There once
was a woman in Town who looked so good everybody thought "dang she looks
so good!" and for her birthday one year they all pooled their money and
bought her a sweatshirt that had 'Dang I look so good' printed on the hood of
it. The woman was proud of her sweatshirt and wore it every day as she rode
through Town on her horse.
It was a
particularly bright autumn day and the vain woman was riding down Main Street
asking everyone about her beauty. "Do I look so good?" she asked, and
each of them answered, "Oh yes!" in turn. Then she saw, coming
towards her, the Specter of Death on a black horse. She asked, "Death, do
I look so good?" and Death just stared forward, not responding. The woman
tried again-- "Death, do I look so good?" --- but Death just
continued in his slow, silent trot. Now this woman loved crabs more than
anything and she always carried a sack of them in her saddlebag. She was eager
to impress Death even if he refused to compliment her, so she held up a crab by
its spindly leg and asked, "Want one?" Death paused his horse and nodded,
although he had no mouth with which to eat. The woman handed Death the crab and
he placed it in his saddlebag. He then snapped the reins and carried on.
Just
outside of town, Death came across a tiny, hunched figure, bent over his wares
on the side of the road. The old man was arranging his spoons just so when a
dark shadow fell over him. He turned his head up toward the source, and when he
saw the robed reaper he fainted dead away. People often fainted when Death came
to take them, and this agitated Death because he needed them to climb on his
horse. He kept a Tupperware of cold water in his saddlebag for these instances,
and now he reached for it and he poured its contents on the spoon-seller's
face. "Wake up!" he called, but the spoon-seller was so deeply
unconscious that the cold water didn't wake him. In these cases, Death usually
grumbled, got off his horse and poked the victim with his scythe, but he hated
dismounting because he was lazy. Feeling around in his saddlebag, he came
across the crab, and tossed it at the spoon-seller's head. SMACK--the hard
chitin to the cheek woke the spoon-seller up that instant. With one blackened
finger Death gestured for the little man to climb up on his horse. Terrified,
the spoon-seller obeyed, using as a stepstool the little red ladder he carried
with him everywhere to help him reach low-hanging peaches.
Now later
on that afternoon, the woman with the hood that said 'Dang I look so good'
happened to come riding along the same path. When she came to the side of the
road where the spoon-seller had fainted, she saw the discarded crab, and
recognized it as the one she had given to Death. "Well, isn't he an
ungrateful specter," she thought, and being rather haughty, she decided to
follow him and asked him why he'd tossed her gift aside. She rode on a little
ways until she got to the gas station, and there she asked the attendant which
direction Death had gone.
"Oh,"
said the acne'd attendant in coveralls. "He had the little spoon-seller
with him. I'm sure he was heading to the Underworld."
"And
how do you get to the Underworld?" the woman asked.
"Three
camels to the right and down the Rabbit Hole."
The woman
with the hood that said 'Dang I look so good' counted one, two, three camels to
her right and urged her white horse toward the Rabbit Hole. At the sight of the
vortex, the white horse whinnied and backed away, so the woman tied the animal
to a nearby tree and jumped down the Rabbit Hole alone.
Sure
enough, Death and his horse and the spoon-seller were at the bottom of the
Rabbit Hole, filling out paperwork for the Underworld. The spoon seller was
resting on the black horse, taking his last living breaths and answering
questions like, "What's your date of birth?" and "What's your mother's
maiden name?"
"Why," interrupted the woman,
"would you take my crab and then discard it, instead of just saying in the
first place that you don't like crab?"
Death,
dodging the question, explained the whole rigamarole with the fainting
spoon-seller and how the water hadn't woken him up but the crab to the face had
worked like a charm.
"Why," continued the woman, still
angry, "didn't you just climb down from the horse yourself and wake the
man by poking him with your scythe?"
Death
shrugged, and the truth of the matter sunk in: Death, the woman realized, was
lazy. "You know you shouldn't be so lazy," she chided, and she
reached into her saddlebag for a crab-snack to improve her mood, but of course
she had left her horse behind and her saddlebag wasn't there.
"I'm
not going to make a big deal out of this, because it looks like you're busy
with paperwork," the woman continued. "But I hope when my time comes,
if I faint from fear, you will have the decency to get off your horse and wake
me instead of just throwing a crab at my face."
"You
should've known," Death said in a low, unapologetic tone. "That
specters don't have mouths."
The woman
huffed and turned to get back to her horse, but it Rabbit Holes, which are easy
to fall into, are quite difficult to get back up out of.
"How
do I get out of this thing?" the woman asked.
"You've
made a second mistake," Death said. " Once you set foot in the
Underworld, you are officially deceased. The only beings who can traverse the
worlds are myself and my horse."
The tiny
spoon-seller still sat on Death's horse, quivering in fear.
"What
are you saying?" the woman demanded. "You're saying I'm dead?"
"Pay
attention to your toes," Death responded.
The woman did so, and noticed a creeping chill starting at
the base of her toenails. She saw also that the ground upon which she stood was
made of frozen blood.
"You're
gradually turning into a corpse," Death informed her. "Whereas the
spoon-seller, who's still on the horse, has not yet touched the deathly ground.
You'll stay here in his place, and he'll return to the Living. Now, if you
don't mind, I need your date of birth and your mother's maiden name."
The little
spoon-seller, shocked at this turn of fortune, bounced up and down on the
saddle with glee. The woman, struck with disbelief, answered the questions for
the paperwork. When it was all finished, Death asked: "Where's the cold
feeling now?"
"In my
knees," said the woman.
"When
it's up to your head, you'll be fully deceased." He handed her the
paperwork. "And these forms will be clutched in your frozen fingers. At
that point, someone will come to take you away."
He climbed
back on his black horse with the spoon-seller and waved goodbye.
"Wait,"
squeaked the spoon-seller, eyeing the woman's customized sweatshirt. "I'm
cold."
"You're
cold?" the woman said, reading the old man's intentions. "Fine. Take
my sweatshirt. I'm dead."
She handed
him the sweatshirt that had 'Dang I look so good' printed on the hood of it. It
was big for the spoon-seller but he wore it happily. In fact, it was the first
piece of clothing anyone had offered him in all his fifty years.
Death
snapped the reins of the horse and returned through the Rabbit Hole. Having no
immediate work to attend to, he carried the spoon-seller back to his spot on
the side of the road. The red ladder still stood in the dust, and the spoons
were still laid out just so.
"Thank
you for your mercy," the spoon-seller said as he climbed back down.
"I'll
be back for you soon enough," Death responded.
Four people
bought spoons that afternoon, and two more bought handkerchiefs. Some
complimented the old man on his sweatshirt, and others snickered because the
man did not look so good at all. He had warts on his nose and scars on his
cheeks, and his lips were cracked like old pottery. But at least he didn't have
fishy crab-breath, which was what all the Townspeople had said about the vain
woman behind her back, and no one really noticed she was gone. No one, that is,
except the gas station attendant, who found her white horse at sunset and rode
off toward the horizon, while the spoon-seller packed up his wares after a day
of good business, and the vain woman froze in the Underworld, and Death, at
home with his feet up, sketched a self-portrait in which he had a mouth.
