Angel of Death

Death has a sense of humour. A warped sense of humour, maybe, but a sense of humour all the same. Although it is hard to believe, the Angel of Death is actually a very happy camper. Doing what you were born to do is very fulfilling, even if the hours are unusually long and all your clients hate you.

Today Death is working hard. Apparently a lunatic doctor escaped from a high security compound. It wondered in its disturbed eternal mind if that was why all its charges came to him in pieces. If so it would have a quiet word with whoever was in charge of security at that prison. A deadly word. Killers were bad. Psychotic killers were worse.
_____________________________________________________________________

Dr Jeremiah Marshall shuffled his papers, sweating profusely and twitching nervously. He flicked a switch on a cheap stereo and the small speakers burst into life, playing relaxing classical music from a gas station mix tape. The good doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath, smoothing his hair with one hand and rubbing his cheek with the palm of his other. The music continued to play and he hummed along, occasionally interrupted by the tortured screams of the man in the next room, the man he had promised a hot dinner and a fix for an hour of hard work. The good doctor thought it was rude that the hobo had not appreciated that he was trying to meditate. “After all, what have I ever done to him?” He resumed his music and over its low hum he didn’t quite hear the deep, groaning chuckle that seemed to resonate from the ground beneath him.
_____________________________________________________________________

The victim shrieked in agony again as he had another convulsion. Whatever the doctor had injected into him wasn’t heroin as he had promised. It felt like lava in his veins. He shot a glance at the miserable shaking thing that was his left arm. It was covered in weeping sores that oozed a thick yellow jelly that smelled like horse radish. Where he had been injected was marked with a small, but growing, patch of what he suspected was rotting flesh. Thankfully the smell was overcome by the oozes unusual odour.

He didn’t expect to live for much longer. A sharp pain was working its way through his stomach. What had the doctor fed him? He didn’t remember. He coughed up more phlegm and nearly choked on it. It dribbled from his mouth and dried all over his chin into a disgusting green scab. A light on the wall flicked on.

“How are you feeling, Gerald?” A voice asked from a speaker mounted in the corner of a wall. It didn’t wait for a reply. “I’m going to ask you a few questions. Now, I don’t have a microphone in your room, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to respond visually.”  For the first time Gerald noticed the security camera watching him opposite the doorway, which was now barred shut. “Raise one finger for better, raise two for worse, okay?” The voice sounded nervous and excited. Like a little rich kid before Christmas morning. He choked again on more phlegm.

“How is your sore throat, Gerald? Better or worse?” Gerald couldn’t even feel the scratch in his throat he had complained to the doctor about. Better, he supposed. He raised one finger, his middle finger, to the camera. “I’ll take that as better, I guess. Good.” Gerald heard scribbling as the doctor paused to note this. “What about your blocked nose? Has the phlegm moved?” A stupid question, if that camera was any good at all. His nose had gotten worse, although that might have been because of the cold of the room. He raised two fingers. He couldn’t think of a reason why he should help the man who was torturing him. The speaker talked again. “That’s a shame, then. Any side effects? Painful urination? Chest pain?” Gerald tried to laugh and instead vomited up the dinner the doctor had fed him. The only side effect is a long, painful death, he thought.

He wasn’t sure if it was his delirious state, but Gerald thought he heard someone laugh.
_____________________________________________________________________

The good doctor put down his pen and flicked off the microphone. Disappointing results. His search for a cure for the common cold continued. “At least I have the dissection to look forward to.” It wouldn’t take much more for Gerald to die. He could kill him peacefully with a lethal injection, but he didn’t think he’d be able to get close enough to Gerald to deliver it. He didn’t really care. Watching people die was a pastime for him that had gone unfulfilled for far too long.

He turned back to his notes, read them and re-read them, noted them, and finally filed them in a draw marked- ‘Subjects’.
_____________________________________________________________________

Gerald was close to death. He could feel it coming, like he felt his lungs gasping for air through his mucus clogged throat, like he felt the slow death of the muscles in his left arm. He would die very soon.
_____________________________________________________________________

Death walked through the abandoned hospital slowly, humming the theme of ‘The Simpson’s’ while it moved silently from corridor to corridor, a clock ticking in its mind, the clock of Gerald Randolf, a clock that was about to ring and wake up whoever had set it. Minutes or hours might have passed in its timeless existence, it didn’t matter. Death was never late. Death always came right on its cue.

It walked passed another door, one barred shut, and instantly knew this was where the charge was. It passed through the doorway.

The charge was laid out on a hospital bed, its dwindling life source an easy target. It would not need to be attacked with Disease or Famine- this one would die at Deaths touch. A skeletal finger reached out and touched Gerald on the forehead. The light in his eyes died, and now they served only to stare blankly at the ceiling, without purpose. Death smiled. Another job well done.