Eternity Times, April 43 rd
After assisting for a mere four millennia at his noble work of collecting souls, our Hades office reports that young Mr. Thanatos, lately fulfilling the office of collector of souls and debt agent, has been lost to us in a motor accident off a country road in New Hampshire. He is survived by parents Nyx and Erebus, and his numerous siblings, notably Oneiroi, Nemesis, and his twin Hypnos. We received a letter from the Horse Guards of the Armageddon Plain lamenting the loss of “one whom we called Pale; signed Famine, War, and Conquest aka Pestilence,” saying “he will be missed by us all.”
This article went on for twenty-seven fireproof pages plus an opinion editorial as a supplement for Limbo residents, running eighteen pages as they had an eternity to read it in, but mention of an obituary was curiously absent.
Pushing up his goggles the youth splashed about wildly in the water. His duster was waterlogged and a poor friend in the deep tow of the current. He wriggled out of it, watching it swirl away downstream. Watching it go down, he realized it had been a while since he swam, and his shoes, cardigan, tie, and shirt soon followed it. (The traditional cloak would have been in keeping with his office, but he would have been too conspicuous; every day he lamented that fateful day in 1903 the magazines said cloaks were out of date. Then he remembered that
somehow, that particular life, or more precisely that existence, was no longer his.)
Twenty feet upstream the car lay upside down in the middle of the river, water hissing against hot iron. There were planks all over the place, a plentitude of planks, and none of them were intact. A glance showed that the water had extinguished his inverted torch, and the scythe had probably gone downstream by now. Worst of all, he was entirely covered with flesh, and in the pink of health. He looked up to see the three men from the college sitting at the riverside with their sketchbooks, frozen with shock.
“Hello up there!”
“Good heavens, man, you’re alive!”
“Yes—I seem to have lost most of my clothes. Anyone have a spare set?”
“But of course—here in this Gladstone bag—we’ll clear out; come on men,
let’s give him ten minutes; we’re just glad you were not killed!” And they scrambled up the bank, their large tenured stomachs jiggling.
The youth had retained his pants but those were soaked, so he simply put on another shirt and decided to call it good, though he did dry his face and hair in a sweater, which he then rolled up and put back in the bag.
The men came back down the bank.
“We can’t believe it. We’ll have a team of mules here tomorrow to haul away the car and see what can be done with it. There is an excellent garageman round the next town over who might like it for spare parts.”
“Never mind the car,” he said distracted, “something is horribly wrong.” And he ran for the high ground and the turnpike.
“He’s unlucky in love,” declared one of them, of a poetical bend.
“No, no, Doctor Cunningham; he’s simply of the idle rich and this was his first brush with both reality and gravity.”
“Is that from Marx again? You always quote Marx; I just wanted to do a sketch of the landscape. But I wish we had sketched him—he looked like a—“
“Like a Greek god,” finished the poet.
“Just call me Than. No, really, just call me Than. It—I promise it isn’t short for anything really. Than. Than. Than-k you very much. Than Thanson. No, that will never fly--too like--like a Norwegian. Try it brighter, happier—Just call me Than!” He kept running until safely out of sight of other people (how blasphemous that seemed! Other people—the idea! He had been a demigod, for Zeus’ sake) and leapt nimbly up the rocks on the side of the railroad embankment, running up to the top like a deer, shouting with joy and an abandon previously only seen in Pan, for whom he had once held a snobbish disregard. He saw before him the perfection of a youth in the peak of manhood, a paragon of excellence, and was terrified. The world round him seemed nice.
No, it seemed very nice.
So he did the logical thing and stepped on a bug.
The bug got up and brushed itself off and kept right on going, perhaps a bit offended, or perhaps upset that it wouldn’t be able to cash in its life-insurance policy.
And he looked up and realized that now nothing more could ever die. Death had died, and brought Thanatos to life as an individual, as someone who could—
“I’ve done it!” he cried aloud; “I’ve solved mortality!” He stood astride the railroad embankment in the moment of penultimate vitality of a New England day in April.
“Mortality!” echoed back the hills, “-tality, -tality-tality-talitytalitytality-and he looked up not into the beckoning beams of his colleague Helios, but the incandescent glare of the headlight on the 5:15 accomodation, running late and trying to make up lost time. A sudden clang like being knocked down with a shovel, and a short shock--then the keening of the Westinghouse air-brakes as the train went into emergency.
Eternity Times, Juvember 75 th :
DEATH BACK ON THE JOB; INFERNAL HOUSING MARKET IN ASCENDANCE
The housing markets in Seven Circles and Brimstone Lane have been heating up again,
there is now a fresh supply of new tenants looking for long-term lease. Our agent, the
indefatigable young Mr. Thanatos, appears to have undergone briefly a “near-life”
experience, but he does not let this bother him as he is back on the route, keeping old
Mr. Charon busy down there at the boat landing with plenty of passengers.
--The crew fought their train to a stop a quarter mile later, but the engineer never found anybody splattered across the front of the pilot beam. The professors packed up their picnic, waddled back to the main road, and arrived fifteen minutes late that evening. Doctor Cunningham wondered the longest, but the thoughts went away the moment he saw a student he hadn't asked yet--
"Have you read Marx?"
"Yuh, I have red marks, must be the chairs."
So they continued on, unknowing that the world’s brief dalliance with immortality was over and thinking the whole thing had been a figment of the imagination, which is all a Greek myth really is. Death had died, and then died again, and so will I, and so will you. Double negatives don’t make no positives.
After assisting for a mere four millennia at his noble work of collecting souls, our Hades office reports that young Mr. Thanatos, lately fulfilling the office of collector of souls and debt agent, has been lost to us in a motor accident off a country road in New Hampshire. He is survived by parents Nyx and Erebus, and his numerous siblings, notably Oneiroi, Nemesis, and his twin Hypnos. We received a letter from the Horse Guards of the Armageddon Plain lamenting the loss of “one whom we called Pale; signed Famine, War, and Conquest aka Pestilence,” saying “he will be missed by us all.”
This article went on for twenty-seven fireproof pages plus an opinion editorial as a supplement for Limbo residents, running eighteen pages as they had an eternity to read it in, but mention of an obituary was curiously absent.
Pushing up his goggles the youth splashed about wildly in the water. His duster was waterlogged and a poor friend in the deep tow of the current. He wriggled out of it, watching it swirl away downstream. Watching it go down, he realized it had been a while since he swam, and his shoes, cardigan, tie, and shirt soon followed it. (The traditional cloak would have been in keeping with his office, but he would have been too conspicuous; every day he lamented that fateful day in 1903 the magazines said cloaks were out of date. Then he remembered that
somehow, that particular life, or more precisely that existence, was no longer his.)
Twenty feet upstream the car lay upside down in the middle of the river, water hissing against hot iron. There were planks all over the place, a plentitude of planks, and none of them were intact. A glance showed that the water had extinguished his inverted torch, and the scythe had probably gone downstream by now. Worst of all, he was entirely covered with flesh, and in the pink of health. He looked up to see the three men from the college sitting at the riverside with their sketchbooks, frozen with shock.
“Hello up there!”
“Good heavens, man, you’re alive!”
“Yes—I seem to have lost most of my clothes. Anyone have a spare set?”
“But of course—here in this Gladstone bag—we’ll clear out; come on men,
let’s give him ten minutes; we’re just glad you were not killed!” And they scrambled up the bank, their large tenured stomachs jiggling.
The youth had retained his pants but those were soaked, so he simply put on another shirt and decided to call it good, though he did dry his face and hair in a sweater, which he then rolled up and put back in the bag.
The men came back down the bank.
“We can’t believe it. We’ll have a team of mules here tomorrow to haul away the car and see what can be done with it. There is an excellent garageman round the next town over who might like it for spare parts.”
“Never mind the car,” he said distracted, “something is horribly wrong.” And he ran for the high ground and the turnpike.
“He’s unlucky in love,” declared one of them, of a poetical bend.
“No, no, Doctor Cunningham; he’s simply of the idle rich and this was his first brush with both reality and gravity.”
“Is that from Marx again? You always quote Marx; I just wanted to do a sketch of the landscape. But I wish we had sketched him—he looked like a—“
“Like a Greek god,” finished the poet.
“Just call me Than. No, really, just call me Than. It—I promise it isn’t short for anything really. Than. Than. Than-k you very much. Than Thanson. No, that will never fly--too like--like a Norwegian. Try it brighter, happier—Just call me Than!” He kept running until safely out of sight of other people (how blasphemous that seemed! Other people—the idea! He had been a demigod, for Zeus’ sake) and leapt nimbly up the rocks on the side of the railroad embankment, running up to the top like a deer, shouting with joy and an abandon previously only seen in Pan, for whom he had once held a snobbish disregard. He saw before him the perfection of a youth in the peak of manhood, a paragon of excellence, and was terrified. The world round him seemed nice.
No, it seemed very nice.
So he did the logical thing and stepped on a bug.
The bug got up and brushed itself off and kept right on going, perhaps a bit offended, or perhaps upset that it wouldn’t be able to cash in its life-insurance policy.
And he looked up and realized that now nothing more could ever die. Death had died, and brought Thanatos to life as an individual, as someone who could—
“I’ve done it!” he cried aloud; “I’ve solved mortality!” He stood astride the railroad embankment in the moment of penultimate vitality of a New England day in April.
“Mortality!” echoed back the hills, “-tality, -tality-tality-talitytalitytality-and he looked up not into the beckoning beams of his colleague Helios, but the incandescent glare of the headlight on the 5:15 accomodation, running late and trying to make up lost time. A sudden clang like being knocked down with a shovel, and a short shock--then the keening of the Westinghouse air-brakes as the train went into emergency.
Eternity Times, Juvember 75 th :
DEATH BACK ON THE JOB; INFERNAL HOUSING MARKET IN ASCENDANCE
The housing markets in Seven Circles and Brimstone Lane have been heating up again,
there is now a fresh supply of new tenants looking for long-term lease. Our agent, the
indefatigable young Mr. Thanatos, appears to have undergone briefly a “near-life”
experience, but he does not let this bother him as he is back on the route, keeping old
Mr. Charon busy down there at the boat landing with plenty of passengers.
--The crew fought their train to a stop a quarter mile later, but the engineer never found anybody splattered across the front of the pilot beam. The professors packed up their picnic, waddled back to the main road, and arrived fifteen minutes late that evening. Doctor Cunningham wondered the longest, but the thoughts went away the moment he saw a student he hadn't asked yet--
"Have you read Marx?"
"Yuh, I have red marks, must be the chairs."
So they continued on, unknowing that the world’s brief dalliance with immortality was over and thinking the whole thing had been a figment of the imagination, which is all a Greek myth really is. Death had died, and then died again, and so will I, and so will you. Double negatives don’t make no positives.
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I'm in awe of people that can just churn out pages and pages of writing at will. It's a skill I will never possess!
