three ways 'revelations'...

1.

As Henry Walsh laid shriveled up underneath the sterile cotton sheets pinning him to the moldy hospital bed, he remembered a thought he had when the damn Catholics and stupid Protestants killed each other on Irish green soil.

The whole act of dying was a rather unnecessary nuisance.

All these different ways of dying were easily avoidable: disease, war, a bad potato. A man didn't have to watch his skin dry up, feel his bones brittle, lose his senses and endure the pain of his immune system failing.  There was an easier way to die, should one feel the need to finally off themselves.  And suicide wasn't an answer; quite frankly those acts were messier than the French Revolution.

Being that Henry was stuck with immortality (the Spanish had it wrong with their Fountain of Youth, it was actually a Holy Potato), he had a lot of time to find the answer. So he utilized this answer now, as he watched his last daytime soap opera.

"What the fuck, Walsh?"

Henry turned to his left and there stood Death, chugging down a bottle of Southern Comfort. Death used to have the whole get-up with the scythe and the cloak. Then he took the life of Bill Hicks, had one too many tequila shots with the man and out went the doom-and-gloom. Now he looked like some skeleton hobo wearing Walmart from East Los Angeles.

Death tapped cigarette ashes on Henry's pale face. "You really tried to fuck yourself up for good."

Henry shrugged. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Nice touch with the rat poison."

Death's teeth rattled when he laughed. Henry would miss that the most. "I thought so too. Now, you going to take me or what?"

"I don't swing that way."

"You know what I mean, prick."

Death sat next to Henry, flopped his skeletal arm around the starch blue pillow and gave Henry a half-hearted hug. "I'm gonna miss ya, Hank."

"Henry."

"Hank's a better name. Like Tom Hanks."

"Just do it."

The process was simple. Death touched Henry's sternum and pulled out not a soul or a spirit, but a piece of yarn invisible to the mortal eye, corporeal to those like Death and Henry.

As Henry gasped his last bit of life, his now-mortal body turning to dust, he smiled up at Death and uttered a confession.

"By the by," he wheezed, "my son's the Antichrist."

When the plump nurse returned to Henry's room to give him his medicine, she screamed in horror to find nothing there but piles of dust.

The police called his death inconclusive. The newspapers echoed the same. The conspiracy theorists and religious zealots alike labeled it as a possible homicide, a work of God and/or aliens, depending on who one talked to.

Only Death knew the truth. And when he received the confirmation from Saint Peter that Henry actually did sire the Antichrist, much to the horror of everyone in Heaven, Death laughed, shouted "fuck it" and headed to the best pub in London for some beverages.




2.

Henry Jr. felt like the outcast of the outcasts. Theater geeks considered him a freak; the goth kids thought he was a weirdo; the mentally handicapped believed he was Satan. Henry Jr. never understood why. His friend Death told him he was a perfectly normal Irish Catholic boy who happened to burn things daily; and Death was his only friend, so Henry believed him.

Despite these social setbacks, Henry Jr. was able to gain the crush of a lonely red-haired girl in the class named Molly, who thought he was pretty cool, which completely baffled Death but he was too drunk to care.

Henry Jr. was so happy to not only have a friend who wasn't all bones and drank scotch all the time, but someone who was his age and actually liked him. Really liked him!

Then Henry screwed it all up on their first and only date at the local park, where he confessed:

"I'm the Antichrist and I'm going to kill everyone one day!"

Molly frowned. "You shouldn't kill everyone. That's not nice."

"Why not?"

"Because the Bible said so!"

"Well my friend Death said the Bible was Man's way of trying to bake a cake and instead caused religious diabetes, so you shouldn't take it so seriously."

She stood up and wagged her finger in Henry's face. "I don't like you anymore! You're a bad, bad boy and my mama says you're going to Hell--!"

Death showed up a minute later to pick up Molly out of the squished carcass of a dead frog. He shook his head at the bloody guts spread across the concrete by Henry's light-up shoes.

"Well, if you're worried people are going to wonder what happened to the broad, don't worry, I just killed her whole family off."

Henry Jr. stayed quiet. Death frowned. He took a seat next to him on the park bench and put a bony hand around his shoulders.

"You okay kid? I know you liked her."

Henry Jr. shrugged. "You said I'd kill everyone eventually. What's one stupid Bible-thumping girl gonna do? Haunt me?"

"Probably." Henry slumped forward into his hands. Death patted his shoulder. "Don't sweat it, kid. Women are works of the Devil anyway. The Irish said so."

Henry smiled and glanced sideways at Death. "Is that why you say my mom should be the Antichrist?"

"She'd be a better one than you."

"Uh...Thanks?"

"Don't sweat it kid." Death reached into his hoodie and pulled out a Bud, pushed it into Henry's face. "Want a beer?"

"I'm eight."

Death shrugged and cracked open his can. "Your loss."




3.

Twenty-five years later, in Dublin, Ireland, Henry Jr. walked into a confessional booth and waited for Father Walsh. With his mother dead and the world soon to follow, Henry Jr. felt relatively calm.

A few minutes later, the mesh window slid open. Father Walsh yawned and anticipated the usual words from the man on the other side. This was already shaping up to be another boring Monday.

"Hello father," Henry Jr. greeted.

"Hello my son. Speak the words--"

"I'm afraid I don't have much time," Henry Jr. cheerfully said, "so I'm going to be rather quick. Your ancestor, my father, was an immortal, and so are you."

Father Walshed stuttered, "Uhhh, e-excuse me?"

Henry laughed. "Sorry, I'm sure you're used to the whole 'forgive me I have sinned' bullshit but like I said, no time." He turned his head and watched his brother's petrified eyes through the mesh window. "See, to keep my immortality, I had to kill all my siblings, and they're all dead now. Except you." He grinned from ear-to-ear. "Because I'm the Antichrist and I can't have you fucking up my shit in the next five minutes."

With that, Henry slammed his arm through the wall, punched through his brother's chest, ripped out his heart and killed him.

Outside the church, Death finished his last bottle of Jack Daniels. His old black cloak smelled like piss; he regretted not washing it a decade or two earlier. But he did miss the weight of the scythe in his hands. It felt like coming home.

Thunder rumbled above him, murky grey clouds turning acidic red and purple. He looked above and waited for the rain to fall and laughed when frogs bounced off his bony forehead instead. Blood painted his bony fingers red and locusts swarmed the skies. It was over. The Apocalypse had begun.

Death looked over his shoulder to the mouth of the Church, where the Antichrist emerged, ready to fulfill his duty.

"Immortal now?" Death asked.

"Yeah, it's done."

"Fuckin' finally. How many of those damn siblings of yours did we have to kill? What was it, forty, fifty? I lost count! Your father really got around dude."

"Tell me about it." Henry Jr. tilted his head to the side, confused. "Say, don't you get a horse by now?"

Death shrugged. "Famine probably has it tied up somewhere in the Underworld. I'll get the mutt later."

"Oh. Okay." Henry Jr. wiped his brother's blood on his chest and frowned. "Shit, just when I need some Tide Bleach-on-the-Go." He repeatedly scraped his hands over the stain then gave up.

"We could go to the Tesco in London," Death offered.

"It's probably burned down by now since there's mass anarchy across the world."

"Mmm, true, very true." Death stood up and finished off his cigarette, throwing it to the ground. He lugged his scythe over his shoulder. "Walmart it is then. Shall we?"

"Sure." They walked side by side as Death's cigarette set aflame to the church behind them. "Say, how long until the Second Coming anyway?"

"When Jesus starts understanding LOST."

"So a couple of months."

"Just in time to score some chicks."

"Are there any left?"

"I left some hot ones wandering about, yeah. Should be some fun, seeing as it doesn't matter if we get sexual diseases or not, you know? Fuck it all." Death withdrew two bottles of beer from his dusty, wrinkled cloak. "To the end of the world, kid."

The Antichrist took the proffered bottle, cracked it open and toasted his best friend. "To the end of the world."