Contractor: Chapter - 3

“Do you really think your unfinished business is important enough to stop me?” Death chuckled. For some reason though, he did stop. Or at least he didn’t kill me right away. The important thing was that I wasn’t dead, and that was enough to encourage me to pursue the topic.

“I-I’m a writer.” I stuttered. “I’m on the verge of my masterpiece. Please.” Death burst out laughing, which besides being the last thing I expected left me a little insulted.

“Aren’t you a little young for that? You don’t fool me Albert, people try to buy time from me almost every day. It doesn’t often work out the way they want it.” He sighed, taking on a more businesslike manner from his previous hysterical one. “Now hold still, I’m going to take your soul. It isn’t all that painful and the less you struggle the more there will be left for me. So don’t be selfish.”

“At least give me a chance to prove you wrong.” I said quietly. My boldness didn’t seem to match my quiet voice. Fighting Death was an unnatural idea, death happened and it wasn’t any human beings choice to defy that. But I’d been doing it this whole time without even thinking about it. Somehow defying Death seemed natural to me, more natural than just letting it happen as most people must judging by his attitude.

No sooner had I felt I had a chance to survive than the feeling was warped by a yellow smile from Death. I stood slowly, perhaps to try and run away again, but I couldn’t be sure. I was mesmerized, frozen in place and before I could act any plan I might have been formulating was cut short.

“I’ll give you three days.” Death placed a hand on my shoulder and my world faded to black. The last thing I saw was his yellow smile.

 

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When I woke, though it was more like realizing where I was and less like I’d been sleeping and woke up there, I was in a small dark room. A tall yellowish candle stood in a corner of the room opposite from me and lit the dusty room with a small timid flame. I was lying face up on an old squeaky metal cot with a thin dusty mattress separating the metal wire underneath from my back.

I sat up and hefted myself onto the floor. The first thing I felt was pain. I felt like I was comprised of one giant aching bruise. If I stood still though, the pain wasn’t as bad. From my standing perspective I could see all of the small room at once. Against the wall on the opposite side of the room from the cot was a small square table with a giant typewriter sitting atop it. The machine was covered in cobwebs, but somehow managed to look valuable. Just to the right of the table was a waist high metal stand where the candle stood melting. To the left of the table was a stack of blank yellowed paper on the floor.

Apart from the few objects against the wall the only other thing in the room was a mirror. I would hardly call it a mirror though, as it was nothing more than a relatively large shard of glass, yet there could be no other purpose for such a piece of glass hanging on a wall. Oddly, despite the obvious purpose, the glass shard failed to reflect anything in the room, myself included. No matter how I looked into it all I could see was a rose with dark petals hanging from about a foot of thorny stem in the midst of an empty black nothing, and that was only when I looked directly into it. As I tried to get other perspectives on it sort of swung around a bit. When I pulled it away from the wall, very careful not hold it by the jagged edges, all I could see behind it was chipping plaster.

After deciding that further inspection of the “mirror” was a waste of time, I walked over to the typewriter and dusted it off a bit. I’d never used one before, it was vastly inferior to a computer in my opinion. Apparently Death didn’t think the same. He’d left me a note, still tucked into the decrepit beast of a machine.

 

 

I looked at the candle, there was already a puddle of melted wax forming at its base. Fear froze me long enough to realize that I needed to move. No point in wasting more time. I ripped the note out of the top of the typewriter and slid in a new sheet.

I tried to remember the story from the other night, but I was too scattered from the shock of what was happening to think clearly. A word for word copy would be impossible, especially on this monster of a type writer. Without anything else coming to mind though, an attempt would have to do. With no backspaces I was scratching out a lot of words manually. After every page I glanced at the candle which seemed to be melting faster and faster. As a result of my panic a lot of the pages were wrinkled from me trying to jam them into the typewriter a little too fast. I typed as quickly as I could to try and compensate for lost time, but the faster I typed the more errors I made which only made my haste pointless.

The whole time I typed I never once felt hungry, or tired, or distracted in the least by any of the usual random ideas or thoughts that typically led me away from my work. It would have scared me if I’d had the time to notice, but I was a little bit preoccupied with typing for my life. The fact that I had been confined in an aperture-less room by Death didn’t really register. I was operating by his rules now, and on his time, which didn’t leave me any time of my own to think of anything but writing. It was equal parts a dream come true for me, the aspiring writer eager to write professionally, and a nightmare for the boy in an impossible situation.

 

Reviews

[Jordyn Gray]

It's fantastic! I'm really enjoying myself! One quick thing, though. You never say what Al is scratching his mistakes out with. Is it a pen, or a quill, or something else entirely?

[Outdated Account]

You have a good point... I was thinking white out, but that wasn't common practice for typists until much after this typewriters day. I think it's actually safe to assume that Death has one of the very first typewriters ever built, so Al may be using charcoal or an ink quill. Now I need to seriously think about this topic, thank you.