The Nasal Cavity

Pestilence was sweating profusely. However, it had nothing to do with the new strain of bird flu he was currently incubating.

"He's gonna go mental when he wakes up." He whined, absentmindedly squeezing a pustule on his hand.

The other two men rolled their eyes and went back to their thought-intensive task. The voluminous firey-headed man tried to delicately manipulate a polished piece of ivory bone into its corresponding socket.

"You've got it on backwards! He's gonna go flippin' mental. Face it: we're dead."

"Shut up, Pestilence." The other, painfully thin man known as Famine shot at him. "That kind of attitude is not helping. Besides, I don't remember you finding fault with the idea at the time."

The huge shoulders of War heaved with the steady build up of imaginative laughter, crescendoing in thunderous rapture. Now it was the turn of Famine and Pestilence to roll their eyes, until their feisty friend let them share the joke. "We're not dead!" He explained between snorts, with tear filled eyes. "His lordship is dead!"

Famine's nostrils flared with carefully controlled impatience. "Yes. Quite. Now do you think you could be a dear, and pass me his femur? I think I have the knee cap here."

"Oh, alright." War passed the bone to Famine. "No need to sulk because you lost."

"I did not lose."

"Ooh, you little liar - you know I won with the half strike on the split!"

Famine blushed, calculating his odds of getting through dinner without an argument on the finer points of the ten pin bowling rule book, but Pestilence was pointing a crooked finger at the 3D jigsaw of Death's cadaver. He was coming round, and they hadn't finished rebuilding him yet.

War glanced under the dinner table and around the long dining room. "Where's his head, then?"

"Oh, gawd. I think we left it in the gutter. Make yourself useful, Pestilence and go and fetch it, there's a good sport."

"Unlike some..." War muttered, while the spotty youth sidled out the front door to look for the skull/bowling ball.

Pestilence picked him up and carried him in to the others. Two flaring pits of hell burned in the empty eye sockets of a very miffed Death and a muffled anger resonated throughout the house.

"When you've mmm-quite finished, Pestilence. Could you remove your mmm-fingers from my eyes and mmm-nose? I think we all need a little chat about personal space, and mmm-boundaries."

(415 words)

For more tales from the everyday lives of Four Horsemen please see:

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Christmas  [13+] Four Horsemen get ready for a night out... by Acme