Death's Detective

Death at a Play

He pushed back his hood to get a better view. Not in the mood for his traditional robe he had resorted to a hoodie woven out of pure darkness. One with little strings to tighten the hood. When you’re invisible to the living no one can force their dress code on you.

Recently Death had grown a beard, it was an odd look combined with the skull, but he liked that it gave him something to stroke when puzzled by humans. His cat took that role before, but she was off on one of her mysterious holidays.

She would’ve loved the play. She loved all musicals, except for Cats which she found incredibly offensive.

The Actor hit his final note and the crowd rose in jubilation applauding loudly and throwing flowers onto the stage. Before they could land Death slashed at them with his scythe causing them to wither and die. The Actor was allergic and he didn’t want him to go out sneezing.

Not after a performance like that. The performance of a lifetime as they say. Certainly of The Actor’s lifetime Death knew.

The Actor took in the crowd’s love one last time and headed backstage. Death was waiting for him when he entered his dressing room.

“Ooh, hello, are you from the theatre?” The Actor asked in surprise, but not as much surprise as you’d expect.

“No.”

“That’s a very serious face you’ve got there. We haven’t been cancelled, have we?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Death replied, “Now, let’s discuss your retirement.”

At Death's Door

A teen girl with fiery eyes that had seen the pits of hell many times was waiting at Death’s door.

She sat slumped down on his doorstep with the complete lack of energy unique to young people usually bursting with energy. This type of slump is what you get when they actually burst.

Her father, who happens to be the Devil, had told her she shouldn’t be hanging around hell all the time and sent her off to work with her uncle, Death, for a couple of days. “Death never sleeps, let alone until noon. It’ll do you good,” he had said.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Death asked.

“That’s not funny, Uncle Death,” she moaned.

“You kids these days have no sense of humour,” Death claimed. “I’m just saying, this isn’t exactly the most lively place.”

She rolled her eyes and gave up on moaning a second time. “Dad sent me.”

“Why?”

“Probably because he’s evil.”

“Don’t say your dad is evil,” Death reprimanded her.

“He is evil. That’s the whole point of him,” she said in an I-know-everything tone.

“Still.”

“He said I have to follow you around to learn about hard work, but I know all about that already, I mean, have you ever tried to straighten your hair in hell? The humidity is unbearable,” the Devil’s Daughter complained.

“I can’t say I have,” he said stroking his beard.

“I should be finding myself and figuring out the meaning of life. You can’t help with that,” she continued.

“It’s not really my department.” Death agreed.

She looked down. “Are you wearing pyjama pants? Are you-- Did you lose your cat again? You always get weird when you lose your cat.”

“I didn't lose her, she's on vacation. And I don't get weird, I don't do weird. Death is serious business. As for these?" He looked down at the silky pants with the Casper the Ghost print on them, "They were a gift. Now, tell me, is your father up to something?” he asked, avoiding further comments.

“God only knows,” she said.

“He probably does,” Death paused and grinned, not that he had much choice, “‘God only knows?’ I’m rubbing off on you already.”

Death and the Devil

A deathly sigh came through the gates of hell.

The Devil turned around and said: “Death, what brings you here? You rarely do direct delivery.”

“Is there any anywhere we could talk?” Death asked over the anguished screams of the damned. "You know, without all this noise? I feel like I'm in a night club."

“Sure, follow me to my office and close the gate behind you. It’s always such a bother when the dead start roaming the earth,” he answered.

The Devil lead the way and Death followed. As they walked past sinner after sinner Death felt like they were going around in circles, which obviously they were.

Eventually they arrived at the most dreadful, drab, dingy, depraved and dark office one could imagine, a place devoid of any hope. However, it had a plant in the corner, so it wasn’t all bad.

The Devil’s assistant was frantically flinging receipts and forms around and angrily glared at the Devil.

“For the six hundred and sixty sixth time you have to document your deals better. You offer everyone all they want in exchange for their soul, but someone has to organize and deliver those requests. You can’t promise two people all the wealth in the world at the same time, it makes no sense,” she said extremely exasperated and exhausted.

“You’re doing great, sweetie,” the Devil said dismissively. He turned towards Death and asked him what he wanted to talk about.

“You want your daughter to follow me around?”

“That would be great,” the devil said covered in schmaltz.

“Why?”

“Because I’m worried about her. She sits around all day not doing anything, not showing any interest in this hell hole or any of the other ones,” the Devil explained, “Maybe if she had something to do…”

“I see. Helping me with the bookkeeping and paperwork that kind of thing?” Death asked suspiciously.

“She really needs to get out more,” the Devil tried, “I remember when we would stroll around her sitting on my shoulders so she could watch the telemarketers get tormented. Now she says it’s all pointless and cruel and stays indoor the whole day.”

“Right, you want me to take her with me into the field,” Death said, his eye sockets unable to narrow.

“Perfect!”

“I have some nice calm deaths, gently into the night and all that, coming up, what do you say?” Death asked.

“I don’t think she’d be interested in that. Kids need a lot of excitement for things to grab their attention.”

“Excitement? What about a murder? A gruesome revealing-the-dark-side-of-human-nature homicide. Is that what you were thinking of? Forget about it, I’m not doing it,” Death said having put his bony finger on the Devil’s real motive.

“Are you mad? Is this about the plague again? Come on! It was good fun,” the Devil said jovially jabbing him in the side-bone.

Death swiped the hand away with his scythe and said: “I’m not here for you to teach your daughter whatever horrible things you want her to learn about people.”

“I’m not—your cat away again, isn’t she? You always get like this when your cat is away.”

Death Comes Home

Death had returned hoping to end the day with a nice cup of hot cocoa. Having recently guided a nice shopkeeper along he had gotten hold of a pack of two day expired biscuits that would go great with it. Death didn’t mind out-of-date biscuits, out-of-date biscuits were what his job was all about he thought.

“Go to hell,” Death said to the Devil’s Daughter lying on his sofa flicking through his books.

“Very funny,” she said in a tone suggesting it was the least funny thing she’d ever heard. “What’s with these boring old books? Don’t you have a computer or a tablet?”

“They tell me books are dead,” he replied. “You should go home. I don’t need an assistant.”

“Fine. I didn’t want to work with people anyway; people are the worst. Dead or alive,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just follow Dad’s footsteps and resign myself to torturing them for all eternity. So boring. Whatever,” she got up to leave.

“Hold on.“

She stopped a little too quickly for someone perfectly fine with leaving.

“We’ll head out now, but let me first put on some different pants,“ Death said.

“Fine.”

A Case For Death

Death was haunting a bakery and the Devil’s Daughter was on his heels. Inside the nice little bakery a nice little old lady was making nice chocolate covered carrot cake.

“So she’s going to die? How? Is she going to choke on her own cake? Will she fall into her own oven? Will the carrot cake garrote her seeking revenge?” the Devil’s Daughter asked Death.

“I don’t know yet, but the last option seems unlikely,” Death answered.

“What do you mean you don’t know? You’re Death incarnate, can’t you sense how everyone will die?” she said in surprise.

“Not always.“

“Does it matter? Can’t you wait for her to die to find out? I mean, that’s the point you come in anyway.”

“I need to figure out the cause of her death so I can guide her along properly. The way someone dies affects the way they approach moving on and sometimes the where they go. Besides, I can’t show up not even knowing what caused me; I’d feel like a real fool.“

“How come you can’t sense what will kill her?”

“Because the cause is something supernatural,“ he explained.

“Supernatural? Like being killed by a bewitched carrot cake!” she concluded.

“I don’t see the motive,” Death said shaking his skull.

“Because she would have eaten it, obviously.”

“There’s no bewitched carrot cake within a 70 km range and no witch with the skills to make one in this town. No, they will bring in someone from outside for this hit,“ Death said.

“A hit? This is a hit? What makes you think so?” the Devil’s Daughter asked in surprise.

“Even with supernatural deaths I can sense certain things about her death. I can tell it will be messy. And I sense a coffin being built made up of a hundred tiny little boxes. She’s going to be blown to bits,” Death revealed.

“Why would anyone want to blow up an old lady?” she asked.

“I’ve been watching her and she’s at the center of everything baking related in this town. She’s the linchpin, the ringleader, she has the baking club completely under her control and because of that the whole town is in her debt. It’s a Quid Pro Cake world, kiddo. But someone has had enough, someone wants to take her place as the cherry on top of this whole town.”

The Devil’s Daughter had never heard anything so ridiculous. “Is this one of your death jokes dad warned me about? Look at her, she’s harmless. She won’t have any enemies, let alone one who’d hire a demon or a witch or some other supernatural create to kill her. Besides the carrot, I don’t see the motive.”

“Maybe she was getting too pushy,” Death proposed.

“Too pushy?”

“Not everyone likes brownies no matter how many times you go ‘ooh, go on, just have one’.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” the Devil’s Daughter said.

“I’ve seen people murdered for less. Two separate people have been murdered over their misspelled M&M’s collection. We can’t draw conclusions just yet, first we need to investigate.”

“Investigate? Like the police? Just—before someone kills anyone?” she asked.

“Yes, we need to start by searching her place and questioning the people who know her,” Death said ready to get to the bottom of the case of the exploding baking grandmother.

“Awesome,” the Devil’s Daughter said excitedly.

“I suggest we do the good cop/bad cop routine when we question people. I’ll be the good cop, because I have a natural proficiency for putting people at ease,” the walking skeletal incarnation of Death said.

“I can totally be the bad cop. I’ve just perfected my demon voice. I’ll be the best bad cop you’ve ever seen,” she said completely on board.

“Your demon voice?”

A literal fire started burning in Devil’s Daughter’s eyes and dark clouds gather around her head, indoors and everything, backed by the noise of thunder her voice deepened and beamed through the bakery. “MY DEMON VOICE BRING AWE TO PUNY MORTALS AND MAKES THEM WEEP AND COWER AND BEG FOR MERCY. IT WILL MAKE THEM SPILL THEIR GUTS AND IF THEY TRY TO REFUSE IT WILL MAKE THEM, err, well, SPILL THEIR GUTS TOO, but in the other way, you know.”

“Ooh, good,” Death said casually. “Let’s get going.”

The Baking Club

It was teatime and Death had grown hungry; luckily he was surrounded by cakes, pastries and cookies. Baked goods and to-be-baked goods filled the house at 221b Bake Street to the brim, or rather to the chimney.

A banner on the wall read:

FIFTH ANNUAL BAKING FESTIVAL

PI(E) NEVER ENDS

“Make way for the donuts!” a man yelled running in their direction carrying four boxes on his head.

He shoved his way past the Devil’s Daughter, her eyes lit up in anger and she yelled: “WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING.”

“Careful,” Death said to her, but it was too late.

The whole house froze in sudden fear; her demonic voice had worked just as she had predicted. People cowered, wept and begged for mercy. The man who had pushed past her rolled up into a fetal position besides the croissants. Which almost worked for him as camouflage.

Being a master detective this did not stop Death from spotting him.

“That’s the treasurer of this baking club. The second-in-command. When the woman dies he will next in line to become the head of the club,” Death pointed out to the Devil’s Daughter.

“He’s the murderer?” she asked looking down at the weeping croiss—man.

“He has a motive, sure, but that proves nothing.”

“I can make him confess. Just watch me,” she said, fixing her burning eyes on him and taking a deep breath. She produced her most booming, commanding demon voice yet. “YOU PLAN TO KILL THE HEAD BAKER AND TAKE CONTROL OF THE BAKING CLUB.”

“It’s not true, it’s not true,” he cried.

Death banged the bottom of his scythe on the floor and the fear lifted from the room, everyone looked around in confusion and as if waking from a trance went back to rushing around and baking.

“We won’t learn anything like that,” he said. “We should search her house for clues first. Then we can question them once we know what to ask.”

The Goth Girl

Death had turned up at the old lady’s house and found it occupied by a pale, black-haired girl with black mascara, black lips, black nails, a black dress, but a regular red heart.

“Maybe she’s a murderer,” the Devil’s Daughter said.

“She’s not a murderer,” Death replied.

“She looks like a murderer.”

“She’s a goth girl, that’s why she looks like that, they all look like that. I was a goth girl once and I’m not a murderer,” he explained.

“Aren’t you, though?”

“I keep the records, that’s all.“

Death made him and the Devil’s Daughter turn visible and said: “Excuse me, miss.”

The girl turned towards his voice in surprise. Seeing a bearded skeleton in a hoodie and pajama pants and a girl with the flaming red eyes she frowned and asked: “Are—are you the delivery people?”

“No. I am Death and this is the Devil’s Daughter,” the Devil said plainly.

“The anti-christ?” the girl asked.

“No! I’m just the Devil’s daughter, that doesn’t mean I’m the anti-christ, why does everyone always assume that? Are you, I don’t know, the anti-fred-from-across-the-street just because yours and Fred’s parents know each other?” the Devil’s Daughter, not the anti-christ, said.

“Ok, ok, sorry, I didn’t mean to assume,” the Goth Girl said timidly.

“It’s a pet peeve of mine.”

“With that all cleared up we can start the investigation,” Death said.

“The investigation?” the Goth Girl asked.

“Just a routine pre-death check up.“

The Goth Girl’s eyes widened in a panic.

“No, no, it’s not about you,” Death quickly added, “Nothing to worry about. We thought this was the house of the lady running the cake shop.”

“Ooh, you mean my grandmother. Hold on, does that mean she’s…”

“We have some questions,” Death blurted out before she could finish realizing why they were here. He did not get around to his questions, because the Devil’s Daughter, who was getting a little too much into her bad cop role, interrupted him.

“DOES YOUR GRANDMOTHER HAVE ANY ENEMIES,” she bellowed in her demon voice.

The girl didn’t react like people in the baking club had reacted; she didn’t weep or cower; she was awed, in a way, although it would be more correct to say she swooned.

“Wow. That is one sexy voice,” the girl said after having stared at her with an open mouth for much longer than it’s socially accepted to stare at someone with an open mouth. Which isn’t long, but still. 

“WHat?” the Devil’s Daughter asked in confusion, dropping her demon voice halfway through.

“Ah, yes, this can happen, I’ve seen it many times before,” Death said knowingly.

“Do you, err, enjoy walking, I mean me, I MEAN walking with me, I mean, please kiss me!” the girl said losing all control.

Death snapped his bony fingers and the smitten girl froze in time.

“She’s fallen for your charms,” he said turning towards the Devil’s Daughter.

“My what?” she asked confused by all this.

“Your devilish charms,” he said with a smile.

“You mean this is a spell? I didn’t cast a spell.”

“It looks like you cast a little love spell on your girlfriend,” Death teased.

“She’s not not my girlfriend!”

“Sometimes people are taken by our inherent supernatural charm and they act very strange. She probably had a fascination with all things dark and demonic before and now here you are the Devil’s Daughter in the flesh, no wonder she thinks you’re cute,” he explained.

The Devil’s Daughter turned bright red and looked away.

“You’re right we won’t get much out of her like this, we’re better of searching this place first.”

They searched the whole house looking for any clues to why the Grandmother will die. They didn’t find much. However, every time Death suggested they should give up and question the girl after all the Devil’s Daughter decided they should start the search over again.

The Final Nail

Death stared the Goth Girl in the eye. The Devil’s Daughter on the other hand stared at the ceiling and was avoiding eye contact with the girl at all costs.

“Have you heard anything about a baking club conspiracy?” Death asked her.

“Uh, no,” she answered, trying to catch the Devil’s Daughter’s eye.

“Do you intend to inherit your grandmother’s secret recipes?” Death tried.

“What? No, I hate baking.”

The Goth Girl coughed trying to get the Devil’s Daughter’s attention.

“What are you doing here?” Death asked.

“Grandma’s waiting for a delivery of some big pot thing and someone needs to be here to sign for it,” the girls’ eyes finally met, they both froze and stared at each other for a couple of seconds, the Goth Girl sighed, the Devil’s Daughter reconsidered her thoughts on people and they both giggled.

“A big pot thing? You mean a cauldron?”

“Yeah, one of those.”

“Hmm,” Death considered this new information. “Where did she buy this cauldron?”

“I don’t know. She found it online,” the girl said, briefly looking away from the Devil’s Daughter to point at the computer.

Death headed towards it and commanded: “Reveal your secrets.” The machine did nothing, so he rebooted it and tried again. “Reveal your secrets,” he repeated. This time it showed him the order for the cauldron.

“Thank you,” Death said examining the order. The old lady had ordered it from a company called ‘Wicked Wiccan World’. Death recognized the name as being that of a witch’s shop.

Looking at the pictures of the cauldron Death noticed a small crack running down from a nail holding one of the handles in place.

“There it is,” Death said turning to the Devil’s Daughter, “Cause of me: Exploding witch’s cauldron.”

After Death

It was all over for the old lady; she had finally finished the hundredth cake; unfortunately she was also dead. The exploding cauldron had sent boiling icing and grandmother body parts everywhere.

“Ooh, my, what a mess,” the Baking Grandmother’s soul said looking at her iced body splattered all across the room. “What happened?”

“The cauldron exploded,” Death answered.

“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that silly Internet. What’s this stuff on the walls? It doesn’t seem like boiled icing.”

“That’s you,” he said simply.

The grandmother turned and looked at Death. A look of understanding came over her.

“Ooh. I see. What’s next? Where am I going now?” she asked.

Death looked at his notebook and answered: “To a nice condo in Spain.”

“Spain? The afterlife is Spain?”

“It’s a different Spain,” he explained.

The Baking Grandmother blinked and then hurried off to grab a broom. “Before we go we should clean up this mess, we can’t leave it like this.”

“Someone will clean it up, I’m sure,” Death said taking the broom away from her.

“Ooh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother anyone with having to clean this up, it will just take me a minute,” she said snatching the broom from his hand.

From the bottom of the Devil’s Daughter’s icy heart a tear welled up and fell from her fiery eyes ending up as a lukewarm drop on her cheek.

“Sweetie, are you all right?” the kindly grandmother asked.

“You’re just so nice,” she answered. “We’ll help clean this up for, won’t we, uncle?”

“No, no, no. We can’t allow the dead to clean up the scene of their own death, people will start asking questions,” Death said resolutely.

“Please,” the Devil’s Daughter pleaded.

“No. We’re going to Spain and that’s the end of it.”

To Hell With It

Death had gone to hell to drop off the Devil’s Daughter with her dad.

“Have you learned anything about people from your time on earth?” the Devil asked her.

“Yes, I’ve learned something, Dad. I’ve learned that people are fine no matter what you say. Sometimes they may be rude, but often they’re nice and—and sometimes they’re cute,” she said and she stormed off to her room.

“Can you believe that?” the Devil asked.

Death considered it for a while and eventually answered: “She has a point, sometimes they are cute. I remember you used to tell me that very thing a few millenia ago.”

The Devil just shook his horned head and trotted off. Death went towards the Devil’s Daughter’s room and knocked at her door.

“Go away, Dad,” she said.

“It’s me.”

She opened the door. “Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you would ever like to tag along again. I, err, I wouldn’t mind if you did,” Death said.

“Is this about you missing your cat? You know she’ll be back. She always comes back,” she asked sceptically.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Death replied.

“Well, I would love to, Uncle. Just come to hell next time you have a case.”

With the mystery of the exploding cauldron solved Death finally returned home to enjoy that nice hot cup of cocoa.