Monsieur Death

We had only been talking about twenty minutes when my phone rang.

“One sec.” I told him. I made a face. “Mom.” I explained.

“Hey, Mom.” I answered irritably. “What do you need?”

“Are you alright?! Are you behaving?!”

“Yes. Yeah. Stop it! We’re fine!” I hung up and rolled my eyes. “She’s being weird again.” He nodded, seeming unsure of what to say. I sat back down, then reached under me and pulled a book out. I recognized it immediately.

“The Phantom of the Opera?!”

“I haven’t finished it.” He told me.

“Well? What do you think?!”

“It’s rather dull.”

I nodded. “Yeah, the movie was way better. You have a TV?” Was was He didn’t seem to understand. I looked at him when he didn’t answer. I was starting to find he didn’t know much.

“You know, a TV: big black screen? No? Rectangle-ish?”

A flicker of recognition flickered across his face.

“Here.” He got up and opened a door to another bigger room. It was also totally black with dimmed light. It was full of black beanbags and black lazy boys. A black table sat near one of the beanbags, covered with black Mountain Dew and dark chocolate bars.

“Wow.” I said. “You spend everything in black, huh?”

“The letters are my short are green.” He replied, pointing to his black tee that read EMO in glow in the dark lettering.

“Yeah, not much better.” I said, but I grinned against my better judgement. “I mean, I didn’t even know there was such thing as black Mountain Dew?”

He shrugged. He seemed to do that a lot.

“So... you want to watch?”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed and turned on the TV. Phantom of the Opera had been streaming for a couple a months now, so all I had to do was click on it.

“Come on.” I said, motioning for him to sit. I was never this social, but something about him..... the realization that I didn’t even know his name stopped me from thinking it further.

“I never asked your name.”

“No, you didn’t. I never asked yours either, I just guessed.”

“Well? What is it?”

Then he looked at me with those big brown eyes and said, “Can I trust you?”

“Uhhh, yeah.”

“Death.”

“What?!”

“Death. That’s my name.”

I continued staring at him.

“Death, or if you must The Grim Reaper.”

I was totally lost.

“No recognization?”

I shook my head.

His shoulders heaved with a sigh.

“Okay, my name’s Liam.”

“Okaaay?”

“Yeah.”

“So...... what was everything else?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah.... you want to watch, or what?”

He just shrugged again. I got the feeling he was still confused. I hit play, and we settled down to watch. He told me to help myself to the Mountain Dew and chocolate, and said a couple more weird things about letting him know how it tasted. If he had never tried them, why was there wrappers on the table? I put the thought aside and settled down to watch. We were only about half hour in when we heard a knock on the door.

“It’s my mom.” I said. “Ignore her and there’s a chance she might go away?”

“That sounded like a question.”

“It was.”

She kept knocking for another ten minutes or so, then my phone rang. I Grunted in annoyance and pulled it out.

“Evangeline! Why aren’t you answering the door?!”

“Sorry mom, we didn’t hear you!”

“You know darn well-“ her tone changed. “Can your friend hear me?”

I was tempted to say yes, but I had a better idea.

“Nope.” I told her, the pressed the record button. This would make great blackmail in future days.

“Well, I know darn well you could hear me! Now get out here right now and open this door!”

“Sorry, we’re watching something. You’ll have to pick me up later! Or my friend might not like you anymore!”

“Did your friend hear you say that?!”

I hung up. Liam raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head.

“We can keep watching. My mom will leave us alone for a while.”

I sent her a text: he’s very, very rich.

She didn’t text me back, but the knocking stopped. I noticed Liam reading over my shoulder.

“Focus on the movie!” I snapped, pulling it away from him. His eyes returned to the movie, but my face flamed. Had he seen that last text?! He’s very rich?! What was I thinking?! Then again, what did I care? I usually lost friends in less than a week, a month if I was feeling well behaved. I tried to focus of the screen, but my mind kept wandering. Strange things had been happening lately. Earlier that week, I had been pulling stunt I was sure would get me in some sort of trouble. I had jumped off the corner store roof, but someone was pushing a mattress underneath. I had jumped a creek that was way to far for me. The quick rushing waters below would kill me if I fell, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. But an old man had caught me before I could make the jump. That very day, I had swung from a tree and jumped a forty foot drop without a single scratch. That had disturbed me the most. In fact, it had disturbed me enough to go home and hole up in my room before mom crawled through the window and made me come over. Now this boy, showing up with no family or life before, asking for me by name, having never tasted things that he had obviously eaten, and calling himself Monsieur Death or the Grim Reaper. Something definitely weird was going on, but at the moment, I was going to watch my movie without any interruptions, and no overbearing, idiotic mom was going to stop me.