Chapter Three: Pomp And Circumstance March In D#

Rhys muses on his special "talent" for survival

Brushing his teeth quickly, Rhys Vertoc hurried to finish getting ready. He was already late, the events from the evening before having lead to a distracted and disturbed night’s sleep, and he knew if he didn’t get back on track soon he risked losing the job he loathed, but needed. Catching sight of his own reflection in the mirror, he winced. Although the most obvious signs of his recent accident, walking into a pole (of all things), were gone, he fancied he could still see some swelling around the eyes, probably brought about by last night’s fiasco. Who, he asked himself, chokes on a strawberry? He knew he was lucky he hadn’t died, and wondered if it might not be time to start buying first aid books for the people around him. Or, at the very least, quoting first aid knowledge at them at every opportunity. He chuckled to himself at the idea.

 

Everybody had a talent, that’s what he’d learned in primary school; everybody had a talent that was theirs, at least one something that they were good at. He’d spent his childhood looking for his talent, trying to ascertain what it was that made him stand out, and he’d come up blank. Now it seemed he’d found it, and it definitely made him stand out as unique... but it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d hoped for as a youngster. No, he had no special talent for reading music, or playing the guitar, or even at acting or sport; nothing that would have made him popular in school, or given him the chance to go a long way in life... Rhys Vertoc’s special talent appeared to simply be the ability to not die. He couldn’t even count the amount of times he’d almost lost his life just in the past six months alone, and it did seem to be happening more frequently as time went by, as though someone were out to get him. He had wondered for a time if it might be the well dressed business man he saw so often, usually around the time he had one of his near-death experiences; it wasn’t natural for the man to turn up so many places. As it turned out, he’d been right, and here he chuckled again. Two years ago, he’d been paranoid enough to shout at the man, and that’s when it had happened. The man had looked at him in surprise. “You really can see me? That’s not supposed to happen!” That’s when he had found out who it was who was following him around �" Death.

 

There are not many people who could say that Death truly stalked them, but Rhys was certainly one of the few who could. In truth, Death had almost made a second job out of following poor Rhys, always certain that Rhys’ time was nearing its end, only to be thwarted at the last minute when Rhys simply failed to die. A series of lucky circumstances, a rock in just the right place or a bystander who knocked him out of harm’s way just in time, for instance, would save his life with just fractions of a second to spare. And Death would sigh in frustration and move off, get on with business elsewhere.

 

Just before taking off out his front door, Rhys stopped to collect his favourite novel, Douglas Adams’ “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”. Shoving it unceremoniously into his bag, he grabbed it and his keys, then locked the door behind him. On the drive, he continued to think about Death.

 

Over the two years since he first met Death as a person, Rhys had gotten to know him a little better. He’d learnt that the man was more than his job, though he was certainly kept very busy with that. He knew that Death’s favourite card game was, unsurprisingly, Poker. He knew that Death’s favourite colour was black �" again, no surprise there. He knew that Death’s own favourite book was The Baby Hugs Bear And Baby Tugs Bear Counting Book. That, admittedly, was rather a surprise. Death wasn’t quite as predictable as he had originally assumed.  When Rhys had wondered how Death managed to do his job so thoroughly and still get some time in for those other experiences, Death had given him a crash course explanation. Something, Rhys recollected, about living in the spaces between time, or being able to access that trouser of time that evaded regular humans. He had also learned, that day, that, just as there are many doctors, or mailmen, or bus drivers, there is certainly more than one Death out there doing the job.

 

At first he had laughed. More than one Death? How could that be? Who apportioned each soul? Why have a Death at all, why not just allow the dead to pass naturally into the next world? He hadn’t shared his thoughts with Death, at the time, but in the months since, he had found time to ask all but the last of those questions. The answers, he conceded to himself, were certainly quite enlightening, even though he did not recall the specifics. Actually, he frowned to himself, he recalled very little about it all, indeed. He would have to ask Death about that, too; though no doubt it would be to do with the nature of the subject at hand, in which case he would have little recollection of that conversation, either.

 

Rhys shook his head and turned his focus back to the road. If he wasn’t careful, Death would be paying him yet another visit already today, and he could do without the attention. Already his friends and family had shared enough that he was becoming somewhat well known for his “frequent brushes with death”, and he suspected that might not bode well for the relationship he was hoping to enter into...

 

Ah, Tamara Baggins. Now there was an interesting, and beautiful, train of thought to follow. He’d first met her at a friend’s party, and they had spent the evening chattering away like a pair of children in the schoolyard. It was one of the first times in a year where he’d been in a large company and nothing had happened to him. Not a single time had he come even a little close to death, and he had been very grateful. It is, after all, rather hard to pick up women when you keep keeling over in front of them. They tend to get the wrong idea, and assume you’re sickly, or that you take too many risks, and would therefore leave them widowed before the year was out. Only gold-diggers were interested in men like that, and no gold-digger in the world would be interested in a mere bus driver with no greater ambition in life than to work at a hated job just because it paid enough to keep him afloat. When the night was over, he had asked if he might take her out for a drink sometime, and she had looked disappointed, but agreed. He wondered, at the time, what he could possibly have said wrong, but gratefully took down her number. A few days later, he had gone around to his friend’s place and asked him about the woman. That’s when he had learned how much she enjoyed romance and spontaneity, and he had formulated something of a plan for himself. When he called her that night, he had invited her for “an evening unlike any other she had experienced” and she had sounded far more enthused when she agreed.

Author's Note

Please bear in mind this is a very rough first draft as I'm throwing together 50,000 words in a month. Feel free to add reviews and comments/fix grammar and spelling/find plot holes and problems (these things are heavily encouraged!), but please do be gentle on this, as well as bearing in mind that part of the NaNo experience means unnecessary padding and/or weird moments/dares.