FSE

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Earth, being several billion years old, did not care at the goings on of a single man. No matter what the 'evolved' beings that lived on it like so many ants on an moderately sized hill thought, it was there before them, and would be there long after their short lives ended. Such a thought, dependent on your outlook on life, could be either terrifying or liberating.

However, to one such being, this thought meant nothing. His short life was about to end, and to him it didn't matter that the Earth would keep turning. In fact, had he given it much thought, he might feel resentful that his small, insignificant life would have no impact on the planet he'd be leaving behind.

Tied to a metal chair inside a warehouse on the wrong side of Los Angeles, a male Calico patterned anthropomorphic cat stared down three Dobermans. Two stood behind the third, wide shoulders and huge muscles visible even through their suits. They stared at him, and he couldn't help but feel insulted at the sheer boredom on their faces. The third though, he was the one who commanded the most attention.

Shorter than his compatriots, and much thinner, he nonetheless had an unmistakable aura of danger that, if anything, undersold the sheer bloodlust this man could summon. His name was Auric Thenderson, and he was the leader of the most powerful gang in Los Angeles. The Blood Hounds.

Auric was looking down currently, using a flip lighter to light a thick cigar. When the end glowed a bright orange, he took a deep drag from it, closing his eyes in pleasure as he inhaled. He leaned in close to the Calico, blowing the smoke in his face as he opened his eyes, dark black pools of an emotion he couldn't understand.

"Andrew Clover." His voice was smooth, charismatic even through the overwhelming malice that he exuded. "You were a difficult cat to get ahold of. You managed to escape us for a long time. Four months we've been looking for you, and finally, you and I get to meet." He clenched the cigar in his teeth. His hand came up, gripping Andrews face and tilting his head first one way, then the other. "I have to say, it's not easy to avoid my boys. The fact that you managed to hide so long almost makes me want to recruit you. Unfortunately, that would be bad for business." He let his face go, and turned his back to him, walking a few feet away.

He took another long drag from his cigar. "You owe us quite a lot of money Andrew." Auric said as he let the smoke flow slowly around his muzzle, twirling up in soft swirls. "Now I'm not a monster Andrew, I'm a fair man." He chuckled at his own joke. "So if you can pay us back say, now, we'll let you go and we can all just forget this happened. So, Andrew, would you like to pay us the three hundred thousand dollars in cash or check?" This time all three of the dobermans chuckled at the joke, knowing he had nothing on him, having been dragged from his hotel room in nothing but his heart print boxers.

Still, Andrew knew if he didn't say something, he was going to die here. "Look, Auric, man. I can get you the money. I have it hidden somewhere, and if you let me live I'll give it to you, with interest!" He added in. "I'll tell you exactly where it is. Just don't hurt me please!"

Auric turned back to him, a toothy grin on his face as he walked up to Andrew, his eyes still dark and foreboding. "Andrew, what can I say, you look like an honest boy, of course we will trust you. Just tell me where the money is, and we can put this behind us." He bit down hard, snapping his cigar in his teeth as he viciously backhanded the cat, knocking the chair backwards from the force. Andrew coughed, spitting one of his fangs out from where the blow had knocked it free. Blood flowed down his chin as he stared up at the ceiling. He heard the sound of the gang leaders expensive shoes as the canine walked around and back into Andrews field of view.

His muzzle was locked into a snarl, and as Andrew looked at him in fear Auric spit the stub of cigar in his face. It bounced off his busted lip, tobacco scattering across his face. However, as Andrew recoiled from the cigar, Auric reached inside his coat.

When Andrew looked up again, he saw Auric staring down at him, a heavy pistol in his right hand. The eyes looked down at him and suddenly Andrew could understand the emotion behind them. Grim delight at the fear in Andrews eyes, staring down at his victim in a perverse joy. "Goodbye Andrew, you may be a feline, but you'll die like every other rat who tries to steal from me."

A flash, and a loud bang. It happened so quickly he didn't even feel the slug pierce his skull, right between his eyes, leaving a perfectly circular hole over dead eyes.

Everything was suddenly gray. Andrew was on his feet, looking down at his body, shock on his face. Nothing was moving, as if he were standing alone at the end of time. He looked at his murderer, of the easy look of savage glee on his face. He couldn't even be mad, merely shocked with the knowledge his life was over.

Movement in his peripherals had him looking to his right. Standing six foot tall in a black robe with a hood pulled over the head, a figure holding a clipboard looked over the scene. Andrew couldn't see their face, but the long put upon sigh told him that whoever this was seemed to be less upset about the scene they were looking at, and more bored.

"Andrew Clover, your time has come. Step to me and blah blah blah..." The figure sounded so bored Andrew felt a little offended.

"I'm sorry, does my death bore you?" He snapped. He turned back to his body and pointed at it. "Is the sight of my dead body truly so tedious for you?" They say people face the concept of death in different ways, and Andrew had decided he was mad about it.

"Look, kid, I know this is a big moment for you, but you do realize who you're talking to right?" The figure questioned him. The hood was pulled down, and Andrew was surprised to see a midnight black panther woman under the cloak. "I've seen more dead bodies in the last half hour then most people do in entire lifetimes. Can you comprehend that? And do you know just how long I've been doing this?" She waved the clipboard around, frustration on her face. "Since the first formation of life complex enough to amount to more than an amoeba, I've been the reaper for this gods forsaken ball of dirt." She didn't even seem to see him anymore, yelling up at the gray ceiling. "And does anyone ever thank me for this hard work? Does anyone try to understand how incredibly annoying it is to deal with every _fucking_soul that leaves this rock?"

Andrew tried to say something, really he did, but at this point the panther was worked up, walking back and forth in that timeless space with long aimless strides.

"And don't even get me started on how many times I've had to explain that the afterlife isn't just some jamboree of clouds and hopscotch?! If I have to explain one more time that no, you don't get to go to paradise because you sit in a church for one hour a week singing ancient songs, I'm going to throttle someone!" He had a feeling he'd been forgotten. "And I've never even gotten a vacation! Just millions and millions of years of guiding you stupid fucking mortals into the afterlife!"

"So... why not take a vacation?" He spoke up, cutting through her speech and making her stop midstride.

"What?" She asked.

"Why not take a vacation?" He asked again. "I mean really, what's stopping you from taking a week to yourself on some island where no one can bother you?"

"Just... take a vacation?" She repeated, and he nodded. "Ya know what, your right? What the fuck is stopping me from going to the Virgin Islands for a week?" She looked stunned, dropping her clipboard and thinking hard.

"Look, its tough, I get it. Working all the time isn't good for you." Andrew had no idea where he was going with this but it seemed to be working. "I know this resort, I went there last month. It's on the beach, they've got a spa, nude beach..." He trailed off, unsure of what else to say.

"You know what... your right. Fuck it, I'm gone. I haven't gotten laid in seven thousand years since that one date with Hades..." She turned and began walking away, seemingly forgetting him.

"Hey wait! What about me? Don't you have to take me to the afterlife first?" He called out.

"Nah kid, I'm on vacation. See ya in a week." With that she vanished. There was a terrible moment of complete loneliness.

And then he was staring up at the roof of the warehouse, color had returned, and he had a terrible headache. He was still trapped in the chair, Auric's gun still smoking from where he'd fired. He took a deep breath, which apparently was not what Auric was expecting. The doberman jumped back, actually dropping his gun in his surprise. The two bodyguards ran over to see what had happened, and met Andrew's formerly dead eyes, before turning tail and running, screaming about zombies.

Auric wasn't much better, but he was backpedaling so fast he had fallen on his rear, trembling at the impossible sight. "W-w-w-what are you?!" He yelled out, trying to back up further but his back hit a crate, and he was unable to figure out what was blocking him, making him panic more.

Andrew thought fast, and cleared his throat. "Auuuric... I am the vengeful spirits of all those you killed. Release me now and I will spare you my terrible fury!" Okay, so the warbling voice may have been over the top but it worked, the gang boss's eyes widening before he cautiously moved forward and cut the ropes holding him. Andrew slowly stood up, the formerly terrifying gangster cowering before him.

Andrew shook his wrists, wondering at the lack of pain in his joints from the ropes. In fact, aside from his headache, he really didn't feel any pain which surprised him. He reached up to his forehead, and almost screamed as he felt the perfectly round hole the bullet had left in him. His finger came away bloody, though the blood was...tacky. Not fresh, in fact mostly dry. He had a hole in him and yet he wasn't bleeding.

He put it at the back of his mind, walking past Auric, who was still cowering. His nose scrunched up as he smelled the acrid scent of piss as he walked past the dog. With a burst of inspiration he sneered down at his former terror and leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Maybe you should find a new line of work." Before walking slowly out of the warehouse.

---

It had been two days since the incident, and it was very apparent that something was wrong. Andrew watched the news as they reported on the apparent lack of mortality in the world. To hear the media's perspective, the world was on the edge of a golden age of no death. However, the scientists they brought on could not explain it, but DID warn the pundits that their brief studies showed something shocking.

It wasn't just that they couldn't die. It was like their vitals had gone into stasis. No one they had found had heartbeats. If you cut them, they didn't bleed. There had been no births reported anywhere on earth. It was like life had taken a vacation, they said.

Andrew knew better. It wasn't life that had taken a vacation, it was death. And that wouldn't last forever. He put a hand up to his forehead, covered at the moment by a bandanna. The hole was still there. He had looked in the mirror, and with a flashlight discovered that the bullet was still there, lodged in his brain.

If... no, when Death came back, there was no way he would survive. In fact, from what he had observed, a LOT of people were going to die. The news that death wasn't a factor had spread fast, and the amount of people causing each other intense injuries out of a sense of idiotic bravado born from the belief they were now immortal. Hell, right as he was having this thought, he heard a the sound of a dozen gunshots, followed by the hooting of idiots enjoying the ability to act out dumb fantasies without going to jail.

What could he do though? Just sit and wait for Death to return? He didn't want to die. It wasn't like he could just kill death...right?

---

This was dumb. This was really, really, truly dumb. It didn't stop him from adjusting the shoulder bag he was holding as he made his way through the airport. TSA had apparently decided that since death didn't matter, their jobs were just to sit back and relax. No one questioned him as he walked up, presented his ticket, and walked onto the plane.

He had paid for first class, and quickly found his seat, humming a small tune to take care of his nerves. There were three other people in first class, a rabbit couple who were giggling to each other, whispering about the 'mile high club' and a large hippo male engrossed in a magazine, headphones already on and ignoring everybody else.

"Good afternoon passengers, and welcome to Delta flight 86-7-A. We've got excellent weather today for our flight to the Virgin Islands, and will be underway in about five minutes. Please listen to all directions provided to you by our wonderful stewardess's, and remember, while it seems none of us can die, alcohol poisoning will still make an ass out of you, no offense to our donkey passengers." He chuckled at his own joke. "We're looking at a five hour flight folks, so buckle in and get ready to see the beautiful sights of paradise." The intercom clicked off, and Andrew relaxed into the seat, looking at his smart watch and setting an alarm for four and a half hours.

The flight was... well... boring. The rabbit couple continued to flirt, growing increasingly obscene until about three hours into the flight when they stood up and tried to sneak into one of the lavatories. They succeeded, however about five minutes after they went in, they came out, the female looking grumpy and the male clearly embarrassed and sheepish. After that they sat in an awkward silence, not talking or looking at each other.

His alarm went off at the same time as the pilot announced they had made good time, and were looking at an earlier approach then they thought. Andrew took a deep breath and stood up, grabbing his bag and heading to the cockpit.

He was in luck, catching the tail of a crane stewardess walking into the cockpit with two steaming mugs of coffee in hand. The door shut behind her and he moved into the corridor, standing to the side of the door in the stewardess area, which was positioned in such a way that he could stand mostly out of sight of the way the door opened.

Four minutes passed before the door opened again, the crane letting out a clearly fake laugh at something the pilot said. She didn't even notice him until he was on her, clawed hand over her beak and preventing her from screaming as he shoved her aside and entered the cockpit, slamming the door behind him. The pilot and the copilot looked at him surprised, both falcons with a shocked look on their face. He threw the stewardess at the console, and it shocked the two enough for him to be able to reach in his bag, pulling out the weapon he had brought on board, a heavy wooden board with a collection of nails in one end, creating a rusty, spiky end.

The first swing caught the pilot in the temple, smashing his head into the side of the cockpit and briefly sticking in the birds skull. The stewardess screamed and the copilot had to focus on suddenly having control over the plane. It gave him the moments he needed to dislodge the bloody end from the pilots skull. While it obviously didn't kill him, the impact had definitely stunned him. He flipped the board in hand, and swung in the copilots direction. The crane ducked and he caught the copilot in the left eye, and he immediately started screaming as the rusty nails pierced his avian eye. He rolled off his chair , trying desperately to pull the board out.

Andrew grabbed the control apparatus, and immediately pulled the plane into a steep turn as he tried to get control over the plane. He heard passengers cry out and the poor crane tried her best to wrestle him away from the controls, which was a poor decision as it pulled the controls back, making the plane groan as it pulled into a steep ascent. He struggled to regain control as she tried to stop him.

Her body weight, slight as it was, managed to break his hold on the control stick and everyone screamed as the plane dropped into a nose dive.

"You damn bitch! Get off me!" Andrew threw his elbow back and hit the crane in her long neck and she released him, coughing and hacking as she tried to breath. He grabbed the stick and pulled back hard, the islands in sight. He could see the large resort, but the plane was barely able to pull out of its dive, and struggle as he might, he couldn't seem to steer it right. He could almost hear the scream of the airplane struggling to hold together under the force of the dive.

The plane finally pulled out, but with a massive screeching sound the plane lurched to the left as the right wing gave in under the pressure and snapped off. It began to corkscrew and he could no longer make sense of the spiraling mess the windshield had become. A horrible sound filled the air, just like out of a movie as the plane went down.

The last thing he saw was a solid gray rushing to meet him before things went completely white.

---

He came to with a groan, his ears invaded by the mixed medley of screams, sirens, and tumbling stone. He felt lighter, and as he attempted to stand up, he realized why that was. His upper left arm, around midway up, waved around, no hand at the end of it, merely a stump that didn't bleed. In shock, he looked around for his arm, finding it trapped under a huge piece of concrete off to his left. He couldn't really process it, and continue to look around with wide eyes. All around him were slow moving bodies, many of them in pieces but still alive and screaming in fear. The pilot he had hit in the eye was slumped over what remained of a wall, missing his bottom half and looking around as if he could reattach it if he just knew where it was.

His attention was grabbed by a line of fuel seeping its way towards him, from a section of the plane he had hijacked. It reached him, his legs, which were bent at impossible angles, still registered the damp feeling as his jeans were soaked in the flammable liquid.

He heard the slow sound of clapping approaching him. He looked around, and then he saw her. Death herself, dressed in a bright yellow bikini that contrasted well with her beautiful black fur. She was clapping as she walked through the rubble, no one else seeming to see her, or not caring about her if they did.

She walked up to him, taking her time and not seeming perturbed at all with the carnage around her. Her eyes closed and a small smirk on her face as she stood in front of him. The clapping slowly stopped, and he looked at her nervously as she stood still, hands on her perfect hips as she slowly opened her eyes to stare at him. In those eyes he saw something that surprised him.

Rage. Unequivocal, unrepentant rage burned in her amber eyes. That rage grew until the burning rage wasn't quite metaphorical anymore, but actual flames that burned from her eyes, casting her face in flickering angry shadows.

"You stupid, selfish, insane excuse for a living being." She spoke and he felt the very land shake with her fury. "One week. That's all I asked for. One week to relax. And you stupid meat puppets decide the best way to celebrate a brief reprieve from my presence is to maim each other, attack each other and test your 'freedom'!" The land shook again, the screams getting louder as more of the previously magnificent spa crumbled, crushing a couple of people, but not killing them, merely pinning them under a hundred tons of concrete. "And you! The creature that filled my head with the idea of a possible break from the relentless monotony of guiding you idiots into eternity, has the GALL to ruin my vacation by attempting to hit me with an AIRPLANE?!" She screamed at the audacity.

"By all rights, I should just take you to the deepest, darkest pit of Hell I can find right now. But no, you disturbed the balance. Now, because of the mess YOU caused, I have to make an example of what happens when you defy death!" She pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. She pulled one of the smokes out of the pack, and used her flaming eyes to light it before she took a deep drag. "And letting you go before you see what you've caused wouldn't make a good lesson now would it?"

She didn't give him a chance to answer, taking a hit off the cigarette and beginning to walk away from him. The ground shook more, the building coming down around him. She reached the limits of his vision, the edge of a huge piece of concrete. "Enjoy the show." She said, and flicked the cigarette away from her. It seemed to move in slow motion as he watched it flip, end over end, before landing at the beginning of the trail of jet fuel that led to him.

Flames roared to life, moving quickly towards him. He tried to drag himself away, but with only one arm, couldn't get near far enough away before the flames engulfed him. His ability to feel pain came back with a vengeance, and he opened his mouth to scream. The flames crept quickly up his body and down his open mouth, searing his lungs and esophagus in white hot flames. But still he didn't die. As his body burned he somehow heard, over his own screams, the sound of something massive approaching.

He somehow managed to look towards the source of the sound, and saw water. So much water. As if the entire ocean had risen up to engulf him and the entire island.

As the wall of water approached, he had time for just one last thought. 'I should have never borrowed that money."

---

"In today's top story, it seems the brief reprieve from the clutches of death that we enjoyed is over after four days. The bodies are still being counted, and believed to be in the billions as everyone injured during the event passed from their accumulated wounds at approximately 6:17 PM Eastern Standard Time Monday evening."

"In a possibly related note, today at noon, officials across the world declared the search for survivors of the Virgin Islands disaster to be officially over. No survivors have been found after the supermassive tsunami that appears to have completely sunk the islands. Experts have not managed to come up with any possible cause for the disasters, and we are left with the sobering reminder that death is indiscriminate, and no matter what we may think, we are, all of us, vulnerable to the indomitable hand of death. May we never forgot that surety, and let us all learn from this experience to never take our, or our loved ones, lives for granted. May God bless us all."