EFFORTPOST A short story: The Gift

“You'll be alright. Just stop squirming honey, lay still,” Orpah said.

Samson lay on his back on the hot rocks beside the rugged rock path of Sonder Mountain. The sun was flaming intensely, laying a blanket of heavy heat over them. His leg was bent awkwardly, unnaturally, so much so that a lick of the white of his bone could be seen through his shin.

“Calm down honey,” Orpah soothed him, leaning the water flask into his mouth.

The yelling had stopped. Samson had screamed and yelled in pain until his vocal cords were bloody. It was obvious that there was no one else on the path, and with nighttime fast approaching, unlikely it was that the situation would flip. Orpah took off her top, leaving her in just her skimpy white vest, before soaking it in water and laying it over Samson's forehead. The sky was a deep shade of orange. It would have been quite beautiful to look at if the situation was different, less dire perhaps. Orpah knew she would be able to find help at the bottom of Sonder Mountain. But that was easily a three-hour hike, and with night looming over them, she couldn't risk leaving Samson at the mercy of the coyotes. Not while his leg dripped blood and he dipped in out of consciousness, driven hysterical from pain. So she remained at his side, lovingly combing her fingers through his long hair as she tended to his needs.

“They'll notice we aren't there at dinner and come out looking for us. I'll start a small fire to make us a tad more visible,” Orpah said.

Samson gritted some form of acknowledgment through his gritted teeth. His face was almost as pale as his knuckles. Pain like this, it was nothing he ever felt before. It had him contemplating death, wondering whether a life with this amount of agony was one worth cherishing, worth fighting for. Was death not void of all such suffering? But he held on to life, if only for Orpah and her beautiful face, the love she evoked within him, and the tenderness of her touch.

“Go… find… help,” Samson managed to utter without opening his jaw.

Orpah looked up at him.

“Light the fire… and go find help… it'll keep the… coyotes away,” Samson explained.

“Are you sure?” Orpah asked.

Samson nodded. His leg had gone numb from the pain. The feeling of being stabbed over and over again was so consistent it had become a non-factor, like when noise is so ceaseless it becomes soothing or when you wear your glasses for so long you forget they're on. The first few stars twinkled in the sky which was slowly turning from orange to black. Orpah reached into her backpack and pulled out a box of long matchsticks. The trail was mostly stones and sand, but Orpah managed to gather enough sticks to start a sizeable flame. She cordoned it off with a few rocks, kissed Samson on the forehead, and headed down the trail.

“I'll be back as fast as I can,” Orpah said.

The smoke from the flame was serpent-like, the wisps slithering sinisterly. Every moment remaining in consciousness was a conscientious effort. He was glad for the flame. The air had suddenly gone from sweltering to chilly which only made the pain worse. Suddenly he felt the ground shake. He wasn't sure at first; it was as subtle as can be. But it grew and grew until it was an undeniable tremor, as if a giant was walking in the vicinity. Samson didn't have to wonder too much before the source made itself known. A kangaroo hopped out from behind a rock. It was purple and had a flame on the tip of its tail.

“What the everloving frick are you?” Samson said aloud in fear, “what in the frick is that?”

The kangaroo looked at him, tilted its head, and smiled. About twenty crabs crawled out its pouch and scattered all over. The kangaroo stretched in relief. Samson tried to crawl away but failed. The kangaroo was still towering over him.

“I done carried them from Jupiter. Nasty lil buggers, those claws are nothing to be ignorin',” the kangaroo said in a raspy voice.

“What the actual frick is going on?” was all Samson could manage.

“S'pose now is a good a time as any for an explanation. My name is, well I aint got a name. No need for those on the dimensional plane I'm from. I've taken this form because your puny mind would never understand my true form,” it continued raspily.

Samson blinked hard twice. He was convinced this was some kind of hallucination, his mind playing tricks on him, insanity brought on by dehydration and deliria.

“I am the bringer of the gift of death. You can do nothing to earn it, nothing to lose it but like any other gift, you may decline it,” the kangaroo continued, but this time in a different voice like a lady.

“How do I know you're real?” Samson managed to ask.

The kangaroo paused for a while, thought, and then answered.

“On the sixteenth of December your wife Orpah was asleep and you wanted a sandwich. You were too lazy to make it yourself so you opened a jar of Nutella and ate directly from it, you ate it all Samson, all. You got sick the next day and denied eating it. You told Orpah that from the bottom of your heart you didn't do it. But you did,” the kangaroo said in a different voice yet again.

It was as though the kangaroo was having great fun altering its voice each time. Perhaps more out of embarrassment than anything else Samson admitted to himself that indeed the kangaroo was not a figment of his imagination. The entire situation fell into the category of ‘too strange to be fiction'.

“So… am I dead?” Samson asked tentatively.

“Only if you want to be,” the kangaroo replied casually.

Samson lowered his eyebrow, his forehead creased. He was flummoxed.

“Death is a gift, as I have said. You can accept it or reject it,” the kangaroo explained.

He held his long tail in his hand, swinging it around casually.

“And, uhm, if I choose death? What would happen, I'm not saying that's what I want, but if I did choose death, what would happen next?” Samson asked, making very sure to emphasise that he wasn't asking for death.

“I don't know. I've never died. I'm only the collector of souls. I can tell what will happen if you choose life though,” the kangaroo said.

Samson shrugged.

“Oh c'mon, the same old,” said the kangaroo, “pain, misery, discontent, disappointment. Amidst it all a few moments of love and happiness. I've seen a lot of lives in my job. No matter where you are, how you live, it's always the same. Just a different variety of it.”

Samson paused for a while. He had forgotten about his broken leg, something that tends to happen when you have a kangaroo from the realm of death before you. A sly thought crept in his mind.

“You said that death is a gift, right?” Samson queried.

“Indeed.”

“Then, like any other gift, I could pass it on, couldn't I?”

“I s'pose.”

“Then I give my gift to Orpah,” Samson said resolutely.

The kangaroo looked at him, vexed.

“Your own wife? Well that's certainly a new one,” the kangaroo said.

“If death truly is a gift, I would not want my last action to be something as selfish as running away from the strife of the world. If my wife takes it, I will know she loved death more than I. If she rejects the gift, then this will be a life worth living. I don't know, it makes sense in my head,” explained Samson.

“Very well then.”

And the kangaroo stuck its purple hands out, waved them and uttered a magical spell. The sky lit up in a million colours. And then the kangaroo was gone. Samson lay there in the darkness of the night with only the flickering of the flames as his company. No one came until morning when the mountain ranger came around for his morning route. In a state of semi-consciousness, all Samson remembered was being lifted up and put into the back of a pickup truck. He swung in and out of consciousness and found himself on a soft bed, his leg raised in a cast in some sort of log cabin. The ranger and Orpah stood over him.

“He almost died,” he heard the ranger say.

“Oh my poor honey,” Orpah said, “I'm so grateful you saved him. How can I ever show my gratitude?”

“Well there is one way,” he heard the ranger say smugly.

A bit of whispering and a bit of giggling and Samson heard the sound of something oddly similar to the clank of a metal belt buckle hitting the ground. They left the room.

Samson wanted his gift back.