Why I am NOT Terry Pratchett

Space - a collection of galaxies hanging against a backdrop of darkness. There is no end to this darkness, it just goes on and on and on (bearing an eerie similiarity to daytime soaps).

Planets revolve around suns in spiral galaxies, following some ancient law set down by the Creator when He made the universe and the multiverse within and without (sort of like a Venn diagram but with quantum added for good measure). This is a law that is absolute. Well, almost absolute.

They say that the universe began with a bang. A big bang. Scientists of various species have spent countless years trying to listen to the last strains of that big bang. Sometimes, they finally hear it and get very excited, despite the fact that knowing how the universe came into being serves no real practical purpose. But they would be especially disappointed if that sound had been translated into their language equivalent, because of what it meant.

BANG, in the language of the Creator, actually meant...OOOPS.

There is another echo, tailing along the wake of the star turtle Great A'Tuin, upon whose shell were four giant elephants that carried, on their massive backs, the Discworld, home of such wonders like Cori Celesti and the Counterweight Continent and, despite the best efforts of everything else, the twin city of Ankh Morpork.

This echo is slightly different from BANG. It said, quite simply...DAMN.
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There is a room that brought to mind other words ending with "-oom", like "loom" and "gloom" and "doom". This is the room where the life timers are stored, rows after rows of hourglasses, some small, some big, with sand trickling down collectively so that the general effect was like that of an examination hall while the papers were being collected.

Death clicks on the black and white tiled floor on toes of bone, muttering inside his cowl as his skeletal fingers count along the rows of busy hourglasses. Occasionally he picks one up, always one whose sand was running out, and tucked it into the dark recesses of his robe.

A bony finger touches an hourglass, hesitates for one brief moment, before reaching out to grasp it in a pearly white fist. Two twinkling eyes regard it solemnly, and then Death sighs, sounding like the inrushing of air into a long enclosed tomb.

ANKH MORPORK, Death says in a voice like lead slabs dropping on granite. OH...

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"...bugger," someone says, when he wakes up to find himself in the place to which Hell was the next best thing. (Death isn't actually that someone who has just woken up, because this is a cinematic trick adapted for print. Pretty cool, eh?)

Ankh Morpork, a city of such depravity that the only reason the Creator has not destroyed it is because Hell might close down one day and He needs somewhere else to put its denizens in. A city that, despite dragons and wild ideas and Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, continues to exist. Even thrive, in a way that a fire thrives in an oil rig.

Ankh Morpork; Citie of ay Thousand Surprises and Delights. Very often, it came as a surprise and a delight that you were still alive.

For the moment, anyway.

Death isn't really that fond of Ankh Morpork, but then again, did not really dislike it anyway. Depraved it may be, a melting pot of cultures where anything and everything unpleasant bobs to the surface, you could not deny the sheer vibrancy of life in the big city. Of course, being on Duty in Ankh Morpork was like being the lone cashier on the last day of a major sale, but Death was never one to complain.

He glanced at the dead body on the ground, and nods as the ghost of the recently deceased rises up and fades away without uttering a single sound. There were people like that sometimes, who did not bother with the usual "Why did he have to stab me like that?" and the "What happens after this?" routine, just like there are people who paid their taxes without uttering a single word of complaint. Death enjoyed conversation, but one can only take so much of the same question before growing tired of it.

Well, the Duty was done, and He had nothing to do. Then again, He was in Ankh Morpork, home of the Mended Drum and the Shades. Even an anthropomorphic personification could find something to do here.

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It was a typical solicitor's office. It was, for one thing, quite large, and simply furnished with very expensive things. Bronze and brass and silver were very much in evidence, with all their surfaces polished to such a high degree that you could see your face on it - whether you wanted to or not. It was so bright that when the light reflected on it, both the surface and the light went "Ting!"

And this is where I run out of ideas on what to write.

Thus, you see the reason why I am not Terry Pratchett.