A Grim night for Poker

Choices We Make.

            A group of friends met for their weekly game of poker at Bob and Linda’s house. They liked to move the game around from house to house, each host getting an opportunity to show off their cooking ability and den environment. They had all been playing for an hour when there came a knock at the door. Bob gave an awkward smile as his wife Linda turned a deep shade of pink at the interruption, no one was expected. Bill made a crack about pizza delivery and the others chuckle save for the hosts whose antipasto had proved to be anti-edible. Linda glared at Bob as if to accuse him of ordering the pizza behind her back; Bob shrugged defensively and settled in to out wait the pizza man-if that was who it was- he had a good hand and betting was fierce.

            Steve gave a laugh and tossed in his hand as he stood and walked to answer the door. Linda looked sick and glared at Bob for not doing his host duty, Bob shrugged again as he had gotten shrugging down to a fine art and nodded his approval to Steve. Steve opened the door. It wasn’t a pizza delivery man; Linda breathed a sigh of relief. It was the Grim Reaper.

            Steve was speechless, which was probably what Steve did best. He took pride in how speechless he could be and he worked daily at it. He was speechless at work where he smiled and sat speechless at all the board meetings. This was due in part to his boss, Jillian who was the second biggest motor mouth that Steve had ever known. He was especially speechless at home where the biggest motor mouth belonged to his wife and the third belonging to their daughter. Steve practiced being speechless in the car when he drove to work and when he took showers. He was really good at being speechless.

            Steve looked at the Grim Reaper who looked back at him and he was being speechless with a new level of pizzazz. Steve stepped back and Linda hustled over putting on her best hostess face, which was bad since she was lousy at the hostess gig. She was also pissed at the interruption and pissed at her husband probably because he was a shrugger who never accomplished anything at home. When she would ask him to mow the yard he would shrug and go back to watching TV. When she would put own her best nighty and look alluring giving him little winks and shuffles, he would shrug and go put on his pajamas. Linda realized that she spent most of her time being pissed at her husband and glaring at him.

            “Hi, can I help you?” Linda said to the Grim Reaper.

            “Yes.” It replied.

            “Yes?”

            “Yes.” It said as it swept into the house. It walked across to her seat at the table and sat down, leaving Linda embarrassed all over again. Linda huffed and sniffed and glared at its back while wondering whether she spent more time being pissed or embarrassed at how her life had turned out. Now this Grim Reaper had come over uninvited and was sitting in her chair- was it going to drink her wine too?

            Steve returned to his seat ready to be speechless all over again while he waited for the Grim Reaper guy to explain it. Bob shrugged at his wife as she walked around to stand behind him and he tossed his cards on the table thinking he had won the hand. Richard stopped him with a bark of laughter as Bob reached for the chips. Bob looked at Richard as the man splayed out his winning hand and gave another bark of laughter.

            Before anyone could react the Grim Reaper picked up the cards with one bony hand and started shuffling them, each individual card flipping around each skeletal finger so fast it blurred. Lou started to speak as was her due since she was Steve’s wife and the biggest motor mouth he had even known, but no sound came out as a deathly silence settled on the table. The Grim Reaper dealt the cards face up to each player. Everyone had pretty good hands but the Reaper’s was all aces and eights in spades and clubs.

Joe, the poker expert gasped and a chill ran down his spine as he saw the hand. He knocked his knuckles on the wood table and looked around for some salt. The Reaper had dealt himself the infamous Dead Man’s Hand.

            How Joe was a gasper, he owned a wide variety of gasps; in fact he took great pride of this variety of gasps. He would practices his gasps in the morning as he shaved and in the car as he drove to work. It was in his car that he discovered that he was good at gasping. He had spilled his coffee in his lap one morning and let loose a gasp that had both startled and pleased him. For the next few mornings he would routinely spill coffee in his lap so he could capture the gasp perfectly. Then he tried various other foods and drinks marveling at the chilly gasps from icy coke to the shrill gasp when he burned himself with a cherry from his cigarette. The gasp he let loose at the poker table was his signature gasp: it spoke of wonder and fear and deep foreboding as if to say that he had felt someone walk on his future grave. Of course, this was the Grim Reaper, so it was entirely true.

            “What’s the bet?” Leo said nervously, he always asked what the bet was.

            “Your deaths.” The Grim Reaper replied.

            Richard gave a nervous bark of laughter.

            “Oh is that all.” Sheila sniped, she was Richard’s wife. “Well as you can see we are all very much alive.”

            “You are but not for long.” The Grim Reaper said flatly.

            “And how do you know that?” Barb asked from her place next to Leo, her husband. She was having a blond moment as everyone apparently see the Grim Reaper as more than just some creepy skeleton in a polo shirt, khaki slacks and golf shoes.

            “Antipasto.”

            “I knew it!” Heather screamed. “Your antipasto has done us in!”

            Linda looked pissed and embarrassed and looked around the table.

            “I followed the directions, to the letter.”

            “It wasn’t olive oil it was turpentine.” The Grim Reaper replied.

            “But- how would turpentine get into the kitchen?” Linda frantically asked though she already knew the answer.

            The Grim Reaper pointed at Bob, who shrugged. Richard threw his beer bottle at him and it bounced off Bob’s head. Bob went down; the couples looked at Richard who gave a bark of laughter.

            “We’re all dead anyway.”

            “Actually, that’s why I am here.” The Grim Reaper said “It seems we have a problem.”

            “A problem?” Sheila asked after the long pause had passed.

            “We cannot process you at this time there’s a backlog and the boss has decided that you cannot be taken at this time.” The Grim Reaper said.

            Everyone looked immensely relieved.

            “That’s good, because I am going to sue Richard for assaulting me with a beer bottle.” Bob said as he climbed back into his chair from the floor.

            “Not before I sue you for poisoning me.” Richard said with a snort of mirth- he was going for variety since barking laughter was getting old.

            Lou started to add her two bits but stopped as the Grim Reaper raised a pale finger. She was getting upset at not having an opportunity to chatter incessantly.

            “It’s not that simple. You are all already dead.”

            “Not me” Joe said looking at his hands. “I am fine, look.”

            “I am but you aren’t seeing what is really here, you are all still in denial.” The Grim Reaper said. Joe had a sudden glimpse of the room as it really was and saw the tangled bodies, some clawing at their throats, others clutching each other, Linda feet sticking out of the bathroom door. Barb had died screaming. Joe decided that denial was better than truth and went back to it quickly.

            “I think I see what you are saying.” Joe said blinking and relaxing as the denial took over. “What happens now?”

            “Reincarnation or Rejuvenation.”

            “What?” repeated Joe mirroring the other peoples shock and general confusion.

            “You need to choose whether you want to be rejuvenation or reincarnated.” The Grim Reaper replied evenly as he was used to such dimwitted responses in his line of business.

            “So you are saying we are dead, Bob and Linda’s antipasto has poisoned us, and the “boss”- at which point flicked his index and middle fingers in a quote movement- “has no room for us in heaven or hell.” Joe sat back rather smugly with himself; he was good at repeating and summing up peoples conversations in nice little phrases.

            “And now we have to choose whether we wanted to come back as something else or be rejuvenated or something.” Linda finished while giving a smug smile towards Joe for leaving out the decision part of the summary. Linda liked finishing for others- especially Joe since he was so very smug about his summarizing abilities.

            “Yes.” The reaper said grimly, while he counted his chips. “Where can I cash this in?”

            Richard gave his signature nervous laugh at that and looked around for support but found none as each of the people seemed to be lost in thought over what to decide.

Death at My Door

“Forgiveness is divine.” Helena mumbled, forcing the words out in a gasp of pain from where she lay dying in their wide bed, death stood at the door as she pleaded with her husband to forgive her for leaving so soon. Her husband rocked backed and forth on the ladder backed chair as he stiffly clasped his varicose hands between his knees. His eyes shed no tears but the desperate pleading was present in them as he strained to hear her words. Her vision fogged and she almost lost sight of the slight shadow that haunted the doorway to the tiny room where she would die.
            “No me dejen solo! No me dejen solo!”
            She blinked through the tears and the sweat. What had her husband just said. Translate, dammit translate, oh the pain, oh god such pain. Helena choked and gasped and writhed on the twisted sheets in the little white room. The pale gray light of an overcast morning drifting in through the small dirty case window set in one wall opposite the straight narrow bed. What did he say?
            “No dejes que la muerte te lleva lejos de mí”
            Spanish? Was that Spanish? Where did Josef learn Spanish? Then his family heritage flooded her mind, his father’s home in the Pyrenees on the slopes of Caída de Rayo- was that the name of that place? Helena tried but the pastoral scene washed away as she cried out in spittle and red mist. She felt as if the room had been fogged by her blood, her life, her death and her despair.
            “No dejes-“ But he didn’t finish this time. Josef grasped her hand trying to pull it away from the bed.
            Helena howled like a wolf trapped by a bear trap, the cruel cast iron teeth sunk deep in her flesh. Josef let go of the hand and shrank away from her falling from the chair and crawling away into the darkest corner of the room. Helena thought she could hear him whimpered like a kicked dog from the bed. She wished she could console him and tell him it would be alright. She wished that the pain would leave her and allow her to rest. She could almost see the gray fool at her door smile and shake his head slowly as if to say “no, there be dying left to be done first, my child.”
            Dying, that was what it was all about, not death but the transition from life to death. Why did it have to be so hard, why couldn’t it not come in her sleep? The dryness of her throat crackled into her musings reminding her that she had not drunk since the night before. Water- she needed water.
            “Water.” She croaked. Soft sobbing greeted her as a new silence filled the room. Dammit, she must speak Spanish if she wanted Josef to understand. What is the Spanish word for water? She knew this; after all she had wooed the shy Josef with her soft spoken words of the language.
            Why couldn’t she remember the word? Water, teatro?
No that was something else.
            Aqua? No but it must be close to that.
            “Agua.” She whispered into the echoless room.
            “Que?”
            “Agua.”
            A moment passed and then she could see Josef making his way passed the foot of her bed. His nightshirt was ripped and there was blood on it. Her blood- No, his, he had torn his hair out in his despair and his scalped now bled down his forehead and onto the white cotton. He looked tragic as he fumbled with the water pitcher and cup. His hands shook so badly that he dropped the cup as he went to pour the water. Helena could hear the cup shatter as it hit the cold stone like the lid of the sarcophagi that would soon close on her.
            Josef sobbed again and looked about desperately. Helena spoke the word agua again but nothing came but a gasp. Josef started praying as he brought the pitcher down towards her lips. His prayer was mostly unintelligible as the pitcher tilted towards her mouth. The water came in a trickle at first. The flood of coolness and relief slid down her aching throat as she gulped in painful chokes to get its coolness inside her heated body.
            Water of life, she thought in vain as it continued to come. Could it give her one more day to run in the flower fields of her memories? Would it give her back her beauty that she had enjoyed until the thin gray man had stolen it from her? She began to smile as the water came and the horror followed, because the water did not stop. She opened her eyes as she sputtered to stare into Josef’s wildly crazed ones.
            “Voy a ponerle fin.” He said almost gleefully in his anxiety.
            “No….” Helena tried to say. Not this, please don’t kill me Josef. Don’t do this to me- don’t do this to yourself. She struggled to use her arms but she was too weak to raise them. Josef took her head in his left hand, gently pulling her hair back as he continued to pour with his right.
            “Voy a fin que el dolor” Josef said with triumph as Helena began to slip away. Josef wept as he continued to repeat the words like a mantra until the water ran out... Which given the size of a pitcher was not enough to drown a cat never mind a dying woman.
            As her vision cleared she could see Josef staring in disbelief at the empty pitcher as if accusing it of failing him as well. He raised it above his head and for a moment Helena was afraid that he would plunge it down smashing her face with its lacquered porcelain but he threw it across the room instead. As it exploded into fine dust and chunks of flying white and blue shards; Helena remembered it had been a wedding present from Josef’s mother. The cottage came back into view among the cedar trees and the smoke rising from its lone chimney.
            Apparently Josef remembered where the jug had come from too, for her started uttering Mama over and over as he stumbled across the small room. He fell to his knees and began to gather the shards of the broken pitcher into his shaking hands. He wept openly now as he repeated his mother’s name and picked up the pieces.
            The wetness of the cold water running down her face brought Helena back from her meandering observation. She tried to raise her right hand to wipe it away but the effort was too much. The nausea swept over her and the room spun away as pain crept back in among swirling colors. She fought down the sickness and panic until the room settled and her vision cleared. She could no longer hear Josef at all and he was lost to her vision. She was alone.
            How long had she been out of it? Minutes or hours, who was to know? It had felt like days or seconds. For a moment the room swam out of focus and Helena desperately fought to clear her mind of the pointless time consuming pondering. How much time did she have left? Would death come quickly? Painlessly?
            No, she thought, no, I will not give into panic and hysteria. She looked over to the door trying to find the familiar shadow but it stood empty. Now she heard faint sounds from elsewhere in the house-probably Josef storing the shards away for mending- if it could be mended. Josef had always been one to repair, mend or fix before resulting to replacement of any item. The thought of him sitting in the garden shed surrounded by broken pots, tools and junk brought a smile to her lips. Stuff that he was in the process of mending or planning to mend; how he would be able to stand not being able to fix her.
            She remembered bringing him tea as he sat there each Saturday afternoon working hard to get a screw loose or balance the arm of a statue he was gluing. He would look up at her, his black bang falling over one eye as his slender hands struggled with a piece of wood. He would puff out his cheeks and blow a whistle through his lips. He would thanks her quietly in his shy was and take the tea.
            Sometimes they had made love at the tea had been consumed. Josef would slap his knees and stand up and declare that he had accomplished all he could for the day. He would take Helena in his arms ad kiss her long and slow. Then he would scoop her up and carry her out into the orchard behind their house and they would make love for what seemed an eternity. But eventually Josef would return to the shed to resume where he had left off.
         
            “Ahora no puede haber sangre!”

            Josef had returned, he stood just inside the door holding her death in his out-stretched hands. The shine of the stainless steel glinted as the small pane of light caught and released its sleek beauty. The long blade of the chef’s knife rested on Josef’s right palm which bled from a small cut made by it.
            A cold chill of horror overtook her, Josef had found a way to fix his broken wife. She stiffly shook her head, her eyes pleading with him. Josef stood for a moment longer in triumph then lowered the knife and crossed to her. He sat down on the side of the bed and leaned over to brush her hair back with his bloody palm.

            “No te preocupes mi amor podemos estar juntos ahora”
         
            Helena mind cleared as the fear drained from her, the translation came finally- he had said that we can be together. Josef was intending to kill them both. A new surge of panic and fear flooded through her veins as Josef raised the blade in his left hand, his right still on her forehead. He began to pray.

            “Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo…”

            Our Father who art in heaven- Helena’s mind translated as she flexed her hands as the pain drained away. A purity of body took hold and she felt feeling rush back into her paralytic limbs.

            “Santificado sea tu Nombre"

            Hallowed be thy name. The last rites- no not that- or was it? She thought that the prayer was supposed to have something to do with God having mercy on our souls. Mercy, that was a laugh, where was that Christian feat now. There was no mercy for her dying in agony, no mercy for the despair of her beloved husband and no mercy for what he was about to do to her and himself.

            "Venga tu reino-"
         
            Thy Kingdom come- thy will be done, on earth as it is in Cielo. The translation began to muddle as her hands swept out across the be in frantic jerks. Josef raised the knife above his head and held it there. Helena could see a sliver of blood sliding down the blade towards the tip.

            “Tho I paseo por el valle de sombra de muerte-“

            Had he skipped something? She had been so focused on the droplet of blood forming on the tip of the knife floating somewhere above her that she was no longer sure what Josef was saying. Her scrabbling hands found two things at once. Her left hit a thick heavy object that gave in a curling movement- what?

            “I fear no evil shall suffer me.”

            Josef had broken back into English if you could call it that. Her left hand grasped at the object in vain to find purchase but failed time and time again to get more that a page off of the object. Bible, it was a bible that she had found. The family bible was leather bound and heavy- so heavy that she had trouble lifting it when she was well. Despair flooded through her.

            “Tu cuchillo y mano de guía a mí.”

            Now he was changing the words to justify his act, his crime. He would get himself to believe that it was God’s hand guiding his to kill his wife and himself. Hatred and repulsion spread through her chest as the hot anger boiled her blood. How dare he be so lazy, so cowardly, so cruel?

            “Y vamos a morar junto a la casa del Señor para siempre. "

            The sacrilege sickened her, O Josef how could you? Her left hand drummed on the bible until it froze- if there was a bible on the bed then surely there was more. Her right hand closed around the other object. She gathered all her strength and will and courage. The drop of blood fell in slow motion as her right arm became a blur.

            “How dare you take the Lord in vain!” She screeched up at his surprised face.

            The wooden cross hit Josef in the face, the blow was little more powerful than a weak slap. Still the effect was the same as a gunshot. Josef stood up in terror at the sight of the cross held between them. Then he looked down at his sin, the knife in his hand. Hastily he threw it down like a hot snake and back away shaking his head. Then the despair and defeat took him and he fled from the room howling a long desperate shriek.

            “Josef! “ Helena cried in a mixture of sorrow and anger. Her voice seemed clearer now.
            She stared hard at the shadow in the door desperately hoping that Josef would come back in repentance. Desperately praying he would not return with renewed nerve. The pain had passed and a certain euphoria settled around here like soft rain in the wake of a summer wind storm. She looked back up at the new wooden cross wondering where it had come form.
         
            “How long must I wait for this to end?” She asked no one in particular but looked to the door in a guilty reticence as if a priest would walk through to hear her last confession. No one came through it and only its shadows flickered there.
         
            “All you have to do is ask.”
         
            The disembodied voice came to her clear as if the speaker stood just inside the doorway. Her eyes searched the shadows of the door and strained to see beyond it down the narrow hall. The hand holding the cross trembled slightly.

            “Who’s there?” Fear filled her breast and she choked on a sob, how long had this man with the steel wool voice been watching- waiting?

            “An old familiar friend, Helen.” The voice replied from the shadows of the door.

            “Josef?”

            “He is lost to you now, sweet Helen; indeed he is lost to himself. Maybe Jesu can forgive him.” The shadow in the door moved slightly as if the speaker leaned back against the door as he spoke. “Josef will not be able to forgive himself much less you or me.”

            “You- you’re a figment, a fear, a dream!” Helena cried, knowing that her hour had arrived.

            ‘That and so much more, Helen.” The Shade said form the door jamb.

            “I won’t go, I can’t go, my name is Helena!” She had begun to cry, all the while wondering why she had started in the first place.

            “Death comes to all men. There is no denying it, no escape from it, only time to take it in your embrace and live in it. Death is a swift and merciful irony that appeals all at once to the romantic and the fool. All things must pass, yesterday you were young and the men called you Helena as you danced in and out of their lives; but now today has arrived and I will call you Helen so that you will be ready for tomorrow.”

            “Will it hurt?” Helena asked just like a little girl, she abstractly wondered if huddling in her bed like a little girl would fit the scene better than the grown woman crying and fretting like one.

            “Could it hurt worse than dying did?”

            She began to ask what he meant by that- then the truth came to her and she sat up and stepped lightly away from the bed. She felt young and light and virile. She felt new and fresh, far away from the ache and sweat and torment of the previous night. She looked at the kindly old man in the doorway and smiled a smile that made her eyes flash.

            “Come my friend let’s take a walk.” She said as she took Death by the hand and together they walked away from the little room.

Grendel oddity

The makeup of a monster

            Out of the dark depths of the foul-smelling waters he came. Up like a hungry wolf leaping from the still surface onto the black rocks along the muddy shore. For a moment he paused crouching, his gruesome bulk a shadowy mass bending him low between his knees.

            A new scent flowed into his nostrils and they flared out like that of a grim nightmare. He stood up revealing the eight feet of misshapen muscles shaped like gnarled roots. He stretched out his long arms of sinew and bone, his corded muscles flexing in the moonlight. He raised them as in supplication to the orb, its light bathing his mottled skin in yellow light. He was the reason old women whispered stories in the night, he was the reason the Danes had thick doors and heavy iron locks.

            Each of his eight thin fingers displayed a scythe like claw which were known to make the hardest of warriors shake in their hauberks. The rusted red of each claw stretched out toward the stars. The moonlight reveals the fungal moss on his mottled skin covered with warts and moles like studs on an archaic suit of dusky leather armor. With a grunt he strides forward from the water, his powerful legs similar to his long arms clad in the skins of previous victims. The skins trail water showing flashes of scale, fun and hair. His feet webbed for swimming step from the muck of the marsh water to stand in the soft peat.

            He swung his dreadful locks of ropelike hair around as he scented the air with deep breaths of air. His ears are revealed with each shake of his head, cauliflowered from innumerable fights with the hated north men. A crooked nose, pock marked with cists and scars juts out of his face like a knife. His black eyes shift around it as he peers out into the desolation. His thin slice of a mouth spreads into a mirthless grin that snarls as green fluorescent down his furry chin. His sharp teeth are colored like mold edged like broken glass.

            He drops his arms and looks about into the moor out into the gloom. At first he hesitates at the edge of the dark pool; then with sudden energy, he strides out into the night. This hellish fiend from the darker pits of Hades, holding one malevolent desire, the lust for flesh, human to be precise.

            This cursed monster, this unholy seed of Cain, strode through the fens with nothing on his mind but the cold murder on his mind. He would break into the Hall of Herot, slay these new strangers and feast on their meat. Grendel, the prowler of the fens, revenge foremost in his thoughts as he took longer strides. Little could he know that this would be his last night to kill, to feed. For tonight, Grendel, the terror of the Danes, would play a losing hand against the might of Beowulf if not a losing arm.

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