Carlisle was crossing the street absent-mindedly, and got plowed down by a semi barreling across the street, the driver more concerned about his late delivery than anything else.  The paramedics hightailed it to the hospital, though somewhat dispassionately.  These paramedics were veterans, and knew a lost cause when they saw one.  They performed their duties dedicatedly, but as they pulled up to the hospital they knew that a life was lost already.  The attendants who rushed him into surgery, fresh out of college, (one still an intern) truly believed that the man could be saved.  The doctor who operated on him felt nothing.  That wasn’t was he was paid for.

Carlisle was remarkably average.  He lived in a flat in Southampton with only his fish for company right up until the day he was blindsided by the 18-wheeler that ended his life.  He did not consider himself a bad person.  In fact he didn’t consider himself much of anything at all.  He simply walked through life, each day, so routine, that he could be stuck in a universe of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, and hardly notice.  The most noteworthy thing about his life was how it ended, a hit and run that warranted no less than a fourth page paragraph in the Daily Echo.

As Carlisle lay on the stretcher, he dreamed.  His life didn’t flash before his eyes as he had expected it would.  Instead he dreamed he was walking beside his comatose body, alongside a man in a dark suit.  Almost instantly, Carlisle says, “This is one of those near death, out of body experiences I heard about, isn’t it?  And that would make you... An angel?”

I’m afraid not, Carlisle,” the man chuckled.  “You see, death doesn’t work like most people imagine that it does, it-”  Carlisle cut him off violently, and stopped in his tracks.

“Wait, you mean I’m dead, like passed on, kicked the bucket?”

“No, no,” said the man who Carlisle now assumed was death, “the way this works, you can choose to go the long haul, and spend an eternity in the sunless realms,or you can play the lottery.”

“What is this lottery?” said Carlisle, already favouring that option over what his Polish “babcia” would have called the “pozagrobowe.”

“If you choose the lottery, you will be put back into your body.  You will be in your body until the end, for better or worse.  You may make a miraculous recovery, or you may die, and live out the whole thing.  Personally, I would suggest you “give up the ghost” to make a bad pun, and spare yourself the pain of the recovery.  Either way, our record says five more years is your maximum time before making this choice again.  And this is a limited time offer, we won’t be so careless as to overpopulate the afterlife, like your kind did the regular world.  By the by, the odds of you surviving at the next lottery exponentially decrease.

“Lucky for you, that means that you could go on forever!  At about the same odds that you will get struck by lightning once each year for the rest of your life.  You’ve heard of Jean Calment, I trust?”  Carlisle nodded his head, calling to mind the image of the oldest person alive who lived to a ripe old age of one hundred and twenty two.  In the end, we became quite good friends, it was a shame when I saw her for the last time.  Of course, she didn’t remember me at all, so it was left to me to explain her predicament to me.

“Alzheimers?” Carlisle asked, bemused at the concept  of death and the human he could never take becoming friends.

“No no, none of you remember me, says the man in the suit dismissively, “But, I digress.  We are nearing the hospital Carl, (do you mind if I call you Carl, all your friends do,) you have to make your choice.”

Carlisle chuckled, bemused that all religions were right and wrong at the same time.  “If I choose the lottery and lose, what happens.”

“Why, you get my job, you will be one of many mirthless harvesters, to put a twist on an old saying.  It really isn’t that bad, so long as you never hit a nerve, as I like to say”

“What does that mean?”  inquires carlisle.

“Well, could you tell your own son that his time up, coldly and dispassionately, mercilessly meting out the only truly just thing in the world?”

Carlisle tittered nervously before looking at the man, and seeing he was stone faced and  deadpan.  “They couldn’t just assign a different... reaper?”

“Like I said kid, the only fair thing in the world.  No variables, just random chance, each person given their sentence and duties.”

“But surely with seven billion people in the world the odds of coming across one of your loved ones, is... infinitesimal at best..”

“It happens more often than I would like...  My advice, if you ever are in this position, it would serve you best to take a new face.”

Carlisle stood there turning over in his mind what he said.

He dismissed it as nothing, and made his decision

  “I am, for the most part alone, and so either way, I’ll never be in that situation, but there are still some things I would like to accomplish before I pass on, so I’ll take the lottery.”

His companion smiled inwardly. 

Carlisle was back in his body, though he would never have guessed the difference.  He was fully conscious as he was wheeled into the operating room, and he was fully conscious as he was operated on.  He was fully conscious as his family cried over his coffin, but he was not conscious as they put him in the ground.

He was present at his own funeral, and watched as his casket was closed.

He was confused at his experience over the past few days.  All he had thought since the conversation was; Who am I.  Who is he?

He was referring of course, to the man who talked to him about the lottery.  He supposed that he was one of them, the reapers now.  He wondered who he was going to take at this funeral.  He supposed it had to be somebody, otherwise he would not be there.

In a flight of fancy he wondered, “Perhaps one of the few attending guests would murder another; perhaps the gravedigger would fall onto his shovel, or into the pit he was digging.  Wouldn’t that be perfect.  Death at a funeral.  Maybe someone would fall onto the coffin, shocking onlookers-”

Carlisle looks over at his coffin.  He see Him rise up from the coffin, and beam at him.  My father?!  He rises through the lid and grins at Carlisle.  “No!” Carlisle shouts, confusing the onlooking guests.  They can hear him? This confirms it.  How am I alive? Who is in the coffin? he wonders.  How do I see my father rising out of the coffin? I played the lottery, I lost-.  Oh.  He halts himself, mid-thought.

“Only just thing, in the world,” his father’s specter whispers as it stands up from the coffin.  His father, who he had not seen since he was three, had done one last thing for Carlisle.  Carlisle looks down at his hands, old, wizened hands.  He looks at the polished face in the coffin.  He wears his father’s face now, and he watches as his father walks up to the grave digger and waits.  the gravedigger falls, and moments later, his father helps him up.  His body stays in the ground.

“A-am I dead?” quakes the fearful gravedigger across from him.

“Not quite,” Carlisle’s father says glancing behind at his son one last time.