The Death Agreement by Kristopher Mallory Page A

Memories. Discarded decorations and dead
bouquets were piled high in an overfilled dumpster. Dead stems from
dozens of funerals were stuck to the outside of the trash bin. The
flower petals, once so vibrant, littered the ground, brown and
decaying. I nearly gagged from the sweet stench.
    There was still so much to
do.
    I removed The Death Agreement from
my jacket and stared at it, looking through the words more so than
looking at them. The first four sections were complete, but I
couldn't continue on to the next part—share final words.
    There hadn't been any witnesses to
interview, though if I'm being honest, I suppose I should say there
hadn't been any survivors. And there wasn't any audio, video, or a
suicide note. Jesse hadn't left any record of his final moment,
nothing I could use at all.
    We had planned for that
possibility. Inside that section, we had written a short message
for the other person to use in conjunction with the last known
spoken words.
    As far as I knew, Taylor's last
spoken words were in the voice message he had left about not seeing
me: "I saw everyone but you…"
    I wondered if I was supposed to
record a meaningless phrase like that as his final words, knowing
that if I didn't keep my word, I would end up tormenting myself for
the rest of my life. Worse, I knew if the situation were reversed,
Taylor would have never given up on me. It wouldn't have mattered
to him if I had gone crazy and murdered half a dozen
people.
    His copy of The Death Agreement
hadn't been on him, it hadn't been in his car, and it hadn't been
in the house either.
    "Where the hell did you stash it,
Jesse?"
    I took a drag off the cigarette
and held it in until the smoke burned my lungs. I thought about the
voicemail again. I had no idea who he did see, why didn't see me,
or where he was when he saw everyone. So many questions and so very
few answers.
    The cigarette slipped from my
fingers as a sudden disturbing thought took hold. Taylor's exact
words and cadence were: "Saw everyone…but you."
    "My god," I whispered. He
had sawed off his
leg and cut up his family. I wondered if he had wanted to kill
everyone except me. Maybe he had tried telling me that I was
safe.
    The idea should've terrified me,
but somehow I found the possible revelation more interesting than
frightening. My mind had been numbed to the whole ordeal, as if I
knew there were still worse things to discover, as if Jesse Taylor
had begun dissecting my soul from beyond the grave.
    I ran back inside the funeral
home, but Yang had already left. As I turned toward the exit, I
picked up the faint, sweet-burnt odor that hung in the air and
realized Taylor's body had also disappeared from the room. It was a
smell I remembered very well. It was the smell of burning
flesh.
    Standing in the empty parlor,
surrounded by the invisible fog of the incinerator, I tried to
reach Yang's cell. It rang three times and then went to voicemail.
I left him a brief message, "I think Taylor may have confessed to
me. Call me back." Then I dialed the number for the cab company. It
was late and the only thing left for me to do was to go back to my
room and wait for Yang to call.
    So much had happened, I felt as
though I hadn't slept in days.
    I yawned and my eyelids grew heavy
as I waited on the steps of Hardesty's Funeral Home. I must have
nodded off because the next thing I knew, the sound of a horn
jarred me awake. I looked up at a yellow cab idling in the road,
then stumbled to my feet, wondering why my leg felt so
numb.
    I climbed into the back of the
cab, and the old cabbie turned around and smiled. "Where to,
pal?"
    "Walter Reed Medical Center." I
slumped down, leaned my head back against the ripped faux-leather
seat, and closed my eyes.
    ***
    For a moment, the world was dark,
calm, and silent. I felt myself drifting off…. Suddenly, every inch
of my body exploded with pain. I tried to move but my chest had
been strapped down to a military issue cot.
    "What the…." My eyes adjusted