Taxman
Fitzwilliam G. Hastings sat up.
At first, he was relieved. The sudden pain in his chest had lessened considerably. In fact, it was gone. Whatever it was, it had obviously passed, and he could get back to his usual Monday evening activity during Tax season, organising his stack of spreadsheets and ledgers that had been sent to him over the weekend by his panicked clients.
It never failed. It didn’t matter how much money you had, or how familiar you were with it, everyone always put off working on their taxes until it was too late, and April 15th was staring them down, and desperation drove them to throw piles of paper at Fitzwilliam in the vein hope that he could make it all go away.
In most cases, he made things worse.
Not because he couldn’t find every loophole in the book, or because he never managed to squeeze every penny back from the outstretched hand of the government, but because he never let anyone simply brush their hands clean and walk away. He was a teacher as well as a taxman, and he made sure his every client knew exactly what he was doing, and why.
Of course, he had rules; he wouldn’t accept any clients after two weeks before the filing date. He was an artist, and you couldn’t rush artistry.
Fitzwilliam moved back to his desk. His office, which he had lovingly furnished with antique paintings, porcelain knick-knacks, and thick oaken bookshelves covered with broad and heavy books, was lit only by the cool blue moonlight of three in the morning. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but he couldn’t help himself. He loved his job. He lived for numbers and spreadsheets. He loved working all day on adding and subtracting and multiplying. He loved putting numbers in columns and shifting money back and forth with a stroke of his pen. It made him feel powerful. While judges could control your freedom, with his pen, Fitzwilliam could control your fortune.
Fitzwlliam sighed. This season had been worse than usual. He’d had more clients then ever, and one of his clients’ businesses had been involved in some international scandal. His files had been shipped with an explicit letter demanding exacting attention to all details pertaining to their…“arrangements”.
Fitzwilliam sighed again. Something wasn’t right.
Fitzwilliam tried sighing a third time, only to realize he hadn’t sighed the first time. A quick inspection of his person revealed that he wasn’t breathing at all. A glance down at the floor provided a bit of a shock when he saw his limp form, hand clasped to his shirt. Before he had died, Fitzwilliam had expected to be surprised, or even resentful of the fact of his death. He had imagined himself arguing furiously with whichever angel came to collect his soul, demanding that something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t his time yet. Now that it had happened, it was less a surprise, and more an answer to a problem that had been nagging the back of his mind for the past few minutes. His lack of breathing was explained, the sudden lack of pain resolved.
“I’m dead,” he said to himself, if there was in fact a self anymore to talk to.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Fitzwilliam realized he was not in fact talking to himself, as he was suddenly acutely aware that there was someone else in the room with him. A tall man dressed in a black suit and tie with a black top-hat and a walking stick.
“Who are you?” Fitzwilliam asked, taking a step back from the slowly advancing figure. The man reached a white-gloved hand up to his hat, and tipped it with a genteel air that felt almost careless. For a brief moment the moonlight glinted of the smooth white bone of the man’s head.
“Mr. Hastings,” the figure whispered in a voice like velvet tree-limbs and chocolate cobwebs, “I have come for you.”
“What happened?” Fitwilliam stammered, and immediately felt foolish.
“You are dead.” Came the silky voice. “That is all.”
“Ah. Of what?” Fitzwilliam straightened his tie. He always wore his tie, even late at night when he was working at home. His wife had given him grief about it for years, but he always did. it was almost like a badge, he felt. It separated his life from his work. When he was wearing the tie, he was working.
“Birth,” The gloved hand that held the walking-stick twitched. “Birth is the invariable cause of death.”
“That’s a pretty poor cause of death,” Fitzwilliam muttered.
“Nevertheless.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have gotten it wrong?” Fitzwilliam asked, a flutter of hope flickering in what had once been his heart. “A few days too early, perhaps? An odd week?”
“Wrong?” The voice almost sounded amused. “Impossible.”
“Only,” his no-longer-a-brain was working furiously, “how can you be sure?”
The figure stood taller, something like a sneer crossing it’s lip-less mouth. “I am Death, the Omega. The Angel of Endings. The Keeper of the Black Flame. Tender of Souls. Archringer of the Ten Bells of Golthema, and Covetous Supreme of the River of Essence. I hold the scales of Horus, I am father to Valkyries, Brother to Azazel, and Psychopomp to the Heirophanus of All Things. I am not only sure, I am the only certainty.”
“Ah,” Fitzwilliam had to admit he was impressed. He had worked with some very rich people, but he had never met an Archringer before. He didn’t even know what a Covetous was, never mind a Supreme one. “I’m sure you know best, then.”
“Indeed.”
“I just had a feeling.”
“I care not for your feelings.”
“No, I suppose not,” Fitzwilliam sniffed. “It’s funny, that was always the first clue for me that something was wrong in the books. If something feels wrong, it probably is.”
“You dare?” Death slowly raised its walking stick, and pointed with a gloved finger. “Who are you to dare question my professionalism?”
“Fitzwilliam G. Hastings,” he tried to sound proud. “Accountant. I worked for the IRS for fifteen years before starting a private accounting firm.”
“And have you measured the souls of the dead on your ledgers, Tax-man?” The finger didn’t move.
“I’ve had some very important clients,” he protested.
“Have you judged the soul of King Haremhethus the mighty, who ruled over seven kingdoms and whose followers proclaimed his divine heartbeat kept the sun rising and setting like a machine?”
“No,” Fitzwilliam admitted.
“Have you measured the wisdom of Talima Lo-Wachti the Open-Eyed one, whose guidance led the Four Tribes from the age of Ice and Snow into a world of fire and bronze? Whose own hand penned the designs for wonders long since lost to dust and sand?”
“Not really.”
“Have you calculated the worth of Bok, the first human to ever give of her own flesh, that another human might live another day? Who birthed twenty sons and daughters with seven men, and insured your meager race would live on for generations to come?”
“The Duke of Hastings himself asked for me, by name, once,” Fitzwilliam said. There was a pause.
“Oh?” The finger lowered. “And what mountains has he brought low?”
Until now, Fitzwilliam had never thought that a suitable measure for ducal office, but now it seemed frighteningly reasonable. “None,” he admitted, “but he didn’t think he had made any mistakes either, and I proved him wrong. And he was only fifty years old. I can’t imagine you haven’t made any mistakes given how much longer you’ve lived.”
“Lived?” Death cocked his skull. “Are you trying to be funny?”
Fitzwilliam blushed furiously, before he realized he didn’t have any blood any more, so instead opted to shrug apologetically.
For a moment neither of them moved, both unencumbered by the need to breath or blink.
After five minutes, the hand of Death began to move; a single bony finger began to tap the head of its cane in thought.
Fitzwilliam was not taken to flights of fancy. When he read, it was usually dry historical novels, or dusty political discussions. He was not one for fairy tales, nor did he ever bother to spend his time dreaming of the fantastical. He did, however, remember a story from long ago, back when his father had read to him every night, and he remembered a tale which was unequivically clear; Death loved a good bet.
“I wonder,” Death said, finally, its polished skull shaded by its hat, “what you would wager on this point?”
“I don’t have anything, anymore,” Fitzwilliam gestured around him at his house. “Being dead, I can only play for a return to life, but if I were wrong…you already have all of me.”
“I do,” the silky smooth voice of Death filled Fitzwilliam’s head. There was a pause. Was it a trick of the light, or did the grinning skull grin wider? “A wager, then. A game for your life. I will grant you access to the legers and recipts of Death itself. You will scour my filings for mistakes that you are so certain I have made, and if you find even one, no matter how small, I will return your life to you, and you will be forever spared my scythe.”
“I would live forever?” Fitzwilliam blinked.
“Would and will have,” Death nodded. “But, if you find no mistake, I will claim your soul and reap it for eternity. Your soul shall never know the pleasures of the heavens or the pains of the hells, but be forever bound in reincarnation. A fair wager?”
“It does sound fair,” Fitzwilliam nodded. “Beyond fair. I dare say generous.”
“You think that,” Death leered, “because you have yet to experience either.”
In a smooth move that could only convey amusement and mild condescension, Death placed both its hands on its cane, and leaned forward slightly, cocking its skull gently to the side. In this pose of patient anticipation, Death waited for Fitzwilliam’s answer.
Was it the glint of the moonlight on the deathly skull? Was it the way the sable black ate the light around it? Was it the sharp shape of the cane that cut through the darkness like a blade, that made clear to Fitzwilliam the way out of his predicament? Was it a divine epiphany, or the panicked hope of a dying soul that showed him the answer to Death’s wager?
Whatever it was that graced him with its wisdom, there was no fear in Fitzwilliam’s voice when he adjusted his tie, and said clearly: “I agree.”
Death snapped his fingers, and Fitzwilliam’s office faded away. Where the oak bookshelves and antique furniture once stood, now there were shelves upon shelves of metal and marble, stone and wood. They rose up around Death like the Walls of Babylon, covered in thick leather binders and crisp white paper. Boxes and files filled Fitzwilliam’s vision as eons of time spread out around him.
“Begin, little accountant,” Death smiled his deathly smile, “And be mindful — you cannot trick Death.” And with a puff of Shadows, Death vanished.
Fitzwilliam looked around, amazed at the sight that surrounded him. Many of the files were paper, bound in leather. Others were cracking papyrus, shoved in wicker baskets. Several piles of stone tablets dominated one stack, while clay slabs and rolled up tapestries filled another. One stack was nothing but a giant cave wall, covered in ancient cave scrawling that looked more like pictures than numbers.
Well, he’d done it now. All there was left for him to do was earn his life back the same way he had earned everything else. Through very hard work.
Fitzwilliam adjusted his tie.
It took years. Perhaps decades. Perhaps he is still there, tallying up numbers and tracking down recipes. The filing system of Death is not something most mortals would ever consider, much less attempt to fathom. At first, Fitzwilliam was lost, decades spent hunting for missing filing cabinets, cross-referenced files, and boxes full of unexplainable miscellany.
After what could have been years, Fitzwilliam began to understand. He learned the language of the files, and the notation of the numbers. He even found his own file, and was able to tally Death’s efforts all the way back to his great-great-great-grandfather. He tallied every man and woman, every child and grandparent.
After what could have been days, Fitzwilliam picked a file off a shelf, and turned to see the placid calm skull of Death staring at him.
“Have you found a mistake yet, little accountant?”
Fiztwilliam swallowed, and took a deep breath. “John Addams and Thomas Jefferson,” he tried. “Addams’s last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” but Jefferson died before he did.”
“I care not for the order Adams wished they died in,” Death shook his skull. “They died as they had to. There was no mistake.”
“Ah,” Fitzwilliam twisted his tie. “Well, I’m not finished yet, I’ll find something.”
Death only answered with a grin.
Fitzwilliam continued his work, searching deeper and deeper into the past. Children who lived for days, Women who lived for years, men who were cut down before their time, and the victims whose souls died years before their bodies. As he traveled further back, however, the lines became harder to draw. Humans became apes, who became strange furry mammals that looked more like shrews than humans. He audited every death, insuring every soul Death had taken was properly claimed and filed. The whole of history was laid bare before him, and he dived beneath its surface with the passion of a true devotee to his work.
After what could have been eons, Death appeared to him again, his top hat carefully balanced on his bare skull.
“Have you found anything yet?”
“The 300 spartan soldiers who withstood the Persian army,” Fitzwilliam cleared his throat. “Three hundred could not have hoped to stand against —”
“Three hundred soldiers that could hold off the world would be little more than a gust of wind to me,” Death held a gloved hand to its mouth in a theatrical yawn. “It was not I who decided their fate. It was themselves, and they died as they must have.”
“Ah,” Fitzwilliam nodded. “Well, I’m still haven’t looked through everything, but I’ll find a mistake somewhere.”
“Very well. Keep searching, little accountant.” And with that, Death had vanished again.
Exhaling out of habit, rather than need, Fiztwilliam turned back to Death’s files, only to turn the corner and realize that the billions upon trillions of files he had already seen weren’t even the surface. After all, apart from humans and apes and dogs and shrews, There were trees and plants and insects.
Apart from insects, there were molds and slimes and fungus. Even beyond those, there were single celled organisms that had their own life. Even in the multicellular world, each cell lived in its own fashion, and died as well. Rocks too, Fitzwilliam found. The seas and continents had births and deaths of their own. Stars and planets burned away in the night sky. Nations rose and fell. Ideas and concepts had their origins and the moments when their time passed. Years, dreams, languages, machines, minerals, shared moments, seconds and minutes, everything had its own Death, and everything was filed.
After what could have been seconds, Death appeared again. “Have you found anything yet?”
“I think I have,” Fitzwilliam began. “The hundred years war wasn’t one hundred years long.”
“Humanity’s sense of poetry holds no sway over me,” Death shrugged. “The war ended when it must have. You speak in concepts and metaphors. These things are as all life. They come to dust in the end.” Death leaned forward, its cane slipping between its arm and ribs. “You have looked for a long time, Accountant, and I am impatient with your stubborness. I am not bound by the words of artists. I do not follow the laws of humanity. I am not chained by expectation or poetic licence. I am Death, and you will find no mistakes by appealing to the hopes and whims of mortals.”
“Ah, I see,” Fitzwilliam nodded. “Well, I have not finished yet. I’m sure I’ll find a mistake eventually.”
Death’s grin was cold, and not a little condiscending, as Death snapped its fingers and vanished in a cloud of metaphorical anthropomorphicization.
When Death was gone, Fitzwilliam adjusted his tie, and returned to work.
It was glorious, and frightening, and Fitzwilliam worked through it all, because there was nothing left for him but his work. When he was alive he didn’t fear the thousands of pages of tax code. He wasn’t daunted by column after column of numbers. Those pages were poetry to him, the columns a musical staff. He was more than a tax-man, he was an accountant.
After what could have been millennium, or perhaps a few seconds, Fitzwilliam turned around only to see Death rested both its hands on its cane. Fitzwilliam adjusted his tie.
“Now, Fitzwilliam,” Death kicked at its cane and spun it up to its shoulderbone, “the time has come to settle our wager.”
“Has it?” Fitzwilliam smiled. “I haven’t looked through everything yet.”
“Nor could you,” Death smirked. “Time stretches onward towards the final ending. No matter how far you look, there will always be more deaths until that day. The Final —”
“The Final Death of All,” Fitzwilliam nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Death paused in its pontification, and leveled its empty-socket gaze at Fitzwiliam’s calm smile.
“Where did you hear that?” it asked.
“I didn’t hear it,” Fitzwilliam said, and here he pulled a large brown book out and held it up to Death. “I read it.”
Of all the books that had ever been written or dreamed of being written, of all the manuscripts that had been penned by human or inhuman hand, this book was unique. It was not magic, nor holy, nor written by divine hand nor in infernal tongue, it held no mystic sigils nor ancient runes, but it was unique in one simple way: When Death saw it, it stopped grinning.
“Where did you find that?” it asked, in a tone that was full of both amazement and dismay.
“Propping up a shelf a few miles that-a-way,” Fitzwilliam gestured aimlessly with the book. Death’s gaze never wavered from it. “It took a few years to get through, but it details quite a bit of your —”
“It is unimportant,” Death said. “Scribblings from before there was time to measure. If time meant anything to me, I would say I was young.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Fitzwilliam set the book aside, clasping his hands in front of him like he used to do when confronting a confused or frustrated client. “I was fascined by some of your notes, however. It made a few things particularly clear.”
“Such as?” Death tried to regain some of its former ominous tone.
“You’re an accountant too.”
The pale bone white of Death drew itself up, haughty at the slight. “Who are you to dare debase me so?”
“Not at all,” Fitzwilliam spread his arms, encompassing the space-less infinity that was Death’s filling cabinet. “It’s a complement. I never understood you the way I do now. You’re not just a moment, you’re a process. Even my own death hadn’t begun when I was first born, but long before then. Every second that ticks away in the great cosmic clock of the multi-verse is little more than a passing moment that pushed everything closer to one great ending. And how even that, in itself, will be the Birth of something new. I see the great cycle of life and death, and I understand exactly how Death is no different than Life.”
Death’s face could have been a mask, for all the information it conveyed. Fitzwilliam cleared his throat and adjusted his tie.
“You do that a lot.” Death muttered.
“Sorry,” he dropped his hand.
“You have distracted me from our wager,” Death hissed, leaning closer. “Have you found a mistake?”
“I have,” Fitzwilliam said. “I’m afraid you are definitely behind on your taxes.”
“What?” If Death could have laughed, it would have. “What possible taxes could apply to one such as me?”
“Everything is taxed,” Fitzwilliam cleared his throat. “When a Lion catches and eats a gazelle, what is that but taxation for the rest of the herd’s survival? Breathing in exchange for air, fatigue in exchange for action, effort, in exchange for results. Waves tax the cliffs through erosion, as sleep taxes the weary. Doubts tax those who act, fears tax those who plan. Freedom is taxed with blood, and safety taxed with freedom. Effects require causes, and nothing in the universe is free.”
“An intriguing sentiment,” Death’s finger began tapping its cane. “I have yet to see how this applies to me. What must I pay?”
“I’m not sure,” Fitzwilliam tapped a finger to his mouth before casting his gaze around the multitude of files. “But one thing is for sure, you haven’t been tracking any taxes at all. Cells die, but they aren’t cross-referenced with whose cells they were. You’ve tracked the death of several ideas that are clearly based on previous theories, but there’s no reference to their heritage. Errant thoughts blip in and out of your files like bubbles…this is, I’m afraid, some of the worst paperwork I’ve ever seen, now that I know what I’m looking at.”
“The workings of Death were not meant for you to know,” it sounded less like an ominous portent and more a weak excuse.
“Regardless,” Fitzwilliam continued, “with files this shoddy, there has to be a mistake in here somewhere. There’s simply no other option. I haven’t found it yet, but I’m positive I will.”
“No mistake?” Death’s metaphorical vim returned to him with a snap. “Then you have nothing! The wager is over, and I am free to claim your soul for eternity.” Death tapped the cane once between its feet, like a pen marking a full-stop.
“I’m afraid not,” Fitzwilliam turned back to the files, pulling another off a nearby shelf. “The wager is not over; I still have quite a lot of files to get through. You’ve been busy since we started this little wager, you know.”
If there is one thing we know about Death, it is that death enjoys a morbid sense of humor, by definition. It is few people indeed who can stare a skull in the face and see its frozen grin without realizing that the eternal prankster of Death has it in for them, and will spring the joke on them when they least expect it. Death’s grin, for many, is the most terrifying and unnerving sight in the universe.
It was nothing compared to Death’s frown.
“You defy me?”
“Only to keep the wager fair,” Fitzwilliam shuddered, out of habit more than need. “What you said was if I could look through your files to find a mistake. It’s not my fault if files are added faster than I can look through them. I’m afraid our wager is not concluded until I have seen everything; not just what you have done, but what you will do.”
“I did not mean that,” Death waved a hand. “Of course I could not have meant that.”
“I don’t know about what you meant,” Fitzwilliam smiled, “but that isn’t what you said. Are you saying you made a mistake in how you worded the wager?”
For a moment, eternity glittered in Death’s empty sockets.
“No,” it muttered. “I did not.”
“Well then,” Fitzwilliam shrugged, “I had best get back to work. There is an eternity of deaths to sort through, and — as you so eloquently said — a killer of a backlog. I’d best keep working until all the deaths stop.”
“I suppose, then,” Death’s grin returned, “it could be considered a…mistake…to offer the wager in the first place.”
“It would seem so.”
Death stared for a moment, and then nodded.
“As per our agreement,” Death sighed.
“I win?” Fitzwilliam smiled. He felt better already.
“Perhaps,” Death turned and walked away.
“So I get to live?”
“It is not life,” Death whispered as it began to fade. “You have earned your freedom from my scythe, but as you must have learned, you will not live forever. Before the first beginning to long after the last ending, you and I will be there. Will have always been there.”
Death turned around, his grin only remaining a moment before the smoke consumed the vanishing skull. “There are now two inevitabilities in this universe, tax-man; Me, and You.”