Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back any more …

Giggle.

“Press it again!”

Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back any more …

Giggle, giggle.

“Again! Again!”

Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back any more …

Concealed inside a fake bear head, Blaine Anderson (human persona of Death, Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse) stands behind the Crayola red counter of Build-A-Bear Workshop, a cool purple heat burning in his eyes. For the past fifteen minutes, he’s watched a bubbly, sugar-infused seven-year-old girl, standing on line to get her Frozen Fever Queen Elsa bear stuffed, press the blue button that plays the ten-second sample of the song Let It Go – which Blaine has deemed the most vile song in the universe – over and over and over again.

Blaine is free to glare behind the façade of his furry face, but he has to be careful how he directs the loathing surging through his frail human veins, or else he might unintentionally set this little girl on fire.

What a tragedy that would be, he thinks dryly.

A late-arriving gaggle of the girl’s party guests join her in line, and Blaine knows that this heinous torture is far from over.

Being the store manager of a Build-A-Bear Workshop is bad enough, but birthday parties are the worst, especially when the teenage lackey who normally wears the Bearemy bear suit (Build-A-Bear’s mascot that gets drug out for promotions and special occasions) calls in sick at the last minute and Blaine has to take over.

It’s not the first time. Hasn’t the kid had five grandmothers die in the past two years?

At least this tiny sadist and her minions haven’t started singing …

                                                            “Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back any more …”

Twelve squeaky, off-key voices breach the air, and Blaine can smell the polyester inside the head he’s wearing smoke.

“Holy frickin’ …”

“Excuse me, sir?” his obnoxiously upbeat assistant manager asks, beaming at him through the smiling mouth of his costume head as if this is the greatest day of her life – just like every other day between the day that corporate hired her and today. What makes her constantly upbeat attitude even less palatable is the fact that Blaine realized from day one that she has a crush on him … and he despises her for it. Every time she turns her pink bubblegum smile on him, he wants to shout, “No! No! No! No! No!” until the windows shatter and the concrete foundation of the building cracks.

Not yet, he tells himself with a deep breath in and out. Not yet.

“Could you please go to the back and bring out another box of those silver sparkle heels? I have a feeling they’re going to run out soon,” he says, covering for his cursing even though he doesn’t need to. He could have told her anything and she would have believed him.

He just wants to be rid of her.

That perfume she bathes in, thinking it’s going to attract his attention, makes him feel like vomiting with every breath he takes in.

“Righty-o, Mr. Anderson!” she says with an infuriatingly flirty lilt in her voice. “I’ll be right back.”

She doesn’t walk normally. She sort of skips away. Blaine watches her leave, imagining her being chased down and ripped limb from limb by a three-headed dog, maybe even a hydra. Or better yet – a dragon. Then he starts imaging that same dragon scorching the party guests, the ones screaming and screeching and singing that forsaken song, and for the first time that day, he smiles.

Polyester fiberfill lights quickly, he assures himself. This place would burn up like a Roman candle in seconds.

Blaine has lived much longer than the thirty-five years that he lets show on his face, and in that time, centuries upon centuries, he’s seen it all - the depravity of the world rising to a frothy head, ready to overflow, but not in the blatantly blasphemous way it has unfurled in the last hundred years or so.

In the distant past, Blaine has seen good men steal bread to provide food for their families. But these people today steal because they can, and on much larger scales than a single loaf. He’s witnessed a history of people fall to the pride of their own valiant deeds, which ultimately became their downfall, but the people who walk the mall, with their Prada purses and their Rolex watches, out and about just to be seen, are proud of the money they have and the things they can buy, even if they don’t necessarily need them.

He has seen the noblest of rulers get a taste for power, seen it taint them, developing a lust that eventually consumed them. But the people around him, even in this store, who should be enjoying the thrill of childhood innocence and glee, lust after the pettiest things – from people, to cars, to clothes, to the newest cell phones.

Ages ago, he’d have to travel the world to find a single person who embodied all of the deadly sins. In this day and age, he doesn’t have to go much farther than the Westfield Mall.

It’s obvious - to him, at least – that the signs of the end are here. Walk outside this mall, this haven of avarice, and what will he find?

Prejudice.

Intolerance.

Gun violence.

Racism.

Poverty.

Over indulgence.

Bullying.

Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back any more …

That song.

Blaine’s grin grows grotesquely on his face, hidden from view, skin turning black with the raw essence of Death. A single touch of his hand would steal the souls from those present, rendering them victims of righteous judgment … if not for the bear costume he’s wearing.

This is it – the moment they’ve been waiting for. It has to be, and thank goodness. He can’t wait to see it all burn, brought to ruin beneath the blade of his sword, the tromping hoofs of his dark steed. He pulls his arms inside his bear suit, fishes his iPhone out of his pants pocket, and sends out a text to the only three people on his contact list (beside his district manager).

Conquest.

War.

And his personal favorite – Famine.

Oh yeah. Death is calling in the troops with a simple two word message that signals the end of this world.

To: Contact Group – The Horsemen

It’s time.

***

Blaine sits at a two-person table in the food court and watches as the after-hours janitorial staff empties the trash bins, the sound of their sneakers scuffing the tile beneath their feet, echoing throughout the completely empty mall.

It’s 10:57. Almost eleven. The mall has been officially closed for well over an hour. There had been one other manager here, vacuuming in the Hallmark store, but he left half-an-hour ago.

The three gentlemen who had vowed to come to Death at a moment’s notice whenever he called are coming dangerously close to standing him up.

Blaine looks at his cell phone screen and grimaces.

“Where in the hell---?”

It’s then that he hears the click click click of Ferragamo heels hitting the tile, and the smell of sweet vanilla and ginger fills the air.

“Well, hello, stranger,” a sultry voice says. “My, my. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

Blaine smiles.

He came. Blaine knew that out of all of them, he would arrive first.

Blaine stands and turns to meet his old friend. “Hello, Kurt. Long time, no see.” He holds out his hand, eager to feel Kurt’s hand in his again.

“Too long, Blaine.” Kurt slips his hand in Blaine’s grasp. Blaine doesn’t often compare anything to this (it’s too painful for him to think about), but Kurt looks like an angel, and smells like a breath of heaven. But regardless of his outward appearance, how he chooses to dress, how he carries himself, there’s power in his hands, a strength that goes beyond whatever it is he does to maintain his physical form. A single sweep of Kurt’s eyes, a snap of his fingers, and everything around them would decay. Food would rot; animals would desiccate, still alive, their hearts beating the blood out of them until they ran dry; plants would wither and die, crumbling to dust.

To Blaine, it’s a huge turn-on.

“You summoned me?” Kurt slips into the chair opposite Blaine’s, taking a second first to wipe the seat down with his handkerchief, set that handkerchief ablaze, then materialize another clean handkerchief to sit upon.

Blaine glances at his phone. “I summoned all of you. You’re the first one here.”

Kurt shifts in his seat, and looks uncomfortably away. “So, you really think it’s time?”

Blaine leans in when he speaks, keeping that glorious smell of ginger and vanilla in his nostrils. “Don’t you?”

“Well, I have mixed opinions on the matter myself.”

“I know,” Blaine says, slightly bitter about Kurt’s opinions. “You’ve shut yourself away in an Ivory Tower since we’ve been exiled here, but I haven’t. I’ve been here, Kurt. In the trenches, so to speak. Living among them. Working with them. You haven’t seen the things that I’ve seen.”

“Such as?” A smile tugs up the corner of Kurt’s mouth, amused by Blaine’s passion over nothing.

“The greed. The vanity. The sloth.”

“I think you’re forgetting that I live in France, my dear,” Kurt remarks. “If you want to see greed and vanity, that’s where you should be.”

Kurt says it like an offer, but Blaine doesn’t seem to catch on.

“It wouldn’t matter where we were, Kurt! In fact, I think you’ve proven my point. It’s everywhere! Don’t you read the papers? Look up CNN on the Internet?”

“Heavens, no!” Kurt laughs. “It’s too depressing!”

“Well I do. Every day. And every day, things get worse. To be honest, I don’t see why He’s let it go on for so long.” Blaine’s eyes dart skyward, as if Kurt might not know to whom he’s referring.

“It’s called free will, Blaine,” Kurt says condescendingly. “He gave it to everyone. Even us, remember?”

“But our free will comes from a place of deciding when enough is enough, in His stead.” Blaine grins his maniacal grin from earlier, nodding at the thoughts of fire and brimstone brewing in his brain.

“It’s time to pull out the swords …” he says, hands gripping the table.

“Blaine …”

“Mount up the horses …”

“B, honey …”

“And bring about an end to the putrescent and filth that has overwhelmed the world!”

Outside, a thunder clap heralds the aftershocks of Blaine’s apocalyptic decree.

The janitors look around, murmuring to each other about whether or not it’s supposed to rain.

Kurt re-crosses his legs and rolls his eyes.

Blaine simmers down and looks back at the screen of his phone. “Where are they? I mean, they should have been here by now. This is unacceptable!”

“Yeah, uh …” Kurt coughs, fiddling with the ruby links in his cuffs to avoid Blaine’s burning gaze “… they texted me before I got here actually.”

Blaine’s eyes snap to Kurt’s face, their purple glow brighter in the dim, energy-efficient lighting.

“And …?” Blaine says, losing patience.

“And,” Kurt counters, not wanting to be in the middle of this, to be the messenger of defiance to Death, of all people, “basically they said that they’re … uh … not coming.”

“Not coming!” Blaine roars, the food court level shaking at the timbre of his voice, sending the janitors scurrying away in preparation for whatever unpredicted storm is coming. “What do you mean not coming!? Haven’t you seen the signs? Haven’t they seen the signs? I can’t be the only one! The time is nigh!”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, still finding it difficult to look Blaine in the eye when he’s on a murderous rant like this, “but, what if it wasn’t … you know … nigh?”

Blaine stares at Kurt, appalled. Kurt is tempted to laugh, but even though he’s a Horseman, too, making fun of Death himself? That’s plain stupid no matter who you are.

But Kurt has to do something before Blaine opens a hole in the earth and swallows San Diego.

“Come on, Blaine! We don’t need to open the seals. These people are destroying themselves. Besides, we’ve got it good here.”

“Maybe you guys do,” Blaine argues. “Conquest won another MMA title ...”

“Did you catch that fight?” Kurt jumps in. “Puck killed it! Figuratively, of course.”

“No,” Blaine deadpans. “I don’t get pay-per-view.”

“Oh,” Kurt mouths, motioning for Blaine to keep talking.

“War opened that Hot Springs corporate retreat in Utah …”

“Yeah.” Kurt laughs, shaking his head at the thought of Dave, with his insane temper and thirst for battle, surrounded by bamboo sprigs in glasses of spring water, and teaching classes in Feng Shui. “I’m lucky I got in on the ground floor with that one. Best investment I ever made.”

Blaine glares at Kurt, eyes violet with rage, and Kurt sobers up immediately.

“Sorry,” he says. “Continue.”

“And you!” Blaine gestures at Kurt in his expensive McQueen suit and his highlighted hair. (Was that new? Blaine doesn’t know. He hasn’t seen Kurt in … could it be that long?) “Famine – running the most exclusive five-star restaurant in Paris! But look at me, Kurt! I’m Death! I’m the Fourth Horseman! The scourge of the Earth! Even without the three of you riding beside me, I would still reign supreme as the greatest terror in the minds of men, and I’m the manager of a fucking Build-A-Bear, for His sake!”

“You didn’t have to be the manager of a Build-A-Bear,” Kurt says with a sarcastic quirk to his lips. “I mean, wasn’t Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick hiring?”

“I’m serious, Kurt!” Blaine slaps the table with the flat of his hand, making the floor beneath them quake. “Of all of us, I’m the only one who took our mission seriously. I’m the only one of you who laid in wait. I didn’t search for glory for myself!”

“And why not?” Kurt asks.

Blaine opens his mouth to argue, but he can’t. He doesn’t have an answer to that other than he was doing his job. But Kurt is right. The Almighty might have put them on Earth to wait for signs of the Apocalypse, but He didn’t exactly instruct them on what they should be doing while they waited. Blaine put himself in this position. At least he can admit it to himself.

But he can’t take Kurt’s teasing anymore, not when his once lover has been living the high life while he spends his afternoons stocking shelves with teddy bear accessories.

Kurt watches Blaine’s back bow and sighs. It hurts his soul to see Death look so … defeated.

“Look, Blaine, what you’ve been doing is commendable, but you didn’t have to abandon yourself to squalor in order to do it. Going about things this way was your choice. But be a big boy and own up to it! You can’t go destroying humanity and bringing about the plagues of Egypt because you got stuck working minimum wage!”

Blaine tries to turn away in his cramped, unyielding seat, wedging his back painfully against the edge of the table in the process. Kurt puts a hand on Blaine’s shoulder.

“You know, you might be here right now, Blaine, but this isn’t where you were meant to end up.”

Blaine wrenches an inch farther and pulls away. “I don’t need your pity, Kurt.”

Kurt looks at Blaine – looks at Death – in his blue work polo and khaki pants, and in his head, he smirks.

You need something.

“Blaine” - Kurt puts his hand back on Blaine’s shoulder where it had been shrugged off, massaging gently so he won’t be tempted to slough him off again - “when’s the last time you’ve been to Paris?”

“I don’t know? The Black Plague, maybe?”

“Exactly! It’s been far too long. You’ve made being Death all about the end of days. And where has it gotten you, hmm? I’ll tell you where – wearing a bear suit and dancing for a crowd of screaming kids, that’s where.”

Blaine’s cheeks pink at that.

How the hell did he know?

Did that mean that Kurt’s been checking up on him?

“Oh, so … you saw that, huh?”

“Yup.” Kurt bites back a laugh. “I did.” He gets up from his seat and steps in front of Blaine, needing to see his face – even this weak human face, which was so unlike his Horseman Death at all. “We’ve been given this time on Earth to live among the humans, and when we started, we thought it was a prison sentence. But maybe living with the humans isn’t about condemning them.”

Blaine locks eyes with Kurt, and the violet flame within them goes out. That was always Kurt’s super power – not the decay or the destruction.

Being able to put the fire of rage that burned hot inside Blaine, like an eternal pyre, to rest.

“Then what is it about?”

“Maybe it’s about understanding them. He’s given them so many chances. Maybe we’re part of that. There’s so much more for them to learn yet, Blaine. You, too.”

Kurt puts a comforting hand on Blaine’s knee and Blaine takes it, running his thumb over the thin skin that hides Kurt’s true form. Blaine always thought Kurt’s true form was gorgeous, a sight to behold, the thing of nightmares and glory. A flash of Kurt’s magnificence can bring anyone, human and angel alike, to their knees.

But this - this shallow, human contact - is nice, too.

“So, what do you think I should do?”

“I think you should come with me,” Kurt says. “Come to France. Work as a sous chef in my kitchen.” Blaine hisses at the thought of more work and Kurt laughs. “Or don’t work. Go to the Louvre, walk along the Seine, learn to paint. Forget about being Death for a while and learn what it’s like to be Blaine.”

“And … you and me?” Blaine asks. He hadn’t intended to. This isn’t about the two of them. It hadn’t been for eons. But he can’t help it. The worst thing about the decision he made to live as a human was the amount of time he’s spent away from Kurt.

“We can talk about you and me on the way,” Kurt says with a wink.

Blaine nods. That’s a good enough answer for him.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “You’re right. I don’t need this. I don’t need to be here. I’m going to be like you guys, find my niche, become disgustingly wealthy, and watch the world fall apart on its own, without me even having to lift a finger.”

“There you go!” Kurt gives Blaine’s knee a squeeze. “Now let’s go. The smell in this place is getting to me. I didn’t think anything could smell worse than rotting intestines, but something over there …” He gestures vaguely towards a cluster of locked kiosks “… is burning my sinuses.”

“That would be Panda Express.”

“Well then, if we ever do lay waste to the world, remind me to start there.” Kurt stands, brushing off the seat of his pants. “I’ve got a limo waiting outside, and a private plane …”

“Great, great …” Blaine stands, taking off at a powerwalk “… but there’s something important I need to do first.”

Blaine heads to the escalator with a curious Kurt close behind. He travels down a floor to where Build-A-Bear workshop is located – the first thing anyone sees when they get off the escalator, therefore generating tons of lookie-loo traffic during store hours, especially at Christmas.

Blaine despises the mall at Christmas.

He peeks in through the window, behind the counter, where he left the Bearemy costume before locking up. He stares at it, remembering the last six years of his life – the screaming, the constant singing, the over-the-top laughing, the joking at his expense, the birthday parties he couldn’t give a shit about, the bratty kids climbing all over him, the parents who thought that he would act as babysitter just because he worked there and was dressed like a giant walking stuffed animal. He lets his abhorrence for consumerism, for materialism, for the blight on society that capitalism has become overwhelm him.

And Bearemy’s smiling head bursts into flames.

“Blaine!” Kurt gasps, only half-serious when he bats him on the arm.

“He deserves it.” Blaine shreds his polo and leaves it on the floor outside. With any luck, his assistant manager will find it in the morning and think he was mauled by a bear.

The irony doesn’t escape him.

He takes Kurt’s hand, sizzling beneath the surface with the need to destroy something, too, and walks toward the exit.

“Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”