Checkbooks and Moral Balancing Acts
Filthy Rich opened his eyes.
It was funny, he didn’t even remember closing them. In fact, he didn’t remember standing up either. Last thing he knew, he was eating his breakfast and now he was standing? Forgetting things so quickly wasn’t like him.
“Heya pally.” The voice was deep and heavily accented. It was an accent he heard regularly on trips to Manehatten, but here in his own home? An even stranger occurrence. The stallion spun around, his tie lifting up as he did so. Upon turning around, he was met with a rather long black pole that ended with a curved blade. A scythe? “Down here, bub.”
“What?” Filthy Rich looked down, an eyebrow cocked. Standing before him, maybe only a bit taller than his pre-teen daughter, was a figure in a black cloak. A shockingly white hoof rested on the scythe that stood much taller than the figure, and a bony muzzle poked out of the shadow the hood casted. “What-” A chill shot up the stallion’s spine as it caught up to him, the realization hitting him like a runaway produce cart. “-are you doing in my home?!”
“Whaddya know-” The height-challenged pony grumbled out. “-anotha genius…” The figure stepped back and sighed. “Right, gotta bring out the spiel.” The scythe was relinquished and rested against one of the walls, the early morning light catching the reflective blade. “Hold on-” The hoof went into the black cloak, rummaging around until it found a small notecard. “Right okay.”
“Wait.” Filthy got his first good look at the pony before him, it’s face completely made out of bone. Empty eye sockets focused on the card in front of it as it’s mouth clacked, the sound of bone on bone. “Are you-”
“Yes!” The pony spoke, obviously reading the little script on the card. “Hello, I am Death.” Another chill shot up the stallion’s spine as his head turned to the direction of his kitchen table, locating what he feared most. “Ya have probably seen yer body by now, so yeah you are dead.”
Filthy Rich’s body sat at the kitchen table, slumped over with his head in the plate of eggs in front of it. His tongue hung out of his mouth and his lifeless blue eyes staring into the distance. Death’s canned script was quickly forgotten as the earth pony rushed over to his body and began to try to shake it, his hooves going straight through.
“But fear not!” Death continued, his terrible acting doing nothing to hold the pony’s attention. “For this is but the beginnin’ of yer journey. Now I am hear to take into account all o’ yer actions and decisions in life, and if app-apli...if I want, give ya a contract to enter everlastin’ paradise or cast ya down to eternal damnation.” The petite skeleton tossed the card back into his cloak and turned his head to Filthy. “So let’s get this started, huh? I got places to be, people to reap.”
“No I can’t be dead!” The recently deceased cried out as he turned towards Death. “How did I die?” The stallion demanded to know, his thick black eyebrows furrowing. “Heart attack? Stroke? Assassination?” If the skeletal face of Death could display emotion, Rich guessed it would hold a very annoyed look at the moment.
“Listen pal, if yous was important enough to assassinate, ya woulda been dead long before this.” Death hopped up into one of the chairs next to the still-warm corpse, taking the steaming coffee off of the tablecloth and taking a long sip. “Ya choked to death on yer eggs. I’d say to chew yer food next time, but-” Death chuckled, his bones clicking and clacking as he did. “Don’t think it matters now.”
“Wh-” Filthy shook his head, vaguely remembering the panic of not being able to breathe but nothing really solid. “No, no. I can still be saved. I can still be-”
“-Filthy S. Rich, aged forty-five. Chestnut brown coat, greasy black mane and blue eyes.” Death read off of a paper that appeared in front of him. “This you?” He held it out for the pony to see, a picture of his dead body stapled onto the page, one that looked like it was just taken.
“Well you know that’s me, I’m right here!” Filthy wasn’t sure what the reaper was getting at, but it felt redundant and quite silly.
“Well, we don’t make mistakes...not usually...there was that incident with the Apples a dozen years back, but we don’t talk about that.” Death shrugged and looked at the ghost in front of him. “So yeah, yer dead.”
“Rich, dear!” As if on cue, his wife’s voice floated through the air like nails on a chalkboard. “I need some bits, I’m taking Diamond out to-” Spoiled entered the kitchen, her eyes locked on her husband’s body. “Oh my Celestia!” The pointy-nosed mare rushed to her spouse’s side, her hooves wrapping around him.
“See!” Filthy Rich shouted in triumph, a grin crossing his usually sour features. “Spoiled will call an ambulance and I’ll be up and around in no time!”
“Oh good.” Spoiled smiled as she pulled away from his body, a heft bag of bits in her grasp now. “Well, at least I don’t have to ask you for money anymore, darling.” The snide grin and venom in her words deflated Filthy in an instant, causing his incorporeal form to slump to the floor.
“Yeah, sure it’ll be any minute now…” If Death had eyes to roll, they would’ve been doing full rotations in the socket by now.
“Daddy!” Another shrill voice echoed through the halls, perking Filthy’s ears up again. His daughter, Diamond Tiara, came stomping into the room with her usual bossy countenance. “Daddy?”
“He’s dead, Diamond.” Spoiled answered their daughter as she rummaged through one of the cabinets. There was a pregnant silence between the two mares as the elder finally turned around to face the younger.
Slowly, wide exuberant smiles crossed the faces of them both. The pair pink mirror images of one another in the moment. They quickly closed the distance and hugged each other, making sharp and irritating screeching noises.
“I get my inheritance early!” Diamond cried out.
“I get a younger husband!” Spoiled cackled. “Now let’s go find his will!” And just like that, his body was left alone again as the pair bolted through the halls with renewed purpose.
“So.” Death looked at his charge, shrugging. “About that ambulance.”
“Yeah yeah.” Filthy muttered, taking off his tie and collar and tossing it to the side. Not like he needed it now. “Let’s just get this over with, alright.” The world crashed down around the stallion, nothing he thought was true turned out to be. He assumed that when he died he would be mourned and his family would at least care.
“Alright. So.” Death held out his hoof, a rather long piece of parchment appearing in it with a puff of black smoke. “Now, it has been unanimously recommended that ya be sent to the Pit of Eternal Damnation. Or, as we like to call it, PED.”
“What?!” Just like that, Filthy’s spirit was renewed. He roared at Death and flared his nostrils, instinctively stamping his hoof against the ground. “Tartarus? For what reason?”
“So ya dispute this ruling, pally?” Death asked dryly.
“Yes I am disputing it!” The ghost protested, the anger never leaving his eyes. “What have I ever done in my life to deserve eternal damnation?” Filthy was appalled at this decision, absolutely flabbergasted! Of course he would object!
“I’m glad ya asked.” Death cleared his throat and looked down at the paper. “Age three: took yer sister’s doll and tore the arms off.” Death looked back up at him expectantly.
“Oh come on!” Filthy laughed in Death’s face incredulously. “I was three! I was a child. I doubt I even knew what I was doing!” This all felt so ridiculous, defending something from nearly forty years ago.
“Ignorance of the law ain’t a defense for breaking it, jack. You should know that.” Death chided him. Filthy only sighed and waved a hood at the cloaked figure. “So ya plead guilty?”
“You know what-” Filthy sat across from the reaper at the table now, slipping into the comfortable position as businessman and negotiator that he knew. “-I plead guilty to anything between the age of one and ten. Also to anything else where I might’ve been ignorant of some moral law that you have.”
“Well alright…” Death shook his head and moved a worryingly amount down the page, clicking his teeth as he did so. “Age eleven: yer mother punished ya fer not doin’ yer chores by takin’ yer allowance and givin’ it to the bell ringer for charity outside a’ yer Dad’s store. When the bell ringer went on break, ya stole it back.”
“Well that was my money.” Filthy scoffed. “Mother had no right to give it away, and besides what did the charity need it for?” The look that the stallion received from Death could at best be called incredulous.
“It was a charity fer starvin’ orphans in Griffonia.”
“Well at the time I hadn’t eaten all day and needed that money.” The ghost argued, putting a hoof on the table but being wary not to put it through the table. “And quite frankly, I remember wishing I was an orphan after she did that. I plead innocent.”
“One of these, alright. I always get the fun ones…” Death grumbled as he moved down the list. “Let’s skip around a bit, huh?” Last Thursday: Ya threatened Derpy the mailmare that ya would, and I quote, ‘make sure she’s begging on the streets of Las Pegasus with her daughter’ because of an accident.”
“Okay!” Filthy did his best not to let his mouth hang open. “Context is important here!”
“Please.” Death leaned back in the chair. “Enlighten me.”
“She was delivering my mother’s ashes-” Filthy crossed his front legs in front of his chest and frowned at the reaper.
“-the mother ya said ya wished left ya an orphan.” Death chimed in.
“-aaaand she dropped the package on our walkway, breaking the urn!” Filthy finished with a triumphant uptick. “I spent the rest of my afternoon sweeping my mother up off of the front lawn! So yes, I was a bit angry at the moment and said something I probably shouldn’t have.”
“Ya threatened a mildly disabled single mother with homelessness and joblessness, bub.”
“Yes and I didn’t mean it!” Filthy argued.
He only received a knowing look in response.
“Well, I would never do it!” He pleaded with Death.
Again, the empty sockets only looked at him silently.
“I didn’t go through with it!”
“I guess that counts for somethin’.” Death sighed and marked something down on the paper. “Alright, well ninety percent of the rest of these are all about greed; givin’ to charities for only the tax breaks, creating a charity and payin’ yerself to run it, tax evasion through offshore accounts, yadda yadda yadda.”
“Okay, well why else would somepony give to charity, hmm?” Filthy questioned, finally getting Death in a gotcha!
“Outta the goodness in their hearts!” Death roared back. “Whaddya mean ‘why else’? Yer reason is the outlier, not the example!” The skeleton stood up, grabbing his scythe. In one smooth motion, he swung it and cut a hole open in the floor. Flames roared up from the hole, the wave of heat making his cloak billow and blowing Filthy Rich out of his chair. “I’ve heard enough, get in.”
“What? No!” The ghost protested as he stood back up. He racked his brain for a solution, someway out of his fate of infinite pain and suffering. “You said something about a contract earlier! That you could make a deal with me to send me to paradise!” Filthy grinned in excitement. He was a pony that thrived on making deals! “I want to enter into a contract!”
“Of course you do.” Death sighed. “Alright, tell ya what, Pally-” Death produced another piece of parchment and a golden quill, putting on the table. “Considerin’ the vast vast majority of…’problematic events’ in yer life were on account o’ greed, I’ll cut ya a deal.” Filthy got up as Death was speaking and moved to the contract, giving it a read. “ Sign this here paper and seventy five percent of the money in yer bank will be distributed to charities, poor ponies ya wronged, and the less fortunate. We’ll call it even and-” With another motion of his scythe, a hole appeared above them both. Gentle rays of sun shone down, fluffy white clouds backed by the bluest sky he had ever seen. -ya can go to paradise.”
“No.”
“What?” Death’s jaw literally hit the floor with a hollow clatter. “Pally, everlastin’ paradise for yer immortal soul fer money yous never gonna use again. Why no? This is the easiest decision of yer life!”
“Listen, the bureaucrats never got that much money from me in life and they’re sure as hay not getting it in death!” Without another word, Filthy marched over to the fiery hole in the floor and jumped in it without another thought. “See you in heeeeeeeeeeeeelllll….”
“Well.” Death stamped his scythe on the ground, closing both of the portals he opened. “I guess he ain’t partin’ with his money even over his cold dead body.” The little skeleton shrugged. “Oh well, not my problem. Time ta go see if Granny Smith is finally dead.”
