It’s My Job

You ever try explaining inevitability to a guy named Joe?

Joe’s in his fifties, still thinks he’s got time, still believes drinking kale and listening to The Joe Rogan Experience somehow buys him an extra decade. Nice guy, really. Wears cargo shorts in December. Thinks he's too unique to die like the rest of the herd. But tonight, he’s lying on the floor of his garage with a look on his face like he just got punk’d by the universe.

“Wait,” he says, blinking up at me like I’m the valet and he’s confused about where I parked his Toyota. “This is it? Just... like this?”

And I sigh. Not because I’m tired. I don’t get tired. I’m Death. But because I’ve had this conversation about ten trillion times, and it never gets easier.

“I don’t make the rules, Joe,” I say, watching his aura flicker like a busted light bulb. “I just show up. It’s my job.”

And oh, he hates that. Everybody hates that. Because when someone says “It’s my job” it means they’re doing something awful and don’t want to be blamed for it. Which, fair. Because I am doing something awful. I’m pulling Joe out of his meat suit just when he finally figured out how to make a sourdough starter that didn’t taste like wet carpet.

He looks around his cluttered garage like it’s going to protest on his behalf. A half-inflated kayak. Three broken rakes. A lava lamp that never quite caught on. This is where he dies. Not on a mountaintop. Not rescuing puppies from a burning building. But face-down in a pile of cat litter and spilled motor oil, because he slipped trying to reach an old bowling trophy.

“Come on,” he says, like I’m a manager at Applebee’s and he just found a bandaid in his salad. “There’s gotta be some mistake.”

I hear this every day. And every day, I think yeah, probably. But again. Not my call.

“You think I wanted to take your Uncle Ray last week?” I say, folding my arms. “Guy finally paid off his mortgage and was two weeks from his fishing trip to Alaska. You think I wanted to collect that kindergarten teacher in Des Moines who was baking cookies for a school fundraiser when her aorta decided to go full water balloon? You think I like this? I wear black year-round. I scream ‘goth divorcee with a clipboard.’ You think this is a passion project?”

Joe groans. Not out of pain. He’s past that now. But out of protest. Like he’s gonna file a complaint with whatever god he thinks runs HR.

“I’m just saying,” he mutters, “it’s messed up.”

“Of course it is,” I say. “It’s deeply messed up. Life is a chaotic improv sketch directed by a blind raccoon with access to a fog machine. But someone’s gotta sweep up at the end of the show. And guess who drew the short straw.”

He stares at me. I can see it in his eyes. The math of it all. The memories stacking like grocery receipts. His daughter’s wedding. His dog’s last car ride. The time he danced to Prince in a Target parking lot just because the mood struck. All of it hanging in the balance, waiting to be filed in some cosmic folder that nobody reads.

“I didn’t even get to finish ‘Better Call Saul,’” he says.

“Season six is overrated,” I lie. Because sometimes mercy wears a small, black, sarcastic face.

He chuckles. That’s the thing about Joe. He always was good at laughing through the panic. Probably how he made it this far without completely snapping. Even now, as I stretch out the silence, give him a minute to let it settle in, he’s trying to find the punchline.

“But why now?” he says. “I was finally getting my crap together.”

That one always stings. Because that’s the line everyone thinks should protect them. The cosmic Get Out of Death Free card.

“I know,” I say. “Timing’s a bastard. I don’t like it either. You were starting to figure it out. Not the big stuff, but the little stuff. You said ‘I love you’ without needing a drink first. You called your mom on her birthday. You started flossing, for Christ’s sake. But you know what that proves, Joe?”

He waits.

“It proves you’re human. Which means you were never going to get the timing right.”

He swallows, or tries to. The body’s already giving up the ghost, but habit dies harder than most things.

“So, what happens now?” he asks, and suddenly he’s not mad anymore. Just... lost.

I offer him a hand. It’s not skeletal. People always assume that. But I know how to look how someone needs me to look. And for Joe, that means I look like the nurse who held his father’s hand when the ventilator went quiet.

“Now,” I say, “you go wherever it is that makes the most sense to you. Light. Tunnel. Reunion. Endless reruns of ‘Cheers.’ I don’t get to see that part. I’m just the driver.”

He hesitates. One last glance at the garage. At the dust and the junk and the life that was never quite as tidy as he wanted it to be. Then he looks back at me.

“You sure you got the right guy?”

I nod.

“Yeah. Sorry. But yeah.”

And with a sigh that feels like it carries every unpaid bill, missed apology, and mediocre taco he ever ate, Joe lets go.

I watch him walk off into whatever’s next. I hope it’s good. I hope there’s music. I hope they let him finish that show.

Then I check the list.

Next up? A woman in Tampa who’s going to be struck by lightning while arguing with her neighbor about lawn flamingos.

And no, I don’t agree with it either.

But it’s my job.