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“I had a sneaking suspicion that someday you’d come for me,” said Darwin Caulden, to his mysterious guest. “In fact, I think I knew you’d come.” Darwin let a smile float to his lips.
He sat in a green chair next to an oaken coffee and a floral patterned sofa. A cigarette burned readily in an ornate glass ashtray. He grabbed at the cigarette with his index and middle finger and slid it into his lips hastily.
“So it’s time already, I suppose?” said Darwin, his voice estranged by the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grasped it in his fingers and took a long, hard drag from the thing and tossed it onto the ground without hesitation.
He stood from the green chair and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his tight pocket. He wasn’t a tall man. Short in fact, only around 5’5”. He wasn’t exceptionally fit either, though he was far from overweight. His brownish hair was sprinkled with splotches of silver and a neatly trimmed goatee adorned his face.
He drew a lighter from his other pocket and lit a second cigarette. He walked across the small room and over to a small table with a well watered plant on it. He’d always liked that plant, he thought to himself.
He pulled open the drawer of the table and withdrew two small glasses and a bottle of vodka. Strong stuff too. He carried the things over to the coffee table and set them down, then sat back down in the green chair. The guest still stood silently at the door.
He struggled to open the aged bottle and settled for smashing the neck of the bottle off on the edge of the table, spilling clear liquid onto the wood floors.
“Oh no, oh no, oh dear…” he sputtered stumbling to clean up the mess. He bent low to the floor to collect the shattered glass, but halfway down, shook his head and stood up. He sat back down, leaving the mess still on the floor, the vodka forming around the smoldering cigarette still on the floor.
Darwin folded his hands in his lap and looked the guest over again, probably for the hundredth time since he’d come.
“So,” he reached forward again and grabbed the broken bottle. He poured the substance into the two glasses and clutched one in his hand. “I guess this is it huh?” he said, shifting his gaze from item to item in the small room.
His heartbeat increased and he franticly scoured the room with his eyes. Searching. Nothing. He shook his head sorrowfully and raised the glass to his lips. The taste of alcohol brushed against his pursed lips and the strong aroma drifted into his nostrils.
He closed his eyes and gulped down the liquid. He shook his head and wiped his eyes. He slouched in the green chair and his eyes narrowed to half-open slits.
He slid a new cigarette from the box, his eyes jumping around the room, still only half-open. He stuck the cylinder into his mouth quickly and lit it with a single flick of his lighter. With one final drag his body went limp and the cigarette slipped from his mouth and into the pool of vodka at his feet. The lighter slipped slowly from his fingers and clattered onto the floor in front of the guest.
The ghastly figure of the Grim Reaper strode around the coffee table and lay a single skeletal hand on Darwin’s chest. The robe of the guest was tattered and blackened from age. His yellow-brown bone stained from years of the grave.
In a moment it was done, and the Reaper held in his hand, a glowing blue crystal, not the size of a nickel. He clasped his slender fingers around the thing and faded into oblivion.
With his guest gone, Darwin’s lonely body was free to sit alone in his favorite green chair for eternity. He’d want it that way.
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