The game is finished, now you die

e limps between the tombstones, the few not crumbling or knocked over by teens. He isn’t as tall as he used to be. That’s what age does to you. Curves the spine, rounds the joints, shaves off inches and memory. Makes you somebody else.
    He keeps to himself these days. The dwarves organized on him, started insisting on being called Little People and demanded new robes. Cotton instead of the burlap he’d been buying in bulk. Too itchy, they said. So he just stopped making minions altogether. He’d let the spheres rust, too. He couldn’t afford to fix the humidifier to keep the old place dry. Mausoleums cost a fortune to heat.
    He’s taken to snowbirding. At the first sign of frost, he’s off to the red dimension. He doesn’t come back until the asphalt shimmers. He has to take tests every year to keep the hearse on the road. The fat man from the DMV always sweating all over the leather, he’s almost happy when they come to blow it up now, so he can get a new one. And come they will. They always find him, eventually. There were only so many funeral homes, tombs and graveyards he could hide in these days.
    Back inside, he lays the brochures out on his desk. Maybe he could get a part-time job at the hardware store in town. Just enough to put a down payment on a condominium, in one of these seniors' places. Retirement home. It has a nice ring to it.
    But first, there’s sod to lay, floors to polish, brains to obtain. There’s never enough time.
    Today is quiet, sure. But tomorrow, or next week, one day soon they’ll come roaring up in that Barracuda, tearing up his grass. The boy and the ice cream man. Going on thirty years, but they just won’t give up. The irony doesn’t escape him. He’s short and the boy’s old enough to start collecting a pension.
    They’ll make a mess of the place. Whooping and hollering and firing off that four-barreled shotgun. He’s so tired of dying, he just wants to rest.

---