To be visited by Death herself was an honor few could boast of. Hearing her voice in the frightened whispers, seeing her out of the corner of one's eye in shapeless shadows… All of that sort of thing happened quite often.

But having her, in the flesh, watching him as he slowly died? Ah, that was an experience Max hoped he could share with the other spirits in the Beyond.

“Do you want to live?” Death asked him.

If he hadn't had his chest split with a hatchet, his ribcage dented and spiked from blows, and his throat squeezed, Max would have laughed about it.

Yet lying there, in the puddle of filthy water in a hole in the middle of a forgotten street, with nothing but the sounds of animals and creatures of the night to drown out the pathetic noise of his labored breathing, what did Max have, was the sudden urge to cry.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He had the impression that he couldn't speak even if he wanted to. And yet it was in his voice that he heard the words:

"I do".

And later, when Max's body no longer ached and his conscience seemed to remind him that no good could come of such a deal, he wondered why Death would ever need to save anyone.

Nothing in the world was perfectly fair - and Max soon discovered that the retribution for giving him back his life was the eternal task of expanding Hers.