A Loophole (1)

 “I do not intend to die. Ever.”

Jonas chuckled indulgently, but it dried in his throat when he saw his client’s humourless eyes, the old man’s extraordinary pallor, the web of blue veins across his temples. Jonas dabbed sweat from his cheeks and studied the life assurance documents, moon-white against the night-black wood of the vast desk.

“Mr Qadaffa,” he replied, “we none of us intend…”

“I have legal immunity,” Qadaffa’s soft voice interrupted. “A loophole. Mr Jonas, are you familiar with necromancy?”

“I – that is, I don’t …”

“Necromancy,” Qadaffa explained, a hint of glee in his languid whisper, “is the mastery of death, of ghosts.”

Jonas gathered his papers. That crazy traffic to get here and for this nonsense. What time was it? The windows were oblongs of night.

“I have placed my signature in the Book of Thoth, Mr Jonas. Even if I perish, Anubis cannot seize my ghost. I return and live again. As I have for three thousand years, Mr Jonas. Where are you going, Mr Jonas?”

“I have a six o’clock –” Jonas began.

“Mr Jonas, I summoned you and it is not my pleasure that you depart.”

Jonas twisted in his chair. The office was in shadow. The desk lamp spilled a pool of light in which they both sat.

“Every millennium,” Qadaffa murmured, “the Book of Thoth is rewritten, old loopholes closed. I need an exceptional lawyer for such work.”

The pale man placed a bulging ledger on the desk and unclasped its covers. Dust swirled in the lamplight. The pages were papyrus, etched with faded symbols.

Jonas protested: “No one at our firm is familiar with … is that Egyptian?”

“The dead speak all languages, Mr Jonas.”

Qadaffa walked across the marble floor. Jonas could see on it a circular pattern, surrounding the desk and himself.

“The traffic was worse than you recall, Mr Jonas,” whispered Qadaffa, from the darkness behind him. “The collision was violent, death instantaneous – and then I summoned you.”

His voice grew fainter. The arcane signs in the book reshaped themselves meaningfully before Jonas’ eyes: the reed, the upraised arms, Horus, Set, the desert vulture...

“To work, slave. Find a fresh loophole and I will be a grateful master. I might allow you to die.”

---

How terrible, to toil away in life only to find yourself burdened with a boring job in the afterlife. Qadaffa's name is meant to hint at Egyptian origins but really it's just an echo of 'cadaver'. In a longer version of this story, Jonas believed he had arrived at Qadaffa's office to secure a lucrative contract with him, only slowly realising that he is the one being contracted.

'A Loophole' turned into quite a series on Daily Ghost. Later episodes introduced the Egyptian death goddess Anupet who works to counter Qadaffah's necromantic schemes.