Jakob had never been fond of The Fast Food District. To him it was the place where zombies lived—the kind of people who got themselves knocked up (or got someone else knocked up, if case need be) too early and ceased living for themselves at the very moment of their child's birth. He was disgusted by people like them, even moreso than most of the jokers in this city. Except, maybe, the ones born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Now those people were a completely different story.

It was a shame that this was the only district worth going to at exactly, let's see, 3:07 a.m. You could see the stars the best in The Fast Food District.

He sighed and sat at one of the greasy, mottled bench, resting his elbow on the backrest and his head on his hand. Nightcrawlers strolled on by without giving him a passing glance—most likely because he wasn't wearing his normally loud colors. The maroon shirt and gray long sleeved undershirt, and the black pants faded him into the background.

Briefly, he wished he had weed on him, but settled for a sweet tasting clove, leaning against the back and watching the daring strollers walk by. Several dangerous looking characters slid their gazes over his prone form, deciding he was not any of their concern.

3:15.

Areas like these were okay with Jakob, just as long as no one fucked with him. If someone dared to try and mess him up, he'd have to go a little ape shit on them. But no one did. He figured it was because he intimidated them. That had to be it.

His clove was half gone. That was what he liked about them—they lasted for ages.

3:21.

"Give me all your money."

The order surprised him. He blinked and craned his head, hoping he didn't look frightened. He didn't feel very frightened, the situation was a bit to surreal for his taste.

"Here's a thought," Jakob said easily, running his tongue over his top teeth and giving his mugger a calculating look. Not that there was much to look at it. All he could really see was an outline of the man's body. "Go fuck yourself."

He heard the safety lock of the gun click before he saw it aimed at his eye. That struck him as weird.

"I'm sorry, I must have misheard you," the man said, and his choice of words amused Jakob slightly. Did the man just apologize to him? "What was that?"

Catty.

"I said," Jakob repeated, speaking a bit louder, "go fuck yourself."

3:29.

The bullet sent him half off the bench, and he slid down, head dropping painfully loud against then seat. Thoughts tried to connect themselves and failed, most likely due to the fact that he now had a bullet lodged in the right hemisphere of his brain.

3:30.

Drip, drip, drip...

"Cute."

There's a young man sitting on the other end of the bench. He most certainly hadn't been there before, but he is now-- now that Glimmerman's dead, that is. He's wearing a pale suit that glows faintly in the night, the edges blurred off into the mist-- which, come to think of it, also wasn't there before. His skin glows nearly as much as the suit, and his hair, and his eyes, which are downcast, apparently not that interested in the dead man.

Death is filing his nails.

"I mean, it got you killed and all, but it was cute."

His eyes snap up and focus on Jakob. He grins, predatorially.

Having someone talk to him—and being able to respond, was definitely not what Jakob had expected. It took him a moment to gather his wits (as they were currently scattered all over the bench he was slumped against), and then even a longer moment to look at the man who was sitting gracefully at the bench. He stared uncomprehendingly at him (is he glowing?!), then dropped his eye (the other one was currently bits and pieces somewhere inside of his brain) at the blood. His blood.

It was a whole helluva lot more red than he thought it would be.

"What?"

He stared rather helplessly at the man sitting next to his body, and it took him a moment to realize that he could now see his body, lax against the bench and bleeding sluggishly still. It was blurry, as if he were looking through a smudged window, and a rather disjointing realization was that he could feel himself still partially in his body.

"What? What?"

He couldn't bring himself to say anything more. He couldn't bring himself to try and figure out how he could say anything period. He couldn't bring himself to...he couldn't...

What the hell was going on?

Death rolls his eyes, and tosses away the nail file. It puffs into nothingness about a foot away from his glowworm-luminescent body, and he turns his cobweb gaze full on Glimmerman.

"You're dead." Usually a safe assumption after having been shot, when hovering in the grey mists over the chunk of bleeding meat that used to be 'you.'

"You were shot."

"No shit."

He tried to say it like a hard ass, in his usually mocking tone, but what came out was a sort of dazed sort of wonder. He had a feeling he should be nauseated, but it was hard to be physically sick when you weren't very physical at all. A big hunk of meat? Tactless, but disgustingly accurate.

"That's me?" He pointed at the body, keeping his eyes fixed on Azrael. Though he wasn't very impressed by the man's looks (he wasn't impressed by much), he found him a good deal more pleasant to look at then the remainder of his body.

There was a long stretch of silence (it was really probably a minute or so, but for Jakob it felt like an eternity) as he tried to digest all these new events and figure out just what was happening at the moment.

He couldn't.

"What the hell's going on?"

"That was you," Azrael corrects, standing and dusting off his suit.

"Really, how much do I have to say? You died. I'm Death. Now it's time to go see what's next, blah blah blah. Jakob Glimmerman, that was your life."

"No." He said it before he could stop himself, but he wouldn't have stopped himself if he knew he was going to say it. "I mean, no disrespect, sir—" and the only reason why he was giving respect was because it was Death, "but no way. I ain't going yet. I ain't going yet."

He took a deep breath and tried to calm his rattled nerves (nerves? What nerves?). He could freak out later.

Well.

"You've got to let me stay alive. This is all big one...one big fucking mistake!" He was breathing heavily (did he need to breathe?), entire body being put in to every shot of air that escaped his lips.

"I'll give anything. I'll do anything."

He wasn't even quite sure why he wanted to stay alive so bad. The world was really just a laugh riot to him, and all its inhabitants were nothing interesting.

He couldn't leave.

"Anything, anything!" Death repeats. Should the grim reaper really be able to use a mocking tone like that?

He grins broadly and approaches Jakob.

"What makes you think you have anything to offer, mortal?"

(OOC: I'll give you anything, anything, anything!)

"I...I..."

What did he have to offer? His piercings? The money he was saving up for a tattoo? What the hell would Death do with that?

This all had to be one fucked up dream. It had to be.

"I'll give you my soul. Isn't that what the dev...Death (he corrected himself rather quickly, not wanting to offend the man) always wants? Some mortal signs away their soul?" He was starting to get a little more frantic, nothing too impressive from what he was before, but it was definitely there. "And...and if you let me live again, I'll...I'll let you do whatever you want with it."

What would someone do with a soul? Play basketball with it? It being the basketball?

He had a feeling Death was a bit more creative than he.

Death shakes his head.

"I already have your soul, Jakob." He reaches out, flitting his fingers through the air where the insubstantial Jakob is standing. Strands of 'soul' cling to his fingers like mist-- an odd thing to watch but no doubt more odd to experience.

"But..." Ah, the spark of hope.

"But I have an idea. Since you'd do 'anything.'"

He felt bits and pieces of him being tugged away by the hand of death, and it felt like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was almost like falling—there was the same tugging quality on what felt like every atom of his existance.

Jakob never liked falling.

"What?" he said rather desperately, eyes going a bit wild. "What? What's you're idea? Anything! Anything! I'll do it!"

Please.

"Servitude." He smiles brightly, still twining his fingers idly though what's left of Jakob. "I'm so glad you agreed."

Isn't that in all the fairy tales? Never agree before you know what you're agreeing to.

"I'm going to send you back... with some perks. And some checks and balances. And you'll serve me-- I will sustain your life and your will will be mine. Hmm?" Not that Jakob has much of a choice at this point.

"Yeah. Yeah. I agree." He would agree with anything at that point, even if he had more choices. There was something about looking at your dead body that helped you make decisions.

Especially if it meant that your body wouldn't be dead anymore.

He really wanted to be sick at this moment. In fact, he tried desperately to be sick, but it was rather impossible, due to the fact that he was missing a stomach right now.

"What will I do to serve you?"

"A little of this, a little of that. Odd jobs. Checking up on people, on things. Anything I tell you to do, basically."

Somewhere inside the misty, incorporeal non-mass of Jakob's soul, Death's hand clenches into a fist. Grinning broadly, he whirls and tosses Glimmerman back into the cooling meat that had been and will be again his body.

Well.

Now he could be sick.

And he was. Rather violently, all over the ground near the bench. Vanity was the only thing that stopped him from collapsing in his mess—he perched above it and heaved a couple times.

He could feel the bullet in his brain.

The realization made him sick again, but there was nothing left in his body he could extract (except, prehaps, a couple of salty tears that ran down his cheeks). He heaved desperately, then scrambled away from the mess and collapsed on the cool grass, fingers spasming and jerking.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then the back of his hand on the grass beside him. A detatched part of his mind (whichhadabulletinit) wished for a bath—what he really wanted to do was clean off all the blood and vomit and...was that parts of his brain?!

He heaved again.

Death's still there, though a certain insubstantiality to his form suggests that Glimmerman's the only one who can see him at the moment.

The god places his hands on his knees and leans down.

"Well," he says, in a voice tha's whispering a thousand miles away, "you're back. Happy?"

'Happy' wasn't the best way to describe just what he was feeling at the moment. Sure, the elation was there, blooming somewhere deep within his empty stomach, but it was buried under intense feelings of shock, horror, and disgust. Could he do something like this? Could he really be someone's servant for all eternity?

Looking like this?

A shaking hand touched his face (fuck, it was half gone, felt the squishy, meaty feeling, then dropped to the ground as if it weighed hundreds of pounds. He turned his head to look at Azrael, eye fathomless.

"Could we, er, at least do something about my face, please? The eye I can do without for a bit, but people might be a bit wary of someone walking around without half his head. You know. Not very inconspicuous."

Death nods, graciously, and flutters a hand.

"Now that you're back in your body and moving around, maybe I should explain things a bit more. I can't have a servant who is going to fall to pieces all the time-- therefore, one of your 'perks' is being able to heal anything I say you can heal-- including that head wound there."

He straightens, lacings his hands behind his back.

"Of course, the balance on that is that you'll ahve to feed to do so-- to draw power. You can draw power in one of two ways. Every fourteen days, you'll perform a specific ritual-- don't worry about the details, you know them already-- which will connect you to me. I'm your life force now, Jakob. Don't put off performing the ritual."

He pauses, as if to consider.

"It's sort of like your biweekly paycheck, only there are worse consequences than a slim bank account if you don't remember to pick it up-- of course, I highly doubt you'll forget." Internal 'alarm clocks' are easy to arrange.

"Other than that, you'll be able to draw energy from those around you-- humans, other mortal creatures-- in the manner of your choosing. Sex, death, I don't care, do whatever works best for you. Just like a body needs food to run-- you won't be needing food, by the way-- magic needs energy to keep going. You don't produce your own, so you'll have to get it from other sources."

Rather a long speech, actually-- and still it fails to explain everything.

Jakob—Glimmerman. He wasn't Jakob anymore. Jakob was dead.

Glimmerman stared at Death, the words sinking slowly into his newly healed brain. He was having trouble connecting A to B (he was rather stuck at C, you see), but somehow, he understood completely.

His fingers curled on the grass, and he nodded. Slowly. Only once.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "And I'm guessing I'll know when you want something done."

The feeling of being different wrapped around him like an evening gown. For one thing...he seemed to be glowing in the dark, also. At least, his arms were. Was it just because of the close proximity of his feeding source or would he always glow like this?

He stopped thinking about it rationally before he went even more crazy.

"You'll know," Death says and, grinning, fades away.

Leaving rather a number of things unexplained.

((Next.))