A few short stories

[azumeow]

Holy shit dude, way to put a damper on a decent day....

[Oddball]

So, you're sticking with the "Hisao slept with every single girl and had kids with them all," idea I see.

It really doesn't work any better here than it did the first time.

[hyroglyphixs]

Just read through all of em. Some were great (drunk Lilly, singer Hanako) and some were not so great (fathers day..)

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the stories and I hope to read more from you!

[81pi81]

Play me!

What a great idea to install a piano right in the middle of the lobby of the Glasgow Queen Street station! It was not a top quality instrument, and it was completely out of tune, but anyone who was waiting for a train could play, or listen to someone else. All kinds of people could come and play whatever music they liked.

That evening, there were a few curious onlookers standing around the piano, but no-one was playing. Then a couple with two children approached. Posh people, who obviously did not buy their clothes at Tesco. They looked like an ordinary upper-class British family, except the mother, who, despite her blonde hair, looked a bit Asian. A charming lady with an elegant dress, well into her thirties, but still beautiful.

She sat at the piano with the help of her husband. The spectators noticed that she rarely opened her eyes, and when she did, they were not looking anywhere. What a shame such a delightful lady was blind.

Was her music going to match her looks? The spectators were immediately disappointed. She was great eye candy, but she could not play. Despite clichés, blind people were not always good musicians. She clumsily used only one finger, with no sense of rhythm, as if she was trying to remember a tune. No-one guessed what she was trying to play. There were so many false notes that J.S. Bach himself would have hardly identified the Sarabande of his BWV 1010 cello suite.

Her children did not care and were running in circles around the piano, playing tag. If little Matthew had listened to the piano instead of chasing his sister, maybe he would have remembered that it was the tune once played by Mummy's little musical box.

Matthew was a mechanical genius. He loved dismounting little objects to see how they worked, and he had often been punished because of that. Two months before, for instance, he had carefully taken Mummy's musical box to pieces. While he was studying the mechanism, she walked into his room and asked him what he was doing. He told her he was reading but his answer did not convince her (it was very hard to lie to Mummy), so she touched the table, and her fingers found a spring. Then a little lever. When she understood where all that junk came from, she was really cross. She was even angrier than that time when he had broken the screen of her cellular phone last year. Daddy tried to repair the musical box, but finally, he had to throw all the bits and pieces to the rubbish bin. The punishment for Matthew was really harsh: no console games for one week! This was so unfair: how are you supposed to learn how things work if you do not look inside?

The lady "played" the piano for a minute or two while her children were running around, but she could not remember the tune and her noisy kids were getting on her nerves. At last, she asked her husband:

"Henry, what time is it?"
"10 past 7. The train to Inverness is leaving in ten minutes. We'd better go now."

As soon as their mother got up, the children both jumped at the same time on the piano seat and started playing random chords with the palm of their hands all over the keyboard.

The lady shouted: "Matthew! Clarissa! We're going!"

The children reluctantly got up, the lady grabbed her husband's arm, Matthew took his mother's hand and Clarissa her father's. As the four of them walked away towards the platforms, a young girl sat at the piano and started playing an English folk song.

[azumeow]

No. Why? Why do you do this to me?!?!?!?! That was great, but it was terrible! The pain in my heart. You monster!

[81pi81]

The Deal

Junichiro Ikezawa was standing in the middle of an empty corridor. How did he get in there? He did not remember. He did not have the slightest idea about where he was either.

The corridor was well lit and absurdly long. He could not see the ends of it: it looked like it went on in a straight line forever. There was a door just in front of him. It seemed to be the one and only door in the whole corridor.

He noticed the sign on the door. "Department of Death. Office 3-3. Please kick the door hard". Mr. Ikezawa was a civilised man, so he hesitated and knocked gently. No answer. He looked at the sign again. It had changed slightly. Now, it read: "Department of Death. Office 3-3. Please KICK the door REALLY HARD". "OK", he thought. "This is a dream, I am going to wake up soon, never mind". This time, he decided to follow the instructions strictly: the sound of the kick echoed in the empty corridor for several seconds.

The door was opened by a bespectacled dark-haired girl wearing a uniform from "Yamaku high school". Wait... which school allowed that kind of miniskirt? This dream was becoming weirder and weirder. The girl let him in without a word. The room was a little office with a big cabinet, two chairs and a desk on which stood a computer and a printer. The girl showed him a chair and snapped her fingers: immediately, a female voice shouted very loudly just behind his back: "Hello Shicchan, can I help you?" Where did that new girl come from? He turned around. This one looked stranger than the first. She wore the same uniform, but her hair was pink and curly (and how did she manage to get those drills?) She looked cheerful for no reason, while her comrade did not show any emotion. Who on earth were those girls? The brunette used sign language, and her friend translated (still very loudly). "Hello, Mr. Ikezawa. Welcome to the Department of Death. I am Death n°3-3. Nice to meet you."

Mr. Ikezawa kept staring at the pink haired girl. "No, don't look at me, SHE is death n°3-3. I am just her assistant. WAHAHAHA! 'Death n°3-3' is a bit formal, so you can call her Shizune, or even Shicchan. You could call me Death n°3-3-b, but just call me 'Misha'. And we will call you... Jun-chan. Sounds cute, huh?"

Junichiro Ikezawa was old enough to be the father of these girls and, in a normal situation, he would have found this familiarity insufferable. However, there was something frightening in their eyes. He felt that it was not an ordinary dream. It was at the same time complete nonsense and terribly real. Maybe it was a dream but he felt that if he let either of these pretty girls touch him, he would never wake up.

"You... are... Death?"
Misha translated his question into signs, Shizune signed back, and Misha said: "Not exactly. I am... well Shicchan is... Death n°3-3, a member of the Department of Death. There are several humans dying every second, it would be too much work for a single Death, so there's a whole team of us. But", she proclaimed with a serious tone, "the Department guarantees you an equal quality of service, whoever processes you when your time comes!"

Mr. Ikezawa looked at the girls. He was sure they were not lying. There was a cold and threatening spark in Shizune's eyes; her assistant, however, looked cheerful and nice, but somehow she was the one who gave him goosebumps.

Shizune kept signing and Misha went on.

"First, Jun-chan I am going to answer the usual questions guests always ask. One: No, you are not dead yet. Relax, you are here as a guest, we shall remain together for a few minutes, then you will wake up and forget everything. Two: you probably wonder what this office is, and why we are dressed like schoolgirls? It is all an illusion, custom-made to fit your own habits and tastes. You think that an administration must have offices, so this looks like an office. You like mangas full of busty high school girls with miniskirts (naughty boy! WAHAHA!) so here we are! Actually, we are invisible for the living, our names cannot be pronounced, and we are not in what you call 'space'. Sounds confusing, huh? That's why we have set up this office and these characters, to make you feel comfortable, and because we have to discuss some business. Yup! We have an offer that might interest you! But first, let us check the data we have about you. Are you Ikezawa Junichiro, aged 51, currently living in Kyoto?
--Y... yes.
--Married to Ikezawa Sadako, aged 46?
--Yes.
--And you have no children?
--No, the doctors said...
--Then this is your lucky day! We have a promotional offer just for you! We can help you to have a child!"

Mr Ikezawa had already read that kind of tale when he was a kid: there is always a catch. But he did not need to ask where it was, Misha told him on the spot: "Unfortunately, inserting an unplanned human being into existence and keeping track of the consequences is very complicated and very expensive. We are going to ask you and your wife to cover a small part of the expenses. Could you look at this contract carefully, please?"

Shizune handed him a sheet of paper, and looked at her watch. She used sign language and Misha translated: "There is going to be a bus crash in India in a few seconds. Shicchan's going to take care of the customers. Take your time to read the contract before you decide to sign or not. She'll be back in a few minutes." Shizune disappeared into thin air. Mr. Ikezawa and Misha were left alone in the office.

Misha kept talking. She was still signing at the same time, even though the deaf girl was not there any longer.

"They have sent Shizune, as usual. Bus crashes, bombings, dozens of people dying at the same time: in those difficult cases, they always send Shizune, because they know they can count on her. Explosions, screams, prayers, people shouting that they do not want to die, do not hinder her. She does the job quickly and efficiently. Always focused on the work at hand, she has not made a single mistake during the two last centuries. In a croud of wounded, bleeding, screaming people, she always picks only the ones who are scheduled to die, and never forgets one. You know, she has won the prize for 'Most reliable Death' 27 centuries in a row! Can you imagine?" Mishas's tone went admirative: "She has turned her disability into her strongest point, she's a model for all of us, I am so proud to be the assistant of death n°3-3... the deaf Death!". Misha repeated, very proud of her pun: "The deaf Death! WAHAHAHA!"

Finally, she somehow realised that her talk did not help Mr. Ikezawa to concentrate on the matter at hand. He was too scared to even start reading the sheet. "Sorry about my ramblings, Jun-chan. Any questions about the contract?".

Mr. Ikezawa finally laid his eyes on the paper. The text was quite short, actually.

"The Department of Death and Mr. Junichiro Ikezawa agree on the following proceedings:
1. Mr Ikezawa and his wife are going to have a little girl.
2. The department of Death guarantees that the girl will live for at least 18 years.
3. The child will bear the Mark of Death.
4. Mr. and Mrs. Ikezawa will both die when the child is 8 years old."

He stared at the last line. Now that's how they were going to "cover a part of the expenses". But clause n°3 was stranger. He asked Misha about the mark of Death.

"It is the Department's signature, in a way. We are not allowed to tell you exactly what kind of Mark that will be. It is confidential, just like the details of clause n°4. The cause of your death will be... a surprise, you do not want to be spoilt, do you? Where would be the fun? WAHAHA! So, about the Mark, I can just tell you that whenever people will look at your daughter, they will remember that Death exists and that human life is fragile. Humans hate being reminded of that, so maybe she will not be invited to many parties, WAHAHA!"
"Why are you giving us that baby?"
"Well, as we said, it is a promotional offer, an advertising campaign. The point is to make mortals remember that we exist, and that Death is not a bad thing. They hate us and do everything they can to forget us, and that is no good at all. We have already tried to make ads in the past... wait a second."

Misha opened the cabinet and took a few posters from a shelf. "Look at these!"

Those were various attempts to increase the popularity of death among mortals: "Death: never one second too early, never one second too late", "Death: we do what we must because we can", "Death, your most faithful friend", "Death: 200 billion customers, and counting", "Death: if you fall, we will catch you", "Death: you will never walk alone"...

Misha commented: "Nice slogans, don't you think Jun-chan? However, when we showed these posters to test subjects, their reactions were all very negative, they did not find them convincing at all, so all those campaigns were scrapped. Now we are trying living adverts; it is a recent idea, very complicated to set up, and we are not sure about the results... And to give birth to a living advert, we need you! Hmm, by the way, have you read clause n°4? We would like to make absolutely sure it has been read and well understood. You cannot imagine the number of people who sign this kind of contract, and when their time comes they tell us that 'they did not understand', that 'this is not right', whatever. Why didn't they just read the bloody contract before signing? We always play fair, and we never trick anyone!"

Fortunately, the titular Death n°3-3 reappeared on her chair, which silenced Misha. The mute girl had come back out of nowhere, just as she had disappeared. She now carried a smell of smoke and petrol, but her attitude had not changed at all. She typed for a few moments on her computer, and a page came out of the printer. She waved, and Misha translated: "Have you made a decision?"

Mr. Ikezawa tried to reason soundly, but his ideas were running around in his head without making sense. This was all a dream, it was too crazy to be reality... They had always wanted a baby, and it had been a dark day when they learnt that they would never have any... Signing was killing his wife and himself... Heavens! these skirts were REALLY short... After all, they were 51 and 46, not that young... Their daughter is going to be a poor orphan with no friends... They were going to die old but alone and without progeny... Who had ever signed a contract with a Death who wore pink panties? Did unconceived children deserve a chance?

Thinking would not get him anywhere. He decided to trust his instinct, and signed.

"Perfect!", shouted Misha. "Our colleagues have just sent us the answer from your wife, she has signed her copy of the contract too." Shizune showed him both sheets with their signatures, stapled them together, and inserted them into a folder labeled "Ikezawa Hanako". Misha merrily clapped her hands and shouted: "Sweet! everything is in order! Now you can wake up, and forget everything you've seen and heard! And... see you soon! WAHAHA!"

--------------

He could hear organ music... a rather cheerful tune... Where was that sound coming from? When the music came to an end, a male voice spoke:

--We were listening to the chorale variations on "Alle Menschen müssen sterben" ("All humans have to die"), by Johan Pachelbel. They were performed by..."

Mr. Ikezawa, still half asleep, pressed the Stop button, which silenced the clock radio. Then he opened one eye and looked at the clock. Something was not right: it was only 6:15 AM, and the alarm was set to 6:30! Why had the radio played so soon?

What was he going to do? It was too early to get up, and too late to get back to sleep. On the other side of the bed, his wife was awake too. She came close to him and put her hand on his arm, smiling. Mr. Ikezawa knew his wife for a few decades now, and she did not need to say what she had in mind. He remembered that they had not enjoyed a little cuddle together for two weeks. But Monday morning was not the right time to cuddle! The last time they had done that in the morning and on a weekday was at least twenty years ago!

And yet, that day, Mr. Ikezawa, always so punctual, showed up at the factory 10 minutes late.

[Alpacalypse]

Hm. Hmmmmmm. Hmm. What to say about that...

Nicely written... unique concept... ever-so-slightly unnerving feeling that fits perfectly with the scene... yup, this ticks all the boxes for me. Slightly depressing, but I find this to be quite the interesting origin story.

Well done, good sir!

[Mirage_GSM]

Yes, very interesting...
At first I thought this was going in the same direction as Fractal Butterfly - and it is a bit similar - but you gave it a twist of your own.
The only thing that bugged me a bit was that he was made to believe that his signature would affect both him AND his wife, when in actuality she was offered the same decision. If they are really honest about everything they could have told him beforehand.
It would also remove that sour feeling that he was willing to sign away his wife's life "on instinct"