text: I endlessly floated in the tapestry of space for an unknown length of time; maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe years -- I couldn’t tell and I lost count after a day or two. In that time I thought about the day Death came to me. I was sitting in my living room, reading a book, when a burning pain exploded over my chest. I gripped my chest, dug my nails into my flesh, as if I could reach into my body and rip the problem out with my own two hands. I couldn’t catch my breath, no matter how much I gulped up the air. Sweat and tears streaked my beet-red face as I toppled onto the floor. I struggled to stand, get to the phone sitting on the kitchen counter, but my body wouldn't listen to anything beyond the sharp, enveloping pain piercing through me. Then, he appeared, looming like a black monolith. His tattered black robes slithered in the air like coils, melting, moving, across the carpet, up the walls, sticking to the ceiling. Oily tar dripped from the cloth stalactites that formed above him, hissing as it hit the floor, burning holes. Putrid decay wafted through the apartment like a breeze from the dankest, deepest well, housing corpses upon corpses long perished. A fine, greenish fog billowed out from his black, bottomless hood, drifting over everything, making my once livable apartment until a swamp without the murk, mud, or water. “I’ve come to take you,” he said with a hollow, deep voice. Somewhere in the distance dogs began to yelp, and cats hissed. “No-- please,” I grunted, turning over onto my back, the pain ebbing like waves of fire. “I’ll do-- anything-- please.” Death glanced over my apartment, then looked down to me. His cloak vanished, the fog dissipated; the smell, the oily tar; everything disappeared. He store before me in a black suit, gleaming black shoes, with a overhanging hood over his head, casting his face in impenetrable shadows. “This is such a small place to live in and, look, you don’t even have a view.” He glided across the floor to the french doors, overlooking the small grassy lot in between apartment complexes. Death threw open the doors, and leaned out over the painted chipped railing. He inhaled heavily, then coughed. “And, God, it smells, too.” He returned inside, without closing the doors, and appeared before me again. If it wasn’t for the pain or for me slowly dying, I would’ve wondered why Death was so strange. “Life,” I gasped. “What?” He bent forward. “Didn’t hear you, sorry, you have to speak up.” “Life!” He laughed, holding his stomach and leaning back. “Life!" he bellowed, ash puffed out from the hood, forming small motes in the air. "Why does everyone want more than what they have? ‘Give me more! I don’t deserve to die yet! Please, please! I have kids! I have a family! I have a level 83 monk with ultra-rare armor! Blah blah blah!‘ Annoying species, you are. You know some animals accept and recognize when their time comes? They make the best of what they have, lie down and let go? Why can’t humans be like that? They always want more, stay just a little bit longer, as if that extra time mattered at all, even if it’s for naught. “But luckily for you, you poor, poor soul, you began dying at the right time. I’ve been meaning to test this out, so why not now? I will grant you immortality, but once all human life has ended, I will come to you and take you to the other side. No more begging, no more pleading, no more asking for more; you will accept it without question. Got it?” He knelt and poked my forehead with his pointer finger, stripped of flesh, blood, muscle; a long, thin bone. A cold, numbing sensation spread across my face, settling in the back of my head. It oddly feel soothing, like an icy snake flowing through my veins, wrapping around my organs, settling my innards down for a long, comfortable sleep. “That sound good to you?” I nodded, feverishly. "Yes, please--" “Fine, then let's begin” He took his finger away, then spread his open, skeletal palm over my face, and a Novocain numbness and winter frigidness flooded through me, and I immediately blacked out. When I came to, maybe three weeks later, I was still on the carpet. Slowly I got up, switched on the TV, and went into the kitchen. The news announcer said that scientists have discovered that the earth was on the brink of exploding -- something to do with the inner core, atoms, implosion -- and soon thereafter, the sun would soon follow-suit by dying out. And now I was there, sometime later, endlessly floating in space. The Earth exploded and the Sun died out, blackness gave way to more blackness. “Looks like you’re in a pickle. Pick, pick, pickle.” He laughed from somewhere in the nothingness surrounding me. “God I loved that show. Too bad I’ll never see a reunion or a reboot.” “Just kill me already.” I said, flatly. “Oh? Yes, I almost forgot... No, no, I won’t be killing you, not now, or anytime soon I'd think, at least.” I strained my eyes to look into the darkness in front of me, seeing nothing, then looked over my shoulder to receive the same results. Where the hell was here? “What-- Why?” “You’re not the only human who survived.” “Bullshit.” “No -- you would think that -- but no. There’s still a couple hundred floating elsewhere in this darkness; some rich folk were smart enough to build their own space shuttles before disaster struck and what-not so they could live in space. I think they’re trying to find a sustainable life on other planets.” “But, but--” “You accepted the bargain, now you must deal with it.” “But I’m out here! In the middle of fucking nowhere, literal nothingness!” Before his voice disappeared, he said, “Like the old saying goes, 'Don’t ask for what you can’t handle.