Diary of the Grim Reaper.

this was for school, we had to read a book then creative write something on it. i read The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. READ IT! it's a fantastic book. (if you havent read it, this wont make as much sense)

 

 

September 4, 1945.

I realized yesterday that the fighting had stopped completely. I was a day behind the world, but I’d still been busy, gathering up souls and taking them home. It’s amazing that enough deaths have still been continuing for me not to notice that the majority weren’t from gas and bullets.

A few months ago, around early April, I’d been in Berlin, picking up the leader. Unlike most souls, which are usually still warm when I hold them, this one was ice cold, as if he had been dead for days. I’d seen him a few times before, while collecting other souls. The lasting impression he’d left on me was red. I’ve told you before, I see colours first, then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. His colour was red. An angry, fiery, passionate red that couldn’t care less about it’s own colour. I’d been seeing that colour everywhere around then, in flags, posters, but most often in people’s faces. Whether they were rallying, marching or painting yellow stars on people’s walls, they were red.

Those that died in battle, though, they were blue, many different shades of blue; from a soft, sad blue to a vibrant ocean. Even blue, those souls were warm. Blue with heat. After picking up their leader, Hitler, I made a point of holding souls closer to me on the journey home. I somehow felt as if that one soul which had made so much work for me had permanently chilled a part of me deep inside, a part which would never be warm again.

Humans haunt me. I make a point of remembering colours, not names, faces, people.  Colours are simpler to deal with. Colours can’t scream, writhe in fear and agony, or sob so many tears of sorrow that you feel you should take them over to places under fire to soak the gunpowder in their enemy’s rifles.

No, colours are. That’s it.

 

August 20, 1966.

I visited Vietnam the day before yesterday; the village of Long Tan. I picked up around 240 people, coming back later for another twenty or so who had just become ready for me. I was amazed at the difference between that battle and the ones I’d seen only twenty years ago. There were around 3000 versus 108, and yet it was the 108 who won, with only 18 casualties to the enemy’s 245. It’s odd for me to feel anything but slight annoyance for anyone who creates more work for me, but I felt a bit of cheer when I discovered how many Vietnamese I was carrying out compared to Australians, when the battle odds had been stacked against the latter. Little things like that make colours brighter for me.

On that topic, which is a favourite of mine, the Australian’s souls were a peculiar orange-blue, a colour which I rarely saw. I associated it with those that were happy to depart their bodies; those that didn’t mind departing if it meant that their friends could survive. In contrast, the majority of the Vietnamese were blue, as usual. Not to say that they weren’t brave, but I was slightly biased towards the Australians at that point.

I’m still waiting for the world to slow down. After every war I’ve seen, which is more then I’d like to count, humans always say that it’ll be peace forever, not stopping to consider how long a time that is. Apart from the fact that there is no such thing as peace for me, they always manage to contradict themselves, and twenty years later there’s another war going on. Every now and then, I’m tempted to take a single day off to see what chaos would arise. I’ve been around longer then mammals, let alone humans, but I’ve only ever taken one day off when humans eventually became a large race with civilization. I was the reason they invented ghosts and other supernatural beings. When the souls weren’t collected, they hung around, unconsciously creating weird phenomena in the room. After a while, the souls started to find other bodies, and that was when the Salem witch trials occurred. Anyway, after I discovered that leaving souls floating around only created more work for me, I stopped taking breaks.

It’s funny, now that I look back at those times, I realize how much human colour has changed. It used to be silver; cold, powerful, but not uncaring. Now it’s too often red. An angry, violent, hating red. And no one seems to notice it.

 

ANOTHER NOTE ON HUMANS

They’re unobservant of themselves.

 

September 13, 2001.

It’s been two days since the September 11 incident. Around 3000 souls needing to be rescued and taken home. I actually had happened to be in New York when the plane flew straight into the World Trade Center. There were so many colours it was almost blinding. Blazing red, trembling blue and yellow. Then the work started and I was yet again surrounded by blues. Sometimes I wish I could become colourblind for a day; I get so tired of seeing blue.

What surprised me slightly was the terrorists who hijacked the planes in the first place. After I eventually learned everything about the attacks, I’d expected them to be red, or even the blue-orange I associate with those happy to die. But I was wrong. When I found them amongst the mess of souls, they were the same blue as the victims.

 

ANOTHER NOTE ON HUMANS

They’re all afraid of Death.