Death leaned lazily against the hood of a black-and-yellow checkered cab, staring down at my lifeless corpse as it bobbed in the murky water. The cab wasn’t one of the sleek, newer models—this thing was a fossil from a long-forgotten era. But in a world where the cost of parts rivaled rent, relics like this were more rule than exception, patched up with mismatched upgrades just to keep rolling.


    The ocean’s idle ebb and flow made my body dance, bouncing against the stilts of the dock. The motion only made it seem more dead. I stood silent and still, trying to make sense of the scene.


    “Well, I’ll be damned. Jack Callaghan, in the spectral. I’m a huge fan.”


    Death’s smile faded as he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Real shame,” he said, thrusting a long finger toward the body. “It’ll be a few hours before anyone finds it, at least. Hate to see water damage like that. Not to mention the hungry fish. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d put money down on a closed casket.” He reached down with one slender arm and lifted my face out of the water, taking a moment to consider it. “Yep, definitely closed.” He dropped it with a splash.


    Death looked different from what you’d expect. He wore a cloak and bore a scythe, as he’s classically depicted. But the cowl was pulled back, revealing the face of a man. He looked middle-aged, with faint lines around his eyes, the kind etched by years of smiling. His skin was sun-kissed, though still pale at the neck, and he had the unassuming air of a dad who never missed a soccer game but forgot his own anniversary every year.


    The thing that got me, though, wasn’t his face. It was the way he felt real—too real—while everything else around me felt paper-thin, like a cheap holo-projection. The world was off, flat, empty, like it had been sketched by someone who forgot how depth worked. My head throbbed, intense rhythmic drums, like the System was trying to sync with something that didn’t exist anymore.


    I tried to focus, but my life was a haze—a chaotic jumble of fractured images, static, and half-formed thoughts. Desperate, I triggered a Status Check, but the only response was a flare of agony, a white-hot spike tearing through my nerves. The System was gone, glitching itself into oblivion. And me? I wasn’t far behind.


    “Don’t worry about the mind fog,” he said, with the bedside manner of an experienced nurse. “The memories come back... or they don’t. You’re thinking without a brain now. New sensation. Don’t know why people try to think with their brains anyhow. Gums up the works, if you ask me. But what do I know? I’m just the embodiment of Life’s Ending, the face of Transition itself.”


    “It’s coming back to me. But it’s a bit of a blur,” I replied, my voice distant, like it belonged to someone else.


    “Quite right. Few people like to hold on to their lives. Easier to let it all slip away, isn’t it? Don’t think too much about it—always leads to headaches.” His accent was a patchwork, shifting like a bad signal, slipping from one region to another mid-sentence, as though he couldn’t quite decide who he wanted to be.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I studied him, then looked back at the body—my body. I should’ve been more shocked, maybe terrified, but I wasn’t. I’d seen plenty of strange things: demons, cursed houses, hellish battlefields filled with horrors that refused to die. But this? This was something else entirely.


    The edges of my vision flickered, faint bursts of static dancing in the periphery. Images pulsed through my mind—jagged and fragmented. Memories? Hallucinations? A system glitch? I couldn’t tell anymore. I’d heard the stories—about systems and brains fusing, about neural interfaces going haywire when the end came. Machines spitting out their final, desperate moments as the mind unraveled. I guess this was mine.


    Reality rippled, a hollow hum echoing somewhere in the distance.


    “I’m definitely going insane, or dying,” I muttered, the words feeling heavy and inevitable. “Or both.”


    From this perspective, the corpse hardly even looked like me. Maybe it was because it was dead, or because I wasn’t used to looking at the back of my own head. Then again, and more likely, I just wanted to pretend it was someone else. That I was looking at the body of some other poor hapless schlub. That this was all just a dream. The details of my life came slowly when I let them, but they slipped through my fingers like gossamer if I reached too hard.


    “So, this is it?” I asked. “I’m dead?”


    “I’m afraid so, buddy. But don’t sweat it, no-body’s perfect.” Death waited with an expectant stare before shrugging off his smirk with a sigh. “Tough crowd.” He shook his head subtly. “What do you expect when talking to stiffs?”


    “You’re not really what I expected,” I said.


    “You know, I get that a lot. It’s like the hood and scythe aren’t enough anymore. People want the whole song and dance. I mean, that was good and all for the first thousand years, but come on, can you honestly tell me you’d prefer this?”


    He lifted his hood over his head. Black tendrils of smoke spiraled around him, raising him into the air several feet. His face, hidden behind the deep and endless darkness of his hood, left two fiery orbs peering back at me. His hands, skeletal and grotesque, pointed down at me as he rose higher and higher still. Winds crashed hard, and I struggled to stay on my feet.


    Then a voice that sounded as old as time itself. To say it spoke would be wholly lacking. Rather, it intoned without speaking. Deep and full and all that was.


    “DEATH HATH COMETH, PUNY MORTAL. BOW NOW FOR YOUR TIME IS AT ITS END. ACCEPT THE FATE OF ALL. FOR I AM THE DESTINY OF ALL CREATURES. THE FINAL WORD OF ALL WORDS. THE…”


    “Okay! Okay! I get your point,” I shouted out against the whipping winds. This was insane.


    Within a blink, he was the middle-aged man again. “See what I mean?” he said, straightening up and dusting himself off. “And all that smoke leaves a smell. Heck of a time at the dry cleaners.” He assessed me briefly. “Hey, you don’t happen to know of a good dry cleaner in town? Possibly one familiar with shawls. Good cleaners are hard to find. I’d machine wash, but I hate to...” He looked up and caught my eyes before shaking his head. “I suppose not. Well, no matter. It’s about time to go.” He opened the backseat of the cab and made a sweeping motion with his hand.