Let’s talk about operational efficiency. Or, more accurately, the total, unmitigated collapse of it.
If you’re reading this on Halloween night—surrounded by cheap plastic skeletons, children hopped up on high-fructose corn syrup, and neighbors desperately trying to pretend their inflatable pumpkin ghost isn’t deflating in the drizzle—congratulations. You’ve made it to the most overrated night of the calendar year.
For the mortals, it’s an excuse to dress up like a slightly cheaper version of something terrifying and eat fun-size chocolate bars until your pancreas petitions for bankruptcy. But for me? Halloween is just Black Friday for the afterlife.
And this year, thanks to a catastrophic logistics failure involving a pink, 7.4-volt handheld car vacuum cleaner, traffic at the River Styx is currently backed up all the way past the Gates of Dis.
As I documented on this week’s episode of The Story Compass Podcast, I decided to bypass the tedious, seven-month bureaucratic waiting room at the Department of Eternal Logistics. Why file a notarized soul-deed for a traditional, carbon-steel, four-thousand-year-old scythe when you can just hop online and order a portable, rechargeable gadget with “strong suction” and an ABS-graded plastic housing that disintegrates if you look at it too aggressively?
Big mistake. Huge mistake.
It turns out that trying to harvest an immortal, stubborn metaphysical entity with a device drawing less current than a digital bedside clock does not lead to a smooth, elegant transition into the great beyond. It leads to a high-pitched, dying whine, a smell of warm wiring, and a sudden, violent vacuum seal.
Case in point: my co-host, Dave.
Yes, dear readers. While testing the unit’s “soul-dislodging capabilities,” I accidentally sucked my host, resident cynic, and professional sock-hoarder straight into the dust canister.
Now, I have to row all the way down to the River Stix tonight—right in the middle of peak Halloween collection hour—just to fish his stubborn little grey soul out of the murky water and shove it back into his flesh shell.
Do you have any idea what ferry traffic looks like on All Hallows’ Eve? Every amateur necromancer, college student trying out a cheap Ouija board, and ghost-tour influencer with a smartphone gimbal is clogging up the riverbanks. Charon is threatening to strike because people keep trying to pay him in expired crypto tokens instead of ancient Greek drachmas, and Cerberus has gotten into a territorial dispute with a stray German Shepherd from the mortal realm.
It is absolute chaos.
The Moral of the Story
If your clock is ticking tonight, do me a favor: don’t make it difficult. Die neatly. Die quietly. Preferably somewhere with a decent Wi-Fi signal and easy parking, so I don’t have to drag a thirty-dollar piece of Chinese-manufactured plastic across your collarbone while dodging rowdy ghouls on the Stix.
Stick to the scythe, kids. At least when it severs your mortal coil, it doesn’t run out of battery halfway through your final judgment.
Happy Halloween. Check out the show notes for links to The Story Compass, where the fiction actually makes physical sense.
#DeathHasVibrancy #ModernReaping #DeathReview #StixTrafficIsAWasteOfTime
DESEDOMONA:
Welcome back to the podcast. I’m (whisper) Desedoma. Also known as the Grim Reaper, Death, and sometimes Grim. I’ve been featured in all your favourite content, from Terry Prachetts books – yes, I do love cats – and even had Brad Pitt play me in Meet Joe Black. Ah. Brad Pitt. How great was that Caribbean accent? (snort)(laugh)(snort)
But today, well, today, I have a special treat for you guys. I’m going to do a box reveal! Remember last time I was on your show, Dave?
Dave:
Unfortunately.
Desedomona:
Ha! You’re a hoot. Unfortunately… classic burn. (snort)(laugh)(snort) Well, I was telling you all about how I get into sooo much trouble all the time, about the whole scythe thing? Because sometimes I leave it behind, like that one time I went to Seattle Coffee. But it’s not my fault. I mean, how was I supposed to carry my iced, quad-shot, half-caf, venti-adjacent flat white with oat milk (barista blend – obviously), four pumps of sugar-free vanilla, two pumps of regular hazelnut, a half-pump of cinnamon dolce, light micro-foam, a dust of extra cinnamon strictly on the left side of the cup, and a paper straw order, with an extra-large blueberry muffin aanndd carry by scythe?
Dave:
Obviously impossible. It must have been a real dilemma which to choose – coffee, or a mystical one-of-a-kind item forged in the underworld by the demonic forces to slice life from a corpse.
Desedomona:
Exactly. Impossible decision, right? #BeingDeathIsSoHard. But the biggest issue is not that the thing is, let’s face it, super uncomfortable to carry. I mean it hooks onto all types of things. Door nobs, handles, and one time it hooked onto that nice lady’s cashmere jersey that was in the coffin at that funeral, and then I turned and pulled her body out, and everyone was screaming, “She’s alive, Grandma Tessa is alive… That was super awkward.
No, the biggest issue is that to get the scythe replaced if I do so happen to leave it at the zoo, or girls’ bathroom or in Area 51…
Dave:
Area 51?
Desedomona:
What? I was curious.
The point is that the paperwork for a new one is such a hassle. You have to get, like, a standard, issue-three reaper’s scythe from the Department of Eternal Logistics. Then you need a notarized copy of your original soul-deed, and a seven-month waiting period just to get a preliminary review hearing with a middle-management ghoul who hasn’t felt joy since the invention of the steam engine.
So, in the spirit of modern, disruptive entrepreneurship and “lifestyle optimization,” I decided to take matters into my own hands. I bypassed the department. I went online. I ordered an alternative.
(Sound of cardboard flaps tearing open, followed by the dry, hollow clatter of lightweight plastic parts spilling across stone)
Behold.
A box of portable, cordless, rechargeable handheld vacuums. Each one has the potential to be ‘soul-sucking’ (snort)(laugh)(snort)
(Desedomona taps the plastic housing with her fingernails)
Oh, listen to that. ABS-graded plastic.
Dave:
Isn’t that really bad plastic?
Desedomona
Oh yea. Super bad. It basically disintegrates in sunlight. But you know, plastic is bad for you, but good for me, since, well I’m in the ‘people need to die’ business. (snort)(laugh)(snort)
What do you think of this particular one, Dave? It’s so pink.
Dave:
That one? Well, Desedoma…
Desedomona
(whisper) Desedoma…
Dave:
(cough) As I was saying, there is a moment in every man’s life when he looks at a tool that has been perfected over four thousand years—something forged in the fires of human history to do a specific, terrifying job—and he thinks: ‘No. What this really needs is a micro-USB port and a battery made by children in an unregulated shed.
Desedomona
(snort) (laugh) Right? There is something really cool about pitching up at a funeral and bringing something that is pink, cylindrical, and sucks hard.”
Dave:
I think it’s best we move on.
Desedomona:
“Vrrrrroooommmm…. (sucking noise). Isn’t this amazeb-balls?
Dave:
It is, without a doubt, the worst thing I have ever seen. And I once owned a Morris Marina.
(Sound of a toggle switch clicking over. A high-pitched, pathetic whirring sound kicks in, straining like a mosquito caught in a jam jar, before immediately sputtering down to a weak, vibrating groan)
Dave:
Listen to that. That is the sound of human innovation reaching its absolute zenith.
Wait, you know you missing a tool for that one – the crevice tool. The gray one with the stiff plastic bristles. Not that it’s going to help you. You’re trying to vacuum an abstract metaphysical concept, Desedoma. The acoustic feedback alone is giving the rats an ulcer.
Desedomona
(whisper) Desedoma…
Dave:
I’m not sure if these vacuums are really on brand?
Desedomona:
What do you mean? This could really be amazing, right? Imagine. You’re just hanging out. And it’s your time. Your clock’s done ticking. You’re going to die. Then I pitch up, with this radical, retro, sucking machine. It’s got a battery output of 7.4 volts. It’s rated at around 45 watts. Forty-five watts of pure, unadulterated apathy.
A standard household toaster draws more power just to warm up a slice of sourdough. This thing is drawing less current than a digital bedside clock and yet it has the potential to dislodge your soul from this immaterial, material world.
The air is cold. You’re waiting for a sweeping, timeless, elegant transition from this world into the next, and instead, I’m standing over your collarbone, buzzing a thirty-dollar plastic tube back and forth like an exhausted father cleaning up rogue pretzel crumbs after a children’s birthday party.
[cheerful, forced corporate pitch] Just hold still, mortal, I just need to get right into the existential crevices of your impending mortality with this handy USB-C charging cable accessory.
DAVE:
Nobody is holding still for a plastic tube that smells faintly of warm wiring and a Chinese shipping warehouse. Also, your shroud is caught in the intake vent. If you keep waving it around near the floor, you’re going to—
DESEDOMONA:
Oh, stop being catastrophically dramatic, Dave. It barely has enough suction to lift a speck of lint off a tombstone, let alone—
(VRRRRRRRRRRT—SCHLOOP!)
(A heavy, awkward silence fills the room, broken only by the high-pitched, dying whine of a lithium-ion battery running out of juice)
DESEDOMONA:
(Staring down, deadpan)
Dave?
(thud)
Huh. Well. (cough)
This had more power than I thought it. I didn’t even have to change to the suck-a-soul nozzle.
Well, you’ll have to excuse me, folks. I need to go and fetch Dave’s soul from the river stix and shove it back into his flesh shell. Umm.. Check out the show notes for links to The Story Compass, where the fiction actually makes physical sense. #DeathReview. #ModernReaping. See you next week, or sooner if it’s your time!
(Click. Recording ends abruptly.)
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