Job Stability By Sarah Sarai

Old Death offers “Preparation for the Inevitable,” a workshop for the fearful, the morbidly fearful, the clueless who trust their next step will land them in a bar, on a beach or a functional hovercraft. Who attends? Holdouts hoping to sidestep finality; who don’t view death as the centerpiece of life. They barter for password-accessible handouts with gold, heirlooms, transcripts, deeds, secrets. Handouts? 

Any number of Old Death’s constituents trade specialty skills for more hours on earth. It’s the lawyers who fashion relevant info into suitably distressing prose; the keyboard specialists who bang out such legalistic renderings. All for a few more days (pro-rated, per output) on the planet. The curriculum is a mishmash of legal agreements, disclaimers for rocket liability, insurance companies’ client-facing workshops, Human Resources departments’ ill-phrased cautions, information sessions at senior centers, miscellaneous bylaws, unread contracts. 

It's been a minute since Old Death punched into their job, which they agree is a prestige, albeit lonely, gig. Long into their reign Old Death began to see themself as Quixote-esque, spearing windmills masquerading as foes. They convinced a boozing sidekick to accompany them on their plodding journey. Both reconciled themselves to each other’s oddities, the boozing sidekick shrieking less and less in the presence bolts of lightning, swords, elite militia, lethal honeytraps. Old Death clamping his his ears when his companion produced a syntho-fart, knowing this too would pass. When his sidekick tumbled off the road over a cliff onto boulders, a walking-while-drinking venture, Old Death decided they didn’t want to break-in another assistant and resumed their solitary ways. 

And thusly and so. 

Old Death spits on you who think yourself mighty—or, far worse, connected—as if you could phone a senator to gain another year or ten on the planet. Fat chance. They are indifferent to your posturing. Make no mistake. They are coming for you. Consider the helpers: beef, bacon, stupidity, Proud Boys, Marjorie Green, lack of universal healthcare, an understaffed FDA, Alex Jones, big tobacco, the NRA, toothpaste manufactured in China, so much whiskey, Marlboro Lights, cupcakes wrapped in cellophane. Oh, Lord, save me from the white squiggle!

Calculating the odds, something at which Old Death excels, they currently loiter outside the KFC at Second and Fourteenth, the southwest corner, N.Y.C. They know without knowing (or without knowing, know) a thing is on the way. The thing is a Yellow Cab which quick-swerves right onto Second from Fourteenth. The cabbie’s hands are shaking. He is old, but not ancient. As if age mattered. The cab crashes. Old Death leans to sniff dead cabbie essence. 

Mortality is a beautiful thing. 

In the back seat, an infant is clutched by her mother. Little one doesn’t know what memories are, but already has stored many, and will carry a faint trace of that smash, taxi into curb, of cabbie grabbing at his busted heart as he dies. Later in life, the child will twitch when hearing a siren, seeing an ambulance, witnessing a mother’s grasp. She will not remember Old Death sniffing the dead cabbie, though she will harbor a sensation of same; the barest outline of a bag of bones and a scythe; faint echoes of an inhalation echoing.

Old Death stands tall. What will become of the planet if they don’t perform their mission? Highly populated is the globe. And yet.

We have heard that Near Death (yes) is gaining followers again. On all the continents, people are interested in this newly revived boundary. They savor the promise Near Death offers, that highlight, preview of what lies ahead (oh, brave new world). Some say Near Death is a perspective on the all of it, past, present, future. In the body, out of the body, return to the body, the queer body, the woman’s body, the disease-free body. Near Death, also known as the hovering death, the death that doesn’t kill the body but never leaves the mind—the “experience” of death without that tiresome end stop, is an attractive possibility. Hover above your body, look around, explore, even, gain perspective, return.

Near Death is wholly different from Old Death who is not worried they will be looking for work anytime soon. Their job description is writ in stone. 

A correct assumption? What do we know but that tomorrow, next week, next year, Old Death is coming. And may, Near Death, offering its glimpse of afterlife, of the day after the party ends, for you and you. For the all and for the any.

Sarah Sarai saw Gene Autry on horseback when the cowboy and his horse visited her grammar school in Southern California. She writes poetry and fiction and flash. Her most recent poetry collection is That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books). Sarah Sarai is an independent editor of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Join her at https://www.facebook.com/farstargirl
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