Read Online Managing Death by Trent Jamieson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Trent Jamieson
Ads: Link
we’ve got, or what the game is.’
‘Ten Pomps. We could do with ten Pomps,’ I say.
‘But they wouldn’t really be yours. They’d be doing her bidding.’
‘But they’d
know
what they’re doing.’
Tim gets to his feet. ‘That’s what worries me.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Shift change. Things are about to get crazy. We’ll discuss this tonight, eh?’
‘Yeah. Holding off until tomorrow is long enough to piss her off, but only a little.’
‘Annoying people isn’t the greatest tactic, Steve.’
I grin at him. ‘You use what gifts you’re given.’
‘Oh, you use that one all right, and it’s a rough instrument.’ He closes the door behind him.
‘I didn’t get this job because I was subtle,’ I say to the door. ‘I got it because I was stupid.’
The chair beneath me shivers, as though it is dreaming. Three people die in a car accident. Someone clutches at his chest. His heart beneath races, shudders, halts. I look at the corner where the cockroach ran. There’s been enough death already. I let it be.
I’m Death, not an exterminator.
7
W ith Tim and Cerbo gone I get to work.
Well, I try to.
First I pick up the chip packet and toss it in the bin. The chocolate wrapper goes the same way. I straighten a few papers, open some letters, but I’m not really reading them. I switch on my MP3 and listen to some Black Flag. Henry Rollins gets me in the right headspace today.
Complacency’s a killer, Morrigan used to say. He should know. He used it to kill most of Australia’s Pomps. But it took him down, too, in the end. He certainly hadn’t expected me to win the Negotiation.
If I’m honest, neither had I.
Here I am sitting in the throne. An RM with all the responsibilities that entails. Staff beneath me, a region and a world to save from Stirrers, as well as a commitment to good returns for our shareholders.
I think about those ten Pomps and just how helpful they would be, not to mention Suzanne’s knowledge. The black bakelite phone sits there. This is the sort of thing Mr D could advise me on. But I need to start making my own decisions. I’ll talk to him thisafternoon, once I work out exactly how I feel about this offer.
I type up a couple of emails, then text Lissa:
Interesting morning, how about you?
No response. So I send another one, creaking backwards and forwards in my throne:
Wish you were here. Naked.
No response. I play the crossword in the
Courier-Mail
– only cheat half the time.
Then I consider the paperwork on my desk. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I sign off on.
A car accident on the Pacific Highway chills me with eight deaths. It’s just a gentle chill, but their deaths come so suddenly – I worry that there is no one there to facilitate their way into the Underworld. That there is, and that it is done, brings a tight smile to my lips. A seventy-five-year-old woman in her garden in Hobart clutches at her chest and tumbles among her rhododendrons. Two children jump off a bridge in some northern New South Wales town: only one surfaces. Someone takes a hammer to their husband, claw end first. Death. Death. Death. And my people are close by at every one.
It sounds terrible. But there’s life before those endings, and existence after. It’s not the world ending, but lives. The world’s ending, though … I need to find out more about that Stirrer god.
Still no response from Lissa, so while I work I follow her via my Avian Pomps.
A crow witnesses her stalling a Stirrer in the Valley – the corpse had somehow escaped the Royal Brisbane Hospital. She lays the body gently against a bench and makes a call. An ambulance will be along soon. They’ll ship the body back to the morgue and it will be as though it never happened. She binds the wound in her palm quickly and efficiently.
A sparrow watches as she eats a kebab for lunch, sitting in a mall, just a few streets from where she lay the body down. I can almost smell the garlic. I want to reach
‘Ten Pomps. We could do with ten Pomps,’ I say.
‘But they wouldn’t really be yours. They’d be doing her bidding.’
‘But they’d
know
what they’re doing.’
Tim gets to his feet. ‘That’s what worries me.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Shift change. Things are about to get crazy. We’ll discuss this tonight, eh?’
‘Yeah. Holding off until tomorrow is long enough to piss her off, but only a little.’
‘Annoying people isn’t the greatest tactic, Steve.’
I grin at him. ‘You use what gifts you’re given.’
‘Oh, you use that one all right, and it’s a rough instrument.’ He closes the door behind him.
‘I didn’t get this job because I was subtle,’ I say to the door. ‘I got it because I was stupid.’
The chair beneath me shivers, as though it is dreaming. Three people die in a car accident. Someone clutches at his chest. His heart beneath races, shudders, halts. I look at the corner where the cockroach ran. There’s been enough death already. I let it be.
I’m Death, not an exterminator.
7
W ith Tim and Cerbo gone I get to work.
Well, I try to.
First I pick up the chip packet and toss it in the bin. The chocolate wrapper goes the same way. I straighten a few papers, open some letters, but I’m not really reading them. I switch on my MP3 and listen to some Black Flag. Henry Rollins gets me in the right headspace today.
Complacency’s a killer, Morrigan used to say. He should know. He used it to kill most of Australia’s Pomps. But it took him down, too, in the end. He certainly hadn’t expected me to win the Negotiation.
If I’m honest, neither had I.
Here I am sitting in the throne. An RM with all the responsibilities that entails. Staff beneath me, a region and a world to save from Stirrers, as well as a commitment to good returns for our shareholders.
I think about those ten Pomps and just how helpful they would be, not to mention Suzanne’s knowledge. The black bakelite phone sits there. This is the sort of thing Mr D could advise me on. But I need to start making my own decisions. I’ll talk to him thisafternoon, once I work out exactly how I feel about this offer.
I type up a couple of emails, then text Lissa:
Interesting morning, how about you?
No response. So I send another one, creaking backwards and forwards in my throne:
Wish you were here. Naked.
No response. I play the crossword in the
Courier-Mail
– only cheat half the time.
Then I consider the paperwork on my desk. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I sign off on.
A car accident on the Pacific Highway chills me with eight deaths. It’s just a gentle chill, but their deaths come so suddenly – I worry that there is no one there to facilitate their way into the Underworld. That there is, and that it is done, brings a tight smile to my lips. A seventy-five-year-old woman in her garden in Hobart clutches at her chest and tumbles among her rhododendrons. Two children jump off a bridge in some northern New South Wales town: only one surfaces. Someone takes a hammer to their husband, claw end first. Death. Death. Death. And my people are close by at every one.
It sounds terrible. But there’s life before those endings, and existence after. It’s not the world ending, but lives. The world’s ending, though … I need to find out more about that Stirrer god.
Still no response from Lissa, so while I work I follow her via my Avian Pomps.
A crow witnesses her stalling a Stirrer in the Valley – the corpse had somehow escaped the Royal Brisbane Hospital. She lays the body gently against a bench and makes a call. An ambulance will be along soon. They’ll ship the body back to the morgue and it will be as though it never happened. She binds the wound in her palm quickly and efficiently.
A sparrow watches as she eats a kebab for lunch, sitting in a mall, just a few streets from where she lay the body down. I can almost smell the garlic. I want to reach
Similar Books
