(This is one of the short stories from DEATH AND THE DEVIL, which will be published in ebook format in the next week or two. The theme strikes me as appropriate for Good Friday.)
It is a well-established fact across most of the known multiverse that death is, generally speaking, the end of life. This is the sort of obvious statement that most beings understand intuitively, in the same way they understand that water is wet or that the line of traffic you’re not driving in will always move faster than the one you selected.
What is less well established, and indeed known to only a select few cosmic entities, is that there are occasional exceptions to this rule. Not many, mind you—perhaps ten or twelve across the entirety of existence. But when they do occur, they tend to cause no end of paperwork.......
....And at the center of this troublesome accounting error was the same man who now hung on the central cross.
“He’s made quite a nuisance of himself these last three years,” the Devil continued. “Even turned me down on a really sweet deal I offered him. But today—today he’ll regret not taking it!”
