Apocalypse When?

The door creaked and a head popped around the corner. In a low voice, she asked “Honey, are you awake?”

The only response from the lump in the bed was the slight movement as the covers were drawn tighter over its bulk, and an incoherent muttering. She took a step in, moving towards the bed.

“What was that, dear?”

“Grmppph!”

Reaching the bed, she lifted the sheet slightly so that she could hear him and asked again.

“Leave me alone l got a bastard of a headache!”

“Isn’t that usually my line, dear?” Her stance, hands on hips (having dropped the sheet back over her husband’s head) betrayed the sarcasm in her response.

“Time you were up, dear.” Her voice was soft but insistent, silk shod in steel. He groaned, one hand questing its way out from under the covers to irritably grab the sheet she had displaced and pull it back over him.

“Leave me alone, you she devil!” he snapped.

“Flattery won’t help you,” she warned. “They’re waiting outside.”

He burrowed further down into the bed, his voice less distinct now as the covers muffled it.

“Tell them to go to Hell!”

“That’s more like it.” She clicked her tongue approvingly, moving to the window and drawing across the heavy curtains. Harsh, bright light flooded the bedroom, sending her other half sinking further down into the bed. “Shall I lay out your good suit, dear?” She spoke from the open door of the wardrobe, turned back when she heard no reply other than a droning snore and wrinkled her nose at the evil smell that began to permeate the room. Sighing, she withdrew and closed the door: his farts could literally be fatal, she knew that.

She retraced her way to the hall door, opened it and folded her arms.

“Sorry boys, he’s, ah, indisposed this morning.”

A tall figure in a hood nodded, looked at his three companions. Though it was impossible to see beyond the folds of his cowl, you got the definite impression he was winking.

“Nursing a hangover, more like.” The voice that issued from out of the hood was deep, rich and cultured, and spoke of money and breeding. It held more than a note of annoyance. “Again.” The impression was, somehow (though this could never be confirmed of course) of someone rolling their eyes.

She sighed.

“You know how it is, Death.”

Death certainly did. “Not good though, is it, Your Ladyship?” he drawled, producing from the folds of his cloak a long ornate scroll, which he seemed to examine closely as it rolled open, “Seventy-fifth- no, no! I tell a lie!” Death ran an impossibly thin finger with an equally impossibly sharp nail down the scroll, shook his head. “Seventy-sixth time he’s cancelled.” He peered down at her, the effect of being examined making her shiver slightly, despite who she was. “This year,” he added, archly.

With the look of one who has suffered, and continues to, Her Ladyship nodded.

“Don’t you think I know that, Death? You think I’m happy about it?”

Another voice piped up. It was ragged, thin, wheezing, as if it had no strength. Its owner also wore a hood, but unlike Death’s smart black one, it was a dirty yellow-white, torn and patched and stained.

“He was (cough!) out with (hawk!) them again, wasn’t he?”

“He did go out, yes, Pestilence.” She was non-committal; her husband rarely advised her where he was going, or with whom, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

A powerful voice joined the discourse, moving his sleek black steed closer and leaning down, his eyes two bright stabbing bolts of fire. The voice resounded with the clink of metal on metal, and seethed with the crackle of flames, with just a hint of a dying man’s scream thrown in for good measure.

“Fucking Gabriel, yeah?”

“Like I say, I don’t -”

But War was not the sort to be trifled with. Not even by her.

“Oh it was Gabriel, I’d bet on it,” he affirmed. “Sure, there’d have been Uriel, and the rest of them. But it’ll have been his idea. Gabriel the fucking Announcer.” He snorted. So did his horse. “The only thing he’s announced in centuries now is that it’s someone else’s round. Cheap bastard hasn’t bought a drink since Noah hammered the ark together. When is that guy going to realise he has a problem?” he asked nobody in particular.

From behind her, down the hall, and even through the thick door issued a hacking cough. She rolled her eyes. She knew War was referring to Gabriel, but he could just as well have been talking about her husband. She would not disagree.

“If today is off,” whispered a voice which was almost not a voice at all, so low and weak it sounded, “let’s go get some breakfast. I’m fucking starving.”

“You’re always starving, Famine!” War seemed annoyed at having had his train of thought interrupted, but Her Ladyship seized the opportunity to get rid of the four callers.

“You may as well,” she sighed. “He’s not getting up till this afternoon if I know him, and by the time he gets his shit together, well, let’s just say he won’t be in any fit state.”

Death nodded, tugged at the reins of his pale horse.

“Have you made The Call yet, Mag - ah, Your Ladyship?”

Had her skin not already been naturally red she would have blushed at the sudden slip, an error that could prove fatal. Nobody addressed her in such a way. Or, she thought with a wicked smile to herself, undressed me either. She glanced nervously back down the hall, half-expecting her husband to come thundering up it, wreathed in smoke and fire, eye blazing, fangs agape, the look on his face that of the classic irate husband who realises his missus is cheating on him.

The hall remained empty. From further down it, the groans of self-inflicted pain issued, like the cries of a lost soul.

“Not yet, Death,” she admitted. A shadow passed over her beautiful features. “Not looking forward to it, to be honest.”

Death grinned his death’s-head grin. It was, to be fair, the only one he had. “Need a stiff one beforehand, eh?”

The purposely ambiguous nature of his comment made her blush; she hoped the other three didn’t see, then wondered if they knew, or suspected, then decided she didn’t care. War only cared about fighting, Pestilence was sick, but probably unable to conceive of such a thing, and Famine? Well, Famine just wanted to know where his next meal was coming from. They were probably safe.

“Wouldn’t you?” She smiled archly at him. He raised a skeletal finger to his hood in a mock salute as he wheeled his horse away, the others following him, the plaintive voice of Famine drifting in the wind as he hoped MacDonald’s weren’t finished serving breakfast for the day.

“Look, are you sure, love?” Maggie called back in to the bedroom, hoping for a response, but nothing answered her but the sound of a succession of very loud farts. Hell with this, she thought, and headed for the hall. “I’m making The Call now!” She snapped her threat at him, but only deep, bubbling snoring came back.

She approached the Phone. It stood on a small table in the centre of the hall and was a dazzling, brilliant white. She picked up the receiver. There was no dial. There was no need to dial. This telephone was only connected to one line, and immediately she lifted the receiver she heard a voice she knew too well for her liking, a clipped, officious, disdainful voice, the voice of someone who feared mere vocal contact with her would sully it. Sighing, she pushed down her own resentment and asked to be put through.

The Call was not long. It never was. But it had been the same now for – how long? Long as she could remember anyway, and that was a long time.

Always the same excuse.

She was getting tired of it.

“Yes Sir. I know Sir. Just not possible today, Sir. Hope You understand, Sir. Yes Sir. I will, Sir. Thy Will Be Done.”

She rang off, replaced the receiver in the cradle, and went into the kitchen.

As she always did when she made The Call, she needed a drink. It would be a few hours yet before His Mightiness dragged himself out of his pit (though, of course, in reality he was always in his pit, as were all of them) and would then stagger with bleary eyes into the kitchen, scratching himself and enquiring as to whether there was any danger of breakfast at all?