13 Ghost Stores in 13 Days

Death on Demand

Malcolm had been hearing the radio commercials for months.

Now YOU can become Death, Destroyer of Worlds … and all in your spare time!

Death on Demand promises to take the easier-than-THEY’D-have-you-believe task of harvesting and transporting souls away from elites like Charon and the Grim Reaper and into the hands of YOU.

Just download our app, answer a few simple questions, and our dispatchers will tell you where to pick up your freshly deceased soul. When you’re done reaping for the day, simply log off. You make the hours. You are your own boss.

…Death on Demand. Where you’ll never be Soul’d Out.

So he signed up.

He didn’t have a car and the idea of touching dead souls skeeved him out, so Malcolm somehow got himself signed on as a dispatcher, which was a full-time job without the flexibility afforded to The Reapers. At his interview, his soon-to-be boss told him the job would make him feel powerful beyond his wildest imagination. He’d been doing it for two months and he only felt tired. The health insurance was nice, though.

The phone had been ringing all night.

“Death on Demand,” Malcolm said. “Where you’ll never be Soul’d Out. Malcolm speaking.”

“Yeah, uh, hi, Malcolm?” said a demonic voice on the other end. “This is, uh, Bob Satan? I’m one of the associate demons down in Hell? How you doing?”

“Doing OK Bob, thanks for asking,” Malcolm said, and he meant it. No one ever asked how he was doing. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Yeah, uh, so your guy was supposed to, uh, drop off a fresh shipment of sinners for me this afternoon,” Bob Satan said. “I’m, uh, supposed to be sticking a giant flaming pitchfork up their collective-”

“I just checked the computer,” Malcolm said. “That shipment was dropped off more than two hours ago.”

“Yeah like I was saying,” Bob Satan said. “I took out the, uh, pitchfork? And was, you know, going to, uh, ‘Get to work,’ but, yeah, these guys, they ain’t the right guys, you know?”

“I’m not following,” Malcolm said.

“These are souls of innocent. I smelled the purity right away. Dang near singed my snout right off.”

Malcolm covered his mouthpiece and cursed. Wrong delivery. Third time this week. He took a deep breath and delivered the line they had scripted for this sort of situation.

“Well, Mr. Satan thanks again for bringing this to our attention, I’ve alerted my driver and we are going to get the correct souls down to you as soon as we possibly can,” he said.

The other phone line lit up. 665 area code. Heaven. Malcolm covered the mouthpiece again.

“Don’t answer that,” he yelled to no one in particular.

“And to make it up to you Mr. Satan,” he said into the phone. “Please feel free to keep those souls of the innocent and do with them whatever you please. Free of charge.”

“Hey thanks a lot, Malcolm,” Bob Satan said. “The big man is gonna like that. I appreciate what you do. I know you got a tough job up there, OK?”

Malcolm disconnected and checked the voicemail that had been left from Heaven. Ten seconds of blood curdling screams followed by an angelic voice whispering, “Help me please,” then the sound of a dozen chainsaws, then dead air.

Malcolm needed a Pepsi. The phone rang again.

“Death on Demand,” he said. “Where you’ll never be Soul’d Out-”

“Your freakin’ guy is 45 minutes late,” the voice said. “You realize if these souls don’t get picked up within the first hour they become children of the damned, doomed to roam the earth for all eternity, right? I got a 20-soul pile up over here. I don’t think this city can handle that many ghosts being unleashed at one time. You want to be the guy who ushered in the freakin’ apocalypse?”

Malcolm rubbed his forehead and glanced at his open orders. Too many to even begin to guess which pickup this caller referred to.

“Sir, could you please inform me of your location?” he asked.

“Just get the driver down here,” the voice said. Then the line went dead as the souls he was dealing with.

Malcolm was still 45 minutes from his break. He could sneak out and have a cigarette. Who would notice? The phone rang.

“Death on demand,” he said, defeatedly.

“Yes, good evening,” came a voice in a Transylvanian accent. “I ordered 40 CCs of O Negative over an hour ago. And I am becoming quite hungry.”

“Wrong extension,” Malcolm said. “You want BloodHub. Hold on I’ll transfer you.”

Malcolm tried to type in the extension for the vampire food delivery service that worked out of the corner of their office, but was pretty sure he accidently transferred the call over to RideScare. Whatever. Their problem now. For a moment he relaxed, content that none of his lines were ringing.

The phone rang again.

“Death on-”

“Yeah this is Ray Johnson out in Levittown, I got a real problem with you pal.”

“With me?” Malcolm said.

“Yeah when I signed up they said I could Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. Thought I’d be getting some cool assignments. Mass murders. Twenty-car pile ups. Secret government killing fields. I’m sick of these hospice homes.”

“In Levittown?”

“Yeah you gotta send me somewhere good pal.”

Malcolm looked at the screen. All the open deaths in the Northeast suburbs were garden variety. Deaths of old age. Peaceful slumbers. Everyone surrounded by family. It sounded kind of nice, Malcolm thought.

“All just normal deaths,” Malcolm said.

“How about I come down there and kill you pal,” the voice said. Then he hung up.

Malcolm decided to go on his break early. The phones would be there when he got back.

He lit up a cigarette and relaxed. He checked his phone. His friend John asking if he wanted to go the Devil’s Tavern. Not 2nite, he texted back. Work killing me. His friends didn’t bug him about his hours. They thought he was following his dreams. He told them he worked in the tech industry.

One of The Reapers, an old school guy wearing the traditional black cloak, emerged from the office with his paycheck. He looked at the cigarette, pointed two fingers toward his eyes, as if saying ‘I’m watching you,’ then pointed ominously at Malcolm.

“Coming for you soon, bro,” The Reaper said.

Malcolm stared back, perplexed.

The Reaper mimed smoking a cigarette, pretended to choke himself, then walked away.

An alarm sounded above Malcolm’s head. The break was over.

“Attention dispatchers,” a voice said. “We have a code blue. Mass casualty event in Nicetown. Please return to your work stations. All Reapers must be rerouted immediately. You will not be reimbursed for lost break time.”

Malcolm sighed and went back to work.

Hours later, his shift ended. He walked out with his friend Miranda, who worked in another department.

“There’s like a late night happy hour sometimes at Devil’s Tavern,” she said.

“Kind of tired, Malcolm said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

The only rule of 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days is that the story must be posted the same night I started it.

Previously on 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days:
Day 1 The Ghost’s Girlfriend
Day 2 The Girl with the Puka Shell Necklace
Day 3 The Time I Went to the Old Church Later Than I Should Have
Day 4 Ride Scare
Day 5 Miranda, Who Appears as a Portent of Death
Day 6 A Halloween Carol
Day 7 El Mariachi de los Muertos