A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

While Charlie's Beta Male imagination may have often turned him toward timidity and even paranoia, when it came to accepting the unacceptable it served him like Kevlar toilet paper - bulletproof, if a tad disagreeable in application. The inability to believe the unbelievable would not be his downfall. Charlie Asher would never be a bug splattered on the smoky windscreen of dull imagination.

He knew that all the things that had happened to him in the last day were outside of the limits of possibility for most people, and since his only corroborating witness was a man who believed himself to be the Emperor of San Francisco, Charlie knew he would never be able to convince anyone that he had been pursued and attacked by giant foulmouthed ravens and then declared the tour guide to the undiscovered country by a sultry oracle in fuck-me pumps.

Not even Jane would give him that kind of quarter. Only one person would have, could have, and for the ten-thousandth time he felt Rachel's absence collapsing in his chest like a miniature black hole. Thus, Sophie became his co-conspirator.

The tiny kid, dressed in Elmo overalls and baby Doc Martens (courtesy of Aunt Jane), was propped up in her car seat on the breakfast bar next to the goldfish bowl. (Charlie had bought her six big goldfish about the time she'd started to notice moving objects. A girl needs pets. He'd named them after TV lawyers. Currently Matlock was tracking Perry Mason, trying to eat a long strand of fish doo that was trailing out of Perry's poop chute. )

Sophie was starting to show some of her mother's dark hair, and if Charlie saw it right, the same expression of bemused affection toward him (plus a drool slick).

"So I am Death," Charlie said as he tried to construct a tuna-fish sandwich. "Daddy is Death, sweetie. " He checked the toast, not trusting the pop-up mechanism because the toaster people sometimes just liked to fuck with you.

"Death," Charlie said as the can opener slipped and he barked his bandaged hand on the counter. "Dammit!"

Sophie gurgled and let loose a happy baby burble, which Charlie took to mean Do tell, Daddy? Please go on, pray tell.

"I can't even leave the house for fear of someone dropping dead at my feet. I'm Death, honey. Sure, you laugh now, but you'll never get into a good preschool with a father who puts people down for their dirt nap. "

Sophie blew a spit bubble of sympathy. Charlie popped the toast up manually. It was a little rare, but if he pushed it down again it would burn, unless he watched it every second and popped it up manually again. So now he'd probably be infected with some rare and debilitating undercooked toast pathogen. Mad toast disease! Fucking toaster people.

"This is the toast of Death, young lady. " He showed her the toast. "Death's toast. "

He put the toast on the counter and went back to attacking the tuna can.

"Maybe she was speaking figuratively? I mean, maybe the redhead just meant that I was, you know, deadly boring. " Of course that didn't really explain all the other weird stuff that had been happening. "You think?" he asked Sophie.

He looked for an answer and the kid was wearing that Rachelesque smart-ass grin (minus teeth). She was enjoying his torment, and strangely enough, he felt better knowing that.

The can opener slipped again, spurting tuna juice on his shirt and sending his toast scooting to the floor, and now there was fuzz on it. Fuzz on his toast! Fuzz on the toast of Death. What the hell good was it to be the Lord of the Underworld if there was fuzz on your underdone toast. "Fuck!"

He snatched the toast from the floor and sent it sailing by Sophie into the living room. The baby followed it with her eyes, then looked back at her father with a delighted squeal, as if saying, Do it again, Daddy. Do it again!

Charlie picked her up out of the car seat and held her tight, smelling her sour-sweet baby smell, his tears squeezing out onto her overalls. He could do this if Rachel was here, but he couldn't, he wouldn't, without her.

He just wouldn't go out. That was the solution. The only way to keep the people of San Francisco safe was to stay in his apartment. So for the next four days he stayed in the apartment with Sophie, sending Mrs. Ling from upstairs out for groceries. (And he was accumulating a fairly large collection of vegetables for which he had no name nor any idea of how to prepare, as Mrs. Ling, regardless of what he put on the list, always did her shopping in the markets of Chinatown. ) And after two days, when a new name appeared on the message pad next to his bed, Charlie responded by hiding the message pad under the phone book in a kitchen drawer.

It was on day five that he saw the shadow of a raven against the roof entrance of the building across the street. At first he wasn't sure whether it was a giant raven, or just a normal-sized raven projecting a shadow, but when he realized that it was noon and any normal shadow would be cast straight down, the tiny raven of denial vanished in a wisp. He pulled the blinds on that side of the apartment and sat in the locked bedroom with Sophie, a box of Pampers, a basket of produce, a six-pack each of baby formula and orange soda, and hid out until the phone rang.

"What do you think you're doing?" said a very deep man's voice on the other end of the line. "Are you insane?"

Charlie was taken aback; from the caller ID, he'd expected a wrong number. "I'm eating this thing I think is either a melon or a squash. " He looked at the green thing, which tasted like a melon but looked more like a squash, with spikes. (Mrs. Ling had called it "shut-up-and-eat-it-good-for-you. ")

The man said, "You're screwing up. You have a job to do. Do what the book says or everything that means anything to you will be taken away. I mean it. "

"What book? Who is this?" Charlie asked. He thought the voice sounded familiar, and it immediately sent him into alarm mode for some reason.

"I can't tell you that, I'm sorry," said the man. "I really am. "

"I've got caller ID, you nit. I know where you're calling from. "

"Oops," said the man.

"You should have thought of that. What kind of ominous power of darkness do you think you are if you don't even block caller ID?"

The little readout on the phone said Fresh Music and a number. Charlie called the number back but no one answered. He ran to the kitchen, dug the phone book out of the drawer, and looked up Fresh Music. It was a record store off upper Market in the Castro district.

The phone rang again and he grabbed the handset off the counter so violently he nearly chipped a tooth in answering.

"You merciless bastard!" Charlie screamed into the phone. "Do you have any idea what I've been going through, you heartless monster!"