SPIKE Q: So Death, what brings you to these parts?
DEATH: Searching, searching.
SPIKE Q: Okay-- next question. Are you male or female?
DEATH: I am androgenous and ambigendered.
SPIKE Q: Care to explain that?
DEATH: No.
SPIKE Q: My friend Marie is dieing and she is unhappy about that.
DEATH: Happiness and unhappiness are not within my realm. People live and people die. It may be everything to you but it is nothing to me.
SPIKE Q: Uh, okay. So Death, what do you do in your spare time?
DEATH: I play strip poker with my best buds-- Anubis, Kore, Kali, and Hecate.
SPIKE Q: STRIP poker? But you're not wearing any-- oh never mind. So who is best at it?
DEATH: Kali is a real cutthroat. Hecate cheats. Kore is distractable depending on the season. Sometimes Anubis picks a fight with Hecate's hounds. Kali does win most of the time. Hecate and I are about evenly matched.
SPIKE Q: Your fellow poker fiends are almost all women!
DEATH: It would seem that way, yes.
SPIKE Q: What are the stakes?
DEATH: Why do you ask? Are you planning to join us anytime soon?
SPIKE Q: Noooo.
DEATH: Just checkin'. Somehow I didn't think you would scare so easily. After all, you have looked in my face and laughed a few times over the years.
SPIKE Q: Please don't hold that against me. It was all nervous laughter at finding myself still alive.
DEATH: You have to admit you've done some pretty stupid things. Well, the last time wasn't your fault though. That was the time you refused to die, you know.
SPIKE Q: Uh, thanks. I think.
DEATH: You're quite welcome my dear. I perceive that you are thinking of a bus or an airplane. I suppose you are thinking about the termninal of death being the end of the line. Or perhaps you are wishing for a speedy exit.
SPIKE Q: Actually, I was thinking about Emily Dickinson. Did you really stop for her?
DEATH: Emily and I were rather well acquainted during her earthly lifetime. Most poets of a melancholy nature are well acquainted with me, you know. You've written some deep stuff yourself, come to think of it.
SPIKE Q: Thanks. Sort of. Care to talk about Sam Hain or seances?
DEATH: Sam Hain. When the veil thins. My favorite time of year, you know....
SPIKE Q: Uh, Death? Death?
DEATH: Sorry my dear. I was pleasantly distracted. Oh, that's right. I remember your first seance.
SPIKE Q: You do?
DEATH: Oh yes. You were such an odd kid. Reading the Sunday obituaries was one of your hobbies. You and a couple of other vacationing kids were under a boat on the beach one night. Someone had the bright idea to call back John F. Kennedy.
SPIKE Q: Yes, the candle blew out and we all spooked.
DEATH: JFK is not really interested in coming back to talk to the public, you know. Better you should have tried to dig up Sylvia Plath. Now there was a fine melancholy soul. Since the advent of psych drugs, there are less melancholy souls around. Such is progress.
SPIKE Q: You would rather have people be miserable and kill themselves?
DEATH: Now just who do you think I am, Spike? I take no position on suicide. None. Nor on misery or contentment. I am nothing if I am not---
SPIKE Q: Yeah, yeah. What about reincarnation?
DEATH: What about it?
SPIKE Q: Well, is it real or not? An awful lot of witches and hindus believe in it.
DEATH: I take no position on that either. I will say one thing though. Karma has been frightfully misinterpreted. So has Power for that matter.
SPIKE Q: Death-- uh, you are, uh-- vaporizing.
DEATH: Sorry, Spike. I gotta go. Seems the jig is up for some old guy in the nursing home up the street. Shall I save you a chair at our poker game?
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