“All right, I’ll call you tomorrow sweetie.” She called back through the club doors and then let it close. It was slightly after 11 PM on a Saturday night and Zineth was already trying to find a cab home.  She stepped up to the curb and looked up and down the boulevard. The street was empty of traffic except for a few parked cars. She loved this club, The Terracotta, but it was in such a deserted part of downtown. There were a few smokers finishing up their cigarettes but they were wrapped up in their own conversation.

She pulled out her cell phone from the little purse she’d brought. One of those tiny numbers that was the only thing that was acceptable with most powerful of outfits a woman could have, the LBD. Flipping her phone open she was immediately greeted with the smiling picture of some random beefcake looking all sexy. However the little antenna symbol above the beefcakes head showed no bars, which in the freezing night air, made him seem a little less sexy.  She slipped the phone back into her purse muttering a silent curse. She lit a cigarette for herself and waited outside the club for the next cab to appear.

She looked at her reflection in the glass of the clubs door. She looked good and she knew it. She and her friends had decided to go ‘hunting’ this evening, so she pulled out the big guns. Her fiery red hair hung in sexy curls, tight in the back with just enough dangling in front to have sexy bangs. Her dress was a sleek black number which hugged her curves perfectly, and just for effect her bra pushed her ample ‘B’ cup into a ‘C-‘ category. She looked good and she knew it. Now if they prey had been worth while it would have made all her effort worth while. Unfortunately, they had not.

A rash of married men, gigolos, and jerks seemed to answer the call tonight. And she had had enough of that type long before this evening. It didn’t help that she actually wanted to go to church in the morning. She hadn’t gone in weeks and had decided that tomorrow she would start again, No Matter What.

Her cigarette was only half finished, but she stomped it out anyway. Once again the idea of quitting came to her and it was more than enough to finish her current one. Zineth stepped back up to the curb and look for a ship on the horizon once again. Far off in the distance she saw a city bus already pulling away from a stop. She couldn’t have made it to the stop even if she wanted to. You didn’t ride the bus armed with the LBD, which was asking for trouble.  The bus disappeared around a corner leaving the street clear once again.

She really hoped a cab would show up soon. She was freezing. She should have brought a coat, but that would have ruined the look she was going for. And now the smokers that had been behind her had gone inside, probably escaping from the cold. And being alone out here was starting to freak her out just a bit. She looked up and down the street a bit paranoid, for no other reason than her mind was beginning to fuck with her. A few closed stores, parked cars looking lifeless, an unused bus stop and a few alleys. Nothing out of the ordinary but shadows to spook an ordinary girl.  Almost like a continuous loop, she would look up the street one way and back down the other, then look at her own feet at the sexy knock off Prada’s she wore, then past her own reflection into the club again, only to start over again looking back up the street. It was during this last pass that she thought she saw something. A large shadow moved into one of the alleys right down the way. Zineth looked around quickly to see if anyone else saw it, but she was quickly reminded she was out here freezing her ass off alone.

Reaching once again into her tiny purse she pulled out a tiny spray can of mace that she’d had forever since she’d gone to a self defense lecture two years ago. “Hello?” she called out in the general direction of the alley. And then she started moving toward the alley. Zineth was terrified but her feet seemed to move of her own accord. She held the mace in front of her like it was a pistol, one hand ready to spray the other hand wrapped around the first.

“I have Mace.” She called out again, this time warning to whoever might be in the alley. Seconds after saying it, she regretted letting whatever drugged out rapist mugger that might be in the alley know she was coming and silently cursed herself. Yet her feet continued to move forward. What was it that she’d seen? But yet some unknown part of her mind knew exactly what she’d seen and that was what drew her forward.

She stepped into the alley like a police office, legs spread in a aggressive stance, her mace held armed in front of her. But she saw nothing. She felt a bit foolish the instant she saw down the alley. Feeling silly and like a stupid little girl, one of the feelings she hated more than anything else. She looked back toward the doors of the club embarrassed, and was more than happy to see no one had seen this foolish behavior.

She looked down the alley almost disappointed that there was nothing to see; a few dumpsters, litter strewn about like bottles and paper. A shopping cart full of what she would consider crap looked like it had run into the wall on the far side of the ally. A single light bulb was lit further down, probably illuminating the back door of the club. She moved into the alleyway, wondering why she was scared in the first place.  Zineth only got a little way down before she spooked herself for a second time.

She slowly walked down the alley, almost looking for an explanation for what the shadow had been that she had seen. She just barely passed a dumpster when her foot bumped something and she let out a tiny scream as she jumped back. Looking down she saw a dirty pants leg sticking out from just beyond the dumpster an old converse sneaker looking poor and untied. It didn’t move.

She tapped it with the tip of her shoe; once, …twice, …a third time. Nothing. Zineth moved around the dumpster giving the leg, and presumably its owner, a wide berth.

He must have been in his sixties. His clothes both tattered and layered. His body was giving off its own pungent odor which seemed to compete with that of the dumpster. His pants were covered in a myriad of different stains of different colors. All seemed to be aged except one at his crotch where a large wet patch steamed in the cold. Her eyes continued to scan up his body to his face. A thick scraggly beard covered most of his face. He had died only moments ago of Hypothermia. How she knew it Zineth couldn’t say, but she did.  In his hand was a bottle of liquor, some cheap bourbon the man had been drinking for artificial warmth.
Then she noticed the wood. Next to the dead vagrant’s shoulder was a staff standing up. It seemed out of place. Her eyes climb up the haft barely noticing the ancient robes behind it. It wasn’t until she saw the skeleton hand grasping the wood tightly that she realized what she was looking at. She stepped back, her heart nearly stopping.  There in this silent dark alley towering above the dead man stood the grim reaper.  The layered robe was deep. It was the only way her mind could explain it, like it went inward and outward at the same time. She could see his collarbones and the way its spine attached to its skull. Empty sockets bore right through her. And then the memory came back in a flood.

It had been over a year ago…

Zineth lie in a hospital bed, her entire body in pain even with the morphine drip that barely took the edge off.  She didn’t remember the car accident, only what her parents had told her had happened. She’d been sideswiped by a drunken driver doing about 80 miles per hour. She had been going over to a friend’s place and had been alone in the car. She had been pinned in the vehicle, the steel in the door and roof wrapping around her crushing her into one spot. The firemen had torn the car apart getting to her with the jaws-of-life. The drunken driver had flown through his own windshield but miraculously landed in a roll and walked again with only a few scratches and a concussion.

Doctors had her in the ICU for surveillance, scared of internal organ damage. She woke two days later, greeted by family who had taken shifts waiting. Over the next couple of weeks she skimmed in and out of consciousness. One night she woke to find her father asleep in a chair, a book barely hanging on by his fingertips. Her room was a cubicle with windows on every wall, presumably for the doctors to see into the next patient’s room at any time. Most the lights had been out, set to that nighttime mode where one in every four was lit creating an artificial sense of darkness within the rooms and hallway.  
She saw him float into the room through the window. Terror filled every deep space in her soul at the sight of his visage.

He passed by the window, not noticing her at all, and then he was out of sight. She blinked and looked around again. A nurse walked by the open door of her room and then past the open door of the next room where she had seen the reaper. The nurse glanced into the next room as she had glanced into her own and kept moving down with her rounds, seeing nothing. Zineth thought she had imagined the whole thing, fear dripping away like water.  She closed her eyes wearily, the drip making her continually sleepy. Drugged induced sleep crept sweetly over her until she heard the alarms.

Her hazy state became completely coherent as she heard the loud beeping. Her first thought was that it was the machinery attached to her. But as her eyes immediately darted to the screen all it showed was the same numbers as before and the steady repetitive raises in what was her pulse line. Her father also awoke at the noise, but he turned and looked through the window into the next patient’s room. Although her angle of view was weird she saw the doctors and nurses rushing in talking loudly in that medical jargon you hear on E.R. and all those hospital shows.  And then he came through the wall.

She saw him walk though the wall and into her room, towering over the lying form. Her father never turned from his rubbernecking the next room as if he hadn’t seen a thing even though the robed figure passed right by him.  She looked up into the hood, those empty sockets starting back at her… through her. He carried a large scythe, the old kind like farmers used to use, but instead of carrying like the way it would be used he used like a walking stick. She could hear every time the wooden end would clack against the tile floor. He came to a stop next to her bed, towering there silently, gazing upon her with those empty sockets. He didn’t move, just standing there for what seemed like an eternity. He twisted his head slightly and she could hear the rubbing of bone against bone. With his free hand a skeletal hand disappeared into the other sleeve, digging around fishing for something.

After a time he pulled his hand back out, this time holding an hour glass. This too looked old and traditional. She could see the sand pouring from the top into the bottom, there still seemed to be a heavy amount in the top portion. He held it before her so she could see it clearly. It almost seemed to her that the sands were slowing their descent into the lower bulb. Just as quickly he returned it back into his sleeve, and just as abruptly the grim reaper turned and headed out of the room, walking right through her father as the wall beyond him as he departed. Her father shook with a body shiver as Death passed through him but he didn’t move at all like you think you would as the specter of death passed through you.

But she thought she’d imagined all that. A delusion based on location and morphine. But here he was, again, tonight…

Those empty sockets bore through her soul again. He made no sudden moves. He didn’t reach out to touch her. Nothing. She let out the tiniest echo of a shriek, but she had stopped breathing the moment she’d seen him and now had no air with which to scream.  Slowly the reaper reached into his sleeve again and once more pulled out the hourglass. Just as before there was ample sand in the top bulb, but it was no longer falling into the lower half.

“What?” Zineth asked meekly. “What is that?”

But Death said nothing. He didn’t even make the attempt. He showed no signs of communication; no tilt of the head or opening of the jaw. He just watched her with his empty sockets.

“What?” meekness began to raise her voice in confusion and terror, “What do you want from me?”

Nothing. Death just watched her.

She was about to ask once more, seconds from turning in her high heels and finding out exactly how fast she could run in them. And then a voice spoke up.

“Are you daft?” asked a voice without tone or inflection. Death had not moved his jaw. HE hadn’t thunk it into her mind, she had actually heard the words. And then the voice called up again. “Do you think this visage can speak?”

Zineth looked down at the voice. The dead vagrant’s eyes were still glazed over looking at the back of the dumpster, his body lifeless. But again his mouth opened and he spoke. Whether it was his true voice or that of Death’s she couldn’t say but the dead body spoke again.

“Do you see lips? Do you see lungs? A tongue? Vocal cords?” The body asked never looking up at her, the eyes still glazed. If she hadn’t seen the mouth move she would have sworn someone else had to have spoken. But the toneless lifeless voice continued speaking though the corpse. “You can see me. You are among the chosen.”

“Chosen?” this was all becoming surreal way to quickly. She looked back up at the skull. “Chosen for what?”

Again the voice spoke from the corpse as she forced herself to face Death. “You can see death. Not this visage before you, but the dead themselves. You are chosen to walk with the dead. A deathwalker.”

The cynic in her spoke before she realized it, “Original name.” Her hand clapped over her mouth after she had said it. The reaper before her didn’t move.

“You are one chosen by the creator. You will aid the lost to their destination.” Spoke the corpse.

Zineth looked down at the dead man again and then back toward the robed skeleton in front of her. “Like to heaven or hell?” But there was no answer. And hysterics were trying to rise within her, after all how crazy was this. “Why don’t you just talk to me?”

The corpse spoke again. “This visage can not speak. The image of the reaper is ground deep in the human psyche and this is how I am most commonly seen. There have been short times when I have been seen as different actors.”

It was like her mind threw a switch. First he was Brad Pitt, then Bella Lugosi, then another, and another.

“Others have seen me as a cartoon.” Spoke Brad and Bella, and the others in front of her.

Another switch was thrown. First a cartoon grim reaper, then a pale goth chick with an eye tattoo wearing an ankh, then another make, and another. The girl wearing the ankh spoke up next. “The way your minds function now you can only process the idea of death in certain ways. These… images let your mind understand what is happening. “

“And I can see death?” Zineth asked the fingertips of comprehension holding on.
The grim reaper stood before her again. The corpse answering once again. “You can see the visage of death. Death is a word you use for what happens. There is more.”

“And what do you want from me.”

“You will aid those who need… assistance.” The corpse spoke.

“But how?”

“Your sands have stopped.” And as the corpse said it the reaper dropped the hourglass. It smashed down on the asphalt into grains and splinters. The winds immediately whipped up around them blowing it everywhere. In a matter of seconds the entire thing was gone. When the winds died down the corpse spoke up again. “Your way is new. I will show you the way.”

“So what… what am I supposed to call you? Death, the Grim Reaper, Grimmy?” She asked unsure of the protocol she now was involved in.

The corpse spoke once more and for the last time.  "I am known among a thousand stars, by millions of different cilivilaztions. I have seen the birth of empires, and the descent of angels. I am known to some as death, to others as the omega, but you death walker, you will call me…” the body paused as death searched the universe for a name. Only one name came to mind, “…Andres."

The reaper turned and extended his bony hand toward her. Zineth couldn’t explain it but her fear was gone. A strange curiosity filled her slowly. With trepidation she took the offered hand. Death turned and headed back down the alley, this time with Zineth in tow.

She looked up at his spooky visage again, “Um, Andres… can you turn into Brad Pitt again?”