100 Original Murders, pt 1 (de nuevo) + 2

Changed a bit form the original draft, plus about 1000 extra words! Woohoo!

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There were several things Peter Pete Peterson had not expected from Death.
First, he had not expected Death to be a woman. Yet underneath the frayed black robe that floated about her and seemed to melt into the night, she was most definitely female. The girdle that seemed to be made of human femurs, the earrings made from molars, and the presence of blood red lipstick supported this.
Second, given that Death was female, he had not expected her to be attractive. Yet despite the maggots in her pin-straight inky locks, and the way she hunched over herself like there was a great burden on her back or something heavy hanging from her neck, and the fact that she was easily eight feet tall, Death was definitely beautiful. The artful structure of her heart-shaped face, the perfect clarity of her milk-white skin, and the spark of wisdom and wit in her red eyes supported this.
Third, given that Death was an attractive female, he had not expected her to be the single most frightening being he had ever encountered. Yet upon realizing that he was standing over his own bloody body and she was standing over his now faintly luminescent self, the rain not seeming to touch either of them, he had felt an intense fear for his very soul. The fact that he had attempted to wet himself, failed on account of being reduced to a faintly luminescent soul, and dived behind the nearest bush to trembled and curl into the fetal position supported this.
“Car crash in the rain on a dark mountain road,” Death droned. “Hardly original.”
Peter thought about raising his head and defending himself, but decided against it. Part of his mind was mildly annoyed he no longer possessed the power to urinate, but mostly he was just terrified. More terrified than that moment when he realized his car was doing somersaults down the side of the mountain, or when he realized he was standing over his body here, but most of the car and his legs were there.
“At least you died in an interesting position,” Death continued. “How did you manage to bring the steering wheel with you after your torso went out the door the tree took off?”
Ah, so that was how that happened. Some part of Peter wondered if Death had purposefully given that piece of exposition, but like the part that was fretting over urination, it was readily ignored by the rest of his mind.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” Death’s voice was suddenly incredibly close, like she was standing right behind him again. He peeked through his fingers and promptly screamed.
She was standing right beside him, bent over so her face was inches from his, looking bored and impassive. Peter scurried away from her as quickly as possible. She followed with soundless steps.
“I suppose by now you’ve gathered what’s going on,” she said in monotone. “You died, obviously, and I’m here for your soul. What brand of afterlife would you like? Considering you were coming back from mass, I’m guessing you want to go to Heaven. But if you ask me, Valhalla would be much more exciting.” She paused and as he attempted to hastily climb a tree to get away from her. “But I don’t think you’d get along very well there, would you?” For the first time some semblance of an emotion besides boredom graced her voice, and unfortunately it was a mild sort of contempt.
Clinging to the branch that had brought him to eye level with Death, Peter realized his masculinity had been questioned, and he set about putting her straight. “I–I took k–karate in s–s–sixth grade,” he blubbered.
She blinked dispassionately at him.
“D–don’t you have other souls to reap?” he asked, hoping she would go away and leave him glued to his branch.
She very slowly cocked her head to the side without moving the muscles of her face in the slightest. “Even if it takes all night to deal with you, I can visit everyone else who dies all over the world in the same night.” She paused and then added in an equally detached manner, “I’m like Santa Claus.”
Peter wanted to cry,
“Well? Do you want Heaven or not?” She blinked again, slowly. “You’re not going to be one of those stupid people who regrets what he’s done and asks for Hell, are you?”
“Um,” said Peter quietly, “can I go back to being alive?”
Death stared at him for a very long time, then wordlessly raised her arm and pointed with a long, boney finger at the pile of metal that had once been his car and his disembodied legs still pressing the brake.
“Obviously not,” she said finally.
“Please?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
“You’re a lovely woman,” he tried.
She said nothing to that, although the air of mild contempt was back.
“I promise to have a more interesting death next time,” he said, shifting himself from a cling position to a sitting position on the branch. This brought his head above Death’s, and she inclined her face to keep eye contact. She was still the most intimidating thing he could imagine.
“I fail to believe you’ll keep that promise,” she drawled. Peter noted the contempt was gone and decided to pursue this angle.
“No really, you just tell me when my time’s up, and I’ll do some sort of crazy suicide. Something really original no one’s done before.”
“Too much work. And you’ll probably screw up anyway,” she answered simply, and then reached for his head.
Peter shrieked and fell backward off the branch. It didn’t hurt, seeing as he was a faintly luminescent soul, and he was quickly on his feet and trying to run in any direction where Death wasn’t. Death was faster, though, and grabbed him firmly by the hair.
“Just tell me what type of afterlife you want, or I will eat your soul like you were an atheist,” she said calmly.
“I will give you a hundred original deaths!” Peter screamed desperately and futilely tried to pull away from Death’s iron grip.
Death actually raised her eyebrows at that, which had not happened in decades.
“And how do you propose to do that?” she asked.
Peter stopped struggling physically and began a mental struggle to figure how exactly he could do that.
“Well, I, you see, I um,” he blabbered, “I’ll start a, uh, theatre group and–” She began pulling him toward her.
“I only deal with real deaths,” she intoned boredly. “And suicides get old fast.”
“I’ll– I’ll–I’ll–” Peter mentally rifled through his brain. The parts concerned with urination and exposition where kicked aside, and he found a dark sort of corner where he had bottled up all the sinful thoughts his weekly trips to church had banned.
“I… I will c–commit one hundred original murders,” he said frantically, eyes darting around the gloomy and dripping forest as if a better idea might emerge from behind a tree, but the words were out already and all he could think about was how the smell emanating from Death reminded him of road kill or maybe his dead goldfish after he’d overfed it, and he just wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
Death removed her hand from his hair and the corners of her mouth were raised an almost microscopic amount.
“Deal,” she said.
They had then hashed out the details of the argument. Peter was to commit one hundred murders that Death deemed entertaining, with a permissible rest period of no more than 365 days between each one. In return, Death would prolong his life. In theory, Peter could add one hundred years to his life, but Death cautioned him that it was highly unlikely every death would be judged acceptable and he’d either have to commit more than one murder a year or fail and die. If Peter successfully did one hundred original murders, Death would leave him alone until he happened to drive off another mountain, die of old age, contract a horrible new disease, etc. If he failed, Death would reap his soul, and possibly eat it too, no matter what afterlife he preferred.
Then Death left him alone at the base of the mountain, wondering how to get back into his mutilated body.
He started by removing his legs from the car and dragging them over to where his torso was. He pried the steering wheel out of his body’s literal death grip and went off to find a missing chunk of skull. It took him about an hour’s worth of searching to find it, and after clumsily sticking it back to his head and pressing the base of his torso up against his legs, he sat down next to his corpse and pondered what to do next.
He wondered if he should do anything to keep his various pieces from falling back apart and, more importantly, how he should go about repossessing his body. Did he have to somehow crawl in through the ear? Would that bit of skull just fall off again if he did? Were parts of his brain also missing? Should he be looking for them? Did brain melt in the rain?
Eventually, his simply laid down on top of his body and hoped he would eventually sink back into it. Either this was the correct course of action or fate took pity on him (the latter being more likely), because when he sat up some fifteen minutes later, he was completely intact, legs and torso and skull piece and body and soul and all.
He immediately regretted not waiting for the rain to stop to attempt this.
Shivering, he rummaged through what was left of his car, and to his distress found that his cell phone was just as smashed. Wanting to cry again, he crawled into a part of the backseat that hadn’t been completely destroyed and tried to go to sleep.
When he awoke, the rain had stopped, the sun was out, and he found he had gained the ability to urinate. After relieving himself, he paced the area his car had cleared when it had crashed into it. He had no idea where he was. He could follow the path of destruction is car had carved back up to the road, but some places were awfully steep and he didn’t want to risk falling and meeting up with Death again. He could wait here until someone realized he was missing and a search party came for him, but who knew how long that would take. He sat down on what had once been his passenger’s seat and tried to visualize a map of the area and figure out if there were any nearby roads or trails that wouldn’t require ascending a cliff to reach.
After several hours of trying, he still couldn’t visualize anything useful. He glimpsed something brown and fury moving in the distance and immediately concluded it was a bear. It was, in fact, a deer, but although it wasn’t nearly as frightening as Death, it could very well deliver him to Death, so he took off toward the mountain side.
He slipped four times climbing up, but considering the ground was damp, Peter considered this a job well done.
Three cars passed before one stopped for his outstretched thumb. The man who stopped was driving a pick-up truck with slaughtered pigs in the back, and he was missing his two front teeth. Unnerved by the corpses in the back (did Death come for animals too?), Peter polite asked to borrow a phone and didn’t mention anything about climbing in the death-soaked vehicle. Surprising, the man did have a cell phone, and so Peter found himself calling his mother.
“Hello, Mom, it’s me,” he said. The pig-man snorted. This man was calling his mommy?
“Peter! You didn’t pick up your phone! I called you twice last night, and three times this morning, and what do you do? You ignore me. And you never visit. Peter, you’re–”
“Mom, listen, my car went off the road at STREET NAME–”
“–It’s not like you live far away–”
“Mom, I nearly DIED.” She paused. The pig-man seemed more impressed. Peter explained what happened, minus the bit about making a deal with Death and having to put his body back together, and all the while his mother was speechless and the pig-man’s eyes grew steadily wider.
“Oh, Peter-baby…” his mother breathed when he was done. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom, barely a scratch,” he said. “Could you come pick me up?”
“I’ll give you a ride,” the pig-man offered enthusiastically. Peter ignored him and explained to his mother where he was.