Death Takes A New Year

De: Kat Summers

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

You'd think New Year's Eve would be simple. Stay home. Watch the year turn.

But no. I, Corvus Q. Featherbottom—raven, psychopomp, the only one who learned anything from Jamaica—have been dragged to Times Square because time itself has stopped, and apparently we're the only ones who can fix it.

Father Time is done. Six thousand years of watching humanity waste his gift, and he's finally snapped. The ball won't drop. Midnight won't come. Two million mortals are trapped in metal pens with no facilities, and the year is stuck at 11:47 PM for what might be eternity.

Death thinks he can negotiate with a deity who's older than calendars and twice as bitter. Hel is discovering that crowds are worse than the underworld. And Doug—yes, that Doug—has survived seventeen near-death experiences in four hours and still thinks this is "the best night ever."

I'm perched on a frozen hot dog cart, watching Father Time refuse to restart the clock, wondering when I became responsible for convincing an exhausted god that humanity deserves another chance.

Spoiler: our evidence is Doug. A man in a Hawaiian shirt. In December.

If this is how mortals celebrate, I'd hate to see how they despair.

A chaotic, time-bending fantasy told by a bird who warned everyone this would happen.