I thought I was really clever. I had it all worked out, how to avoid death. I had my dice: Specially carved from the knucklebones of a murderer, tried and executed, and dug up and carved all in one moonless night, a year and a day after his death. I kept them within reach at all times.

When Death did come, it was for the dumbest fucking reason. I choked on a piece of broccoli after congratulating myself for not dying falling down the stairs. I’d tripped at the top, see, but I knew enough about how to fall to roll with it and come out at the bottom with all my bones intact. Five minutes later, I take a big congratulatory bite of broccoli and then I’m choking and I panic and I’m on my knees and

And then I can breathe just fine, and I’m standing over my body. It’s still twitching, and I’m thinking that shouldn’t be so, I shouldn’t be officially dead until I’m officially dead, but

“We had to make time for your game.” Oh, thank god, it’s actually true. I fish my dice out of my pocket, but “You never win at dice.”

It’s because of the stakes, I explain. Death can’t just let people free to be alive again, so of course everyone loses when they set impossible stakes. So I make a different wager: He wins, I’m dead as normal. I win, I do his job for a year and a day. Death just smiled. He didn’t have a skull for a face, it turns out, just emaciated. Still a weird smile.

So we rolled, and he won. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. Was it just a roll of the dice? “No. You had it right. Bad stakes make for a bad game. But you had nothing to wager. If you’d found me while you were alive, maybe, but you let me find you. And by then, you have nothing left.

“C’mon, let me give you the tour.”