Brody wasn’t sure what had happened. One moment he’d been walking along the street, heading back to his car after a particularly disappointing burger, the next there’d been a shout of alarm quickly followed by a deafening crash that had echoed down the brownstone dominated street,

Somehow, in the chaos, he’d found himself face down on the sidewalk. What an evening it was turning out to be!

Prying his face away from the pavement, he could see that a small crowd of gawping onlookers had gathered around whatever had fallen.

The new spectators who joined them seemed oblivious to him, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be trampled on until a smartly dressed African American lady came to his rescue.

Hand outstretched, she warmly commentated that he looked in need of assistance, which he cautiously accepted, lifting himself up before self-consciously dusting himself down.

“Crazy night, huh?” he said as he took a better look at her in the street lighting.

She was middle-aged, with short hair in a pixie cut which looked like it was fixed dramatically with a healthy application of product. She was formally dressed in her stylish high heels, and what looked like a stiffly starched orange dress with white-and-gold piping, and accessorised brooch. Brody imagined that she was probably on her way back from church, and this was her good deed for the day.

Out of habit, he did a few stretches to check himself out. He’d taken a few tumbles when doing karate training when he was younger, and they always seemed like a good idea. He made a mental note that with a fall like this onto hard pavement, he would no doubt feel a little bruised tomorrow. That seemed to be life in his mid-fifties. His body always had to pay a toll.

“Do you really need the street yoga, or you planning on taking a run next?” she cackled.

Brody was about to rebuke her when he noticed, “No. Come to think of it, I actually feel fine.”

Now he took the time to reflect, he didn’t even have the ever-present dull ache in his left shoulder from the time a throw had dislocated it. It was an injury which had never quite gone away. Until right now.

He smiled a little to himself. It was no doubt adrenaline masking everything.

“Did you see what happened?” he asked.

She seemed to be stalling, taking a small tin out of her pocket, extracting a breath mint from it, and asking him if he wanted one. He politely refused.

“Someone was taking a piano out of the window. It slipped,” she finally answered.

“Really?” Brody took a step back and looked at the top of the brownstone tenement. It was an older building with a hoist on the outside to take furniture in and out of apartments, and right now he could see the scraps of a rope tangled around it. “I didn’t think anyone used those things anymore. Is a fucking coyote moving house and trying to catch a roadrunner, or what?”

The lady laughed, and loudly crunched her confectionary between her teeth, “A sense of humour, I like that.”

“Good job it missed me.”

She sucked in her teeth a little, giving a bit of a grimace, “Oh, it didn’t miss, honey.”

Brody felt his brow furrow in confusion.

She smiled at him again as she continued to chomp on her mint, “You need to check behind you, hon.”

He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, as a sense of dread began to consume him. What was he going to see? He was sure that he didn’t want to know.

But he had to look. She was waiting expectantly for him to, urging him on. Taking a steadying breath, he finally turned around to follow her direction.

In gaps between the crowd, he could see it now, a smashed upright piano, and sticking out from under was a pair of legs. Legs that were dressed in chinos and loafers that he recognised. Because they belonged to him.

“Is that supposed to be me?”

The lady nodded.

“It was you,” she said with a heavy emphasis on the word ‘was’.

“This can’t be,” Brody blurted. His mind grasped for an explanation, any explanation rather than what he was looking at. This had to be some kind of hallucination.

Remembering his basic first aid, he felt for the pulse in his own neck, finding nothing. In desperation, he ended up looking at his fitness watch, and sure enough, where a heartbeat should be registering there was simply a blank dash.

He told himself that he just needed to snap out of it. Rushing over to the crowd, he tried to reach out to them, inexplicably being unable to grasp them or get their attention. He might as well be trying to touch his own reflection. They continued, oblivious to him. Only the lady dressed for church was paying him any attention.

“I’m afraid it is. You’re dead, honey, and I know it probably comes as a shock as it does for most. Believe me, few welcome it.”

“So, you’re…” Brody’s mind was struggling to comprehend what was going on. But if he was dead, and she was talking to him, that could only mean one thing. “You’re the grim reaper?”

The smile on her face broadened. She was clearly amused.

“Honey, I’m neither grim nor in the reaping business. But, yes, I’m the usher to what’s next. You can call me Auntie if you like.”

“Are you here to judge me?”

“That’s not my role. I just help you over.”

“But this must be a joke. No one gets killed by a fucking piano outside of cartoons. You have to let me go back!”

“Oh, here we go. And before you ask, we’re not gonna end up playing chess for your soul. So, tell me, what do you have to go back for?”

“I’m a very important person. The CEO of a healthcare company.”

“Yeah, I’m aware. And I really didn’t want to mention this, but I’ve crossed over a lot of your customers. Ones with completely treatable conditions, only you didn’t let them get it.”

“I didn’t personally reject their care,” Brody tried to defend himself. “That wasn’t anything personal. That was business.”

“I thought the job of a healthcare company was… I don’t know… providing healthcare? But not your company, it seems. Is this really your unfinished business? Did you have more people you needed to deny care to as part of your important life’s work?” Auntie said in a patronising tone.

Brody took a moment, sure it sounded bad when you put it simply like that. But she just didn’t get it. He tried to think of a compelling argument to make this woman see reason. He’d be able to talk her round. He always found a way to charm people.

“You know, my company provides a lot of jobs to people. We need to make money to keep those jobs,” he argued. “What about them? They depend on me.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be an usher to the afterlife? I’m sure you’d be interested in a small slice of my day,” Auntie explained, and helped herself to another mint, which she made a show of exuberantly crunching on. “My morning involved a young bride on the way to her wedding. She was on her way to the happiest day of her life, only to be caught up in a freeway pileup.

“Meanwhile, my afternoon involved holding the hand of a four-year-old girl whose family home had just been levelled in a declared act of self-defence by a neighbouring country. But do you know what? For you, I could make an exception.”

Brody grinned at what she was saying, not being able to believe his luck. He was going to be able to wiggle his way out of this.

“Really?” he replied incredulously.

Auntie fixed him with a stare and her smile dropped, “No. Do you really think you’re more deserving than those other tales? Or do you just think you’re so special?”

“I can change,” he pleaded.

“It’s too late,” she said coldly, returning the tin of mints to her pocket. “I really don’t know why this is such a shock. You’ve dealt in life and death more than many mortals have. When you condemned people to their fate, you just expected them to accept it with good grace.”

“But this is different.”

She asked him why, and he stopped for a moment to ponder that, not liking the response.

“Because this affects me,” he answered honestly, hearing his own words and having an uncomfortable moment of revelation. But she was right, it was too late to do any good. Much too late.

Mmm-hmm? she sighed in disappointment, giving the air of a teacher who’d just been given a stock answer to why their student’s homework was missing. “Look, we can’t put this off forever. We need to go. There are people waiting for you.”

“My friends and family?” Brody asked, closing his eyes and imagining who would really be waiting for him.

Auntie smiled at him again, but there was no warmth in it now.

“You’d better hope so.”