Annabelle Jenkins hated herself with the loathing that only an ostracized teenager could generate. She felt that she wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, or athletic enough; everyday she went to school and was ignored and came home feeling like nothing. After a time she came to firmly believe she was nothing.

She glared at herself in the bathroom mirror with squinty eyes. ‘I am a cow. A big, fat cow. God, even my name hints at cowness - Annabelle. Who the hell names their child after a cow?’ She gave a scream and hurled her clenched hands at the mirror, trying to make her horrible reflection go away. The mirror vibrated slightly with each blow but the reflection refused to vanish. She slumped onto the cool edge of the tub, hands thrown over her face. Her jaw was clenched tightly shut to prevent herself from breaking down into sobs, oxygen whistling harshly in and out of her nose. After a moment her hands dropped down into her lap and she silently rocked back and forth. Over and over her mind echoed with the word “nothing.” She was nothing; the kids at school didn’t even acknowledge her enough to pick on her. Sometimes she wished her parents would beat her; at least then she would know that they knew she existed. Why would they when she had three older perfect sisters? She was just forgettable.

Annabelle lifted a slightly shaking hand and wiped the tears that were falling down her cheeks. She would make them notice. In one final messy act, she would leave them with a permanent marker that she’d been here. Slowly she stood up and went to the sink, her right hand going to her father’s black gun. It lay there and seemed to suck all the light into itself, a cold black hole. She turned on the faucet, filled up a small plastic cup with water, and then turned off the water.

She paused. “Mom, Dad, Karen, anybody home?” she yelled at the top of her lungs. Everybody should be gone, leaving her home alone, but she wanted to do one more double check. With a minute of silence being her only response, she raised the plastic cup to her lips and took the water into her mouth. She didn’t swallow, just held it in her mouth. She had read on the Internet that you should hold water in your mouth if you were going to try suicide by blowing your brains out. Doing that gave your brain something to focus on rather than your impending demise and you were less likely to shake and miss. Or worse, not miss but leave yourself in agony on the floor from a bad shot.

She slowly picked up the small revolver; it felt heavy and awkward in her hand and she pressed the muzzle slightly under her bulging chin. With all the water in her mouth, she really couldn’t feel the gun. Her finger twitched on the trigger but didn’t pull it and her hands began to grow warm and damp. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the bathroom door beginning to open. She froze, gun under her chin. ‘Oh crap.’

*******************

Jill took a swallow from the sliver flask in her hand before she proceeded up the stairs. She really wasn’t sure how she moved around without people seeing her, or how she got into locked houses, burning buildings, and plague-infested villages without getting caught, noticed, or hurt. Sure, there had been a manual on how to be death Death. She had found it in her coat pocket shortly after taking up the position from Death 16, but she had gotten drunk in the nearest bar and left it on the stool next to where she had been sitting. The “Higher Ups” had been pissed and they refused to replace it. Not that she cared, but she did know one thing - there was some human walking around who literally knew the secrets of Death.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she put the cap back on the flask and stowed it away in her coat. She ran a hand through her reddish-brown hair and went to open the bathroom door, mentally preparing herself. It was going to be icky - teenage suicide, bullet in the brain. She had purposely come a few seconds late ‘cause she didn’t really want to watch it happen. She would just make sure the soul did its thing and move on to her next appointment. She opened the door and her eyes went wide with terror, it was worse than she suspected. So she said the only thing that came to mind - “Gah!”

***************

Annabelle had much the same reaction to the strange woman coming into the bathroom, only she made more of a gurgling noise due to the water leaving her mouth. It rushed out, warm, from being held in her mouth, and hit the floor with a wet smack. She coughed and tried to get her voice to work. “W-w-who, the hell are you?”

Jill’s wide blue eyes tried to grow wider. “Uh, oh shit.” Her brain ticked furiously, trying to come up with something. “My bad. I’ll just come back when you’ve finished.” She started to backtrack, pulling the door shut. She was in so much trouble. How could she have screwed up the appointment time? She had purposely been running behind for this one.

“Stop.”

Jill stopped. She wasn’t really sure if she could even be shot, but, staring at the gun pointed at her chest, she decided she didn’t really want to find out.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Annabelle was not thinking very clearly at the moment. However, she did know that this person should not be in her house. Plus this woman had interrupted her right in the middle of something important. She had just worked her nerve up to pull the trigger, “I asked you a question.”

Jill kept a close eye on the agitated teen’s gun hand as she answered, “I have some business to, uh, take care of, here in your house.” She winced as the words came out of her mouth. God, that sounded lame.

“Business. Oh my God! My parents know. They sent you to talk me out of it. You’re some kind of therapist.”

The gun waived threateningly in her face some more.

“Well, you can’t stop me.” With her conviction firmly back in place, Annabelle put the barrel of the gun in her mouth.

“Okay. Just hurry it up, will you?” Jill turned to exit, but paused as Annabelle muttered something inaudible around the gun. “What?”

The gun was removed. “Where are you going?”

“I thought this should be a private thing. You know, killing yourself and all that. I thought I’d just step outside and, you know, give you some privacy.”

“Aren’t you going to stop me?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, I get it. This is some kind of reverse psycho-babble.”

“What?” Jill stared at the gun-toting teenager in confusion.

“You’re just trying to use your therapist ways to get me to give up the gun.”

Jill rubbed her face. “Look, kid., I don’t really care what you think. I’m Death. I’m here to make sure your soul does its thing once you splatter your brains all over the walls. Now if you could hurry it up that would be great because you’re behind schedule. You should have shot yourself six minutes ago. Death is a hopping business and you’re making me late for other appointments.” Okay, so she really couldn’t remember what her other appointments for the day were, but she didn’t really want to summon her day planner at the moment. Instead she reached inside her coat pocket, removed the flask, and took a healthy drink.

“You’re Death.”

Jill was miffed. There was clearly a tone of non-believing in the girl’s voice.

Annabelle took a good look at the woman standing before her. She wasn’t really much to look at. Slightly glazed blue eyes, messy auburn hair, worn jeans, and a jacket over a faded green shirt that had some unreadable writing on it. To top it all off, Death was drinking out of a flask.

Feeling herself being sized up, Jill tried to make herself taller and puffed out her chest, but it soon deflated. “I am too Death,” she mumbled.

“I don’t know. I expected someone taller, all in black, and carry a scythe.”

“Oh, we have him, too. He’s Death 4. He was a wheat farmer during the middle ages.”

“There’s more than one Death?”

“Oh yeah, there’s tons. You know how many people we have to take care of in a day? It’s way more than one Death can handle.”

“Wow, I’d never really thought about it before but I guess it would be hard for one person, er, Death to handle.” Annabelle paused then realized what she was saying. “Oh my God, some insane person has just wandered into my house. You stay back from me or I’ll shoot.”

Jill straightened up and backed nervously away from the wildly waving gun, “Whoa. Hey, I’m not the one who wanted to kill myself, so just watch out who you’re calling a nut.” As she backed up, her right elbow hit the corner of the open door, causing the flask to fall. The loud bang of it hitting the floor caused Annabelle’s finger to jerk on the trigger. And an even louder boom filled the air.

Annabelle’s hands were shaking and her mind was spinning. ‘I’ve killed somebody. Sure, they were a nut, but I’ve killed them. I was supposed to kill myself. Oh God. My parents are going to notice me now; I hope they’ll remember to visit me in jail.’ She just stood still, the gun shaking in her hand; the smell of powder burned in the air and, crumpled at the bottom of the now shut bathroom door, was some crazy woman.

‘Happy dance. I’m finally dead,’ was the only thing going through Jill’s mind before she opened her eyes. “Fuck!” The teenager was still there.

“Oh my God! You’re not dead.”

Jill stood up and took the gun from the girl’s hand. Apparently she couldn’t die from being shot so there was really no reason to have the girl shoot her again. She made the teenager sit on the toilet while she sat across from her on the edge of the tub. She set the gun down beside her and looked at the black hole in the door. “You’re going to have a doozey of a time explaining that to your folks.”

“No, I’m not. I’m going to die. Aren’t you here for me?”

“I think by this point we both know you’re not going to off yourself anytime soon, so why don’t we just move on to other things.”

“Shows what you know. The moment you leave I’m just going to finish what I started before you so rudely interrupted and then you’ll have to come back,” the teenager said, thrusting out her chin defiantly.

“Why the hell do you want to kill yourself? Don’t you realize the shock and pain you’re going to put your family through? At least think of your little brother who’s going to find your body here in the bathroom,” Jill said, trying to reason with the girl.

“Nice try. I don’t have any brothers and I’m the youngest.”

“Fine, your cat’s the one who finds your corpse. Your parents will hear it mewling and come to investigate. So why do you want to do it?”

“So they’ll notice me. So that for once in my life, I can be the center of attention; people will know who I am.”

Jill looked at the girl. She was dressed in teenaged angst black from head to toe. She had blonde hair cut short against her head. She was still pudgy with baby-fat, but soon that would go away, and when she got older Annabelle would be a beautiful woman. “Oh, I get it. Gay and lesbian teens make up the highest number of teenage suicides. Well, instead of killing yourself, just tell your folks you’re gay. That’s bound to get them to sit up and take notice.”

“What?”

Judging by the gasping fish impression and angry eyes, Jill thought she might be wrong.

“I am not gay.”

“Well, I’m just saying …”

“Not gay.”

“Sure.”

“If I had my gun back, I’d shoot you again.”

“So I misjudged. It’s not like I’m a good judge of character. I deal mainly with dead people, you know.”

“Fine, but just so we’re clear. I’m not gay.”

Jill looked across at the girl. “Are you going to try and kill yourself? Because I’m thinking I should get going. I’m sort of behind.”

Annabelle smiled. It had been a weird evening. She had fully planned on killing herself tonight but now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to die. She wasn’t sure what had changed, but something had. Maybe it was when she thought she had killed another person. She couldn’t put her finger on the moment but she was somewhat changed. “For right now, I can honestly say you won’t have to come back tonight.”

Jill smiled. “Good. Now just admit your latent homosexuality and you’ll be on the road to recovery.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Fine.” Jill retrieved her flask off the floor, sadly feeling its nearly empty state.

- - - - - - - --

Annabelle sat in a daze on the toilet seat, wondering how the gun had gotten all the way over by the tub. There was a police officer talking to her in low tones, but it sounded all blurry. Her parents stood in the doorway, tears in their eyes, as another policeman kept them out of the room. Finally her brain processed what was being said. “Is she okay? The neighbors reported a gunshot. Has there been an intruder? Is she okay? Is she okay?” Annabelle started crying and saying she was “sorry” over and over again.

Across the street Jill stood under a dogwood tree; she pulled her day planner out of the air and checked her appointments. Fuck! In big bold letters it said she had a meeting with her supervisor in 35 minutes; all her other appointments had been cleared. She wandered down the street, wondering if there was a decent bar nearby.