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“I can’t bring him here,” Bunny replied, balling her fists in frustration. “He’s lost his pendant.”
All other emotions vanished from Roberta’s face as she stared at Bunny in abject horror. “He what?”
Bunny didn’t know what else to say, so she just stared at Roberta.
Realizing that this wasn’t a drill, Roberta opened her top drawer and took out a bright yellow vintage rotary telephone. She sat it on the desk, picked up the receiver, and dialed three numbers.
767
Whoever answeredthe call must have been waiting for it. Roberta unpursed her pink lips with purpose.
“Yes, Operator? I’d like immediate transmission, please. Human realm to Lobby. For Death. Immediately, if you please. Thank you!”
The ‘you’ was chirped in a higher tone of voice that somehow managed to make Roberta sound both incredibly peppy while also sarcastic as hell. Bunny made a mental note to review this marvel later.
A couple of seconds later, the air began to shimmer and shift right next to where Bunny was standing. Blue light particles danced in the space as though caught in a vacuum, specks of dust frolicking in a celestial sunbeam. Bunny watched, wide-eyed, as one by one those particles joined together, becoming bigger and more fluid. The shapes stretched and shifted, lengthening into arms and legs, and eventually forming a familiar outline.
After a minute or so, Death was standing in the Lobby.
“How did you do that?” he asked breathlessly, holding his hands out so he could look at them before glancing at Roberta. “And who are you?”
The receptionist peered at him, hawklike, like she was trying to see whether he was joking with her.
“It’s great to see you too,” she remarked dryly before turning to Bunny. “I see what you mean. This is an issue.”
“Ya think?” Bunny shot back, earning herself a raised brow from Roberta’s direction.
“Not the least of which is because of that,” the woman added with a nod at the counter on her desk. The two sets of numbers—one of which depicted the number of souls waiting to go into the world, and one showing the number of souls needing to leave it—looked woefully unbalanced. According to the tally board, there were currently millions of humans living past their use-by dates.
“I just thought he’d had a few bad days or something,” Roberta confessed. “This is far, far worse.”
“No kidding,” Bunny agreed, worried. “We just watched a soul come out of an old woman’s body and go into a repairman.”
Roberta glanced at her sharply. “You saw what?”
Death chose that unfortunate moment to chime in with details. “It was black and smoky and then when it came out of the woman, her body sort of just…” He held his hands together and then pulled them apart like something exploding. “Liquified.”
“Are you sure?” Roberta directed the question at Bunny, having appeared to deem her the most reliable source of information in the room for the moment.
“As sure as I am that I spent twenty minutes cleaning up every trace of her gooey body,” Bunny replied, feeling sick all over again at the mere thought of it. “And as sure as I am that I have no idea how to explain she’s suddenly missing to my boss. Let alone the broken window and missing repairman.” She narrowed her eyes as she watched Roberta’s face, trying to pick up a clue as to what exactly was going on. “Why? What does it mean?”
“It means,” Roberta declared, looking a little pale, “that Upper Management is gonna be pissed.”
She opened the top drawer of her desk yet again, but instead of putting the vintage phone back in, she took out a giant red button. It had no wires and wasn’t connected to anything as far as Bunny could see, but the next second, Roberta smashed her fist down on it.
Hwaaah! Hwaaah! Hwaaah!
A deafeningly loud alarm began to echo through the otherwise serene Lobby.
