The Reluctant Painter

I don’t particularly like my job but at least I have one. My brother is super protective and made me move to the desert across the street from him. I can’t blame him. It’s not like I was doing much with my life bumming around with my friends getting high. His only condition was that I get a job so I took the first job that came my way. The Artist Agency calls my position a “Hungry Artist” which is a fancy way of saying this is a shit job.

Even with this job and the freeish housing things aren’t exactly going my way. Yeah, I'm grateful to have a steady income, to live in the trailer my brother owns, and for the money that he and his wife send me to help keep up with bills. Things keep seeming to go downhill day after day lately. My smoking hot girlfriend broke up with me. Then my dog Shep got sick. And then when my best friend Eden took me out to try to cheer me up I ended up trying to make out with her. I got a black eye for it. She hasn’t spoken to me since. Things really couldn’t be worse for me right now.

Thankfully the Artist Agency called the other day to hire me to finish up the new mural at the gym in Kelix City. I can’t say that I am the best artist but work is work and it will help take my mind off of things for a little while. It's just painting anyway. I took the day job begrudgingly and made my way to head to Kelix City. It takes two buses and one train to get to Kelix City from New Bertsnal where I live. That costs me $23 just to get to the job site and back. The agency only has me scheduled for four hours to finalize the mural. I make $23 an hour. I’m about to make less than $100 for four hours of work. This job fucking sucks.

Unfortunately, the job site was downstairs in the men's locker room. This part of Kelix City is elevated over the rest of the city. I had been hoping that maybe at least I’d have a good view all day even if it was just some housewives doing yoga badly. Realizing that I had gotten the shit end of the stick I plugged in my earbuds and got to work.

After a few hours, one guy with bad diarrhea and several smelly dudes later the job was done. It was pretty nice; an optical illusion of the wall broken down showing the earth and the moon from above. I hadn’t taken a break so I decided to spend the last 30 minutes of my time having lunch. I grabbed what I thought were all of my bags of paint supplies and headed outside.

Finding a bench outside, I chowed down on leftover pizza that my SIL sent to my place last night. I noticed a bag with the painting supplies that didn’t look familiar. It was plain black with a thick gray zipper and felt kind of expensive in my hand. I opened it up expecting that maybe I had picked up someone's gym bag by mistake. To my surprise, it was full of cash! Thick bundled stacks of cash with $1000 markers on the bands. Holy shit! It looked like there was a couple of grand in this bag alone. I’ve never seen this much money ever in my life!

Quickly but trying not to look suspicious, I zipped the bag back up, grabbed all the other bags, and threw what was left of the pizza slice to the pigeons that were hungry watching me eat. I hurried down to the subway level to catch a train back to New Bertsnal. This time the cost of the tickets and bus fare didn't even phase me considering I had a few thousand bucks in one of the bags I was lugging back home.

I don't usually pay any mind to how long it takes to get around on public transportation. I am a habitually late person but this time I was buzzing in my seat with anticipation about arriving in my neighborhood. When the bus finally got to the corner of my street I practically ran all the way home. I headed straight for my shed where I usually keep all of my painting supplies. My dog followed me in as he's keen to do when I arrive home. I know he's expecting that we will go for a run or a swim in the river like we tend to do every evening but not today.

After I stowed the supplies away I unzipped the mysterious bag and dumped everything on the ground. Inspecting everything that tumbled out of the bag, I find a mix of both new and used stacks of bills all with $1000 marked bands on them. I quickly counted everything out and totaled it up. There was $20,000 in that bag! I've only got like $2,700 to my name and that's only because my brother gave me $1,500 last Christmas. Shit, this is a lot of money.

While I gaped over my luck at finding this bag o’cash I noticed a notebook where I had originally dumped everything out. It's a regular hardcover black notebook except for the scythe debossed on the cover. Opening it, I flipped through the pages. Most are oddly blank until I get to almost the end. In very neat handwriting there is what looks like the details of a contract. It was a few pages long and not written in English. It could possibly be in Latin but I could only make out the few words in English; Jack-of-all-Trades, billionaire, beach house, global superstar, and the name Charles Andrei signed at the end. That name sounded familiar but I could put my finger on it. There is another signature next to it that I couldn't decipher. The letters kept playing tricks on my eyes. The first time I looked at it I thought it said Hel. The next time I read Ankou, then Thanatos, and finally Magere Hein. That's not possible, I thought and closed the book.

Suddenly it was very cold in the shed. The window pains started to frost up and I could see my breath before me. The sun had been setting when I got home but it doesn't get this cold in the desert ever. Shep started barking and growling at something behind me. I hadn't heard the door to the shed open but I had a feeling that I wasn't alone. I turned around slowly and had the shock of my life. It was my mom. At least it looked like my mom. My mom died when I was very young. I don't have any memories of her except for the stories my brother told me but there she was in my shed.

She didn't look entirely here but not like a ghost either; she was very pale and almost transparent yet her face was as kind as every photo I'd seen and her hair was the same fiery red that both my brother and I inherited. Although she looked as real as any person there was something about the air around her that made her appearance seem as if I was looking at her on a screen that wasn't in focus. She was unmoving although her dark clothes and hair seemed to be moving around her by some unfelt breeze as she stared at me with her piercing eyes. Even though this was my mom I couldn't help the feeling of fear that was creeping up my spine.

“Mom?” I manage to ask in a quiet, trembling voice.

“When Death comes it comes with a friendly face that you miss dearly and hold close to your heart, Josh Swanson,” there is something otherworldly about her voice. It sounds both like a whisper yet booming and as if many people were talking at the same time. It's hard to listen to.

“Death?” I could feel a strong flood of terror surge through my limbs but I pushed it down and tried to stay calm, “Am I dying?”

“No, Josh Swanson. You have something that belongs to me.”

My body began to tremble and my breath quickens. I knew I wasn't scared because here was Death with the face of my mother but something about what was happening was making me feel a kind of way. I pushed through those feelings again and asked, “I have something of yours? What could I possibly have that belongs to Death? I barely have anything.”

“The notebook”

I take a shaky breath as I look down at the notebook still in my hand. My thumb lightly grazed the scythe shape of the cover and it seems obvious at that moment that this book should belong to Death. The shed is small and Death is standing just on the inside of the door but it takes me an extreme amount of effort to walk the few steps to hand the notebook over to her. By the time I am close enough for Death to take the book from my hand I am shaking all over, I can barely breathe or keep upright. It almost felt like I was dying the closer I got to her.

Once she takes the books from my hand I hurry back to the other side of the shed in an effort to put as much distance between us to stop this awful feeling, “I just found it honestly. I didn't take it. I don't even know where to find something like that to take it from you.”

“I know this Josh Swanson. Humans are idiots and I have trusted them too often. You are not in trouble. And the human who is is none of your concern.”

“That's good to hear,” I sigh in relief and quickly add, “The part about me, I mean.”

Death knobs and turns to leave. I am desperate for her to go but I think to ask one thing, “Hey, what about the money?”

Death looks at the piles of money on the floor and then back to me her expression unchanging, “Do with it as you wish. I have no need for such things. I will give you one warning Josh Swanson. Use it for any selfish or indulgent needs and I will be visiting you or a loved one much sooner than was written."

I felt impossibly colder as Death said these words before she vanished. I like to think that I'm brave. Brave enough to not be that freaked out when the Grim Reaper suddenly shows up in my shed but even this paranormal event had me close to pissing myself in fear. It was some time before I had felt okay to move from the shed and go into my trailer. When I finally summon up the courage I take a shower and turn my favorite podcast on to try to calm my nerves. While I was pulling together dinner for me and Shep a breaking news announcement came on as the podcasts played through.

Multimillion-dollar, global superstar and prolific writer Charles Andrei most famous for his Sugar Babes series was found dead in his Malibu home just minutes ago by his publisher. The cause of his death is unknown at this time but there was an eyewitness report that the home looked as if it had been broken into despite the heavy gates and armed security on the property.

That name...that was the name in Death's notebook. Something about the bag of money must have been a bribe for Death to get him out of that contract in the book. Maybe he chickened out and didn't have the balls to face Death again. Whatever it was we will never know.