alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!”
The Quiznos was a crater. It looked less like an underperforming fast food franchise and more like the target of a hurricane, with whole-wheat buns and fifteen-gallon condiment jugs smeared across the parking lot like a Jackson Pollock. All you’d need to do was shrink it, shellac it and mount it on the wall to have a kinetic piece of modern art.
Sister Mary hobbled around in circles, stumping back and forth on her bruised ankles as fast as she could, laughing like a crazy person with the sheer joy of being alive. Satan sat on a flattened reach-in fridge and shook rubble out of his shoes. Then Sister Mary tripped over the smashed body of Quiznos Team Member Carson, crushed beneath a ten-foot-long particleboard counter. The smile froze on Sister Mary’s lips and she knelt at the side of the dying girl. She held her broken hand and leaned in to listen to her gasps.
“It’s okay, I won’t leave you,” she said. “Do you know the Act of Contrition? We’ll say an Act of Contrition together and then take Communion. There’s bread here, I’ll bless it. It won’t be exactly right but it’ll – ”
Carson pulled her closer to her bloody lips.
“I’m...a UU...” she said.
A UU. A Unitarian Universalist.
“Might as well be a Communist,” Sister Mary thought, but she kept it to herself. The girl was dying. It really wasn’t the time.
“My...hair?” Carson asked. “It looks...okay?” She had always been proud of her hair. It was the one thing in her life she’d been able to control.
Sister Mary smoothed the girl’s bangs away from her forehead.
“You have great hair,” she said. “I always wanted mine to be this thick. You’ll have to tell me how – ”
But Carson was already dead.
“Come on,” Satan said. “We’ve got to get to Hell right away.”
“What happened?” Sister Mary asked.
“I think they tried to get a jump on having me kill you,” Satan said.
“That girl didn’t get an Act of Contrition,” Sister Mary said. “I was going to do it but she just died.”
“Then you’ll be seeing her in Hell soon enough,” Satan said, pulling her away.
Sister Mary looked back at the smoking crater.
“How did I survive?” she asked. “Basic physics says I should have died.
“Basic physics tend to get all wonky when I’m around,” Satan said, pulling her along behind him. “Come on, we’re going to make a pit stop along the way.”
The cab pulled up outside the Welcome Center for the Detroit Sunrise/Sunset Maturity Village. It was a singularly uninspiring place to die, little more than a giant brick container full of old, unwanted people. To Sister Mary, it looked exactly like Shadow Grove.
“I’m not going inside a retirement home,” Sister Mary said. “I’ve got a history with those places.”
“Then stay here,” Satan said. “I won’t be long.”
He pushed open the glass front doors and found the name he wanted on the directory. A shiny linoleum hallway took him to the Rainbow Wing, room RW-12. He knocked, but there was no answer. He tried the doorknob and it opened immediately. He stepped inside the darkened room. It was warm and stuffy and smelled like skin. The curtains were drawn and it was packed with furniture that was far too large for the miserly amount of floor space. A gloomy figure was sitting in a La-Z-Boy Reclina-Rocker planted right in front of the TV, which was going full blast. The Price Is Right was on.
“Hello, Death,” Satan said.
Death turned up the volume.
“I don’t apologize very often,” Satan said. “So just hear me out.”
Death didn’t move. Drew Carey’s voice brayed. Satan walked over to the Reclina-Rocker and tried to pull the remote control out of Death’s hand, but Death’s grip was too strong. Satan had to settle for pressing the “Mute” button.
“I’m sorry for firing you,” he said, then waited for Death to say something. After almost a full minute he realized that Death was going to play hard-to-get.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he continued. “What you did was sloppy but I overreacted. And I need your help. It’s all falling apart without you. I need you to come back.”
Death just watched Drew Carey silently mugging and grinning.
“Please,” Satan said, unaccustomed to begging.
Death gave no indication that an answer was forthcoming. Satan decided to try another tack.
“Are you going to just sit here for eternity watching daytime television?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Death mumbled.
“It’s a waste,” Satan said, happy to be getting somewhere.
“I’ve got satellite,” Death said. “I watch TCM. I