The Kindly Reaper

The things my brain creates at 1:00 in the morning.

               The girl was lying on her back on the pavement, looking up at the blue sky.  There was a dull ache in the back of her head, but the rest of her felt surprisingly numb, as if the pain she knew that she should be feeling were somehow displaced from her body.  Muffled, too, were the noises around her, the sounds of the sirens and the urgent voices of the EMTs running towards the smoking remains of the car.  She knew she shouldn’t have let her sister drive while she was drunk.  Stupid mistake.  It didn’t seem to matter now, though.  Everything felt so distant.

                Suddenly, a tall, cloaked figure appeared at the girl’s feet.  She looked up at the towering form, her eyebrows raised.  So… this was the Grim Reaper.  Turns out he did exist.  He was just like all the cliché descriptions - robed all in black with a hood hiding his face, skeletal hands grasping the long wooden handle of a huge, wickedly curved scythe.  That scythe… The Reaper raised the blade above his head, and the girl was seized with a sudden, terrible fear.  “Please,” she begged, swallowing nervously as she followed the scythe’s movements with her eyes.  “You don’t need to use that.  I’ll come willingly.  I won’t fight.  I promise.”

                But the Reaper made no movement to stop.  The scythe came to a halt high above his head, pausing for a moment and hanging motionless in the air.  Then, suddenly, the Reaper brought it swiftly down.  The girl screamed in utter agony as the sharp blade cleaved into her flesh.  Then, everything went black.

 

                The girl was conscious just a moment later, the pain gone, floating on her back in some sort of swirling fog of black and gray shadows.  Suddenly, a bony hand appeared before her, reaching through the mist in front of her face.  Without thinking, she grabbed the hand, and it lifted her up and out of the shadows as if pulling her from under water.

                The girl was brought to her feet on the pavement where she had just been lying - in fact, where her body was still lying behind her - and saw that the hand belonged to the Grim Reaper, who was standing before her, the giant scythe now strapped to his back.  The Reaper let go of her hand and lifted his skeletal fingers to his face, pulling down the hood of his cloak.  To her surprise, the girl found herself face-to-face with a young man, more of a boy, really, not much older than she was.  He had curly, messy black hair and warm olive skin, and his eyes were big and brown with extraordinarily long lashes.

                “Sorry about that,” the boy said.  “I have to do that to everybody.  It’s the only way to separate the soul from the body.”

                “No worries,” the girl replied.  “I mean… I was dead anyway.”

                The boy smiled.  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand in his bony fingers.  “Let’s get you home.”

                Together, the two of them walked off down the street, chatting amiably, leaving the girl’s dead body to grow cold on the pavement behind them.

Author's Note

So, apparently takes on the Grim Reaper are kind of an "in" thing... :) This idea just kind of popped into my head. If you're interested in this, I highly recommend checking out "The Grim Reaper's Kids" by Emily and "My Dear Grim Reaper" by Errenn. Both are very good, and - surprise! - also about interpretations of the Grim Reaper. Because, apparently, we human beings all have a kind of freakish obsession with death. Good for us.

Reviews

[Érenn]

Alicia, if I had missed reading the Author's Note (don't worry i never do) I wouldn't be able to thank you for reading my work. Thank you so much for liking my take on the grim reaper.
Moving on to the story it's a lovely sweet story. The fact that the girl was already willing to let go off life, was interesting, because it's made me wonder what kind of a back story she had. And when you described the grim reaper, believe it or not I thought you were describing my features. Damn do i like this grim reaper a lot ^^ No I would have loved it any way, irrespective of the physical features. Good job ^^ Keep it up.

[AliciaB]

Thank you! And you are most welcome! To be honest, the girl doesn't really have a backstory - in terms of her being so willing to die, I was thinking more along the lines of, she already knows she's about to die, so she'd rather go without the pain of the scythe. I guess the backstory she might have would be an understanding of what the Grim Reaper is supposed to be: someone who ferries souls from life into death, who is going to take her no matter what, so she might as well try to go quietly and avoid the pain. But, of course, as is said in the story, that pain is necessary. This is cool, though - your comment is making me think more deeply about my own characters! :) Thank you! And I'm glad you like my Reaper. :)

[Érenn]

Haha your welcome ^^

[Emily]

That was amazing!!
I loved it!
I can see a little connection between 'The Grim Reapers Kids' and this. (Glad you liked mine by the way :D)
It was very well writing.
Keep up the great work!!

[AliciaB]

Thanks! You too! :)