Department of English

Spring 2005 High School Edition

A Game of Life and Death

Martin Barrett
Fiction (11th-12th)
First Place
Parowan High School
Teacher: Gail Harris

Bill Harmon was having a very nice day until he died. While out on a jog he had been hit and killed by a piano someone had foolishly thrown out of a third story window, as sometimes happens.

The first thing Bill noticed was that he was surrounded by darkness, not the pleasant kind of darkness such as outside under the moon and stars or at home in bed, but a rather uncomfortable sort of darkness that made him feel very uneasy. Bill could see himself just fine but he was unable to see much else, indeed, even what he was a mystery as there didn’t appear to be anything under his feet at all.

“Bill Harmon?” came a deep rasping voice from behind, pulling Bill from his thoughts. He turned around very slowly to come face to face (as much as possible) to a very tall, very thin being wrapped entirely in ragged black cloth. The figure was leaning heavily on a very large scythe, almost as tall as the figure itself. “Bill Harmon?” it repeated.

“Oh, yes, and who might you be?” responded Bill.

“I AM DEATH,” boomed Death.

Bill blinked twice, wondering what to say to such a remark. He settled with patting Death on the arm and saying, “Good for you. Now, could you possibly tell me how to get from Sycamore Street from here?”

Death was taken aback. It stretched out a long, skeletal hand and scratched its head for a moment. “You … uh … do know where you are, don’t you?”

“Well, if I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you for directions, now would I? Use your head, man!”

“Let’s just go,” sighed Death. “I’ve wasted far too much time with you already.”

Bill looked around him. “Go where?”

“I AM DEATH!” boomed Death again. “ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID?”

“Hey, now it’s just a simple question, no need to sink to insults.” Bill sounded truly offended.

Death clenched his fists and then unclenched them. “Fine,” he sighed, “let’s start over. Hello, I AM DEATH. You are dead. Now please let me do my job and follow me so we can just get this over with.”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Bill.

“Now what?!”

“There’s no what I’m dead,” said Bill, matter-of-factly.

Death waved his hand, and with a flourish, his enormous scythe had disappeared and was replaced with a clipboard and a pair of spectacles. Death replaced the spectacles on its skull-like head (which to Bill seemed like an empty gesture) and read from the list on the clipboard. “Bill Phillip Harmon?”

“Yes.”

“Of Willow Falls, Minnesota?”

“Yes.”

“Husband of Cindy Harmon?”

“Love her with all my heart.”

“Out for his evening jog?”

“Helps me stay in shape.”

Death then wheeled around and jabbed the clipboard at Bill. “See this picture? That’s you. You’re dead. Let’s go.”

“Nope.”

With the same flourish that produced them, the spectacles and clipboard vanished and were replaced by the scythe. “WHY NOT?”

Bill placed his hands in his pockets. “Because if I’m not back in fifteen minutes, my wife will have my head. Besides, since I’m standing here alive and well, you have no proof that I’m really dead.”

“I AM DEATH,” pleaded a very weary Death. “You have to come with me.”

Bill looked very thoughtful for a few moments before saying anything. “I heard somewhere that if I challenged you to a game and won, then I could go home scot free.”

“What utter nonsense,” said Death, raising an eyebrow (if such a thing were possible), “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Bill stood to his full height and quite dramatically shouted, “I challenge you!”

Death groaned and drummed his finger against the blade of its scythe. “When I beat you, will you promise to come along and stop causing me trouble?”

Bill said, “Of course.”

“Then choose your game and be quick about it!” Death sat down cross-legged, looking rather depressed.

Bill started pacing in a small circle muttering things to himself like “Scrabble? No, no, I failed my spelling tests in school” and “Twister? No, I have too many bad memories with that game.” This went on for quite some time.

After a while Death spoke up. “I’m very good at chess,” it offered.

“Well, then we obviously won’t be doing that.”

“Um, how about Backgammon?” Death hazarded.

“What on earth is a Backgammon?”

“I don’t know either.”

And on and on it went until both Bill Harmon and Death were slumped over next to each other, incredibly exhausted.

“I think I know what to do,” said Bill, standing up.

“Thank goodness,” said Death, who also stood.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

“Say what?!”

“Rock, Paper, Scissors,” Bill repeated.

“Please explain.”

Bill held out his had with two fingers extended. “Scissors cuts paper,” he said. Then he curled his hand into a fist. “Rock crushes Scissors.” Finally, he stretched out his hand flat, palm down. “And Paper covers Rock. On the count of three show me what you picked. Understand?”

“This game seems foolish and trivial,” pouted Death.

“Ready? One, two, three!”
A loud cry of victory echoed through the darkness. “Whoo hoo!” exclaimed Bill. “You should have known better, everybody chooses Scissors!”

“Two out of three,” demanded Death.

“Sorry, but a deal is a deal,” said Bill, looking rather pleased with himself.

“Fine! Leave! Begone!” raged Death, throwing his scythe off into the distance.

After Bill Harmon had disappeared, Death collapsed on the floor and sighed a long, rasping sigh. “Why is it always Americans?”

 

The crowd that had gathered was reasonably shocked when Bill Harmon crawled unscathed out from under the broken piano, dusted himself off, and proclaimed that there should be a law against people who throw pianos out of third-story windows, especially when there is someone jogging past.