A skeletal hand dipped into the shadows of a robe that was a robe only because it was too solid to be a shadow. A plain wooden sand timer was withdrawn and a blue pinprick regarded it from deep within a boney eye socket. The last grain of sand fell like a tear into the bottom half of the timer. And the contents of the timer flipped around, the cascade of sand beginning again.
BUGGER said Death, or rather he didn't say it, the world just changed so that the words appeared, in the head of whoever was, or in this case wasn't, listening, to have been said
ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE continued the skeleton mournfully.
The Quite Reverend Stanley Cromwell died aged ninety. He was run over by a cart. Afterwards, he looked philosophically at the body he had recently occupied.
"I suppose it happens to all of us eventually" he remarked. "What now?"
I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU.
The Quite Reverend Stanley Cromwell, aged two years, sat on a pot with his trousers around his ankles. His cherubic smile widened as he stood and presented the contents of the pot to a tall woman in a dark dress, who beamed.
Death wasn't there. He had no place there, not like the short plump woman in the white skirt who was leaning nonchalantly in a corner. As the woman in the dark dress left, she straightened up. CONGRATULATIONS came the voice that wasn't quite a voice. IT ONLY GETS HARDER