Insert clever title here…

Death was a patient man. He stalked his prey with the cunning and patience of a skilled trapper, laying his traps with the full knowledge that eventually his prey would come to him. His days were spent, not in a fervor of running around and catching people, but slowly ambling from trap to trap, relieving souls and sending them on their ways– up, down, or worse than either, sideways.
Death was a practical man, but time had tarnished him, as it tarnishes everything. The constant brushing up against souls, the raw material of humanity stained him, and the stain seeped into his pores and began to work its way slowly through his veins up into his heart.
Over the course of millenia, with the handling of each and every soul that has passed on, Death slowly began to become ensoulled. The knowledge didn’t come to him slowly over time, the knowledge didn’t soak slowly in like rainwater through holey shoes. Rather, it was when he found himself sitting inside Christie’s of New York, preparing to bid, on all things, an original used by Elvis himself guitar, that he became worried. What was he doing, bidding on a guitar owned by the father modern music?! Why did he NEED Elvis’s guitar?
“Because I want it.” He said to himself as he raised his hand to make a bid.
An old lady, surely soon to be meeting him via soul trap turned her head and looked at him, “You know what they say… talking to yourself is the first sign that you’re going.” She smiled at him but he just scowled at her and upped his bid.
He tried to put off the notion that he was “going” but he couldn’t get it out of his head. Suddenly he didn’t just puzzle over his want of the guitar but began to fear it. He looked down at his feet, encased in soft, gorgeously made Italian shoes, gazed at his Armani suit-clad self and grimaced. He was becoming more and more like his prey with every passing hour. He shuddered as the thought came to him; souls have sell-by dates. Oh you can run, but you can’t hide. Even the most clever and cautious person who ever survived life’s pitfalls eventually dies in their sleep.
And if souls have sell-by dates… and he was becoming ensoulled… Death stared death in the face, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.