By Steve Redwood

Artwork by Carole Humphreys

The woman lay sprawled in the armchair, her head tilted back at an unusual angle, one plump arm hanging awkwardly over the side of the chair, the other flung gracelessly over her stomach. Beside her, on a stained glass-topped table, were scattered half a dozen empty Guinness bottles, an ashtray overrun with clumsily-crushed cigarette ends, the viscous remains of fish and chips in soggy newspaper, and various crisp packets. Amidst this carnage, the sole survivor, a half empty bottle of brandy, stood mourning its fallen comrades. A small black and white television set sulked in the corner, emitting a peevish whine of neglect.

The curtains were not completely drawn, and through the gap, etched like ice by the light of the streetlight outside, a face suddenly appeared. It gazed in for some time, and then, as if reassured by the complete immobility of the woman, withdrew. A moment later, the door was quietly opened, and a man stepped swiftly into the room. He shut the door as silently as he had opened it, crossed to the window to close the curtains thoroughly, and then turned to stare at the woman with what appeared to be great satisfaction

There was something inhuman about the intruder. 

The head was almost bald, the skin stretched tightly across the misshapen skull in a phrenologist’s nightmare, mottled as if an inebriated pigeon with dirty feet had trampled and slithered all over it on a rainy day. The facial skin had the texture that the same pigeon would have had, if caught and plucked. The eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, didn’t quite seem to fit there, and the sockets themselves were curiously misaligned. Beneath the lumpy nose meandered a bluish gash which must have been a lip – or two – since there were no other landmarks before the face abruptly terminated in the jagged promontory of the chin. 

Of the body nothing could be seen, since it was shrouded in a long black cloak, adorned with strange cabalistic signs.

After staring for some time at the woman, the man reached into this cloak and extracted a bundle, which he shook open with his left hand. It was a huge sack, into which he at once began, with his right hand, to cram the woman, beginning with the feet.

At this point the woman’s eyes jolted open, her body stiffened, and the cloaked figure staggered back in surprise.

“What the hell...!” shouted the woman. Her voice had the quality of a metal chair being scraped over rusty nails.

The visitor now appeared horrified as well as horrific. His mouth fell open until there was a muffled clicking sound, whereupon it snapped to again, reinstating the narrow blue line, and his eyes emerged, like hermit crabs, almost out of their sockets. He shook his head in bewilderment, muttered an inaudible imprecation, snatched a small black book from a slit in his cloak, glanced inside it, thrust it back in his cloak, stepped forward again with a very determined air towards the woman now thrashing about on the floor, grabbed her - by the hair this time - and once more attempted to stuff her into his sack.

“What the hell...!” bellowed the woman again. She freed herself from the man’s grasp, lumbered to her feet, and gave him a violent push. He stumbled backwards and crashed back into the chair.

The man now showed every indication of being upset. The blue line wavered, and passed through what appeared to be the EEG recordings of a dandy who has just stepped into a Brobdingnagian cowpat, before settling finally for an expression reminiscent of a recently bereaved goldfish. He began to speak, but the action dislodged a small portion of his cheek, which he rapidly, and rather self-consciously, pushed back into place, before commencing again, in a voice muffled either by frustration or the hastiness of his repair work.

“Madam!  This is most untoward, not to say grossly unnatural. You are Dead, and therefore that Flesh no longer belongs to you, but to us. You are – I state it unequivocally – acting, not only unlawfully, but, worse, impossibly. So let’s have no more of this.”

And he began to rise again, sack in hand.

“Hold on there!” screeched the woman, tanking towards him and towering above him, so that his left eye and her right nipple, which in the fracas had escaped the cloistered virtue of her dressing gown, were on a level glaring redly at each other. “Just hold on there, young man, and apologise for disturbing a poor helpless girl, all alone and unprotected, before I beat the living daylights out of you!”

The man’s left eye, unnerved by the sheer naked bellicosity of the nipple, slunk back deep into its socket as its owner sank back into the chair. And when the second nipple suddenly emerged in full battle array, the man visibly quailed beneath their combined might. He evidently decided on a placatory approach.

“Very well. It’s possible – just possible, mind you – that there may be some mistake here. But I assure you your Death was Arranged for three minutes after midnight. If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself.” And, with an aggrieved air, he thrust the little black book towards her.

The woman, who had been staring rather blankly, with no sign of having understood any of this, hesitantly put out a large hand that looked as if it had been formed out of congealed cooking oil, then paused. A smile began to cross her face, rather like a gouty fly crawling across a dumpling. Then a rumbling emerged from inside her, a deep cavernous laughter, and her body began to shake, causing her breasts to perform a ponderous Catherine wheel.

“Oh you poor dear,” she burbled, with lascivious coyness, “now I get it! Well, I’m very honoured, to be sure, but, lovey, I ain’t been on the game for years now. Not that the spirit was weak, mind you, oh no, nor the flesh” (she glanced down proudly) “but, well, I does get short of breath. It’s the fags. Not in my prime, I ain’t ashamed to say, though it don’t show, do it?” (Another glance down.) “Well, well, fancy that! So you got my address from one of my old clients, and finally knocked up the courage to call, eh? Well, I’m respectable now, my dear, as you can see,” (she made a pretence of doing up her dressing gown). “But, well, you never know, we may get on, and then...but come on, have a drink, and see if I can guess who gave you my address. But, lordie, you did scare me, the way you came in! Still, I likes a man who acts like a man!” And so saying, she waddled over to the table, and picked up the brandy bottle.

The man had listened to all this open-mouthed. Most of what she said made no sense at all. What was clear – terrifyingly so – was that Final Accounts had slipped up somewhere. But Final Accounts never slipped up, or at least never admitted to slipping up, which came to the same thing as far as his future in Departures was concerned. If he returned with an empty Sack, he would be blamed.

And instantly demoted to Ghosthood again!

He felt himself decomposing at the very thought. The Flesh he had now was bad enough – he was certain Stores had fobbed him off with triply recycled stuff – but to go back to Ectoplasm again, with its vile smell and clammy texture, so tenuous it couldn’t even be seen in daylight; to have to spend another eternity in dank unhealthy secret passages of gloomy unoccupied mansions; to be the helpless victim of every upstart priest, medium, or exorcist who took it into their heads to torment him – no, it was unthinkable: he simply could not return empty-handed. 

He accepted a drink from the woman to give himself time to think. He created a dazzling smile by flipping his goldfish scowl upside down. His thoughts raced on.

No, he could not, would not, face Ghosthood again! Collector (Probationary) was a poor enough post, but at least it was a first step. Complete a thousand Sackings, and you entered the true hierarchy, with the privilege of Arranging Departures, beginning with Old Age and Illness (euphemistically called Natural Death), moving up through Accidents into Individual Suicides (a tricky one, that, but providing a real sense of achievement, so he’d heard), and finally entering the Grade One posts: Natural Catastrophes and Multiple Suicides, otherwise known as War.

“I just have to have her.”

He realised he had said this aloud, and gulped nervously. But the woman seemed pleased.

“Yes, yes, all in due time, sweetie - maybe. But let’s get to know each other a bit first, eh? I mean, I don’t even know your name.”

By Beelzebub, he had to Sack her! To lose his job now, when he’d only just started...but how? She was obviously stronger than him: the only decent Flesh he had was in his right arm – damn those twisters in Stores! – so violence was out. Perhaps he could persuade her to go with him voluntarily? If he explained the situation to her...  Final Accounts had erred, whatever they might say. (And not for the first time, either: there had been a certain Russian monk who had doggedly refused to Die On Time, and, long before that, some carpenter’s son who had indeed Died On Time, but then gone and changed his mind!) Nonetheless, they couldn’t have erred by more than a few hours, or the mistake would surely have been spotted. So it really wouldn’t make very much difference to her if he did Sack her now – a certain terminal discomfort, maybe, but surely she could be made to see that this was nothing compared to the torment that lay ahead for him if he didn’t Sack her.

“...all right, sweetie? My, you don’t talk much, do you? Did I hurt your poor mouth? Well, you did come on a bit strong, you know – not that I mind a bit of a tussle, but I likes to be awake to enjoy it.” She was gazing at him myopically with an expression that contained a fair amount of desire.

Yes, earn this woman’s goodwill: that was the way.

“Madam, I am very grateful for this beverage you have so courteously offered me. Allow me to drink to our closer acquaintance, both now and in the Hereafter.”

He took a polite sip, remembering too late that, because he was still only on probation, they hadn’t bothered with all the usual intricacies of the normal body: his throat was simply a cylinder extending to his stomach. The liquid landed with a muffled squelch in this nether region. 

She didn’t seem to have heard it, though she was staring at him fixedly. She had allowed her gown to fall open again, and he had the impression that she was squeezing her thighs together. Odd.

“Let me take this opportunity to apologise for my earlier rather precipitate action. I naturally had no idea that you weren’t Dead. My conduct appears to me all the more reprehensible now that I have made your living acquaintance, and come to understand what a charming and comprehensive lady you are.”

That ought to win her over, he thought, but decided to broaden the smile for good measure. He succeeded, however, only in elongating it, with the result that one end curled into his nostril, inducing a tremendous sneeze, which swept past the woman to impact against the wall behind her, dislodging in the process a spider lounging indolently in its web contemplating its forthcoming repast, a mightily dejected bluebottle, which repast now struggled free from the sneeze-battered web and flew away, to spend two glorious days gloating over its escape before being swatted by a pretty French au pair girl who had arrived but one hour before.

These wondrous workings of nature, however, passed unheeded by both the man and the woman. The latter, it seemed, hadn’t even noticed the sneeze, for, after the man’s compliment, she had lowered her eyes and adopted what apparently was meant to be a demure expression, contradicted by her increasingly heavy breathing and the way she now had both her hands clutched between her thighs. He proceeded to state his case with growing confidence.

“You see, what I’m about to ask isn’t just for me, it’s also for the good name of the Collecting Branch of Natural Departures. You must understand that we field workers only Collect, we don’t Arrange Deaths. So you see I personally have nothing at all to do with your demise.”

He paused to make sure she was following his words. She seemed mesmerised by his inverted-goldfish smile, her breathing was now rapid as well as heavy, and her whole body was straining forward. 

“You may think that we are all well-stocked, but you must bear in mind that by the time we’ve processed your bodies to be suitable for our own use, we need perhaps a hundred of them just to make one of ours. Your body, for example, bounteous though it is, would only provide enough material for, say, one of my feet – not that” (he added hastily) “I personally am ever likely to be walking on you, since I only deliver the bodies to the Plant, and draw my rations from Stores like everyone else.

“Now, there is great competition between the various Departures – Natural Death, Accidents, War, etc. – since each has the right to keep and recycle the bodies it claims. And we in Naturals have the worst of it. You may consider this odd. Plenty of bodies, you’re thinking. But we can’t touch any bodies that have Died of things like Aids or cancer, because the disease would still be there, and then we would get it, too. Still plenty of bodies, you’re thinking. True – but we’re restricted to those we can take without the knowledge of humans. If anyone ever found out we were using your bodies, there would be selfish dog-in-a-manger attempts to protect them from us. Can you imagine the hullabaloo if the family crept quietly into old Grandpa’s bedroom to see how he was, only to find out that he wasn’t? No, we can only Collect bodies like yours, people without family or friends to notice their disappearance.”

Once again he paused, to see how she was taking all this. What he didn’t realise was that the woman hadn’t understood a word, but that this was the first attention a man had paid her for a long time, and his deep unearthly eyes and impossible smile were setting fire to her loins, a fire threatening any moment to engulf her. 

“Not like those lucky sods in War!” ( As he grew more confident, his tone became less formal.) "’Two hundred missing’, say the bulletins, nobody suspects a thing, and suddenly even the tea-ladies in War Departures are prancing around with brand-new noses or ears! And as for Natural Catastrophes, talk about a plum job! One Krakatoa, one San Francisco earthquake, and they can sit on their backsides for a year!  But, still, they’ve earned the right, I suppose. It takes some skill to Arrange wars and catastrophes without anyone on Earth suspecting a thing. The sheer genius of Arranging the abduction of Helen of Troy, or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, or persuading people to build a city right under Vesuvius!

“No, I’ve no quarrel with War and Catastrophes, they deserve their pound of Flesh. It’s Accidents I hate: as if they haven’t got enough opportunities with Italian drivers or Indian trains or Russian planes, they often try to claim bodies for which we’ve Arranged a perfectly Natural Death, such as in your case. We Arrange for someone to die of exposure in the mountains, and those crooks come along and persuade the silly bastard to fall down a precipice! We have a couple of hundred people dying nicely in hospital, all legal and above-board, and Accidents Arrange a bloody fire! Soundrels, the lot of them!”

He knew he was getting a bit carried away, but he’d never had such an attentive listener: she was now almost out of her chair, so interested was she in his story! Nevertheless, he sensed an unusual warmth coming from her body, and her lips were drawn back from her teeth in an almost predatory manner. He decided to get to the point.

“Now, if I went back without you, it would be the end of me. They never give you a second chance. OK, the Flesh I’ve got now is rubbish, soft as shit, but it is Flesh, and I couldn’t bear to lose it. That’s why I must have you. Tonight. Now. But I assure you it...”

The last words – possibly the first the woman had understood – had fallen like oil on the simmering flame of her desire. The conflagration now beyond control, she hurled herself upon him.

He didn’t stand a chance. Her lips had ground into his before he could even move, and his chest caved in with the sound of falling timber beneath the weight of her tormented bosom. Within seconds, the fine black cloak contained little more than chunks of disintegrating flesh.

The woman scrambled away screaming, staggered backwards, slipped on some soggy chips which had somehow left the table, and was dead the instant her head hit the floor.

**********************

His essence hovered in the air, assessing the damage. His Flesh could be used again, of course, though it would take hours to build up another body. Despite this, he was filled with elation: the woman was Dead at last, a bit late maybe, but well and truly Dead. He was saved. He need only put together enough body to enable him to Sack and Collect her. His mission had succeeded, after all, even if only by accident...

By accident! Even as the terrible realisation hit him, the door was opened, and a man stepped jauntily into the room. 

There was something inhuman about the intruder...

********************************