The Road Trip

A drug dealer winds up dead, finds the great beyond means a beaten up old car driven by Death himself. They engage in a road trip viewing the man's life in a distorted Texan desert.

The sky was the first thing he had noticed. A few sullen clouds drifted leisurely overhead, wading across the deep purple above. It almost gave the impression that they were surrounded by a mighty television set which was not quite tuned properly, with the colours all a little askew. As if they were in some improper version of the world that required correcting via a deft fiddling with the aerial. But there was no way to switch this reality for the so-called “proper” one. Death would likely have said that the remote control had now been broken and now they were all permanently tuned in to the 24/7 broadcast of channel headfuck. Metaphorically speaking.

The road at least was one familiar sight. One of those especially straight roads with the yellow lines, the kind of lengthy asphalt monstrosities which snaked across the deserts of America like giant blood vessels, clotted with heaving masses of vehicles. The land of the free, Death had gathered from his many dealings there, was a disgustingly vibrant form of “alive.” Yet here it was quite the opposite. Nothing at all was alive here, disgustingly vibrant or not. He leaned upon the petrol pump and he supposed that the resemblance which his entire surroundings bore to a dusty American shithole made sense, given the circumstances. He twisted his neck to inspect the length of the road, which continued on as far as the eye could see to quite obstinately meet the horizon and continue on to a location Death did not know.

His passengers often presumed that he did know and was simply keeping their destination from them, a fact which he often played on to screw with them but it was actually seldom the case. He had much less to do with the whole process than the average dead man presumed. He merely took the deceased from Point A to Point B and then promptly left them to whatever cosy afterlife awaited them. He had no knowledge beyond that and more often than not he was surprised at the crazy snapshots of their lives he witnessed along the way. Humanity, Death thought as he flicked his lighter open and closed restlessly. Always surprising what they place importance on, in the end. What they choose to re-live.

It was a common saying that as a person died their life flashed before their eyes. However, in reality it did not so much flash as drift lazily by through a protective layer of glass, kindly provided by the allocated friendly neighbourhood Driver. The passenger was allowed a little time to cry or laugh or vomit or engage in whatever bodily function pleased them and then they were off to the next carnival attraction. It was, Death thought with a wry smile, a damn sight better than any standard road trip he had observed.

The desert about him, the sand of which was itself tinged with purple as some alternate sun shone down through the sky, was Texan. Death recognised some of the rock formations and he believed the small rest stop at which they lingered was faintly familiar. A great deal of his passengers came from North America and on the rare occasion from Canada. That was where he worked, the office where he clocked in each day, but of course there were other Drivers who worked there too, not to mention hundreds and thousands of others driving hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children to deaths they never seemed to believe were theirs.

Death tried to remove the petrol pump at the optimal moment so that the price would be exactly $50.00 but he fucked it up and went over by four cents. There was no-one in the rest stop to charge him but he cursed nevertheless as he set the pump back into its rest. He moved to the passenger side window at the front of the car and rapped the window with his knuckles.

“Are you from Texas?” he asked, and then, after a moment, “o que te vive en México jodiendo?”

There was no reply. Death sighed. Another depressed and angst-ridden passenger. The quiet ones were never any fun. The ones that lost their s**t at everything were almost always hilarious, provided that remained figurative as Death made it clear that clean-up duty was not part of his job description. He licked his lips thoughtfully. The spanish had felt rather familiar upon them, as if the language had graced them before.

“Quieres cualquier piscolabis, pendeja?” he asked, but again his passenger remained mute and staring straight at the road in front. Death shook his head and walked back to the rest stop. It was a small affair and there was not much on offer but after some perusing Death placed a large bag of potato chips, a couple of chocolate bars and a bottle of water onto the counter. He reached into the pocket of his suit past his exposed ribcage and drew out some crumpled notes, placing a fifty and a twenty down on the counter and stuffing the rest back into the voids contained in his pockets.

“Keep the change,” Death said to an imagined figure behind the counter, and, arms laden, he strode back to the car. He found that english did not wear upon his tongue either, and guessed that his passenger may have spent time speaking both languages. He winked at the man as he passed across the front of the car but received no response. Death opened the car door with a creak and sat down heavily, throwing the snacks onto his passenger's lap.

“For f**k's sake-!” came an involuntary cry and Death gave a shout of delight.

“So he speaks! Y en Inglés, también!”

The Passenger threw the confectionary to the floor at his feet and looked indignantly at his driver.

“I speak Spanish too, y'know. Goddammit, the hell's the grim reaper doin' speakin' Spanish anyway?”

“Ich spreche auch Deutsch.”

“S**t. S**t, now I'm talking to him. Sweet Jesus.”

The man put his head in his hands and bent over double in his seat. Death observed him for a few moments before turning the key in the ignition. The car rattled into life, the whole structure of it shuddering as it did so. The Passenger still had his head cradled in his hands. Death turned his attention to the road which stretched out almost elastically before them.

“Bit late for the recovery position,” he said, and he put the car into gear and they pulled away.

It was not as if there was any traffic but regardless Death maintained a steady speed of 40 miles per hour. Besides, the car there were in was hardly in the best of shape and Death did not want to push it. He had no idea who came up with the rules of this realm if there was anyone at all. But the transport was always a vehicle from the passenger's life and, more often than not, this was to the severe detriment of Death. Other Drivers had said they had travelled the road in flashy sports cars but Death's passengers seemed to prefer the “piece of absolute s**t” variety. The car they were in was a four-door saloon type with a broken radio and more than a few dents. There was also a worrying clanking noise coming from somewhere toward the rear. Death leaned back in his chair with an arm resting lazily upon the wheel and spoke to his passenger.

“So, where'd you pick up this little beauty?”

No reply came and Death looked over to see his passenger staring moodily out at the desert outside, his head propped up upon his elbow. Death jerked the steering wheel sharply so that the car swerved across the road and the Passenger knocked his head against the glass.

“Would you watch what the hell you're doin'?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Well frankly I don't give much of a s**t.”

The Passenger turned back to the eerie clip show of passing rocks and plants and signs for attractions which never materialised. Each person's road was pieced together from all the different places that person had been and all the things they had seen, forced together like someone hammering jigsaw pieces into places they weren't supposed to go. You could pass two rocks that back in the real world were thousands of miles apart but here were just a few metres. Death often supposed the place was a lot like memory itself. It often skipped the boring parts. However, Death was determined not to let this be another silent and brooding journey. If the radio was fucked intelligent conversation would have to suffice.

“Look, don't be sad. You're just dead,” he said, and received a withering look from the Passenger.

“Yeah, ok, you're dead. That's not entirely great. But you're going to see your whole life again before you go. Your Greatest Hits. That's always a fun time. So cheer up a little. There's no radio so we're going to have to do something to pass the time, and since you've chosen this delightful little wasteland as our playground, I reckon I-spy is out of the question. So let's chat.”

He looked over toward the Passenger who met his eyes for a moment before pulling a face and turning back to look out the window.

“It's too goddamn weird. You have my face, for Christ's sake.”

Death admired himself in the rear view mirror. Unkempt wavy brown hair, brown eyes, strong jawline, hint of a beard. He looked over and saw the exact same features on the man sitting opposite. Drivers were permitted to pick any form they chose and Death liked to think that he always assumed the guise of his passengers to make some metaphorical point about self-reflection but really he just liked to f**k with them. He grinned and told the Passenger that it was better than a seven-foot hooded skeleton driving a car.

“There isn't enough room in here for a start,” Death said, adjusting his seat. “Barely enough for me as it is.”

“You still have...that...” the Passenger said tentatively, indicating toward Death's chest and the exposed ribcage which lurked behind his suit jacket.

“Ah, yeah. Well, ain't a lot I can do about that. All Drivers got to have it whatever form they're in. Got to have some way to identify us, I suppose. Kind of like a trademark maybe? Some bullshit like that. Easy enough to hide when you have to, though.”

The Passenger looked on with an expression akin to nausea as Death arranged his jacket and tie so that his ribs were disguised.

“Ta da! Easier when you're wearing a snappy ensemble,” Death said, placing his hands back upon the wheel. “You should try it sometime.”

The Passenger looked down at his chequered shirt and jeans and frowned at Death.

“Now the Grim Reaper's givin' me fashion advice? Hell.”

“Call me Death.”

“What?”

“Call me Death.”

“But you ain't the only one. You said there was other drivers.”

Death screwed up his stolen face and tutted.

“Well, yeah, but you couldn't pronounce my real name and grim reaper's too much of a mouthful. And besides I'm not grim. As you can clearly see, I'm a delight. So call me Death.”

The Passenger looked at him, shaking his head slowly as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

“I ain't goin' to call you much of anything if I can help it,” he grumbled eventually.

“Suits me,” said Death, and then a huge grin slowly spread across his face. A cluster of skyscrapers had suddenly appeared on the horizon, their grey form like some mighty leviathan rising out of the sand. The Passenger noticed it suddenly and sat up in his seat. Death looked at him with wild childlike eyes. Finally, a bit of excitement.

“There's our first stop, buddy boy. The same one all the others get, to a certain extent. It's time to re-live your so-called kicking of the so-called bucket.”

The skyscrapers clustered together in the sand. It looked as if it was a giant's toy that had become boring and had been flung hastily away. A city cut out and pasted haphazardly into the desert. There was no gradual movement from Texan sands to deep urban civilisation either. Driver and Passenger suddenly found themselves flanked on either side by the tall, looming concrete bodies where mere moments before a sea of purple-tinged sand had surrounded them. Like the desert, this city was a misremembered thing also; as Death looked up, he saw that some of the skyscrapers appeared bent and crooked, some to the extent that they appeared to defy gravity, as if some expressionist set piece had been made solid. Death found himself curiously disconcerted and he focused his gaze upon the road in front of him which had transformed itself into a simple two-lane affair. There was still no traffic however and they drove straight down the middle, albeit at a slower pace. Along the sidewalk strange phantom creatures drifted along, practically invisible unless the sun shone in the correct way so that they shimmered into view, ghostly and mirage-like. The Passenger fixed his gaze on one as they drove by.

“Don't worry, they're harmless,” Death told him. “Just afterthoughts of people you saw. You obviously don't remember any of them clearly so they're just...formless. Anyway, they can't hurt you so forget about them. They're just sideshows. We're here for the main attraction.”

Death knew that the first stop could often be the most dangerous. Sometimes people died in particularly violent ways and while Death had always been told that these echoes of events and people could not affect him he had heard many stories to the contrary and so he maintained a constant air of caution. The Passenger himself was in quite a state. He was staring frantically out of the passenger-side window at the phantom people, and he let out a barely audible gasp as he began to recognise certain features of the city as if each one were itself a spectre come back to torment him. As he turned to see out of the driver’s side Death could see that he was quite pale.

“So where are we?” Death asked, and predictably he received no reply. He nudged the Passenger gently with his elbow.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more!” he said, putting on an accent that even he had to admit was half-hearted. The truth was that Death was beginning to become quite apprehensive. The Passenger’s eyes were bulging and his breath had quickened and now he sat tense and upright staring straight ahead. The eerie emptiness of the city had also begun to unnerve him. They had been driving among the skyscrapers for an unusually long time. Usually by this point the circumstances of the Passenger’s death had made themselves apparent.

“Where are we going?” Death asked, fighting to keep a slight tremor out of his voice. “What the hell are we looking for?”

The Passenger did not reply immediately but suddenly sat up in his seat, his mouth agape.

“Holy s**t.”

Death looked from him to the road ahead and saw what his passenger evidently already had. A perfect copy of him stood on the pavement ahead, jostling through the ghost-crowd, their forms shuddering like liquid, making his way toward the road. His was the only clear and defined figure around. Death felt a keen relief wash over him. Here was the guy. Everything was going as planned. They would watch him get killed in whatever grisly manner the higher powers had chosen for him and then they would drive on until they found the next sorry piece of his life lying around in the sand. That was the job.

He liked the job.

Death slowed the car to a crawl and the Passenger placed his hand on the handle, readying himself to step out. Death caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye and his hand went instinctively to his jacket pocket. But he stopped himself and placed his hand slowly back on the wheel.

“Don’t even think about it,” Death said sternly, fixing the Passenger with a look he believed to be stern and authoritative. “Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.”

“So I just have to sit here and watch myself get killed all over again?”

“I'd say this time you might have a better all-round view of it, but yeah, essentially.”

“What the hell is the point of that?”

“I don’t make the rules, my friend. I’m just the lowly driver.”

The Passenger looked annoyed but made no further indication that he planned to exit the car. Death parked up against the pavement a few metres up from the ghostly memory version of the Passenger and killed the engine. He lent his arms up on the wheel and placed his head upon them.

“Now we wait,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled.

“For what?” came the reply.

Death raised himself up to make eye contact with the Passenger.

“You tell me,” he said with a grin.

The Passenger frowned and turned away, visibly nervous. Death continued to smile, and slowly reclined in his seat, leaning back in his stolen body to enjoy the show. The version of the Passenger outside had reached the pavement and it looked like he intended to step out onto the road but suddenly he froze as if he had heard something. Then he looked up and stared straight at the dented saloon car in which his observers sat.

Both Death and the Passenger jumped as if they had been physically shocked.

“Jesus Christ,” said the Passenger.

Death looked into the eyes of the man standing there a few feet ahead of them and this memory, this fragment of a reality that once was stared back into his. It wasn't god damned possible. This thing should not be able to see them. It shouldn’t be able to react to their presence. Something was wrong.

An almighty squealing of tires suddenly pierced the air. At the same time, a look of shock came over the face of the Passenger standing upon the pavement to show that he had also heard it. The Passenger within the car had whipped around at the noise and was staring out of the rear windshield but Death remained transfixed by the figure before him. The shock which had appeared on his face was gone and an expression of calmness had arrived to replace it. An expression of acceptance, no less. And by this Death was confused.

“What’s that about?” he asked the Passenger.

“Oh Christ…”

“What’s with that look he’s giving us?”

“For God’s sake, look!” the Passenger exclaimed, gesturing wildly toward the rear of the car. Death turned around in his seat and was greeted by the sight of a black 4x4 speeding toward them like some crazed demon newly released from the prisons of hell. Through the windshield he could see two figures of indiscriminate forms. Yet their eyes and teeth could be clearly seen, an exaggerated projection of what these two people had meant to the Passenger. Utter terror.

Death needed to see no more and he whipped back around to face forwards.

“What?” came the panicked voice of the Passenger. “Can they hit us?”

“We’re not sticking around to find out,” hissed Death, and he turned the key violently in the ignition so that the car rumbled into life. He put the car into gear and slammed on the accelerator, the two of them jolting in their seats as the car pulled away, narrowly avoiding the curiously pensive figure still stood on the edge of the pavement, the peaceful look still on his face, although it was now clearly directed at the 4x4 rather than Death and the Passenger.

Death focused on the road ahead, his breath coming in heavy panicked gasps and his shoulders tensed at the wheel. Yet he was relieved in knowing that the memory of the Passenger had not reacted to their presence after all. A dull thump and a further shriek of rubber sounded from behind them. The Passenger turned to look behind them but both demonic car and death-marked man had vanished back into whatever oblivion they had spawned from.

“That was close,” said Death with an exasperated laugh. “A little too close if you ask me. Goddamn. A closer call I don’t think I’ve ever had.”

The Passenger looked at him. “I didn’t even see it. I thought that was the whole damn point.”

The skyscrapers began to melt slowly away and were replaced once more by the purplish Texan deserts. After a moment Death spoke again.

“Yeah well, another second and you’d have been killed again. Even I don’t know what’d happen to you then. Or, for that matter, where you’d end up.”

“So you really don’t know where we’re going?”

“I know where I’m going. I’m going to drive until this road ends and then you’re going to get out and I’m going to go pick up the next sorry deadbeat. But as for where you’re going? Not a clue. Sorry.”

“You just follow your orders and you don’t know a damn thing about what you’re doing or why.”

“I’d say that’s about right. Problem?”

The Passenger said nothing. A thick silence then fell over the car which Death was perfectly happy about. The events which had occurred in the distorted city had scared him more than he dared admit. He had come closer than ever before to actually getting involved in a memory sequence. More than that, he had nearly disrupted it. And the results of such an almighty f**k-up were things that Drivers only whispered about. He looked in the rear view mirror but although it had barely been a mile since they had passed the last skyscraper the cityscape had vanished once more, the grey and concrete beast diving back into the sandy depths.

After a few more miles Death pulled over the car to the side of the road, the sand billowing in great dusty clouds as the vehicle came to a halt. Death killed the engine and rolled down the window before removing a packet of cigarettes from some cavernous place within his jacket and then he sat smoking. The Passenger watched him for a few minutes before slamming his fist down on the dashboard.

“Why the hell have we stopped?” he hissed through gritted teeth.

Death rolled his eyes over to look at the Passenger and he blew a ring of smoke.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have been just so keen to..um...bite the bullet? You didn't get shot though, so is that the right expression? Bite the windshield? Regardless, what's with the impatience? Aren't you enjoying my company?”

“I’m not keen and I sure as s**t ain't enjoying being stuck here with you. Hell, I just want to get this whole thing over with. This whole place is just a big joke to you but this is my f****n’ life going by here and I don’t much care to see it all again. Once was enough.”

Death shrugged and looked out at the landscape again. Silence fell over the car again. Eventually, Death cleared his throat and spoke again.

“Who were they?”

“What?”

“Who were the guys in the car?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me. They were driving with one hell of a vengeance and that was plain for even an ethereal creation like myself to see. So cut it out and tell me. You’ve really got nothing to lose at this point.”

“What the hell makes you want to know so bad?”

“A delicate infusion of mild curiosity and extreme boredom.”

“Well I'll be damned if I tell you s**t before I get one of those cigarettes.”

“But they're so bad for your health...”

The Passenger fixed Death with an almost deranged look. Death smirked and proffered the packet, which the Passenger snatched from him. The Passenger took one and Death reached over to light it for him.

“Drug dealers,” the Passenger said eventually, reclining slowly as he inhaled. “Not the amateur kind.”

“How’d you get involved with them?”

“I was, uh...a smuggler, I guess you'd call it. F**k, that makes me sound like some kinda pirate.”

Death turned this information over in his mind for a few seconds and decided that this man was telling him the truth. It certainly made sense.

“So you smuggled stuff over the border.”

“Yeah.”

“Figures. So all this gorgeous desert, this was part of your route then? Although I imagine it was less purple. Oh, and your affinity for the Spanish! It's all coming together beautifully. A drug dealer, how lovely. What delicacy did you bring over to sate the thrill-seeking American populous then?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not particularly.”

Death was satisfied knowing this information. He now had a fair idea of what he might expect of the rest of the journey and as a result he felt more at ease. He flicked his cigarette out of the window before starting the car. The Passenger regarded the end of his own cigarette almost wistfully, knowing full well he would likely never taste one again, but he too flicked it away as they drove off again into the deserts, in search of the broken and scattered fragments of his life.

The Passenger spotted the house first and he told Death when he did in a voice that was fighting to retain its composure. Death looked at the small dot of it ahead of them, a shadowy thing that seemed to writhe as if it were not fully confident in its form. Regardless, the Passenger seemed to know what it was.

“Ok, what’s going to happen?” Death demanded. “You remember what happened when you didn’t tell me last time. And we don’t want a repeat of that glorious f**k-up.”

The Passenger swallowed harshly, his nervousness betraying itself, but he spoke tentatively.

“It’s where we met to exchange the product. I got it over the border and gave it to these guys who distributed it and they gave me my money.”

“Who’s house is it?”

“Wasn’t anyone’s. It had been abandoned and left to rot for years. They said it was better to meet on neutral ground.”

“Ok, so you came here a few times. Do you know which specific ultra-fun occasion we’re currently re-living?”

The Passenger leaned forward. The shape of the house had become solid and it was clear that it was in a sorry state. Despite his substantial distance from it, Death could see that the wood it was made from was ancient and that many of the windows had boards across them.

The place had a porch at the front but many of the supports along it were broken, giving the house a toothless look. Yet he supposed that it would have been grand and austere in its day, as the place was large with an undeniable rustic appeal. As they drew closer Death saw that there was a dark red sedan parked outside of it.

The Passenger seemed about to speak but a car suddenly materialised alongside them, the growl of its engine silencing him. He recognised it as the demonic 4x4 from the city. Death slowed their own car and both he and the Passenger watched as the dealers pulled up to the house.

“I know what’s going to happen,” came the barely audible voice of the Passenger. “Oh Christ. I know what’s going to happen.”

“Skip the preamble and spit it out!” Death yelled, feeling uncomfortable once again in his lack of control. The dealers had left their car and gone inside the house and as Death drove closer to it he could hear no sound from within its broken and gaping jaw.

“I was inside with ‘em,” the Passenger said, his eyes wide and staring straight ahead. “A normal trade. But then the f****n’ cops showed up. I don’t have a goddamn clue how they knew where we were. We were in the middle of f****n’ nowhere. But they showed up and we bolted. Didn’t catch a one of us. But then the dealers wondered who had sold them out…”

Death had by this time stopped their car a little way from the house. A ghostly sound of police sirens started up from somewhere behind them and Death turned to see. Suddenly they burst into view, two police cruisers speeding toward the house, their lights flashing offensively bright. The Passenger swore again and Death faced forward to see the two creatures he'd seen in the car before, still all eyes and teeth, pelt from the house, erupting from the doorway as if the house were vomiting them up. The Passenger, or the memory of him, came after them, and they were all in their respective cars by the time the police reached the house and had screeched to a halt.

The 4x4 took off first, slamming into the front of one of the cruisers and sending it careering away as if it were nothing at all before tearing off down the road away from Death and the Passenger. The sedan followed after it like a mechanical pilot fish, and almost instantly the two cruisers were after them. Before very long the whole procession melted into the sky and were gone.

Death blew out his cheeks and laughed.

“Well, that was a real hoot. Very exciting. Had my heart really pumping.”

He put the car into gear and lead it back onto the road. The Passenger did not respond but Death was grinning wildly and took no notice, his confidence restored now that the second sequence had gone off without a hitch. As they drove past the house the Passenger followed it with his eyes, the glassless upper windows like eyes themselves which watched him back.

“So was it you?” Death asked, jolting the Passenger out of his thoughts.

“Was what me?”

“Was it you that sold them out? To the cops?”

“You saw me taking off back there. Was I running like it was f****n' me?”

“I guess I don't really know.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“That whole fiasco wouldn't have shown up here if it wasn't an important moment in your life.”

“It was important in that those b******s thought it was me and they f****n' killed me for it.”

“But it wasn't you?”

“Ain't that what I said?”

“You're sure?”

The Passenger turned over in his seat so that his whole body was facing away from Death. He closed his eyes and sighed.

“You ain't got enough cigarettes to follow that line of inquiry.”

Death was surprised at how quickly the next landmark loomed into view. It was only about seven or eight miles after the memory of the dilapidated house that he caught sight of a new cluster of amorphous shapes on the horizon. As the car drew nearer they found their forms and before long Death found himself driving through a bright suburban neighbourhood. Even by his standards it was quite surreal. Each house was painted an alarmingly bright colour, and each lawn was pristine and vibrant as if each blade of grass had been worked on individually.

The place was also unusually large. Usually a memory would be around five square miles at the largest but even after an hour driving down streets at random no trace of Texan desert had returned. Neither had Death seen any sign of any people, not even the ghostly wisps of folk whose faces the Passenger had forgotten. He looked over towards his companion and was surprised to find that he had both wakened and that he turned and looked back at him. The Passenger's expression was measured and he seemed to be waiting for Death to speak. So Death cleared his throat and did.

“Well this sure is a lovely neighbourhood,” he said slowly, shifting his weight in his seat. “A great location. Very close proximity to the terrifying drug house. I’m very jealous. Mrs Death and I should see about getting a place round here.”

The Passenger was still looking at him with a vaguely amused expression that Death did not think was a result of his quips, even though he was entirely confident within himself that they were the very definition of hilarity.

“I’m just kidding,” he began again, eager to shift the Passenger’s gaze from him, “Mrs Death hates…”

“I just want to get this over with,” the Passenger said suddenly, and Death looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

“Is that so?”

“You ain’t telling me where we’re goin’ and I obviously got no way out of this so what else is there for me to do? I'm just gonna sit here and watch this play out, but I want it to play out fast. Anyway. You beat me. Congratulations.”

“This isn’t about beating anyone. I’m not winning by taking you to your demise here. You guys never believe me but I really don’t know what’s in store for you beyond this and I don’t much care to know. I’ve no beef with you or anyone I’ve ever driven. It’s nothing personal. Like you said before, I just do what I’m told.”

“You never tried to rescue someone?”

“Pardon me?”

The Passenger rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat.

“What I’m sayin’ is, have you never bonded with a corpse-to-be on one of these road trips? Enough that you think about turning the car around and…”

“I'm flattered you think we're bonding, kiddo. But, what, you want me to give you your life back? Return you to the land of the living?” Death threw back his head and laughed long and hard. “I’m sorry to break this to you, but it doesn’t work like that. No driver is ever going to get in cahoots with a passenger and that’s just the way of it.”

“It’s never happened?”

“Not to my knowledge, and my knowledge is rather extensive.”

“So what you’re sayin’ is you don’t know.”

“What?”

“You don’t know if it’s ever happened but that don’t make it impossible. You don’t know there isn’t a back door outta this place.”

“There isn’t a back door out of this place.”

“There could be.”

“There isn’t.”

“How would you know? You do as you’re told and so if you’re told there ain’t no back door you won’t question it.”

“Alright, listen here,” hissed Death through gritted teeth. “You think you’re the first moron I’ve had in here to ask me about the f*****g ‘back door’ theory? I don't know whether this little slice of suburbia has made you all nostalgic for life again or what but you can forget whatever you're thinking right now. What, you think I’ve never had anyone here crying and begging me to take them back? Well, allow me to make the situation quite clear; I don’t give a single s**t about any of the passengers that I’ve had to deal with over the years and I’m certainly not going to start with a two-bit drug dealer like yourself. So even if there is some portal or whatever that leads back out of here you are never going to find it.”

The Passenger opened his mouth as if he were about to say something in retaliation but then he sat back and closed it again. A few moments of silence passed, Death seething quietly and the Passenger lounging with eyes half closed, turning things over somewhere behind them. Then he sat up.

“We’re here.”

“We’re f*****g where?”

Suddenly Death saw a flicker of movement somewhere to his left and he turned to see a young woman and two toddlers loading up a car in the driveway of a garish lime green coloured house. The figures of them were remarkably clear, the features more defined even than those of the memory of the Passenger himself had been. Death found the scene oddly familiar and for a few seconds he could not put his finger on why but then he realised that the car in the driveway was a newer version of the one he sat in. He turned to the Passenger.

“Who are they?” he said, but the Passenger was staring at the woman and the children and he seemed not to have heard.

Death lessened the pressure on the accelerator, planning to stop somewhere along the road so that the Passenger could watch.

“Keep driving,” the Passenger said without taking his eyes off his memory replaying outside the window, the woman now slamming the car’s boot closed.

“Huh?” said Death, and at this the Passenger’s head snapped quickly up so that two copies of the same pair of eyes stared into one another.

“I said keep f****n’ driving.”

Death did not reply but he did as he was bid and put his foot down on the accelerator so that the car sped up once again. He looked back at the green house. It appeared that the young woman had slammed the boot so hard that it had knocked something loose in the mechanics on the car’s underside. She was peering under it now with the children watching her and her face came up with brows furrowed. Then Death saw a man come out of the house and go to the woman. As he turned the corner he just about caught a glimpse of his face; a clean shaven, healthier looking version of the face which he himself wore.

Death was inclined to stop or to slow down but he did not. His job was to escort the Passenger through the distorted remnants of his life so that he could glimpse them all again and a glimpse was all that was required. If the Passenger did not care to look that was not his concern. Yet Death was puzzled that his passenger was choosing not to observe the only relatively happy sequence that they had run across so far. They turned a corner and Death looked back but the figures of the family gathered around the car were lost. He set his eyes back on the road ahead and now he could see the desert lying beyond the houses, patiently waiting.

Each memory sequence eventually relented and gave way to the desert once again, was eaten up by it and forgotten. Death thought about all of the Passenger's other memories, the tracks that were not deemed worthy of inclusion on the so-called Greatest Hits album, and he wondered how deep they lay beneath the sands of the deformed Texas.

The deserts had crept back much quicker than they had departed. It was almost as if the Passenger himself had been eager for his memory of suburbia to linger for as long as possible initially but now just wanted it to recede and be gone. He controlled this world, in the end. These were pieces of reality as seen through his eyes, how he remembered his life before. He remembered these deserts a sickly purple colour, he remembered those skyscrapers bent and crooked like broken bones. He remembered those houses so bright and full of life. Back in the land of the living, they weren't really, of course. But the Passenger had associated emotions with them in his head, and here those emotions were projected onto everything.

Death tried to shake these thoughts from his mind. Empathy was a dangerous road to tread in his line of work. He looked to the Passenger but the man was not even looking back any longer. He had his eyes closed and he looked to be dozing again.

Death had been struck by how happy the memory of the man had looked as he had come out of that green house. He hadn't been bursting with joyous energy or skipping along merrily but his face was youthful, smooth, bright. It was a distinct contrast to the man he had observed in the distorted city, to the one he had seen run to his car after delivering drugs to the men who would eventually end his life. Above all the man had been an entirely different creature to the one who sat beside him now, snoring gently and oblivious to the desert which was creeping steadily back, devouring the tarmac and trees of the Passenger's suburbia like a carnivorous thing.

The back door theory was one Death had not given much thought to. Drivers joked about it and everyone who had been driving for any decent length of time had at some point or another been asked about it by a particularly ballsy passenger. In truth, he did not like to think about it. The idea that those higher up the food chain than he would keep something that monumental from the drivers was a thought that, put lightly, scared the living s**t out of him, especially as he was already suspicious of the bare-minimum amount of information he was given. For the most part he accepted his existence for what it was and that entailed accepting the job too and asking few questions about it.

There was only the road and the driver and the passenger and that was how it had been for him for decades. He forgot how many years. Time didn't really exist here, not in the traditional sense. Death looked out at the curious purple-tinged sand drifting steadily by the window. Perhaps he was like the sand himself. Perhaps he was a natural part of these dream-worlds, just another deformed version of reality, a human being misremembered and made solid.

"F*****g hell, get a grip." Death said, and focused his mind on the road ahead. A speck had materialised on the horizon. He had been driving with this passenger for what seemed like 24 hours now. A day seemed to be the average length for one of his journeys, although it varied. Death had once driven a very nice young methhead whose journey had consisted of only two stops. Evidently his life had been somewhat less than interesting. However, he had apparently been off his head the whole time and probably thought the whole experience was some sort of strange drug-induced vision, or something. He probably sobered up once he had reached whatever came next. Heaven, hell, oblivion? Death could not say.

Anyway. 24 hours was the average. They had now been driving for longer than that. Death narrowed his eyes and strained to see, the sun blaring. It looked like a diner up ahead.

“Very likely the final stop for Texas’s favourite drug dealer,” he said, and the Passenger stirred in his sleep. Death wondered if he should wake him, since he was after all supposed to bear witness to whatever was going to occur here. He decided not to.

As they pulled up, there was no immediate commotion and so Death stopped the car to wait. After a couple of minutes there was still nothing. Death rolled down the window and stuck out his head, looking this way and that. It was eerily quiet, with only the gentle sound of the wind churning up the purple sands around them. The diner remained a gaudy anomaly in the middle of it, but after another ten minutes still nothing had sprang forth. Death sighed.

“F**k this,” he said. “I’m starving.”

He swung the driver side door open with a creak and stepped out onto the road, slamming the door shut behind him. The Passenger jolted awake. He saw Death making his way over to the diner.

“Hey!” he called after him. “Hey! Where you going? Where the hell are we?”

“Don’t know. Getting pie.”

“Uh…well, what about me?”

“Stay there or come in. Makes no difference to me.”

Death pushed open the door to the diner, a bell tinkling as he did so. The place was one of those cheesy 50s’styled joints, all neon lights and chunky ornaments. There was even a jukebox in the corner. A counter ran along the length of the diner with red felt stools at regular intervals down it. There was a door behind it with a small window on it through which the kitchen could be seen, grey and clearly in need of a good cleaning.

There were no smells of cooking nor sounds of patrons talking. The jukebox was silent. Death did not move as a ghostly phantom person walked through him and vanished as it hit the sunlight outside, the edge of the memory. Several of these figures drifted about the diner, their eyes the only solid thing about them, echoes of real people who had once drifted about a real diner.

“Don’t think they’re gonna serve you.”

Death turned to find the Passenger at his shoulder.

“I don’t doubt it. Luckily I’m a self serve kind of guy.”

Death walked over to the counter and vaulted it. He then made his way into the kitchen. The Passenger took a seat beside one of the phantom customers who appeared to be huddled over an empty mug. The Passenger regarded the figure curiously. The diner was faintly familiar to him but he couldn’t place it. A light flickered above him and he stared at it. This place was dug up from his memories, he knew, but this place must have come from some deeper pit within his mind than the others he had encountered…

A great crashing and clattering of what sounded like pots and pans came suddenly from the kitchen, interrupting the Passenger’s train of thought. Death stuck his head out of the door.

“What do you fancy? I’m having a milkshake.”

“Don’t suppose they got any coffee?”

“Not hot, no.”

“I’m good then.”

“Suit yourself,” Death said, emerging from the kitchen with a foamy milkshake topped with a cherry in a tall glass in one hand, and a plate with a slice of pie on it in the other. He sat at the stool beside the Passenger, the pensive phantom now gone. The Passenger looked at Death as he lifted a generous forkful of the dessert. Death caught his eye.

“Gotta enjoy the little things,” he grinned faintly, and he ate.

“What flavour?” the Passenger asked.

“Blueberry. It’s s**t.”

The Passenger laughed involuntarily.

“Gee, I made you laugh. Do I get a prize?”

“Was barely a laugh.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

There was silence for a few minutes as Death ate and drank and the Passenger took in his surroundings. Finally he swivelled 180 degrees on his stool and lent back against the counter.

“I think I remember where I know this place from,” he said.

“Did you smuggle drugs through here too? In the cheeseburgers perhaps?”

“Only came here once. As a kid. Dad brought me here on my 13^th birthday. First time I’d ever been out of Jefferson more or less. It was exciting, I mean really. You look at this place now you don’t think nothing of it, just another clichéd 50s’ diner along the freeway. But as a kid this was it. The lights, the smells, everything. It was so different, so flashy, a world away from how I grew up. I remember I got a milkshake…”

“I feel for you. They’re worse than the pie as it turns out.”

“But it was just so different. Felt so exhilarating, and I never wanted to go back to that crappy little Texan town. After that I just wanted to get out, get to the city, do more exciting things…”

Death turned around in his stool also.

“Well did you?”

“Married Helen. Kissing her for the first time was like the taste of that milkshake all over again. So yeah, I guess that was plenty exciting.”

Death looked over his shoulder at his half-empty milkshake glass.

“Maybe they changed the recipe.” He looked back at the Passenger, who was now staring out the window at the purple wastes outside, at the car which was both his and not his.

“What happened to her?” Death asked. “Uh…Helen. What happened to her?”

“Don’t know. Left me a couple years before…this. Found out about the drug stuff. Took the kids, left for her Mom’s. Hell, I don’t blame her a f*****g bit. Still, I tried callin’ her a bunch of times, even wrote her once. Nothing, not one word from her or any of her family. After a year I gave up.”

“Yet it would appear you kept up with the drugs.”

“Smuggling ‘em. Wasn’t ever on ‘em, swear to god.”

“You’re a f*****g saint.”

The Passenger stood up and squared up, looking down at Death.

“You judging me now, huh? Grim goddamn reaper’s judging me. You ever feel a bit of remorse for the s**t you do?”

“Didn’t have a choice. Just make the best of it. There’s nothing I can do.”

The Passenger said nothing, but still stood over Death staring heatedly at his familiar visage. After a moment Death looked up at him.

“What do you want, a hug?”

At this, the Passenger seemed to deflate and he sat down heavily in a booth, staring at the floor.

“I fucked it. I fucked it all up. Just wanted to give them nice things, give her the life I thought she wanted…that she deserved…”

Death then stood up. He smoothed down his jacket and wiped his mouth with a napkin before throwing it to the ground.

“Get up. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Try to do better in the next life, or something. I don’t know. Like I said, I can’t tell you what comes next.”

Death lifted his plate and glass and walked slowly into the kitchen.

“I could have done better, you know,” came the Passenger’s voice. “Could have been a better husband, a better father. Made an honest living. Was just easier, I guess. To do what I did. Live more like the way I’d been brought up.”

“I’m glad you’re repenting,” Death called back. “Very touching. If it works and you meet God, tell him I’m a big fan.” He found a sink and placed his dishes into it. As he stood up again he heard the door open behind him.

“Was me, you know,” the Passenger said. From somewhere behind him. “I sold out those guys. The drug dealers. Was told I’d get protection or somethin’ if I acted ‘undercover’ to lure them out. Never saw anything of the sort. Cops chased me down just the same as them.”

“I know,” Death replied, running a little water into the sink. He liked to leave the place as he had found it.

“Maybe that was my old righteous bone kicking in. That sense I had as a kid of striving for something better. Maybe that made me call the cops. Do the so-called right thing.”

“Didn’t end up being the right thing for you. Got you killed and now you’re back in this s****y diner. Rather cyclical. Ironic. Maybe that’s the point of all this, though. This place. To be ironic.”

“Maybe I can change it,” The Passenger said, his voice close behind Death as he dried his hands. His brows furrowed. What the f**k was he talking about? He turned around with some question fully formed in his mind, but before he had the chance to ask it he felt his face being firmly gripped and swung down heavily to one side.

Then there was nothing but intense, searing pain and an incessant wailing sound. Christ, he was screaming. Thoroughly unbecoming. Death found himself on the floor of the kitchen. It was filthy. Looked as if whoever had developed a half-hearted notion of giving the place a sweep had simply brushed everything underneath the cooker judging by the veritable cornucopia of junk which was gathered there. Still, the underside of it was far more pleasant than the top had been. Death felt his stolen face. He didn’t know what the damage was. He didn’t have skin, or muscle like your typical human. His disguise was paper thin and as a result he couldn’t tell what the effect of a burning hot cooker would have on it.

Besides, why would he? It wasn’t as if a passenger could ever take a driver down.

He'd been stupid. He'd let his guard down. He'd been travelling with him too long. He'd got comfortable. He'd got lazy.

Speaking of, where the hell was the little s**t?

Death shot up off the floor. If he had lost his passenger there was absolutely no telling what would happen to him in return. He didn’t want to think about it. It took him a moment to find his feet but he quickly steadied himself. Death looked down at the cooker. Jesus. Downed by a kitchen appliance. What a joke. He would actually have found it funny if it hadn’t hurt so f*****g much.

He stormed out of the kitchen and into the diner. The Passenger had evidently not been expecting him to recover so quickly. He seemed to be taking in the décor of the diner one last time, indulging in his nostalgia. Sentimental little lamb. Upon seeing Death his face lost a good deal of its colour and his mouth hung open in a rather comedic fashion. This could well have been due to his flame broiled face rather than Death’s formidable presence, but in truth he cared little.

The Passenger made a break for the door. Death slowly and calmly reached into his jacket and drew out his gun. He levelled it at the Passenger, who stopped dead once he saw it.

“That’s a good boy,” Death grinned, although there was no mirth in his tone. “Now sit the f**k down. I’m done playing games.”

The Passenger lifted his hands up, showing his palms, and made a face to suggest he wasn’t going to try anything. He walked slowly to the stool with Death’s pistol trained on him the whole way. He sat.

“You’ve got a gun.”

“Observant one, you are.”

“What do you have a gun for?”

“Why, for exactly just such a fine occasion as this! To stop a jumpy little drug dealer from f*****g off into the wild unknown. To make sure you don’t get away.”

“So, what, if your shotgun looks like he’s gonna get away from you, you pop him?”

“That’s about the long and the short of it.”

“So what happens then? If you shoot me? Aren’t I already dead? Where will I go?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea. Not my problem. All that concerns my superiors is that you’re not here, let loose on your lonesome in this quaint little dreamland. That, they say, would be very bad indeed.”

“You look like s**t.”

“It’s your face.”

“Now it’s half my face. Other side’s mostly skull.”

“Takes more than that to put Death down.”

“I’ll remember that.”

They stared at each other for some minutes. The Passenger had the ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth. The half of Death’s face that still had a flesh substitute was contorted into a snarl. The Passenger shrugged at him.

“So now what?”

“Don’t f**k with me. I’m done playing games.”

“We’re at an impasse.”

“F**k off. I have a gun. I think I have the upper hand.”

“But you’re not gonna use it.”

“Pardon me, sweetness?”

“You want to get me to the end of this here road trip. That’s the point of all this, right? That’s your job description. Sure, you got yourself a failsafe there, but you don’t wanna use it if you can help it. You do that, you’ve failed. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t rightly think you’re a guy who takes failure lightly.”

Death’s grip tightened on his pistol.

“You think you’re a real smart m**********r, don’t you?”

“I have my moments,” the Passenger said calmly, and then he launched himself over the counter, ploughing into Death and sending him sprawling back into the wall. A shot rang out, deafeningly loud within the diner. The phantom patrons quivered at the sound. They seemed to huddle together away from the two figures struggling behind the counter. This in itself would have alarmed Death if he had witnessed it. He and the Passenger were grappling with the pistol in almost complete silence.

Death was up against the wall behind the counter with both hands on it and the Passenger had one arm on his doppelganger’s throat while the other tried to wrench the pistol from his grasp. The Passenger noted that the gun itself did not look to be particularly special; 9mm, grey and polished with a black grip, upon which he could see etched something that looked like a serpent. Regardless neither he nor Death seemed to have an obvious advantage in their struggle. Their bodies were essentially the same. The gun remained pointed diagonally upward like a clock hand at 11.

Another shot echoed about the diner as Death squeezed the trigger. The Passenger was not dissuaded. He maintained a solid hold on the gun which was only broken as Death delivered a swift knee into his groin. The Passenger bent over double, sacrificing his grasp on both the gun and his opponent’s throat. He wheezed in pain. Death stood up tall, his breath measured, and straightened his tie. He looked down at the Passenger who was still fighting to regain his own breath and he struck him on the side of the temple with the butt of his pistol, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

“You stupid f**k!” he bellowed. “You just don’t give up!”

He kept the pistol trained on the back of the Passenger’s head, who lay on the floor without moving. His breath was loud and raspy and his chest rose and fell heavily. There was a small pool of blood forming at the side of his head.

“You’re pathetic,” Death said. “Goddamned pathetic. But you’re too dangerous. Unpredictable. I can’t trust that you won’t pull another stunt like this further down the road. I’d have to knock you out just to feel at ease and then you wouldn’t be awake to see the last of your miserable life so what would be the point? What would be the point.”

He paused and ran his hand over the left side of his face. Smooth, hard bone. He felt the empty eye socket, the point of the cheek bone. His skin had entirely come away on that side of his face. Death gritted his teeth. The fact that his disguise had been compromised due to his passenger angered him even more. It was just f*****g unprofessional of him.

“Sorry,” he went on, looking down the length of the gun at the Passenger still wheezing on the floor. “We’ve had a few laughs, a few cries, but I think this is where our road trip ends, my friend.”

A quiver of movement caught his eye and Death slowly looked around. The phantom diners were all clustered at the far end of the diner, their rippling transparent arms high in the air and their white eyes, devoid of irises, staring at the counter. Death stared back at them and the one eye of his which was still intact widened in shock.

“S**t,” he said under his breath. “Oh, s**t. We’re affecting the sequence. F**k.”

He looked back to the floor but his gun was now trained on a mere pool of blood. The door to the kitchen was swinging ever so slightly. Death hissed through his teeth, but he was now more worried than angry. He pushed open the door and called into the kitchen as loud as he dared.

“Hey! We need to go now, I mean really. I promise I won’t kill you right this second. We’ve been in this sequence for too long, caused too much of a ruckus. The customers are getting agitated.”

There was no reply. He took a few steps into the kitchen and looked about but he could see no-one. Death could feel the tension knotting in his shoulder muscles. He was now painfully aware of the wispy figures outside and their increasing sensitivity to his presence.

“I'm not kidding around here!” he said. “They're becoming aware of our presence and that means we're beginning to affect your memory sequence. Which is grade-a bad news! We start being able to interact with them, affect the sequence, theres no telling what kind of shitstorm we could cause! If we leave now-”

Death was cut off mid sentence as the Passenger exploded out from behind the dishwasher which sat in the centre of the kitchen. He remained low and tackled Death, driving his shoulder into his stomach and winding him, sending the pistol flying out of his hand. The two of them barrelled backwards through the door they had entered by. Death landed on his back and hit the side of his head on the floor, although not nearly as hard as he would have expected. The ground felt soft. The Passenger was still on top of him but he seemed to have over exerted himself. He rolled off Death, taking in great noisy lungfuls of air. The blow he had received to the head had evidently dazed him.

Yet Death was more preoccupied with his surroundings. He felt the floor beneath his with his fingers. Carpet. He seized a handful of it. Unmistakeable. He sat bolt upright. The gaudy lights and gewgaws which had adorned the diner's walls were now gone, taking the walls themselves with them. Death now found himself in a long hallway, flanked by tacky wallpaper riddled with damp. He rose unsteadily to his feet, paying no attention to the Passenger who lay slumped against a radiator watching him. Death took a few shaky steps forward until he came to the door they had tumbled through, the door which should have led into the kitchen they had just been in. He pushed it open to reveal the dim interior of a garage, the carcass of a bicycle lying propped up against one wall.

But there was no trace of the kitchen. Not a single remnant of the diner. Death stumbled backward in shock, staring open-mouthed at the entrance to the garage. Too late. They should have left. The memories were damaged, they were all piling up on top of one another.

“F**k,” he said with a tremor in his voice. “F**k f**k f**k...”

He looked around at the Passenger and blinked in surprise. His own gun was being aimed at him. The man had a trickle of blood oozing from his mouth and there was a mighty welt already forming at his temple where Death had struck him.

“Don't...you move,” he said with obvious difficulty, but Death barely heard him.

“Don't you get it?” he screamed. “We're fucked! I mean properly, seriously, no-coming-back-from-this-one two hundred per cent fucked! You stupid son of a b***h now you've taken me down with you! Lo entiendes, mancha de mierda?!”

The Passenger blinked slowly but kept the gun levelled squarely at Death's head. Death sighed and looked at the wallpaper.

“We're somewhere else now, another one of your memories. We affected the last one, f*****g altered it, and that's brought the whole thing crashing down. This place, it's fragile. That's what we're all told time and again. Look but don't f*****g touch. And we've touched it now! We've run our greasy hands all over it and now we've broken it! This whole place, all of your memories are collapsing like a black hole and we're caught in the centre of it!”

The Passenger seemed to consider this information for a moment. Then he got slowly to his feet, bracing himself against the wall but still keeping the gun level.

“Have to find Helen,” he murmured with a splutter.

This took Death completely by surprise.

“What, you...you want to find your wife?” he said stupidly.

“Can change things...here...do the right thing this time.”

In that moment Death felt real pity for the man, something he could not say he had felt for any other passenger he had ever had.

“What you saw...back in those suburbs...” he said slowly. “That wasn't her. That family, it wasn't your family. That was just your memory of them. They aren't living, they're just...projections. Of how you remember them.”

“You said...you said they could respond to us. Those things in the diner...”

“I also said it was insanely dangerous. No-coming-back-from-this-one two hundred per cent fucked ring any bells?”

“Have to try.”

“No, you don't. You can't stay here. This is just the space between two worlds. You can't go back, you have to go forward.”

“Don't know what's forward. Probably worse than whatever this is.”

He lowered the gun and turned away from Death.

“Don't try and stop me.”

He hobbled through a door into the next room. Death followed close behind but made no attempt to physically stop him.

“You don't know what's waiting for you beyond this,” he said gently. “I get that. It's scary. But you can't live here. This isn't living. Existing here would be torture. Your wife and kids, the ones here, however vividly you remember them, aren't those people. They can't think for themselves. They're just pieces of your mind, pictures of them made solid.”

They were walking through a dining room now. A small table lay to their left, at which sat a burly man with a moustache and a small, mousy-haired woman. A child of no more than eight sat between them. They all stared at Death and the Passenger as they went by, their dinners steaming in front of them. The eye contact unnerved Death. The Passenger trudged on without paying them any attention whatsoever. It appeared he had some destination in mind.

“I'd rather have this...whatever it is. I'd rather be promised this slice of life than gamble it away and maybe get nothing. Maybe I'd get something but maybe I'd get nothing. You don't know what comes, next, right? You were telling the truth about that?”

Death stopped and sighed.

“Yeah.”

The Passenger came to a halt in front of another door. He turned slowly, letting the pistol fall from his fingers to clatter on the floor. Death watched him, as did the family at the table. The Passenger took a deep breath and looked Death straight in the eye.

“I'm afraid of you, Death.”

Death looked back into his eyes. Tears lingered in the corners of them.

“I'm not Death,” he told him. “I'm just his driver.”

The Passenger nodded. Then he turned and pushed open the door. Death craned his neck but could not see what lay behind it. The Passenger went through, letting it swing shut behind him. Death heard a clatter over his shoulder and looked over to find that the family were eating contentedly, apparently oblivious to him now. He stooped and picked up his pistol, slotting in back into the folds of his jacket. Then he pushed open the door and stumbled out into the sunlight.

Death raised his arm to shield his eye from the blinding sunlight. The ground was soft underfoot and he sunk into it. The purple sand. Death looked about him. The Passenger's desert had returned. But the Passenger himself was no-where to be seen. Neither was the diner. Or the car. Death whirled around but was confronted with a further expanse of desert, stretching out flat to quite obstinately meet the horizon, the same as before. This was the same in all directions. The door he had just came through had vanished. The road was the only familiarity that remained.

There was a rock at the side of it and Death sat upon it, placing his head in his hands.

“S**t,” he said.

It seemed like many hours before they arrived. One moment Death was sitting on the rock with only the desert for company and the next he was surrounded by several figures who towered over him. They said nothing, just stood around him in a semicircle. A priest, a stewardess, a bald man in his middle ages. What appeared to be an obese lumberjack with a tangled and matted beard. He had known they would arrive eventually. He grinned when he saw them and spread his hands in a welcoming gesture.

“Hello, boys,” he said jovially. “Guess what? I fucked up.”

***

The man bent out of the car and threw up violently. Death turned away and took a long drag from his cigarette.

“Qaado waqti aad, saaxiibkay,” he said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. They were travelling in a small, white and extremely beat-up car, and he had brought it to a halt in the middle of a long but narrow dirt track, flanked on either side by ramshackle yet colourful houses. A little slice of a Djibouti town. His passenger's pudgy face appeared once more, still looking rather green, and he took out a spotted handkerchief and wiped his brow. He'd just had his first sequence, the poor lamb. Shot by police. They'd aimed for political activists. Had got a few, but they'd also got this guy. He'd just been passing by. Who knew what his opinions were on Djibouti's political situation? Death hadn't had the heart to ask. He was surprised that, as the man had watched himself being gunned down, he expressed no malcontent toward the policeman who had ended his life. He hadn't been bitter.

“Diyaar ma u tagto?” Death asked, and the man nodded after a moment. Compliance was good. Death was not in the mood for antics these days. Officially he had been demoted and was now driving in the region in and around Ethiopia but to him it didn't feel so very different than before. They still cried, they still begged. They still threw up. All that had really changed was the language in which they did so.

Death himself was currently in the form of a woman in her mid thirties, brown of hair with tightly drawn features. These days he never lingered in one form. He began to feel restless if he spent too much time in any one. He had certainly grown tired of the idea of assuming the guise of whoever he was currently driving. That concept seemed gimmicky to him now. He offered the man a cigarette but he declined politely. Death shrugged and started up the car. They began to move slowly through the little town's narrow streets, the man peering anxiously out of the window and letting out a little squeak at each ghostly figure he saw outside the window.

Eventually the buildings began to thin out and a desert replaced them. A strong wind blew sand onto the windshield so that Death had to turn on the wipers to get a clear view. They were rusty and moved very slowly, hardly helping his vision at all. Eventually Death gave up and he pulled the car over to the side of the road. As the killed the engine he looked up to find his passenger staring at him with wide fearful eyes.

“Maxaa hadda yahay?” he said.

“The sand,” replied Death. “Uh...Cammuudda oo kale. Waa in aan sugin in aan ciidda inay ka baxaan.”

The man nodded his head but still looked perturbed. As if he believed this excuse was a cover-up, and they had really stopped to witness some gruesome encore to the violence spectacle of before. Death sat back and watched the sand whistle by the driver's side window. The grains were faintly odd. Something about them was not quite right. In the sunlight they glimmered. With an almost purple colour.

Death threw open the door to the car and got out, the sand stinging his eyes immediately. He drew his neck scarf up and slammed the door shut. Then he walked straight, squinting against the sandstorm. He couldn't see what was in front of him or indeed if there was anything in front of him. He had an urge however and he was determined to follow it.

“Xaggee baad u socotaa?” he heard from behind him. He paid no attention and kept up a steady pace through the thick sand. “Xaggee baad u socotaa?”

Death felt a prickle across his skin. He stopped dead and rolled up his sleeve. His skin was white. The muscles had changed. Were bulgier. A man's arm. He looked up to find that the sandstorm had quietened. There was a structure a few feet ahead of him.

It was like the housing equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. At least six different buildings had come together to form it, and they were all squashed together haphazardly into a single monstrous thing. There was a smattering of red brickwork to the left side of it which gave way to a cream-coloured plaster on the other. Windows of varying shapes and sizes were dotted randomly all over it. One was smashed. A chimney protruded from the side of it at an alarming angle. It was a truly hideous thing to behold, and it sat miserably in the sand as if it had itself no idea how it had come to be there.

There was however a door, dark red with a gold “22” on it accompanied by a brass knocker. Death walked up to it and listened. He could hear nothing from within. He knocked. Still there was no sound from behind it. Death turned the knob and the door clicked open obligingly. He stuck his head inside, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw a dimly lit hallway with several doors along it. Two sets of stairs lead upstairs, one to the left as you came in and one at the very end of the hallway. Death stepped in and closed the door behind him, plunging the hallway into complete darkness. He got out his lighter and sparked it, casting a dull light onto the pictures hanging on the wall. He peered at them for only a moment before heading upstairs, taking the set closest to the door he had entered by.

Here he found only one door. This one was painted light blue but the paint was chipped and peeling off it. A flowery sign upon it read “Thomas.” Death pushed on the door and it swung open with a creak. He held the lighter up into the room to illuminate it. The walls were the same blue colour as the door and had elephants painted on them. There was a chest of drawers against one wall. A few toys lay scattered on the floor in front of the cot which sat in the centre of the room. Death looked into it tentatively, cringing as his head knocked the mobile above it which jangled softly. A small baby lay in the cot, snuggled up underneath a blanket. A few wisps of brown hair protruded from its head. It was breathing gently. But Death could hear another set of lungs at work in the room. He slowly rose and turned around to find a man crouched in the corner behind the door.

He looked the same. His eyes remained fixed on the floor as Death came and knelt in front of him. Neither of them said anything. Death wanted to ask if he had found his wife, or his memory of her, and, if he had, how it had made him feel. Had it made him happy? Had the memory stabilised enough for him to exist there harmoniously? But the mutated form of the building they were in gave him that answer. All his memories were imploding, fighting to occupy a tiny space. They had affected his memories, back in the diner. To an irreparable extent. Death had suspected as much but had never known for sure. Now he saw it in front of him he knew that it was true. This realm, the place where he worked, it would consume you if it was given the opportunity. And here it had been.

Death reached out and touched the man's arm gently. He looked up and Death saw years lying at the bottom of his watery brown eyes. Years spent in here, in this world. They were not happy ones. Death slipped the man's arm around his own neck and slowly brought him to his feet. He turned over his shoulder to look one last time at the baby, still sleeping soundly in the cot.

“Come on,” he said. “Not much road left now.”

Author's Note

Say whatever you like. Second draft but could probably use another. What, in particular, do you make of the flow/pace? And do you get involved in the characters and their dilemmas etc?