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The message flag popped up in the late afternoon of what had turned out to be a spectacularly boring Tuesday. Apparently nobody wanted to die on a Tuesday, so the DOD wasn’t seeing much business. Until now. “Ah, finally!” Manuel Calavera looked away from his solitaire game (he was losing, somehow) and pulled out the message.
“¡Dios mío!”
He slammed the commission down on his desk, facedown, and edged away from it. After a second he lifted one corner of the paper, peering at the text again. He quickly let it drop, snapping his hand away like the page was going to bite him. Yes, he hadn't misread it, it was who he thought it was.
This was bad. Very bad.
===
When he managed to pick the commission up and hold it in his trembling hands, he hurried it down the hall to Eva. “Eva,” he said, dropping the paper on her desk, “you’ve got to find somebody else to take this.”
Eva looked up from her typewriter and straight at Manny, not even glancing at the paper. “What’s the matter, Manny--can’t take time away from your solitaire game?”
“It’s not that,” he snapped, “it’s...it’s him.” He shuddered. “Can’t the new guy take it? What’s his name...Dom something...”
“Domino,” she answered automatically, glancing at the commission. “And I’m sorry Manny, but you know the rules...it showed up in your message tube, it’s all yours.”
He sighed. “Couldn’t I at least get a couple of armed guards or something?”
“I don’t think he’s gonna hurt you, Manny.” She handed the paper back to him along with a pack of cigarettes. “Just make sure he doesn’t wreck too much of the office, okay? Copal’d never forgive you.”
“Right. Well, wish me luck.” When she didn’t, he sighed again, stuffed the cigarettes and the commission into his suit pocket, and returned to his office for his reaper costume.
===
His driver hadn’t been too thrilled to find out where they were going, either, but after a little half-hearted pleading from Manny, he’d been convinced to make the trip. He didn’t do it with his usual speed and efficiency, though, and Manny used up the entire pack of cigarettes Eva had given him on the way there. He wondered what he was supposed to do on the trip back.
They came to a quiet stop somewhere deep in the Land of the Living. Manny sighed and dragged himself out of the car. “Keep the motor running,” he shouted back to the driver, “and floor it on the way back.”
The demon wobbled his head a little as a slight form of acknowledgement. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his normally dark red knuckles had turned white.
Manny didn’t have to go far before he found the soul he was looking for. It was lying in plain sight on a beach completely devoid of all other life, not surprising for this particular part of the Land of the Living. Its mortal coil was writhing harder than any Manny had ever seen as the soul within tried desperately to escape. Dios mío, he thought again, raising his scythe and slicing the coil.
The soul within--a tall, thick-boned skeleton with a small, roundish face and narrow eyes--popped out without any prompting and regarded him with poorly disguised annoyance. “Dead again, eh?” he remarked. His accent was so thick it was nearly impossible to understand him.
“Si,” Manny said at last, tightening his grip on his scythe. “Greetings, Mr. LeChuck. I--”
“Heard it.”
“Right,” he said, knocked a little off-balance. “Er. This way.”
LeChuck glowered, but after a short staring contest and a few muttered curses at somebody named “Peepgood” he wandered his way over to the car and got inside. The frame sagged under his weight, and Manny’s driver turned white and trembling.
“You can drive us back, right?” Manny asked him quietly.
“I--er, yessir,” he squeaked. Manny sighed and climbed into the car with his client and closed the door. They took off back for the Land of the Dead, albeit with a few jerks and stops along the way.
The car’s interior lapsed into an uncomfortable silence for a long time. Finally, Manny cleared his throat. “I suppose you’ve heard the speech before.”
“Aye.”
“That’s...good.” Saves me from having to repeat it, he thought, wishing for another pack of cigarettes. Somehow, the prospect of informing this particular soul of the basics of the afterlife seemed a little silly.
Suddenly, the car squealed horribly and came to a dead stop. LeChuck looked at Manny, unperturbed. Manny looked at the driver, slightly more unsettled. “Don’t tell me we’ve got traffic problems.”
“Um, no...just fried the engine,” the demon squeaked. “But I can get it working again! Really!” He hopped out and ran around to the front of the car, popping open the hood. Manny turned to LeChuck and tried smiling.
“It’ll just be a few minutes...sorry about the delay.”
“Why not?” he snorted, more to himself than Manny. “I’ve got time ta spare.”
After that they mostly kept to themselves, and the cab was quiet save for the driver’s occasional mutters and curses and tinkering with the engine. LeChuck was absorbed with something out the window. Manny tried to see what he was looking at but didn’t find anything.
“You know,” he said, “you’re something of a legend around the DOD.”
LeChuck snapped his attention back to Manny, setting his heavy gaze on him. “That so, is it?”
“Well, since you’re our only client who’s ever come back...”
“I don’t do it ‘cause I like the service, if that’s what yer wonderin’.” He snorted and looked back out the window. “If it were up ta me, I’d give ye a different client and stay away from ye.”
Too bad, Manny mused. I’d bet the guy you’d send would actually stick around. “You know,” he said aloud, “a lot of us have been wondering...what’s it like to go back?”
“It ain’t no picnic,” LeChuck snapped. “But ye get used to it eventually. It’s better than bein’ stuck here.”
Manny smiled--the salesman in him recognized an opening he could work with. “Well, I don’t know, the Land of the Dead has a lot of interesting characters...”
“If it don’t have th’one character I’m lookin’ for, it’s not worth anythin’.”
Manny had just opened his mouth to ask what he meant when the driver hopped back into the car. “Okay, she’s fixed!”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “So step on it!”
===
The car squealed to a stop in the middle of the DOD garage after narrowly avoiding collisions with two other company cars. Manny took a deep breath. They’d made it this far in one piece, at least. But how he was going to sit in his office and explain travel options to this soul, he had no idea.
“If you’d just follow me upstairs, Mr. LeChuck--”
But he was already out of the car. Manny quickly jumped out after him and found him standing on the ramp that led back to the Land of the Living.
“Mr. LeChuck,” he began again, a small note of sympathy in his voice, “you can’t go--”
“Ye think I can’t be goin’ back, eh?” LeChuck smirked. “Ye know I’ve done it before, lad, and I’ll be doin’ it again.”
Manny shook his head. “Your luck’ll have to run out eventually. Besides, you can’t walk--”
“Aye, but ye can, if yer knowin’ how ta do it.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “Well, in that case...you could’ve left any time you wanted to. Why now?”
LeChuck waved at the ramp. “More dramatic, this way. ‘Sides, I like ye. Ye’re a sight better than the last guy they sent ta get me, anyway.”
“Flattered, I’m sure,” Manny muttered. LeChuck offered a small bow.
“If ye’re lucky, we won’t be meetin’ again, and ye’ll be pickin’ up Threepwood instead o’me. ‘Tis a good day ta be dead, but it ain’t that good.” And at that, he bolted up the ramp and was gone.
The driver fainted. Manny only sighed yet again and wondered how he’d ever report this.
===
“Where is he?” Eva looked up from her desk and frowned upon seeing that Manny was alone. “Manny, don’t tell me you left him there...”
“I didn’t. He ran back up the ramp.”
She sighed, handing him a form and another pack of cigarettes. “Fill out the report,” she said, “and I’ll try to keep Copal from killing you.” She smiled sympathetically. “He hasn’t met this guy yet. Just heard the rumors.”
“Yeah. Right.” He lit a cigarette and leaned against her desk. “You know, Eva...have you ever wondered if maybe we’re helping this guy along in some sort of scheme he’s got going? I mean, if we didn’t show up and pick him up, maybe--”
She offered him a very flat, unamused look. “Don’t make me call the company shrink, Manny.”
He shrugged it off. “Forget I mentioned it. And thanks for the cigarettes.” He started down the hall for his office, but Eva stopped him before he could make it in the door. She had a thick file open on her desk and was flipping through it.
“You know, that’s the farthest anybody’s gotten him in a while. Except the second time he showed up--Vera made it all the way to her office before he made a break for it.” She smiled. “You must’ve kept a good eye on him.”
Manny snorted. “Next time, I say we should just sprout him.”
“Put it in the report, Manny.”
He walked into his office, shutting the door. The reaper outfit was back on the hanger within seconds. The report got tossed onto his desk, where he imagined it would be swiftly lost. He only hoped his next client would be a little saner and less the stuff of DOD legends.
===
Manny looked away from his computer screen and back at the short, scowling little soul sitting in his chair. I must be in some sort of slump, he thought, getting up. Then again, he should’ve known this one would be nothing but bad news, given where he came from and the fact that he’d died after double-crossing a certain office legend a few times too many. Still, he plastered a smile on his face and did his best to seem enthusiastic. Maybe it would catch on.
“Okay Mr. LaGrande, if you’d follow me down to the packing room...”
The End
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