[ WP ] What if Death found a reason to live ?

( ( Author's Note: with all respect, i carried on a bit long. This is the first part, the second to be found in the first comment. I wish you all a wonderful night. ) ) 
 
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 `` I'm, ah, dreadfully sorry, you *what*?'' 
 
 
 The teller peered over neatly stacked paper of three colors: azure, crimson, and marigold. His glasses framed beady, wet eyes which narrowed and widened like gills. His hair was a great oil slick spilled into a bone-white ocean. It lay close to his scalp, glistening in the garish halogen light. His eyes flickered towards the nearest exit with a speck of what could have been hope, as though he might find an answer there. 
 
 
 `` I would like to apply for an immediate induction into those foul, drunken, gloriously incompetent denizens of the mortal coil. Form A1-E1, if I'm not mistaken. You have the forms. Is there a particular purpose for your delay?'' 
 
 
 The teller gave half a laugh that tugged the corner of his lips into a grotesque smirk before it quivered back to a submissively clueless expression. A bead of sweat formed on his left temple. He gazed once again at the door and may have given a bit of a sigh. His eyes were the sort of green you might find at the corner of a recently fouled gutter. His voice was halting and strained, as though each syllable had to fumble blindly for a moment before tripping into the next one. 
 
 
 `` I see, ah, well... ah. You are... that is to say, you are, well... Death.'' 
 
 
 A Man sat opposite a desk from the teller, right leg folded, foot resting easily on his left knee. Grey eyes peered steadily out from beneath thin, dark eyebrows like the reflection of a cloudy day off of a frozen lake. One of those eyebrows raised now. 
 
 
 `` Goodness, am I? And here I am thinking I only had a terribly impressive handshake! Why, this explains **so** much. My existence's mysteries unveiled. Truly. Astonishing. Thank you.'' Each word was so dry that the teller found himself growing thirsty. The Man's hair was pulled into a long, thick gray ponytail braided intricately down the back of an exquisitely tailored suit. Thin scraps of black paper were woven into the braid, each of them bearing a single name. Some of them burned, snapped and smoked. Others fell periodically as ash. Still more seemed to emerge from the braid itself, born out of nothing. 
 
 
 `` Did you not hear me?'' The Man leaned forward slowly. `` I said,'Thank you'.'' 
 
 
 `` I did hear you, ah, I only, erm. You're welc-'' 
 
 
 `` It was not sincere,'' His voice cracked through the teller's like a shattering mountain, `` I have told you my request, I have been most civil, will you fulfill my need? Or must I find another who can? I must wonder, if I should need to seek out another what is your purpose here at all? Certainly not for conversation.'' 
 
 
 `` I, ah... um,'' the teller stammered and the sweat on his brow became a multitude, a cascade of nervous perspiration. The teller snatched clumsily for a pocket handkerchief at his breast and dabbed with what he hoped was some semblance of dignity. `` Most, ah... certainly not. Sir. Death, sir, ah, let me call my supervisor. I'm... ah, sure he'll be able to help you.'' 
 
 
 `` Wondrous.'' 
 
 
 The teller picked up a depressingly featureless phone and brought fat fingers crashing down haphazardly on oily keys. He waited a moment. There was a buzzing from his ear and he began to mumble a rapid and incomprehensible slew of words which may or may not have contained the phrases `` help me'', `` Malach HaMavet'', and `` pretty, pretty please''. Those wet eyes slowly peered up. The Man was staring at him. Coolly. Unmoving. The teller found his breath catching in his throat and gave a cough which sounded suspiciously like `` hurry''. The phone was lowered with a click. The Man's scrutiny never wavered as the teller awkwardly found a place on his desk to lay his hands. His fingers trembled as he folded them. He gulped. Like a thoughtful dedication to every moment wasted, a clock ticked off the seconds. 
 
 
 `` You know, I've always hated that nickname,'' breathed the Man. His eyes were granite. The teller's eyes were saucers. 
 
 
 `` I, ah... which, er which one?'' 
 
 
 `` Malach,'' the Man sat back once again, and brought His own hands before Him, laying them one over the other delicately. `` All of them, really. Such nonsense. Grim Reaper, I mean really. Do I appear grim to you?'' The teller stared horrified into the headlights of Death's question. The truth was on his traitor tongue, and so he clamped his teeth together so hard that his cheeks began to ache. `` Harvester of dusky disposition at my worst. The arrogance. As though I can be summarized into some grand, grandly insulting caricature. Like some sort of humanoid, convenient constant for the masses to follow. As though I have some form that steps into their pointless stories.'' 
 
 
 `` Do n't, ah, do n't you have a form, though? The form, ah, you, uh... currently...'' 
 
 
 Flint struck steel in the Man's gaze. The teller wished with all of his might for the ability to melt into cheap polyester. 
 
 
 `` This form, you must mean? I'm terribly sorry, but deciphering meaning from you is rather like trying to identify a pleasing aroma in a compost heap. If what I were searching for lay there it would be impossible to find for everything useless that surrounds it. Do you want to hear the truth?'' The Man smiled, the teller immediately wondered what inhumane means might exist for eradicating a memory and who he might ask about it. `` The truth is that I am all of them and none of them. I am everything and nothing, and I am the punctuation that separates the two. Life is, life does, but life is disgustingly reckless, unpredictable, and disorganized. I am the constant.'' Slowly the Man stood and leaned over the teller's desk. `` Very few things *truly* are. **Everything** ends.'' 
 
 
 `` S... Sir?'' 
 
 
 The Man turned his head toward the offending squeak to find a man who had wasted no time in growing afraid but was trying really very hard to disguise it. Thick brown locks curled over his left temple cartoonishly, stubble on his chin was trimmed meticulously to a uniform 2.5 millimeters. His suit was ill fit but presentable, the sort of outfit which denotes responsibility to someone not entirely ready for it. Inwardly he questioned his life and choices. 
 
 
 `` Ah, perhaps in you I might find a man who has retained use.'' The Man stood in one smooth action, like a cat leaping into a pool of mercury. He strode confidently toward the ill suited man. A grin peppered his lips causing his cheeks to crinkle. In the dull, uniform light his jaw was long and gaunt. `` I wish to apply for an immediate transfer into the ranks of the living. I wish to stride on the sandy beaches, I wish to smell the lavender of a poorly made candle, I wish to mock the foolish in a voice that they wo n't run from. At first.'' 
 
 
 `` I see,'' stated the supervisor. `` Well, you see, there is a complication concerning your current station.'' 
 
 
 `` Which station is that? I do so frequently forget.'' 
 
 
 The supervisor swallowed the fear which threatened to rise into his throat in the form of a wavering whimper. `` Well, Sir, you are Death.'' 
 
 
 `` Goodness, *am I*?!'' the Man's voice rose and the shadows in the room seemed to grow darker, the light dimmer, the air heavier. `` Here I've felt the warmth in every man's last breath and I had assumed I only had dreadful luck.'' He took a step closer to the supervisor, who had to fight his own legs for control as though they were live things in a trap. `` What is your name?'' 
 
 
 `` I am... Zacharius,'' the supervisor stammered. The teller stared between them, the unfortunate bystander to an unfolding calamity. He felt like a man watching a tsunami wave, or a thundercloud. He waited for the crash. He waited for the lightening. 
 
 
 `` Zacharius, an old one, my. Tell me, Zacharius, what did you do to earn your esteemed position?'' 
 
 
 The supervisor opened his mouth but no words came out. He closed it and felt himself deflate. The power he had thought was enjoyable was in fact a figment of his own imagination, he had just realized. `` Murder, Sir.'' 
 
 
 `` Murder, yes,'' the Man's voice was broken glass, boulders shifting against one another. `` We've met, then. I remember. You gave her to me, Zacharius, oh, my, yes how you gave her. Your enthusiasm. Your drive was a shining thing, my good man. All flashing steel and crimson fire. Less enthusiastic when I met you for the second time, if I recall. Do you recall, *Zacharius*?'' He stepped so close that Zacharius was forced to look up the crags of Death's visage to meet his gaze. The shadows were obsidian. `` Do you recall how we *met*?''
