Jack Vettriano The Cocktail Shaker

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Susan did so, and stood before the Ultimate Reality.
Death was seven feet tall. He looked taller. Susan had vague memories of a figure carrying her on its shoulders through the huge , and haughty, and terrible. He might unbend enough to bend the Rules, Susan thought, but that doesn't make him human. This is the keeper of the gate of the world. Immortal, by definition. The end of everything.
He is my grandfather.
Will be, anyway. Is. Was.
But . . . there was the thing in the apple tree. Her mind kept swinging back to that. You looked up at the figure, and thought about the tree. It was almost impossible to keep both images in one mind.
WELL, WELL, WELL. YOU HAVE A LOT OF YOUR MOTHER ABOUT YOU, said Death. AND YOUR FATHER.dark rooms, but in memory it had been a human figure ‑ bony, but human in a way she was certain of but couldn't quite define.This wasn't human. It was tall

Ford Madox Brown Romeo and Juliet

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was no real day or night here. That had given Albert trouble at first. There was just the bright landscape and, above, a black sky with stars. Death had never got the hang of day and night. When the house had human inhabitants it tended to keep a 26‑hour day. Humans, left to themselves, adopt a longer diurnal rhythm than the 24‑hour day, so they can be reset . 'But they ain't stopped dyin' this time. And the horse went to her. She's fillin' the hole.'
Albert glared at the darkness. When he was agitated it showed by a sort of relentless chewing and sucking activity, as if he was trying to extract some forgotten morsel of teatime from the recesses of a tooth. Now he was making a noise like a hairdresser's U‑bend.like a lot of little clocks at sunset. Humans have to put up with Time, but days are a sort of personal option.Albert went to bed whenever he remembered.Now he sat up, with one candle alight, staring into space.'She remembered about the bathroom,' he muttered. 'And she knows about things she couldn't have seen. She couldn't have been told. She's got his memory. She inherited.'SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. He tended to sit by the fire at nights.'Last time he went off, people stopped dyin',' said Albert

Paul Gauguin Woman with a Flower

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Colon began, 'now, as you—'
'You men, you listen up good right now!' Detritus boomed.
'Thank you, Acting-Constable Detritus,' said Colon wearily. 'Captain Vimes is getting married today. We're going to provide a guard of honour. That's what we always used to do in the old days when a Watchman got wed. So I want helmets and breastplates bright and shiny. And cohorts gleaming. Not a speck of muck . . . where's Corporal Nobbs?'
There was a dink as clockwork thinking helmet.'
Cuddy coughed. 'These big bits are cooling fins, see? Painted black. I glommed a clockwork engine off my cousin, and this fan here blows air over—' He stopped when he saw Colon's expression.
'That's what you've been working on all night, is it?'
'Yes, because I reckon troll brains get too—'Acting-Constable Detritus' hand bounced off his new helmet.'Hasn't been seen for hours, sir!' he reported.Colon rolled his eyes.'And some of you will . . . Where's Lance-Constable Angua?'Dink. 'No-one's seen her since last night, sir.''All right. We got through the night, we're going to get through the day. Corporal Carrot says we're to look sharp.'Dink. 'Yes, sir!''Acting-Constable Detritus?''Sir?''What's that you've got on your head?'Dink. 'Acting-Constable Cuddy made it for me, sir. Special

Johannes Vermeer Woman with a Pearl Necklace

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mighty brass taps and then into an enamelled tub. There were things laid out on a fluffy towel beside it -huge scrubbing brushes, three kinds of soap, a loofah.
Willikins was standing patiently beside the bath, like a barely heated towel rail.
'Yes?' said Vimes.
'His lordship . . . that is, her ladyship's father . . . he required to have his back scrubbed,' said Willikins.
'You go and help theThere was a thung noise and Cuddy's helmet came free.
Cuddy emerged, blinking, into the light. He focused on the Librarian, and growled.
'He hit me on the head!'
'Oook.'
'He says you came up through the floor,' said Carrot.
'That's no reason to hit me on the head.'
'Some of the things that come up th old geyser stoke the furnace,' said Vimes firmly.Left alone, he struggled out of his breastplate and threw it in the corner. The chainmail shirt followed it, and the helmet, and the money pouch, and various leather and cotton oddments that came between a Watchman and the world.And then he sank, gingerly at first, into the suds. 'Try soap. Soap'11 work,' said Detritus.'Hold still, will you?' said Carrot.'You're twisting my head off!''Go on, soap him head.''Soap your own head!'rough the floor at Unseen University don't even have a head,' said Carrot.
'Oook!'