Old Smoky bar and burgers, unlike many things, exists most of the time, and when it does it is located on an out-of-the-way mountain road in the Sawatch mountain range in Colorado. Tall and unregulated trees sparsely cover the mountain both above and below the small low-slung burger-joint, and large and unregulated people fill some small fraction of the spaces between. Cars pass the place irregularly, but often enough that it has managed to survive, like a dying animal sipping irradiated water. Old Smokey consists of only one single-story wood building, low-slung and painted a fading red. A rusting metal sign hanging over the entrance reads “Old Smoky Bar and Burgers”, below which it proclaims sarcastically “No one ever dies here”. This is an exaggeration of course. The statement only holds true for the past.
Between the road and the front entrance is a rough gravel field on which the patrons park their vehicles. At this moment, the field is inhabited by five entities. One of the entities has one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head, but currently it is a shadow on a man’s boot, so no one pays it any mind. People don’t tend to notice shadows. The human eye is designed to recognize positive spaces rather than negative spaces, substance rather than absence. This is why it is easy to read white text on black background. We live in a world of shadows, but since they are so easy to ignore it is almost possible to believe they aren’t everywhere.
The second entity is a heavyset redneck man in a two-seater truck parked near the road. His beard is long and orange, his eyes small behind cracked sunglasses, his thick legs up on the dashboard. A Bon Jovi song emits from a cracked speaker, audible for several miles in any direction. A semi-lethal gum infection is slowly working its way around the inside of his mouth, but the man hasn’t had a checkup in seventeen years, so he is not currently aware of this. He keeps licking the underside of his lips every twelve seconds, trying to identify the source of the faint pain in his upper gums. He will probably die at some point, but then again, so does everyone.
The third entity in front of Old Smokey is Death. He has manifested for the occasion as a young boy of about twelve, skin the approximate color of coal dust, sleeves cut off at the shoulders. The boy is deaf, a pun that Death finds incredibly funny. He keeps chuckling to himself behind his mask every couple of seconds. His grey fingers hold a cigarette from which he draws long puffs, sending smoke trails up into the clear blue sky. It is not particularly unusual to find a twelve year old smoking around here, so no one pays him any mind. The entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head watches Death with what could be mistaken by an armature for concern. This of course is ridiculous, as it would require the presence of an emotion.
Directly beside the door stands the fourth entity, a thin man with a baseball cap and a bat. He has been hired by the owners of Old Smoky to beat violently to death anyone who causes trouble in the immediate vicinity. His left boot extends out into the sun, on which a shadow hangs in a lazy manner. The man has a kink in his neck, but if you had an entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head on your boot you probably would to. He stretches his neck agitatedly, rubbing the place where it joins his head. A cloud passes over the sun. The shadow on his boot becomes less visible.
The fifth entity steps out of her out-of-place Toyota Prius, glances nervously around, and walks across the gravel bed. Her shoes make slight crunching noises as she walks. Six eyes and two approximate equivalents follow her to the entrance. A man with the bat watches a door open and close. He rubs his neck, then decides that the Bon Jovi music is pissing him off. He strides towards the truck, bat trailing behind him, kicking up stones. A shadow finds place in the crevasses under his boot and waits. The man with the bat knocks on the windshield twice. Eyes turn under cracked sunglasses.
“Turn it down”
A gum virus infects another five skin cells. Smoke drifts lazily into the air.
“You believe in luck?” Asks the man with the bat. “Cause right now you’re about to be very unlucky.”
A knob is turned. A soundwave decreases in amplitude. The redneck does not believe in luck, but he believes in pain, which is similar. Both can force your hand.
A bat slides across gravel. A neck is rubbed. A shadow returns to its original position. A door has opened and closed. The event has begun.
Jane Doe sits at a table. The seat is hard wood without padding or convenient curvature, and the front left leg is about a centimeter shorter than it needs to be. Her mental state is similarly analogous. She is the sort of person Hollywood would give a line about “showing them all”, a petty sense of revenge which, though appealing, is not her main purpose today. This excursion is simply to gather raw materials for her great work, to begin the process of making a mark on a world that has made so many on her. A returning of favors, a closing of circles. She has always been the unlucky one, the child born under midwinter skies, cursed to a shallow life and deep grave. Luck is a funny thing though. They say that anyone can live forever. They just have to be really lucky.
A waitress walks up and asks for her order. Coffee, dark, no sugar. Normally she can’t stand the stuff, but the coffee has a utility at the moment. The waitress leaves without comment. She has seen it all. Literally. Her eyes are dead, drowned a long time ago.
Jane Doe spills a saltshaker. This takes some doing, as it has to be done accidentally, but she manages it as she shifts the table away from her to make room for her legs. The small pool of salt registers almost immediately in her field of vision, because salt is a substance, not an absence. She licks her lips, a slow deliberate motion. Outside, Bon Jovi wails away, guitar chords entering through the window. A redneck man, having turned the music back up slowly, licks a different pair of lips. Thirteen skin cells have died on the underside of his tongue. No one noticed the music come back on, because it was slow. It rose in small increments when no one was watching, and now it was back.
A hand grabs a pinch of salt. Precious seconds have already passed, this must be done quickly. The salt gains kinetic energy, and passes in a short arc over Jane Doe’s shoulder. It hits the ground and vanishes, breaking conservation of mass. From the bar, the waitress noticed this only to be glad she won’t have to clean it up later. She has seen so many of these things before. So many little moments, vanished in the whiteness of the floor, like shadows in the light. Salt is hard to clean up, due to its small particle size. Much harder than blood. That cleans up with only a rag.
Outside, an entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head notices the absence of salt. Being an absence itself, it notices these things. It shifts from the man’s shoe and stands up, appendages moving slowly. The man with the bat scratches the back of his neck harder. It has begun to itch. Death looks up as the entity stands, but does not comment. He takes a long drag, red glow like an engine-failure light flickering to life at the end his cigarette. The entity has no eyes, but the place where they would be faces Death for a few seconds before it moves to the door. A shadow is gone from a boot. No one notices. Bon Jovi sings about being dead or alive.
An entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head steps through the door to Old Smoky. Its arms reach out and take certain small vital things from people's minds. Their souls notice the change, but have no way to alert the brain. Some will die later, for various reasons. One unlucky man at the bar will die slightly sooner than the others. He is the last surviving offspring of his mother, whom he keeps alive and fed in a small cabin a little ways away. She is not capable of fending for herself at the moment, not after the accident. Many things will kill her, hunger, thirst, wild animals, but probably first the knowledge of her son’s death. She will die alone and betrayed.
The entity does not notice this. It walks amongst the people, searching for a lack of salt. It finds it at a table. A woman is looking for it, but lacks the facilities to recognize its presence. No matter, it will appear to her. Nothingness condenses down like reversed smoke, lack becoming substance. One hundred and eighty six arms become two.
An ambiguously gendered figure sits across from Jane Doe. It wears a suit, which could be called male, or could not, depending on your disposition. It is black, reflects a small amount of light in the red spectrum. The skin is pale, an approximation of light which fails to meet the reality. Grey, like funeral ash. Its face is blank. There is nothing there, nothing but hard void. A light bulb shatters thirteen times in rapid succession before re-forming. Everyone in the bar simultaneously screams before suffering rapid amnesia and forgetting it ever happened. The waitress returns to place coffee on the table. Outside, the man with the bat scratches his neck. Blood begins to well under his fingernails.
Time and cars pass at vastly different rates. Jane Doe looks at the figure with a reasonable attempt at calm.
“Why am I here?” asks the figure without a mouth. Its voice is feminine, French accent conspicuous.
A man licks his lips. His gums have turned purple.
Jane Doe looks at the faceless face. “I need a soul.”
The faceless face looks back. “You have one. Or…” it corrects itself. “At least most of one. Certainly, a functional enough amount of one.”
Jane Doe shakes her head, blinking. “No, someone else’s. I want to work out some stuff.”
“Why?”
Time ceases to pass for an undefined amount of time. One man in Greenland notices and goes mad.
“The Immortality Problem. Thought I might as well give it a try. Get some actual material to work with...”
The figure makes a shushing noise. “Shhh, don’t bring that up. Death’s outside. He doesn’t like that topic.”
Outside, death’s head turns one hundred and eighty degrees to look at Jane Doe through a window. He grins. His teeth are green, riddled with holes and other absences. The other patron’s don’t notice because death is an absence. Just as the entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head is the absence of Good, Death is the absence of Life, and can only be preserved as a hole in the fabric. Death is everywhere there is not life, but there is so much life it is easy to forget this. It is easy not to think that the shadows are everywhere, omnipotent and eternal, and that there is no escape.
Bon Jovi is now only static. There was a transition, but it was slow and subtle and no one noticed. Jane Doe leans over the table.
“Will you do it?”
“You will have to make a Formal Request.” Says the figure.
All noise in the bar stops without prompting or reason. People have simply run out of things to say. Outside, the man with the bat sighs in relief. He has found the source of the irritation. There’s been a spine in his neck all along! He must get it out…
Jane Doe sips her coffee. It tastes grey, like funeral ashes.
“How do I do that?”
“Simply state what you wish me to do, and I will do it.”
“Any weird spells or rituals?”
“No. Just state what you wish me to do.”
“Ok then.”
Jane Doe leans back in her chair. This has gone better than she hoped. The waitress sees this and sighs in exasperation. She has seen it all. Literally. Her eyes are dead, drowned a long time ago. Static fills the ears of the patrons as the radio that once played Bon Jovi gains in volume. Time Passes. A cloud obscures the sun.
“I wish for you to bring me a soul.”
Two arms become one hundred and eighty six. The arms reach out and take certain large vital things from Jane Doe’s mind. Outside, Death smokes a cigarette. Blood seeps into dirt and gravel. An irritating spine has been removed. Trouble can now be caused freely. The clouds have blown away, and the sun filters down in pale rays. Death crushes a cigarette under his shoe, then calls out to the redneck, whose gums have begun to bleed slightly.
“One dead to another, you believe in luck?”
The redneck groans and shifts himself up. “What you shittin’, I ain’t dead.”
Death nodds. “No,” he says, “not yet.”
The large vital things are gathered together into a small confined ball and placed on the table. Jane Doe looks up. Her eyes are dead, drowned a short time ago.
“Here is a soul.” Says the feminine voice with a French accent. “It was yours, but that should not be too much of a problem.”
The entity with one hundred and eighty six appendages and one head gets up and becomes a shadow on a man’s boot. Outside, Death gets up and walks into the bar. He takes Jane Doe by the hand and leads her towards the road. No one notices her leave. She is nothing but an absence, a shadow. She leaves no mark on the world that leaves so many on her. Inside, a man at the bar dies of drink. His mother will notice his passing as the absence of food. He did not drink that much, but the beer had some impurities and contained traces of arsenic. Not his fault, he was just unlucky. And unlucky men don’t live forever.
Death leaves her in a road. Many people die and death must stop for all of them. All them with souls at least. Those without are less important. Unlucky Jane Doe clutches a small confined ball of vital things. People do not notice her. Animals do not notice her. Car drivers do not notice her. She notices them though, their smell, their light, their ever increasing noise…
ns18.119.0.68da2
and then Add to home screen.