Title: Some Minor Confusion
Author: Serendipity
Rating: PG
Word Count: 339
Notes: Those of you who read Terry Pratchett will understand the joke in this one, and shamelessly, I just had to make it. It's the equivalent of a bad pun.
Death wasn't as awful as it was touted as, though few things really ever were, and since all those who talked about the horror of death had obviously never died, their opinions weren't really to be counted on. Generally it was what came before death that was painful. Dying itself came as something of a relief. The soul of Splinter looked around the faintly misty wreckage of his old home and felt as though he should mourn. He felt strangely detached from it, though, as if it was a grainy old movie.
People would usually expect a sense of loss or grief, perhaps of futility when coping with one's own death. Instead, there was an overall feeling of 'well, what happens now?' The afterlife seemed to be poorly organized. One would hope there would be something like a mystical brochure, a travel guide, or at least someone hanging about to usher the souls of the departed from this world to the next. He wondered just what he'd expected, but then again, he hadn't put too much thought into what actually happened post-mortem.
Something light rustled past his foot, something like a thin edge of a napkin brushed his ankle. He glanced down and the sense of pervading strangeness grew. There was what appeared to be the delicate skeleton of a rat, standing upright and robed in black. Rob-ed, actually, in the Old Testament pronunciation of the word. In its paws, it clutched something that looked eerily like the blade of a scythe, and its eyes glowed blue in the shadows of the sewers.
SQUEAK, it said, its voice echoing hollowly. It sounded as puzzled as a skeleton rat could sound, as if something was completely off in this equation.
Splinter stared at it.
SQUEAK?
"I'm afraid I can not understand you," Splinter said, realizing some kind of reply was expected of him. And then a taller, more humanoid figure stepped from the shadows.
AH, said a voice like thunder through empty caves, I BELIEVE THAT ONE WOULD BE MINE.