An Expected Visit

Today, I had an appointment with the Grim Reaper...he wasn't happy. He sat across from me at our kitchen table, a supremely white kitchen table from the mid-90s, which made his bodily shade the epitome of what can persuasively be termed as "black as death". He asked if I wanted coffee, as if he knew how to manipulate our original 1972 Mr. Coffee automatic-drip coffee-maker in such a fashion as to produce "coffee". I declined, casually, so as to not make him feel as if he, himself, were also not in want of coffee. Why the Grim Reaper wasn't happy, I was not sure. It was not my place to ask, so I let that perception fade as he continued with his questionaire...

"Are you eating healthfully?"

"Yes..well, when I can control myself." I snickered here, but it was not well-recieved.

"Doing any drugs, cigarettes, ganja, acid, meth, or ingesting more than the recommended amounts of cough syrup?"

"No, no, no, no, no, and n...well, I doubled the Robitussin on Wednesday because I thought my bronchitis was having a resurgance." That was a lie. He didn't pick it up.

"Any accidents, including any unpleasant slips with a pearing knife in the last six months."

"No." I toyed with my shirt button as he continued making what I imagined to be checks on his clipboard with a pen I had lent to him...he only divulged that it was not his fault the way his last pen had been confiscated in Bangladesh.

"Evaluate the validity of this statement: Do you feel as though you are in good health?"

"Generally, yes." I responded with a despondent overtone that made him stand quickly, causing his robe to even show a bit of his under-smog, which frightened me as it puffed outward, like a miniature inverted atomic mushroom cloud.

"Well, that disappoints me. You are one of our hopefuls." This I knew. He made one last attempt at worth. "Now, before I go, is there anything I can do for you, within reason? It is now my responsibility to offer my resources, says my employer."

"Actually, yes...could you now, kindly, fuck off?"

I couldn't see his eyes, of coures, as they were hidden under that menacing hood, but I'm sure he physically rolled them, right then, during another realization of exactly how meaningless his job really is. What exactly IS his job, though? Of this I am not sure...but I AM sure that it must somehow be important to The Employer, otherwise he would not have been forced to garner my health stats for a second time this week.

I almost felt bad for the Grim Reaper, having to wear such dull earth tones...but I suppose other teens would egg him if he became suddenly adventurous with hibiscus prints and Japanesque neons. I decided I would make Baklava for the next time he came, which would be July 21st, six months from now, six months because that's the way it is, six months for everything, except for a physical, which is a pain in the ass (pun intended) which every guy loves to skip.