Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (15 page)

The Angel of Death skidded to a confused stop as he suddenly came face to face with a naked man who had once been a penguin and whose soul he was sure he had guided to heaven not too long ago. However, that was all he had time to think about as the orderlies tackled him, knocking him into the naked ex-penguin, who shrieked unhappily.

Everyone, not really knowing what to do for the best, lay in a sort of disorganized mess as other orderlies came running from the building.

The last thing the naked man yelled, probably a little too loudly was, "Please don’t put me on a boat!"

Jeremiah the goldfish remained very still. He had suddenly noticed there was a castle in the middle of his goldfish bowl and he was remaining very still in case there was something inside it, and he didn't want to disturb it in case it turned out to be an angry and violent something.

"Where had the castle come from in the first place?" he wondered. And then he began to wonder why he was staying very still. And then the castle slipped from his mind altogether as the large black squiggly object outside of his bowl began to ring.

A recorded male voice clicked on, accompanied by a vast amount of hissing.

"I'm obviously not here, otherwise I would have picked up. Just thought I'd leave a message telling you so. At this point I'd like to encourage you to leave me a message in return if you feel so inclined. If you don't, well, that's your decision, then, isn't it?"

There was a sharp beep, then a frantic female voice popped into the atmosphere. Jeremiah glided around his watery kingdom, quite content not to be hearing the voice due the sound-dampening power of liquid. The answering machine message went something like this.

"Uhh. Hi. I feel a bit stupid doing this, only I'm stuck in the lunchroom at work and, well, a group of deranged cyborg elves has taken over the building and I can't get out. And your number kinda just popped into my head out of nowhere, actually knocked me down on the floor. And since I can't get anyone else to help me I thought you might be able to. Anyway, I'm feeling more and more stupid the more I talk, so I'm going to shut up now. I'm at Majestic Technologies."

There was a click, followed by a sick kind of whirring sound as the antique answering machine attempted to rewind the equally antique cassette tape.

Completely oblivious and suddenly in a most gleeful mood, Jeremiah the goldfish swam in and out of the castle that he had just discovered right there in his bowl.

Feeling completely dejected, Celina sat down in the chair. The phone number had seemed like a completely sane idea at first, but after making the call, she thought it all rather ridiculous. She should know better than to go with her instincts. Receiving strange thought-waves that were definitely not her own was a fairly new concept to her.

When she was younger, she was convinced that Prince was actually speaking to her, and only her, through his music. It was a theory that, in her younger years, quite often got her beaten up by the other girls.

The lights in the kitchen flickered for a moment and tried to come back on, but to no avail. A chill suddenly ran down her spine and then carried on right down to her feet. When it reached her feet, the chill decided that there was still something to be chilly about so it ran right back up her legs and raced up her spine.

There was always a part in horror movies where someone knew something bad was about to happen, everything else happened in the right order, the people were in the right places. The power went out, the phone lines were cut, and Sandra the blonde-haired, big-breasted co-star has been missing for over an hour in the creepy abandoned house that no one in their right mind would go into, not even a bunch of high school kids. If Celina had been in a movie, this would have been the point where she found herself at this particular moment. Although everything had been deadly quiet for the past six hours, suddenly everything seemed even quieter. And although the lights had been out for quite a while, everything seemed more chillingly dark. And then the click of the dining room door being unlocked made her heart pound loudly inside her chest.

Celina froze in place. The thought of moving was of great appeal but her legs had other ideas and wanted to stay firmly rooted. She heard the door creak open, then a set of quick footsteps entered the room. She had to hide, she had to hide, why the hell weren't her legs listening to her?

The dining room door swung all the way open; light spilled through the kitchen doorway. The short, quick footsteps of oncoming evil got closer and closer until, silhouetted in the doorway, a man appeared. A short man. Three feet tall, dressed in traditional elf clothing from the jingle bell on his hat right down to the pointy shoes that curled at the ends. A maniacal grin smeared across his mouth.

Celina, having hidden herself in the walk-in freezer, could see the elf through the crack she’d left in the doorway. The elf, a half-crazed look in his eyes, moved quickly around the work table that sat in the centre of the kitchen. He climbed up on the counter and started opening cupboards, spilling canned foods and all sorts of other packaged goods out on the floor. He then proceeded to go through the kitchen drawers, emptying them as he went. There was such a determined look on his face that anyone watching him would have said, "Well, I'm sure he knows what he's looking for and he's bound to find it, I mean look at the little fellah, he's so determined."

The determined elf seemed to be getting more frustrated as he came to the last of the cupboards and obviously did not find what he hoped to find. He swung open the fridge door and added its contents to all the other stuff that sat on the floor in a messy heap. The elf stopped and looked around the kitchen until finally settling a mean-looking and still quite crazed eye on the freezer door.

Inside, Celina had been watching the ransacking of the kitchen with complete horror and a touch of confusion. Why was the elf destroying the kitchen?

There was a scratching sound at the freezer door. Celina stepped back and looked around the freezer. Pieces of meat hung on a rack, sacks of frozen peas were stacked haphazardly into one corner, boxes were stacked in the other. The scratching continued. Celina could see the elf in the reflection of one of the metallic kitchen cabinets.

Outside the freezer in the kitchen, the elf was leaping at the handle to the freezer, completely oblivious to the fact that the door wasn’t completely closed.

Due to having a bad case of being short, this task was proving difficult. The elf stopped and stared up at the door. His maniacal smile twisted into a half-smile and then dropped completely into a frown. The elf ran back into the dining room and returned quickly, carrying a chair. Hopping on the chair next to the freezer’s edge, he opened the door and swung it wide.

A rush of cold air hit him in the face as he hopped down and walked into the freezer. His nasty, beady little eyes quickly took stock: frozen peas, frozen carcasses of dead animals, boxes of bad, frozen food often found in crappy cafeterias. The elf reached into his pocket and pulled out a two-way radio; he clicked the button once and spoke into the microphone.

"This is Cuddles calling Fluffy, come in Fluffy, over."

There was a mess of static and then a gruff voice came back. "Fluffy here, go ahead Cuddles, over."

"I'm in the kitchen, no lemons here, over."

"Did you try the cupboards? Over."

"Yes Fluffy, tried all the cupboards, no lemons, over."

"How about the freezer? Over."

"Nope, no lemons in the freezer, over."

"Are you sure you checked all the cupboards? Over?"

"Dammit, Fluffy, I checked everywhere, no lemons, none."

There was a momentary pause while Cuddles' eyebrows twitched spasmodically.

Static
.

"You didn't say over. Over."

"Go to hell, Fluffy, over."

"Very well, proceed back to operations, over."

Cuddles the elf swore to himself, stuffed the radio back into his pocket and then left the freezer, shutting the door as he went.

The stack of frozen peas shifted slightly and a bag from the top raised itself off and threw itself to the ground. Celina's extremely cold-looking head managed to motivate the rest of her body to stand up and start moving again. She shook off the bags of peas and stood up, teeth chattering incessantly.

"L-l-lemons?"

No one captured Death,
no one
! And if they did, they'd definitely never ever consider tying him to a hospital bed. That was, until recent events had taken place, causing Celina to hide in a freezer, Nigel to get fired, a penguin to turn into a man, a goldfish to predict the future, and all people in the world to stop dying. And where was God in all of this?

There was a very good chance that at this particular moment, God was serving wine at a small restaurant a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus. Death was not too concerned with God's whereabouts at this point in time. He was more concerned that someone had him tied to a bed in a rundown-looking hospital in the Bahamas.

Gerald, tied to the bed next to Death's, was less concerned with anything and was happily busy watching his toes wiggle, an altogether new experience that he'd recently discovered after being manhandled by a group of large male nurses and then tied to a hospital bed. He was equally overjoyed that no one had mentioned anything about sending him away on a boat.

"I demand to see the doctor in charge!" shouted Death for the umpteenth time.

"Have you ever noticed how nicely my toes wiggle?" asked Gerald of the gentleman dressed in the black robe tied to the bed next to him.

Death was forthright with his answer. "Piss off!"

"Hmm," said Gerald. That altogether new phrase didn't seem to be in his vocabulary. He'd have to remember the words and try them out sometime.

Death got a bit perplexed at this point, and it had nothing to do with the naked, toe-wiggling gentleman to his left. In angelic form, Death was quite powerful. He had been in a few battles and had held his own each time. He'd even been in some nasty bar fights and had come through unscathed. He was an Angel. At least, he was, until he quit. It had never occurred to him that certain strengths would probably leave him after a while. As hard as he tried, he could not break the straps that tethered him to the bed. His ability to have people forget who he was appeared to be intact and was reinforced when moments later Barney the nurse walked in, followed closely by Dr. Ranja.