like—

Wait.

No. It’s not just my imagination.

“Why is your trunk moving?” I ask.

Death says nothing. Dee isn’t even bothering to look up.

“Is there someone in the trunk of your car?”

Death absently-mindedly taps against the table. “I figured you would be. Resistant. So, I came offering a gift. It seemed like the polite thing to do.”

“Is that—?”

“The one who does have intentions of hacking people up. Yes. ”