A Death Wish

It’s one o'clock in the morning in a dark and dusty Nevada saloon. I’ve spent the last four hours observing my next victim. Wallace is a bear of a man with a messy mop of muddled brown hair and dark eyes so shifty you never have a chance to see them straight on. The scar under his right eye is a shrine to the many bar fights he’s been in over the years. At around six feet tall and 250 pounds, his barstool looks like it’s about to buckle under the pressure. 

Everything in this bar, including Wallace, looks ready to buckle. A handful of neon lights work overtime since multiple overhanging light fixtures are without bulbs. The weak light lazily illuminates the shattered glass of the abandoned cigarette machine and the desert dust caked bottles.

See, this is one of those places you go to forget. And the bartender, Avery, with his bushy mustache and cowboy-like drawl, is all too happy to oblige by overserving the bar’s famous Liquid Mind Eraser. The surprisingly creative drink title is one of only a handful of drinks available. The list is found on a cracked chalkboard hanging onto the wall for dear life, but is impossible to read due to the illegibility of the scribbled options.

I’ve lost count of how many drinks Wallace has thrown back. But Avery has been paying attention. 

“One…One m...more round m...man,” Wallace stammers.

“Now look, you know I don’t make anyone’s misery my business, but I think it’s time to call it a night, partner,” Avery responds.

Wallace, fishing for his keys, sees them slip out of his pocket and clang loudly off the metal rung of his stool. Mumbling under his breath, he bends down and picks them up. He slams the keys down on the bar and says, “One. More. Man.”

Before Avery can respond, the door is kicked open, startling the half-dead bar back to life.

“Everybody be cool, empty your pockets, and no one gets hurt!”

As I sit back watching, all I can think is, Boy this guy picked the wrong bar to try to hold up at gunpoint. 

See, when your would-be targets have nothing to live for, death is not something they fear. By the looks on the faces in this bar, death is welcomed. 

Wallace sighs loudly while looking up at the ceiling, resigned to something he doesn’t want to do. He swivels around in his chair and backhands the gun out of the wannabe robber’s hand. His fist connects with a brutal one-two combo to the jaw and that’s it. Lights out. The defeated man drops to the floor in a disgraceful slump. Wallace grabs the gun, puts it on the counter, and says to Avery, “Call the cops and pour me one more, man.”

I follow Wallace as he downs his last drink of the night and stumbles through the door. The Nevada night air is thick with the scent of loss and regret. When we reach Wallace’s one-bedroom flat, I see it isn’t better than the bar. In fact, it’s worse. Empty beer cans and fast-food wrappers litter the floor. The bed, if you want to call it that, is a tattered mattress on the floor with thin sheets and a tattered pillow with stuffing escaping a threadbare pillowcase. The toilet is reminiscent of a prison and shows no proof of ever being clean. It isn’t my job to judge. And I’ve been around long enough to know it takes a significant amount of pain to allow someone to exist like this.

Forgive me. In all this excitement, I’ve failed to tell you who I am. My name is Sterling and I am one of Death’s wish masters. In Hinduism, I would be referred to as Devas, offering protection and healing to those who ask. To a Japanese Shinto, I’d probably be compared to the Kami. 

No doubt you’re familiar with Death? The cloak and scythe? Yes?  I’ve been saying it for years: Death gets a bad rap. Despite the reputation, she’s a big softy and occasionally, she takes a liking to a mortal. She finds tortured and anguished souls to offer a peaceful end. That’s where I come in: my job is to grant a wish to those Death assigns me in the hopes of easing the transition from life to, ya know, what's next. Not a god, but certainly not human, I operate in a place referred to Realms Between. To interact with my assignment, they either have access to their third eye or are in a state of semi-consciousness, like sleep. These days, attention spans allow for less meditation, prayer, and the rituals it takes. So, I’m usually interacting with humans who are in a dream state. 

 For Wallace to notice me and to speak with him, I must catch him in a state of semi-consciousness. After the amount of alcohol he consumed, it can’t possibly be long before he succumbs to sleep. But if he falls into drunken unconsciousness, it’ll be a lost cause for me to communicate with him on this night. I wait patiently and watch, hoping the time is coming soon. 

A pair of worn tennis shoes flies towards the door and I’m grateful the Realm Between isn’t affected by the physical matter of Wallace’s existence. Otherwise, I’d have been knocked in the head. He tosses his shirt at a cardboard box acting as a laundry bin. The shirt falls short of the box, landing in an overflow pile of rank clothes. A quick glance into the fridge provides the only light in this flat. The fridge is depressingly empty, with the exception of a glass of water Wallace quickly chugs before plopping down on his mattress. He puts on a battered pair of readers and pulls out a stack of photographs, for what appears to be a nighttime ritual. As he flips through the pictures, his eyes are quickly flooded to bursting with tears and a single drop falls leading to a cascade that would tug at the heartstrings of the heartless. It’s brutal to watch someone in this type of pain. Luckily for both me and Wallace, it only lasts a few minutes and he is out.

Time for me to get to work. 

I snap my fingers and we are now in my office in the Realm Between, which is a lucid dream for people like you. Wallace has his feet propped up on a mahogany coffee table, comfortably lounging on a brown leather couch. His head rests on a neck contour pillow. I sit next to him in a wingback chair, waiting. After a few eons masquerading as seconds, his haunted cobalt eyes open, exuding a lifetime of sadness.

“Wallace, my name is Sterling. I have one goal: to ensure you have a peaceful transition into the afterlife. See you are going to die soon, and we have some work to do before you move on to what’s next,” I pause, waiting for a response.

Every case of mine is different. The reactions I get most often are grief, sorrow, and anger. What I got from Wallace was one of the rarest reactions: relief and calm acceptance. 

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Wallace whispers. “I’m ready.”

It has been such a long time, centuries, since I had this type of response. I am out of practice and unprepared.

“Oh. Well, right then,” I sputter awkwardly, realizing I’d have to skip steps one through five of my script. “I’ll explain the basics to you first. Even though we are in your dream, we cannot make physical contact with each other. To be clear, I am not going to kill you – you’d be amazed how many people assume that is my purpose. But don’t misunderstand, you are going to die soon. Death tends to be stingy with the details, so I don’t know how or even when. I just know it is coming.

“I am here to help you transition peacefully,” I continue. “I can grant you one wish. Only one. Remember your time here is short, a wish for money or long life or anything similar would be worthless. Do you have any questions so far?”

Wallace shakes his head no. Right as I start to launch back into my spiel, he speaks.

“I do have one question: What is up with that ridiculous green cloak? Do you work part time for a Renaissance Festival?”

I’m so surprised by his questions, a rare giggle escapes me.

“No, Wallace. I don’t work for a Ren Fair. And what’s wrong with this cloak?”

“Nothing if you live in 14th century Europe, I guess.”

“Moving on,” I try to regain control of the conversation. “If I said you weren’t going to wake up from this dream, what would you wish for?” 

Without hesitation, Wallace says, “To forget.”

Again, taken aback by his answer, I say, “To forget what?”

For the first time since waking in the Realm Between, Wallace looks uncomfortable.

“The barstool at The Red Dog is my best friend because I’ve spent years trying to drink away the memory. On many nights, that barstool has been the only thing that keeps me from falling to my knees, unable to face the world. If I’m forced to tell you, I have to relive it. That is the last thing I want to do. I thought this was supposed to ease my transition, not make it more difficult?” Wallace says, the weight of his grief is evident on his face.  

I’m again thrown off by his response. No one has challenged me in this way before and my instructions from Death don’t cover this scenario. 

“I’m sorry, Wallace. The only way I can get you to forget is if you share your experience with me. Then I can grant your wish. I can make you forget and you’ll never have to go through it again,” I say.

He closes his eyes, clears his throat, and tells his story for the last time.

I was driving down the highway at about ten over the speed limit. My wife teased me about my lead foot and called me Speed Racer. It always got her an eye roll and a chuckle.

As I sang along to the classic rock station, I checked the rearview mirror for my wife’s silver sedan. I spotted her a quarter mile back and kept my foot on the gas pedal. 

We were driving the family up to the lake for a fishing trip. Between my wife, our daughter, the in-laws, and copious amounts of fishing equipment, we had been forced to drive separately. There were no complaints from me about this arrangement. I didn’t have to make small talk with my in-laws and could listen to music at a level my wife never let me use around our daughter. It was a win/win for all of us involved. 

One of my favorite songs by Metallica played on the radio and I raised the volume even more, adding to it with my slightly off-key singing.

The guitar riff hit me like it always did, and I started head banging almost in rhythm with "Fade to Black."

I checked the rearview mirror again and this time I saw a semi barreling its way towards me. This guy made my speeding look like child’s play. He had to be at least 20 miles over the speed limit. 

We were approaching a bridge as he passed me on the left and I flipped him the bird. By now I could see he was hauling massive logs. I had a strange sense of déjà vu as I remembered the infamous scene from Final Destination. My wife and I had just rewatched it, reminiscing about our 90s heydays. 

What I wasn’t expecting was the incredible sense of panic and terror as the semi continued its hurried pace. My palms were sweaty and slippery on the steering wheel. My breaths came faster and faster as I shook uncontrollably. 

I recognized these signs for what they were: early indications of a panic attack.

Being familiar with panic attacks, I pulled my car over onto the shoulder, just before the bridge. I slid over to the passenger seat and stumbled out of the car, put my head between my knees, and tried to slow down my breathing. I had a quick moment of gratitude the attack hit me before the bridge, where there was still room to pull over.

Moments later, my wife’s silver sedan sped past, and I saw my daughter smile and wave in the moment it took for them to go by. In the next second, as my head turned to follow their progress down the road, I heard a crash up ahead. On the other side of the short bridge, the timber-hauling semi had tipped over onto its side. I learned later from the police report the driver had looked away from the road to grab a drink and when he turned back, there was a deer right in front of him. In his panic, he yanked the steering wheel to take a hard right. The truck’s momentum caused it to overturn.

My heart sank to my stomach as I watched dozens of massive logs of timber barrel down the road, directly towards my family.

My wife slammed on the brakes and pulled her steering wheel to the right, but there was nowhere for her to go and no time for her to get there. I screamed as the first log slammed into the car, a direct hit to the driver’s side. The car slammed into a partial log jam towards the end of the bridge, bringing the car to a violent stop. I watched helplessly as something (my brain wouldn’t allow me to change that noun to someone) flew through the windshield, landing yards away in the berm. 

I found myself sprinting down the bridge, panic attack forgotten and my body in full action mode. I skidded to a stop a few feet from the car’s engine as it burst into flames. The driver’s side was crushed as if the car were made of tin foil (my brain wouldn’t allow me to follow that knowledge to its natural conclusion), so I raced to the passenger side of the car. I yanked open the door and saw my daughter was missing. A moment before the flames erupted in the cabin, I saw my mother-in-law’s body in the back seat. I only knew it was my mother-in-law from the pearls around her neck. Her face was indescribably bloody and she was unrecognizable. Before I could move to check if she could impossibly still be alive, the cabin was engulfed in flames and I had no choice but to back up. The heat was overpowering. 

After stumbling away from the inferno, I spun around in a circle, bewildered and in shock. My gaze wandered to the berm, where I saw my daughter. I raced to her and sank to my knees by her side. 

Miraculously, she was still alive. Blood poured from her mouth and her eyes were panicked. There was nothing I could do. I held her close, tears streaming down my face, and rocked her back and forth. When the paramedics arrived they had to forcibly remove her from my grip. By then she was already gone.

“As a father, we have one job. Just one,” Wallace says quietly. “Keep your family safe. And that was the one thing I failed to do. You ask me what I’d wish for, Sterling?” He looks up at me, his face a sorrowful mask of torment. “All I wish, is to forget how I failed.”

My line of work is not for the faint of heart, and I have heard a lot of sad stories. This one, though? This was one of the worst. I could understand why Death sent me to Wallace. No one should have to live with that guilt. Death comes for us all. When it’s time there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We aren’t in control when that time comes. Our control starts and ends with how we choose to live. 

The best advice I can give to anyone reading this is that the only control we have over death is to understand we have no control at all.

Wallace’s wish was granted and he woke up the next day smiling for the first time in ten years. That smile is what keeps me clocking in before the next one clocks out. I hope to see Wallace smile here someday soon on the other side when the time comes. Until then I need to get some rest, Death will have me back at it tomorrow.