The problem with being an anthropomorphic personification of death for the last ten thousand years, Malachar thought to himself, was that people assumed you didn't have preferences.
They imagined you as a hollow-eyed skeleton in a cloak, all scythe and solemnity, a creature of pure function—like a cosmic garbage disposal with a flair for the dramatic. They didn't picture you standing in line at a coffee shop, tapping your bony fingers against your thigh, wondering if the barista would remember that you liked the oat milk steamed to precisely one hundred and sixty degrees, not one hundred and fifty-five. They didn't imagine you having a morning routine.
But Malachar had developed one. Strictly. Devotedly. With the kind of religious fervor that had launched crusades and built pyramids.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, at precisely 8:42 AM, he materialized in the alley beside The Grind & Found, a boutique coffee shop tucked between a vintage vinyl store and a boutique that sold artisanal dog sweaters in Portland's Hawthorne District. He'd learned to materialize in the alley because appearing directly inside the shop tended to cause baristas to drop ceramic mugs, and ceramic mugs were expensive, and Malachar was many things...ancient, inevitable, occasionally terrifying...but he was not wasteful.
He'd also learned to wear a human face.
Not literally, of course. That would be grotesque. No, he'd developed what his friend Charon called "the meat veil", a projection, a gentle suggestion in the minds of mortals that made them see a tall, thin man in his mid-thirties with unfortunate posture, wearing a charcoal peacoat that had been fashionable in Prague in 1897 and somehow became fashionable again in Portland in 2024. He had dark hair that fell in his eyes. He had a jawline that suggested he might have been handsome if he ever slept. He looked, in short, like a software engineer who had discovered existentialism and also perhaps a mild amphetamine habit.
The projection even gave him a name tag, which he found deeply amusing. It read: MAL. Just Mal. Like the bad guy in Firefly, or a prefix indicating something negative. He appreciated the economy of it.
At 8:43 AM, Malachar would exit the alley, walk the seventeen steps to the coffee shop door, and enter precisely as the morning barista, a young woman named Cass with half her head shaved and the other half dyed the color of a dying star, finished wiping down the espresso machine.
At 8:44 AM, he would take his place in line. Usually there were two or three people ahead of him. A yoga instructor named Todd who ordered something with turmeric and shame. A novelist who lived in the apartment above the vinyl store and only came down when her WiFi stopped working. A real estate agent who was somehow always on the phone, describing properties as "cozy" when she meant "cramped."
And then, at 8:47 AM, she would walk in.
Her name was Tiffany Slayer , though Malachar knew her as Subject 8,947,221-B, scheduled for death on November 3rd, 2026, at 2:14 PM, via falling piano (a classic, though increasingly rare). She was thirty-four years old, a data analyst for a nonprofit that tracked migratory bird patterns, and she lived in a studio apartment with three houseplants named after Supreme Court justices and a cat named Filibuster who was objectively the most evil creature Malachar had ever encountered, and Malachar had encountered the entire history of evil.
Tiffany was fine. She was unremarkable. She was, in the vast cosmic ledger that Malachar maintained in the back of his mind where other people might keep grocery lists, completely and utterly ordinary.
Except for her coffee order.
Every Tuesday and Thursday at 8:47 AM, Tiffany walked into The Grind & Found wearing running shoes that had never seen a run, yoga pants that had never seen a yoga studio, and an oversized sweater that appeared to have been knitted by someone who hated geometry. She would approach the counter with the confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and exactly how much it cost, and she would say, in a voice that reminded Malachar of autumn leaves scraping against cobblestones:
"I'll have the Grim Reaper's Delight, please. Large. Extra drizzle."
And Cass, the barista with the galaxy hair, would smile, a real smile, not the performative customer-service rictus that made Malachar want to reap the entire service industry for mercy's sake, and she would say, "You got it, Tiffany. Last one of the day, too. You're lucky."
And Tiffafany would say, "I'm always lucky on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
And then she would pay, and she would wait, and at 8:52 AM precisely, she would receive a drink that defied every law of physics and good taste that Malachar had observed in his ten thousand years of existence.
The Grim Reaper's Delight.
It was, objectively, an abomination.
It started with a base of cold brew that had been steeped for exactly twenty-six hours. Malachar knew this because he'd asked, because he was curious, because ten thousand years of existence had taught him that curiosity was the only thing that kept you from going absolutely mad with boredom. Into this base, the baristas injected nitrogen, creating a cascading effect that looked like a waterfall made of obsidian silk.
Then came the foam. Not ordinary foam. This was foam that had been frothed with vanilla bean paste, cardamom, and something Cass called "essence of smoked caramel," which Malachar suspected was just regular caramel with excellent marketing. The foam sat atop the cold brew like a cloud that had decided to become dessert.
But that wasn't all.
No, the Grim Reaper's Delight then received a crown of whipped cream that had been hand-whipped with Madagascar bourbon vanilla and a pinch of sea salt. Into this whipped cream, the baristas embedded three espresso beans that had been coated in dark chocolate and edible gold leaf. Then came the drizzle—oh, the drizzle—a spiral of caramel and chocolate sauces that cascaded down the sides of the cup in patterns that suggested sacred geometry.
And finally, the piece de resistance, the element that made Malachar's eternal soul ache with desire: a single, perfect biscotti, house-made, dipped in white chocolate and crushed pistachios, balanced across the rim of the cup like a bridge between worlds.
It looked, as Malachar had described in his journal (kept in a dimension adjacent to reality, written in ink made from the distilled regrets of emperors), like "ice cream in drag."
It tasted, according to Tiffany Slayer's facial expressions, which Malachar had studied with the intensity of a scholar translating dead languages, like "the moment you realize you're in love, but with caffeine."
For three months, Malachar had watched her order this drink.
For three months, he had stood in line behind her, his bony fingers (hidden beneath the meat veil) twitching with need, and when it was his turn, he had opened his mouth to say, "I'll have what she's having," practicing the line in his head like a ritual.
And for three months, Cass had shaken her galaxy head and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mal. We only make twelve of those a day. Tiffany always gets the last one. She has a subscription."
A subscription.
To a coffee drink.
In a world where Malachar could point his scythe at a king and watch empires crumble, where he could whisper in the ear of a general and start wars that lasted decades, where he could, with a single thought, collapse stars and end species—he was defeated by a subscription service.
It was humiliating.
It was unacceptable.
It was, he realized on this particular Tuesday morning in late September, as he watched Tiffany walk out of The Grind & Found with her abomination of a beverage, motivating.
Malachar stood in the alley, his scythe compacted into a dimension where it looked like an umbrella (a very sinister umbrella, black with a curved handle that suggested a vertebrae), and he made a decision.
He was going to use artificial intelligence to move up her death date.
Not by much. Just enough. Just enough that on Thursday morning, at 8:47 AM, when Tiffany Slayer walked into The Grind & Found expecting to claim her subscription beverage, she would instead be... indisposed. Elsewhere. Perhaps in a hospital, recovering from a minor but inconvenient accident. Nothing serious. Nothing permanent. Just... delayed.
And in that delay, Malachar would step up to the counter, and he would say, "I'll have the Grim Reaper's Delight," and Cass would say, "You're in luck, we have one left," and he would drink it.
He would drink it, and he would understand what made Tiffany Slayer smile like that, what made her close her eyes and make that small sound in the back of her throat that suggested she was having a religious experience in a public place.
And then, having tasted the forbidden nectar, having understood the mystery, he could finally move on with his eternal existence and stop thinking about coffee.
It was a perfect plan. It was elegant. It was efficient. It was, in its own way, very human—using technology to solve a problem that could probably be solved with patience or communication, but why bother with those when you had algorithms?
Malachar pulled out his phone.
It was a very old phone. He'd had it since 2007, when Steve Jobs had presented the first iPhone and Malachar had been in the audience, invisible, watching the man's arteries with professional interest. The phone had been updated over the centuries, of course, through various magical means that involved bending time and space and also Apple's surprisingly robust trade-in program. It currently ran iOS 47, which didn't exist yet in the mortal world but worked fine in the pocket dimension where Malachar kept his accessories.
He opened an app that didn't exist in any human app store. It had a black icon with a white scythe on it, and it was called simply: LEDGER.
The Ledger was Malachar's database. It contained every death that had ever happened, was happening, or would happen. It was a predictive model, a vast neural network that processed the infinite variables of existence...genetics, choices, accidents, intentions, cosmic randomness...and outputted a schedule. It was, in essence, the original artificial intelligence, predating human computing by millennia, now conveniently ported to a mobile interface.
Malachar typed with fingers that were, beneath the projection, nothing but bone:
SEARCH: TIFFFANY SLAYER . BORN MARCH 15, 1992. PORTLAND, OREGON. CURRENT RESIDENCE: 4522 SE BELMONT STREET, APARTMENT 3B.
The Ledger hummed, processing through dimensions. Then it displayed her file.
SUBJECT: TIFFANY SLAYER
SCHEDULED DEATH: NOVEMBER 3, 2026, 2:14 PM
CAUSE: TRAUMA, BLUNT FORCE, PIANO (STEINWAY MODEL D, EBONY FINISH)
LOCATION: INTERSECTION OF NW 23RD AND BURNSIDE
STATUS: CONFIRMED
Malachar stared at the screen. He had the power, right here in his hand, to change this. To move the date. To advance it by mere days, just enough to clear Thursday morning's coffee acquisition. He could tap the EDIT button, adjust the timeline, and...
Wait.
He paused.
There was a new feature in the Ledger app. He hadn't noticed it before, probably because he didn't update his apps regularly (what was the point? He was death itself; he didn't need bug fixes). But there, in the corner of Tiffany's file, was a small icon he didn't recognize. It looked like... a chat bubble?
He tapped it.
The screen transformed. A new interface appeared, sleek and modern, with a prompt box at the bottom and a message above it that read:
WELCOME TO DEATHGPT. HOW CAN I HELP YOU OPTIMIZE YOUR REAPING TODAY?
Malachar blinked.
DeathGPT?
He typed, tentatively: What is this?
The response appeared instantly, in a friendly green bubble:
Hello! I'm DeathGPT, your personal AI assistant for death scheduling! I can help you:
- Reschedule deaths for optimal workflow
- Suggest alternative causes of death based on subject personality
- Generate poetic last words
- Optimize death timing for minimal paperwork
- And much more!
How can I assist you with Subject Tiffany Slayer today?
Malachar stared at the screen for a long moment. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face—the kind of smile that had made medieval peasants cross themselves and reach for garlic, the kind of smile that suggested the universe had just handed you exactly the tool you needed for exactly the petty revenge you were planning.
He began to type.
I need to move up Tiffany Slayer's death by approximately one month and four days. Specifically, I need her to be unavailable on Thursday, September 26th, 2024, between the hours of 8:30 AM and 9:00 AM. Can you suggest an appropriate minor incident that would delay her coffee acquisition without causing permanent harm or raising suspicion?
He hit send.
The little typing dots appeared. They danced for a moment, processing across the boundaries of mortality and machine learning.
Then:
Great request! I have several options for you:
Option 1: Minor traffic accident (fender bender, no injuries, 45-minute delay)
Option 2: Sudden migraine (incapacitating but temporary, 2-hour duration)
Option 3: Lost keys (frustrating, requires locksmith, 90-minute delay)
Option 4: Cat-related incident (Filibuster knocks over water glass, minor flooding, requires cleanup)
Malachar considered. Option 4 had potential. He hated that cat. It had looked at him once, through the window of Tiffany's apartment, and Malachar had felt something he hadn't experienced in centuries: the distinct sensation of being judged by a creature that weighed eight pounds and had the cognitive capacity of a toaster.
But no. Too personal. Too obvious.
Option 2, then. A migraine. Clean, clinical, nobody's fault. Just biology being biology.
He typed: Option 2. Implement for Thursday, September 26th, 8:30 AM.
The response came back:
Processing...
Error.
Malachar frowned. What error?
Subject Tiffany Slayer has protected status. Death cannot be rescheduled without administrative override. Reason: Subject is designated as "Plot-Critical" for cosmic narrative structure.
Malachar stared at the screen.
What does that mean?
It means Tiffafny Slayers's continued existence until November 3, 2026.