Booyaka. Return of the death-writing.
A storm was coming. The water of the river churned from the rushing wind, the normally tranquil current disturbed into high black walls of water, tipped with gleaming crests as the waves tumbled and crashed into one another, propelling each other down and back, only to be thrust again into angry spires.
I strode through the maelstrom, flecks of foam flying before my face and the agitated current sucking desperately at my heels. I paid the water no mind. My eyes were fixed ahead and above, at the huge iron construction that stood over the mouth of the river.
The bridge was my destination, a towering monument of steel, its many lights casting illuminating beams on the enormous and brooding black clouds overhead. I knew what I had to do. I had long ago steeled myself against my inevitable duty. What would it be tonight? Bridges hold so many possibilities for me. A collision, most likely, but how large? Perhaps even a structural collapse… The sheer amount of vehicles rushing over it like so many steel ants would make that quite the job. But then I saw my target and my cold resolve melted.
A single man sat on the edge of the bridge, his legs dangling over the precipice. He was still as I rose over the water, and I couldn’t help but be filled with disgust. Not for the man, but for everyone else, those who drove past him, seeing what he was about to do, uncaring, unhelping. It was my job.
He started as I reached his level; and who can blame him? Between my dark hooded cloak, lifeless eyes, and pale skin stretched so tight over my face that my features were hardly more than those of a skull, who wouldn’t be startled? He raised his stricken face and under the brilliance of the passing headlights I could see the wet streaks of tears.
He didn’t want this. He could be saved.
But before I had the chance to beckon him down, he spoke. “So, you’re here,” he choked. “This is it, then.”
“No, it’s not,” I answered urgently. “This doesn’t have to end like that. Remember who you are. Where’ve you been? What’s your name?”
“My name is Michael.” A note of anger entered his voice. “And I’ve been through hell.”
“No, you haven’t!” I was desperate. I could feel his end approaching. “But what do you think will happen if you go through with this?”
The anger was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a crushing sadness and beneath it, resolve. “It can’t be any worse than what’s already happened.” And then he dropped.
“No!” I shouted, lunged forward. A finger brushed his neck, there was an almost undetectable pulse, and the body twisted, limbs flapping, and plummeted down. The water below seemed to rise up to grab the descending form and it vanished, swept out to sea by the current.
No time to mourn him, I told myself. Stay strong and carry on. I learned long ago that that’s the only way to stay sane. There will be time for lamenting later.
And in an instant, I was gone from the bridge. I continued my business; that night, like every other, I took thousands. And what are those thousands to me? I’ve taken billions in my time! A few thousand more or less is meaningless after all this time.
Hah. I wish. It never gets easier.
Some go willingly; they have lived out their lives and are ready to move on. These I can bear, for they are grateful that I can finally send them on, into eternity. Some try to run, or fight. But it is inevitable; their times have come, or else I would not have tried to take them. Some beg me for their lives. These hurt me, to see them so pitiful, clinging desperately onto the last dregs of mortality and forced to plead to an immortal for a second chance, as if I were their superior on some twisted hierarchy. I have as little choice as they do.
But it is the last category that I hate taking the most. Those who have chosen to send themselves to me before their time is up, those like Michael who don’t understand that nothing on Earth can be worse than what they will find below. I can’t stand to see them at the lowest point that humanity can reach. And despite my immortality, they kill me. I can feel myself die every time they force me to steal away their lives.
It’s never an easy job, but that night was far, far worse. After I took Michael, I felt myself drawn away from the bridge, and into the city. A metropolis at night is always brightly lit and bustling, but this was different. A crowd had assembled at the foot of a single building, held back by a semicircle of official vehicles. A pair of brilliant spotlights crossed beams at the top of the complex, illuminating a man standing immobile at the lip of the building.
Oh, God, no. Not another one.
I settled on the edge of the next building over. From some thirty feet away I called out, “You, there on the wall. Where will you go to once you fall?”
The man’s face twisted into a pained grimace, half a sneer and half a smile. “Well, Reaper,” he spat, “I’m about to find out.”
A body doesn’t make the sound you think it would when it hits the ground. People expect a tremendous thump on impact, but there isn’t one. It’s softer that anybody would guess, and that makes it all the worse for the observers. They came for the spectacle of death, and waited all this time for a climax, but there was none. The body dies silent.
But I’ve got to keep moving. No time to waste, my next charge is scarcely a block away.
An apartment building was my target: one of the higher floors, in a room just outside the balcony. Coming to a rest here, I saw the charge. Suppressing the instinct to scream, I called up the calmest voice I could.
“Hey, put down the gun. What are you thinking?”
This one didn’t even speak to me. His eyes were hollow.
Bang.
The boy collapsed. He couldn’t have been more then thirteen.
“…You were someone’s son.” Tenderly, I placed a hand on his neck, and so freed his soul.
At that point, I thought that the night’s business was done. I could feel a familiar pull, and I knew immediately that I needed to go see an old friend tonight.
Arabella was different. She was a human, and the only one I’ve ever known who recognized me for what I was. Nobody can see me but at the hour of their death, except Arabella. On that night, I knew that I had to visit her. I had thought that it was for my own moral support, so that I could reconcile the death of the boy.
Arabella’s small house, where she lived alone, appeared over the horizon. I entered quietly; I could feel her presence above, in her bedroom. She was awake, so I came in unannounced, feeling my form change as she beheld me: I became a tall, almond-eyed Greek man with curly black hair, dressed in an elegant suit.
Arabella was in bed; unsurprising at this late of an hour. She must have been near thirty on that night. “Hello, Thanatos,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you to come.”
“I’ve had the most horrible night in years, Arabella,” I cried. “Just before I came there was a boy, probably not even in his teens yet; the look in his eyes was terrible. He shot himself. He killed himself, Arabella, he was twelve years old and he killed himself! Why? What drives people to do that?”
“Thana,” she said quietly. “Tell me. This is your job. But you don’t belong here, do you? Who are you, really, Thana? You are called the Grim Reaper, and Anubis, as Azrael and Thanatos, but those are just names. Faces.”
I sighed. “A long, long time ago, I fell to this place from another dimension. And thrust among the beasts, the way that they behave, it borders on dementia.” For a moment I was silent, then my voice rose again, drifting to verge of hysterics. “And now, after all these years, I can barely take it. I don’t think I can make it. Please, take me away from here! I want to go home.”
Silence. Then Arabella murmured, “Thana… what lies beyond the veil?”
My voice was dull. “I don’t know. I’ve never been there.” I looked up and stared at her with renewed interest. “Why? You’re time is far off- oh, no. No, no, no…”
I never get to see humans in health. Sick, on their deathbeds, is what a normal person is to me, because I simply never know them otherwise. That’s why I didn’t realize what was wrong with Arabella until then.
“Thana, I don’t want to go,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”
The room grew dark. All of the pent-up emotions of hundreds of thousands of years full with death collecting suddenly spilled out of me. Black skeletal shapes writhed in the shadows as smells of sickness and putrefaction wafted in. The beating of leathery wings, screams, and cries filled the air. My voice cut through it all, low and thundering.
“You’re scared? You don’t want to go? Do you think I chose this? If only I could have been there, I’d be a hand for the sinking. I’d be a prayer for the dying! See this pain etched in my face? I’m so damn sick and tired of the taste of tears, the sting of pain, the smell of fear, the sounds of crying!
“Tell me, Arabella, as you’re standing at the edge of your life, what do you remember? Was it all you wanted? I’m just trying to earn a set of feathery wings. I wish I could protect you here. Oh, please don’t cry now, smile! As you’re standing at the edge of your life, your troubles are over! Mine are just beginning.”
All of a sudden, the horrors vanished. I whispered: “I’m just trying to earn a set of feathery wings to take me away from here. It’s me you leave behind.”
Arabella was weak. Her sobbing was becoming softer, interrupted with wet chokes and coughing. I leaned over her bedside, reaching down lightly.
“You’re gone from here, don’t leave from here. Don’t leave me here, I hate it here. You’re gone from here, don’t leave me here. I need you here. I need to see you smile.”
I came to them out of mists and rain;
I came to them in dreams at midnight;
I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled the northern sky at dawn...
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