I wouldn’t say I normally have a problem sweating, but there was something about standing in the presence of the Angel of Death that made my pores bail water, almost as if the fires of Hell were emanating from those supernatural dead eyes right into my soul.

“Salutations, I’m Death.”

A cloaked man towered over me. His head was a white skull under a pointy hood with empty eye sockets burning with fire behind them. His joy-sucking cloak hid most of his body, save for his bony hand as it gripped a jet-black scythe, a curved reaper blade about three feet long and attached to the end of a tall, stout pole.

“D-d-death?” I stuttered. It certainly smelled like a morgue.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. My three friends were engaged with the same figure in their respective locations. In fact, Beth chose that same moment to sneak a look over her shoulder at me. Her tears broke my heart.

After a brief pause, she turned away.

I got back to my fate.

Death spoke in a deep, booming voice, as if they were the most important words ever spoken. “You want to know the meaning of life. Why you are here. Were you a good person. Those types of things, right?”

His jaw didn’t move with the words. It was more like the whole shape was talking, or I was hearing him directly between my ears.

“Uh, I guess,” I offered.

“Then I’m afraid I have bad news…”

At nineteen, I hadn’t had a lot of time to fuck up my life enough to rate a trip to the lower levels of creation, but standing there in front of that putrid visitor, I thought my soul was doomed, so I prepared to defend my choices where I could.

My parents were gone, so no one ever took me to church…

No one ever told me it was wrong to do that…

I was just turning my life around…

Standard end-of-life groveling.

“The bad news is, I’m not the Death with a capital D. Think of me more as a…Intern of Death making a recording for the big guy...” The voice had become more relaxed. A noise like the shuffling of papers followed. “So…yeah…it says here you are some Chad named Chuck Mecklinberg, living in a place called Nee-braska.”

I wasn’t sure if I was more stunned by the imposing figure or the words coming out of its, uh, face hole.

“So, you aren’t really Death?” I said, ignoring his poor pronunciation.

“The natural question you want to ask is…who am I?”

“Sure,” I said, confused at his statements. “I guess.”

“Then I’m supposed to say…I have the appearance of Death, destroyer of worlds, but if you’re speaking with this hologram, it means Death is now backlogged.”

“Death is dead?” I asked.

“I know, right?” Death replied. “It probably seems wild we can almost talk back and forth.”

On closer inspection, the Darth Vader-esque figure in front of me was not a real person, nor was it a spirit or ghost, as I would have thought. There was a small box sitting on my floor, and a light shined from the top, creating a realistic hologram, complete with stench.

“Guys, is there a box on your floor?” I called over my shoulder.

Death continued as if I hadn’t said anything.

“Moving on, if Death is waylaid, it means something has gone terribly wrong in the universe or there are so many deaths happening he’s had to put you on hold. If I said your name, know you are among a select few chosen from among billions of candidates to receive a personalize message.” He cracked up. “Good job, buddy.”

“Wait, you said this is a recording?” I asked. The inside of my head was filled with the sounds of a hard rain, a broken shopping cart wheel, and my drunk uncle screaming at his asshole neighbor at three in the morning. My thinking was scrambled mush.

“Dude, looking at your file, I think I can answer your next question.”

Death cleared his throat.

“Okay, listen up. That ‘saves the world’ super-drill of yours did the exact opposite. It launched a dark energy beam which then opened up a…it says the word is shizz-imm—”

A dry female voice cut in. “That word is pronounced schism. What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, right. A schism opened between your universe and the one next door.” He laughed to himself before continuing. “How do I explain it? Okay, imagine two women are putting their legs like this…”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The hologram of Death shoved his scythe under his arm and jammed the dead fingers of both hands together, one hand turned sideways. “I think it’s called scissor—”

“Fuck, that’s disgusting,” the lady chided. “You can’t say that to him.”

Death put his finger to his chin, thinking.

“Guys,” I begged of my friends while there was a pause, “are you getting a voice recording from Death?”

And what did he mean by dark energy?

“All right, Dude, put this flaming idea in your burn bucket. You know those old commercials where the peanut butter gets in the other guy’s chocolate and the dudes are like, fuck me, I never in a billion years would have thought of such an idiotic idea! Yeah? Well, this is just like that. I mean just like it. Two universes have been stitched together, creating a middle ground I often call The Peanut Butter Conundrum.”

He swept his arm behind him toward my wall, though the only thing on it was my Arcade Fire indie rock band poster.

“It literally got blinked into existence moments ago,” the woman called him to the carpet. “How could this be something you often say?”

Death ignored the lady, possibly his boss. “I had to look up conundrum—it means a difficult dilemma.”

“I see,” I whispered.

“Tell him the real name,” boss lady warned.

Death sighed like a schoolgirl told she couldn’t use her phone in class for thirty minutes. “Fine. The world mushed between the others is actually called the HEXAGON IMPERIUM.”

“That sounds bad,” I said to myself.

“I had to look that word up, too. Imperium means empire.”

“Did you have to look up hexagon?” the woman snarked.

“No!” Death snapped.

Her laughter faded.

“Now, what’s the next question you’re gonna ask?” Death said as he turned serious again. “Maybe how the collision happened, what this new place is about, this hexagon Imp—fuck, I’m just going to call it HEMP. I have some notes to read to you which explains it all.”

He paused, took a deep breath, then there was a click.

A second click followed a moment later. “Fuck, dude, I Pammed it. I hit the stop button before I got started on the first sentence and it was off for the whole explanation. Catherine, do I have to read all that shit again?”

“If he hasn’t heard of The Office, he won’t know what ‘Pammed it’ means.”

“Everyone’s heard of The Office! It might be the only TV show playing in both universes right now…”

I swear the figure of death standing before me began to argue with a woman off-screen. The hologram stood motionless, as if waiting for the next input, while the voices went back and forth.

“Do you need a moment?” I asked them, knowing they weren’t really in there.

“For fuck’s sake, we’re going to lose him if we don’t say something.” The woman’s voice explained. “Give this one the top-level, tell him about the box, and we’ll be done with it.”

A short pause, then the woman came back on.

“Sweet donkey’s nuts, you left the record button on again. My voice is going to show up.”

“It won’t matter, Dude, he’s a Chad in a peanut butter land, man!”

“You won’t tell anyone I fucked this up?” the lady voice asked, now sounding sad.

“No way. We both can use this one as practice. Here, let me read this last bit. Hey, Dude, I guess you can see we really shoved the death blade up our own asses here, but you’re our first hologram today, so go easy on us if you ever get a survey. Anyway, the bigwigs in your universe are dealing with the top brass in the other one to exchange intergalactic licenses and registrations, but it’s a fucking mess in there. The cosmic collision of two existences knocked all the serious shit from the back of the bus, like time, magic, and science, and sent it spilling to the front. It’s the same in chocolate world’s bus.”

“You are mixing metaphors with more cringe than that candy commercial,” the woman’s voice complained.

“Am I? What does that even mean?”

“The box,” she deadpanned.

I listened as someone in the recording took a deep pull on a cigarette.

“Right. Each of the selected is given a starter kit box. In the container you’ll find a necklace. Wear it. You’ll also get one golden ticket, which gets you in. And there should also be a map. Use it to go from point A, where you are, to point B, where you’ll find the front.” The guy emphasized the last words.

He halted before continuing. “Oh, for the next recording I’m going to say, ‘where you’ll be finding the front. Get it? Be finding point B. Maybe I can speak about bumble bees. Lots of B’s!”

“Just stick to the script, pleeeeease!” the woman pleaded. “We’ve got to clear six hundred of these messages today. If he’s the peanut butter, some of the others are chocolate, you know? Those are going to take more time.”

The man came back on. “Please bees.”

“Stop it!” she yelled.

“There’s opportunity there,” he finished.

He took another pull of whatever he was smoking.

After a cough to clear his throat, Death got back in character. “So, point B is due north about, oh, a lot of hexes—a fuck of a long way. There might be a conversion for fucks to miles, but I don’t have one. Once you get there, you’ll see what you need to do to solve the peanut butter conundrum. Sorry I can’t help more, bro.”

“You haven’t really helped me at all,” I suggested to the hologram.

There was a pause on the other end.

“Okay, I guess I should give you a summary of all that shit I said while the recorder was off, or it would be a total dick move on our parts. You’ve arrived at HEMP, where they are fighting a war between the universes that crashed into one another. Depending on what kind of ticket you get, you can join the fight as a commander, a crewman, or as fodder. I also heard a rumor you can enlist with the Waffle House Militia…the only group where you are guaranteed to see real action.”

He shrugged before he added, “I’d want to be a commander, honestly, but you have free will.”

I was uncomfortable at the thought of the word fodder when paired with the idea of a big war.

Was I going to be the fodder?