"Hey, Big D!" shouted Famine across the room.

Death looked up and scowled. Famine knew how much he hated being called 'The Big D'. His name was Death. It was a good name - strong and proud. 'The Big D' made him sound like a failed rap star who was working on his fourteenth comeback.

"My name is..." Death began, his voice a low rumble that made him sound like he had a subwoofer stuffed up his behind. Glasses vibrated when he spoke, a fact that War found increasingly irritating as he'd had to attach one of those ridiculous string affairs to his varifocals to help prevent them slipping off whenever Death said something.

"Yeah, whatever," said Famine, or Fam the Man as he was usually called. Granted he was only known as Fam the Man by himself and Pestilencio, but it was enough. Pestilencio, or Pestilence to everyone other than the Man that was Fam, seemed to almost be Famine's shadow. He bought so deeply into Famine's strange world of 'hip' names and 'jive' talking, he even wore a baseball cap backwards and a gold bracelet so heavy his wrist ached if it was raised for more than a few minutes. He was the youngest of the four, and was easily led. It didn't help that he was a little slower than his brothers and didn't quite see the world in the same way. Famine, being the cool fly guy that he told everyone he was - even the milkman who called once a week for the bill to be settled and the old lady (Brenda) who lived down at number 7 - simply thought that everyone saw him as a dude, so saw no problem in Pestilence following him around like an adoring puppy.

War and Death had tried to, gently, peel Pestilence away from the influence of their slightly off-beat brother, but he was having none of it. Famine was a cool dude, apparently, and they could swivel. On what, they didn't know. They'd made numerous attempts at convincing him that he and Famine both needed to be dragged up to date – that an unhealthy obsession with clichéd stereotypes made them look kind of silly, but their efforts had been in vain.

So War went back to completing crosswords while peering over his glasses and squinting, and Death returned to...

"What ya doing dude?" asked Famine.

"Nothing to concern you," snapped Death. War pushed his glasses back up his long nose.

"Come on, fess up!" the Man named Fam said. He pushed his chair back from the table where he'd been beating Pestilence at Monopoly for roughly the hundredth time and swaggered over to where the Big D was sitting. Pestilence watched him go, constantly shaking the dice in his hands and blowing on them for good luck.

This was the only problem with playing any sort of board game with Pestilence. He thought blowing on a pair of dice was lucky and helped him win. Not that he ever did win. At anything. Ever. Famine had mentioned it once, months before, even though he didn't believe it, but Pestilence would have believed that day was night and tomatoes were a nice tasty thing to eat, if Fam the Man had said so. After a couple of games, however, the dice had to be thrown away due to the fact that Pestilence's constant breathing on them made them look as if they'd caught some cuboid form of leprosy or something. They'd start to wither and the numbers would smudge and fade, and they would end up as little more than lumps of plastic or wood. The dice they'd been playing with this time had only been bought the day before, but already they were showing signs of poor health. The five on one was beginning to look like a four, and the other was starting to wilt around the edges.

Famine stood by Death and lightly punched his shoulder. "Come on diamond geezer, let us in on your little secret." He nudged his brother again, causing a low rumble, like thunder in the distance, to come from the back of Death's throat. Famine's perpetual smile faltered for a second, but then came back, as big and beaming as ever. "Yo, D," he said. "Watcha up to?"

Death sighed. A little peace? Was that too much to ask for? Sure, he was the eldest, closely followed by War, but come on, people! They were all centuries old! Couldn't they at least act like grown-ups? He held up the newspaper he was holding and indicated it with a nod.

"This is a newspaper," he said quietly. "It has news in it. You read newspapers to find out what is happening in the news. I, therefore, am reading the newspaper, because I would like to find out what is happening in the news." He raised his thick eyebrows questioningly. "Is that ok with you?"

Famine nodded, ignoring or, more likely, not even noticing Death's sarcasm. "Hey, Dudey-dude! Whatever floats your boat!"

Death shook his head in resignation.

'Why me?' he thought in sad desperation.

Famine paused for a moment, as if waiting for Death to continue. "So... What is happening in the world?"

Death sighed and the photo of their cousin, Fate, fell off the wall and into the fish tank, just missing Lucy the Axolotl. Lucy regarded Fate's picture with disdain for a moment, then swam to the bottom of the tank for a mouthful of bloodworm, feet kicking and tail swaying in disgust. A pigeon fell from the sky overhead, landing, dead, in their back garden next to the pile of tiny bones from all the others that had done the same. Whenever Death sighed, the pile of bones grew ever so slightly larger. Unfortunately for the birds, he sighed a lot, not least thanks to the exasperations of his brothers.

Thanks to their pet three-headed Jack Russell, Cedric (who was partial to still-warm pigeon) it was, at least, a pile of bones and not rotting carcasses, which was nice.

"It's a bad job," he said. "Very bad. The Apocalypse seems to be happening without us."

Famine laughed and two crops of wheat and a willow tree in the fields just outside of town began to whither.

"Don't be talking no rubbish, D!" he exclaimed. "We IS the Apocalypse!"

Death wanted to sigh, but he knew Cedric was already dining and the local pigeon population was fast becoming diminished. He thought they'd have realised that the house was a no-fly zone but no, they hadn't. As such, Cedric was rather portly for a Jack Russell and the pile of bones in the garden was more of a feature than simply a mess. Who knew Jack Russells could be so artistic?