Death's Kiss

Fiction; A grim reaper meets a friend, and, perhaps, his past

His first memory is death’s kiss on his forehead.

Ashes fell around him in never-ending darkness as he came into being. That was all that could be said about this realm outside realms: ashes, dust, the eternal absence of light, and a deep chill forever permeating the bones of all who enter. It existed in neither the realm above or the realm below, but rather somewhere in between.

This was the realm of Death.

It wasn’t a final destination for souls, he knew intrinsically. There was still the place above and the place below. This land was stuck somewhere in between. An eternal limbo.

And he knew his purpose. He was to collect the souls of the dead and deliver them to their fates. It was all he knew. His one reason for being.

He was created in death, for death, and thus, he served death.

_______________

He reaped his first soul on a stormy night in the American country. An older man had been in his house when it was crushed by a tree. The reaper had been unmoved by the man’s pleas for mercy. He was here for a job, and it was to collect. He felt nothing as he took the soul for his master.

_______________

Faces blurred together in his mind. They were different enough, he supposed, to distinguish them from each other in the moment, but that was all. After the fact, he could hardly differentiate one human from another.

It didn’t help that with each reaping he did, he felt a pulsing throb at the center of his skull. A migraine, only... not. The ache in his head was always there, but it didn’t interfere with his work, so he paid it little mind. After all, most days it was just a dull pain. All it really served to do was muddy each reaping even further.

Not even the souls themselves stood out. Some souls went peacefully, taking his hand with a sort of refined grace. Others wailed as if they were dying all over again, recoiling from his touch as if he were a leper. Sometimes they were confused. Others, afraid. They always fell into one of these categories. They were all the same, day after day, year after year. None of them left an impression on him.

Except for one.

He came to collect her past midnight, on a lonely evening several years after he first held a soul in his hand. The apartment was dark, the curtains drawn. The only lighting came from a single cream floor lamp, which illuminated an old woman sitting in a worn red armchair. He could tell she had been beautiful once upon a time, perhaps. Luscious brunette locks had been streaked with gray, thick hair worn by time into wisps, pulled into a tight bun at the base of her head. Her face was sallow, wrinkled like a sickly oak tree. The creases and veins on her hands stood out in such a way that her fingers appeared gnarled and grotesque. She couldn’t have been older than her late seventies, but it was clear that time had not been kind to her.

She looked at him, and she smiled. “So. The piper’s finally come to collect.”

He said nothing. The woman’s smile reminded him of a shark.

“I always wondered what it would be like when I finally met you. What would you look like, I wondered? And here you are, sat right in front of me, after all these years.”

His head throbbed. Absently, he noticed it was more painful than usual. He decided to humor her.

“I don’t believe I know you.” he said.

Strangely, the woman’s smile widened. “Oh, but I know you. You’ve finally come for me, after all this time, to whisk me away from my torment! All these years, hounded by that man... never knowing which day he’d finally get to me, if and when he’d finally get his revenge...” She chuckled maniacally. “And yet here I am, dying on my own terms. How utterly delicious.”

He had the sensation of something crawling down his throat. The woman was eccentric. An interesting change of pace, if he was being honest, however uncomfortable she made him.

He extended a hand. “Your time has come.” he said.

The woman cackled, a crazed grin on her face, her eyes unnaturally wide. It made his stomach flip unpleasantly, his hand freezing in place.

“Heheh... that it has. Y-You hear that, George?! You can’t haunt me anymore! A-All these years, you’ve been eating away at me, but you—! You made me do it, you hear?! I am GUILTLESS!”

There was no one else in the apartment. No other reapers lurking over her shoulder, no unfriendly spirits lingering in the dark corners of the room. There was no one she could be talking to.

His forehead throbbed even harder.

“No one is here to hear your cries.” he said. “Take my hand and join me.”

If it were possible, her grin grew wider. “With pleasure.”

And with that, it ended the same way it always did: with death taking her by the hand. He whisked her off to another place, the cold night air giving way to the otherworldly heat of the realm below. And if her face paled when she saw exactly where death was taking her, well. It wasn’t his job to care for her plight. He didn’t stick around long enough to hear her horrible screams.

_______________

For decades, this sense of apathy was all he knew. A sense of detachment from those around him. He knew nothing else —

she was beautiful

— except the ever-present ache in his skull.

_______________

That all changed one cloudy morning in the small town of Crowhead.

One thing about being a reaper was this: he didn’t have an appearance, per se. Not in the traditional sense, that is. His true form was an enigma. He could take on any appearance he wished – man, woman, child, even animal. Other reapers liked to maintain a particular theme in their appearance, but he had never been inclined to that line of thought. There were times when it was better to appear as a paramedic, or a fireman, or even a petty thief. Whatever helped to blend in the most. Today, he appeared as an unassuming-looking blond man. Polo shirt, khaki pants, just your average joe really. It fit the image of the town he was collecting in – and since it was daytime in a public park, he thought to draw as little attention to himself as possible.

He was on his way to collect the soul – an old woman who died of a sudden heart attack on a bench – when he felt a slight nudge by his feet. He looked down. A red rubber ball sat innocuously by his heels. He frowned at it.

Curious, he thought.

He picked it up and examined it. It seemed it was, in fact, a regular rubber ball. The only even remotely interesting thing about it was that something was stamped on it, in black letters so faded that they had to have been decades old. Squinting, he thought he could make out ‘Property of Crowhead Elementary School’.

Suddenly, a small voice said: “Excuse me, sir?”

He looked past the ball. A little girl was staring at him, wringing her hands sheepishly behind her back. Her brown hair was messy in a way only a child’s could be, and distantly he longed for a hairbrush so he could tame it. She smiled tentatively. “That’s my ball. Can I have it back please?”

He raised an eyebrow. Strange... He wasn’t used to being acknowledged by anyone other than the soul he was reaping, let alone a small child. He had a certain aura about him that cast a bitter cold through the bones of passersby and filled their heads with all kinds of thoughts about wicked, frightening things. Or so he had gathered. In fact, he hadn’t even known humans could see him. None ever had before, unless they were dying. He opened his mouth (what he was going to say, he had no idea), when all of a sudden, the girl paled. She let out a small “eep!” and covered her mouth with her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

The girl took a step back. One hand dropped from her mouth to pull at her striped sweater. “Mom says not to talk to strangers,” She bit her lip. “She says they could gobble me up for breakfast if I’m not careful.”

“I won’t gobble you up.” he said simply, crouching down to her level.

“You won’t?”

Of course he wouldn’t. It wasn’t his job to, after all. It wasn’t her time. And even if it was, something in him clenched at the very thought of stealing the life of this innocent little girl. It was a foreign, unpleasant feeling.

Forcing his thoughts aside, he grinned somewhat morbidly as he held out the girl’s ball. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” If the grin on his face was slightly forced, well, that was no one’s business but his own.

The girl seemed to relax — whether from his words or his offering, he couldn’t say – and after deliberating for a moment, she took the ball. She wore a yellow scrunchie on her wrist, he noticed.

“Thank you, mister!” she grinned.

He felt something in his chest constrict as she ran off. It almost felt like his cold heart was being squeezed. That wasn’t normal, he realized with a start. He should be alarmed. He wasn’t. He would think about why that was, but he was too afraid to pinpoint what he felt.

_______________

He shouldn’t have come back. He had a job to do, and that job was not babysitting little girls.

But she intrigued him. She was the only living person that had ever even acknowledged him. And that wasn’t all: she had not only acknowledged him, but spoke to him, as if he was human like anyone else she’d met before. It was a simple curiosity, nothing more. At least, that was what he told himself as he went back to Crowhead without a soul to reap.

He could almost believe it.

_______________

Time and time again, he found himself back in the small town of Crowhead, not a lost soul in sight. He’d seen the world, collecting souls in his wake. He’d been to the fallout of Chernobyl, the rubble of the decimated power plant piled at his feet, to reap the souls of irradiated workers. He’d been to the fields of Vietnam, gunfire flying past him, as he collected the soul of someone who had been reduced to nothing but bleeding guts from a landmine. He’d been to abandoned warehouses in forgotten parts of cities, windows cracked and sirens blaring outside, as he took the soul of a cocaine overdose victim. None of those places had caught his attention like this unassuming little town had. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but he found himself drawn to the town, like a moth to a flame.

He never approached the little girl. Death had no place around a small child.

He found himself in the park again today. He sat on one of the benches as he rubbed at his forehead with a grimace. It had been bothering him more than usual, lately. A dull aching throb had morphed into a pulsing beat reverberating through his skull. Part of him wondered why in the world he had these pains — he wasn’t alive, after all, he shouldn’t feel pain — but it was a considerably small part of him. It didn’t interfere with his job, so it wasn’t worth lingering on...right?

“Oh! It’s you!”

He jumped. It was her. The girl was smiling in front of him in her jean overalls, her hair in a high ponytail with a yellow scrunchie.

He should leave. She was alive, he wasn’t. It wasn’t right. He sharply stood up and turned on his heel to leave.

“Wait!”

A little hand caught his wrist. It was so... warm.

“Please don’t run away again.” she said.

And God help him, he couldn’t say no to those eyes. He sighed through his nose as he sat back down. The girl beamed, clearly happy he decided to stay. Without asking, she plopped down next to him.

His still heart caught in his throat. “I thought you weren’t supposed to speak to strangers.”

“But you’re not a stranger anymore!” she protested, “Besides, you said you wouldn’t gobble me up. So, can I stay?”

He frowned. “Well, you’ve clearly already made up your mind.”

“You’re funny, mister.” she giggled. “My name’s Cate. What’s yours?”

Her laugh sparked something in his chest.

“...—er daddy, higher!”...

Something was lodged in the center of his forehead. Throbbing. Burning. But when he raised a hand to his head, nothing was there.

“I don’t have one,” he said quietly.

If anything, the girl’s smile widened. “That’s okay, Mister Guy!” And with that, apropos of nothing, she asked, “Do you like Skittles?” Which then prompted a one-sided 10-minute conversation about the value of Skittles and how the red Skittle’s flavor was unbeatable, in Cate’s humble opinion.

Cate.

The girl had a name now. God help him.

_______________

They talked more often, after that. Their only conversation spot was the small park where they had first met, but neither of them minded. They must have made quite the pair: a skipping, smiling girl who didn’t even make it up to the waist of her invisible companion, making their way to an unassuming park bench, where she would plop her backpack down, sit down, and smile at him.

They talked about everything and nothing. Mostly nothing. For example, today’s conversation starter was: “Do you have a dog?”

“No.” he replied.

Cate pouted. “I’ve always wanted a dog, but mom says we can’t have one. Something about res... responsa—something.”

“Responsibility,” he corrected.

“Respon-sa-bili-tee!” she echoed. Despite himself, he smiled. His forehead was on fire, but he resisted the urge to touch it. He didn’t want to worry her.

He hadn’t really noticed it before, but something about Cate seemed... familiar. Like he had seen that dimpled smile before, somewhere. He couldn’t imagine where.

a grin from across the table

BLEEDING

He hissed as his hand involuntarily shot up to his head. He wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t melting from the inside out.

He glanced at Cate. Luckily, she seemed not to notice, as she'd started digging through her backpack for something or other. If she had said what, he was too preoccupied with pain to have heard. He brought his hand to his lap with a grimace.

He tried not to think about such things again. He wasn’t successful.

_______________

“Where did you come from?” Cate asked one day, out of the blue.

“Outside the mortal plane.” he said.

She accepted the answer with a shrug.

_______________

It was getting worse.

It was never a dull pain anymore. Now it throbbed, burned like someone had set his forehead on fire. White-hot, searing pain. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. It was fine.

_______________

“How was school?”

“It was fine. Jessica put a bug in Ashley’s hair at recess. Her scream was so funny!”

“She’s the bully you were complaining about a few days ago?”

“Yup! She’s really mean. She made fun of me when I wore my hair in pigtails to school.”

He smiled. “She deserved it, then. Good.”

Cate grinned. He liked her smile. His chest felt...nice, when he was with her. Warm.

He didn't know what to do with that feeling.

_______________

“There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you.” he said one cloudy day.

“What?” She looked away from the scrunchie she was playing with in her hands.

“That ball I picked up the day we met... it said it belonged to your elementary school.” he continued.

“Well, yeah, a long time ago! It belonged to my Gramma before she gave it to me. She told me it was a present from her dad when she was a little girl!”

surely they wouldn’t miss just one

couldn’t afford a doll

money was tight

she deserved the world

PAIN.

He keeled over from the sheer force of it, unable to hold back a sharp cry.

“...Mister? You okay?” He thought he heard Cate’s voice say.

i’m not okay

i love you

AGONY

“I’m fine.” he wheezed. He forced himself to stand. He had to get out of here. Somewhere. Anywhere. The kid shouldn’t have to see him like this. He stumbled away from Cate, his vision blurring around him. He thought he vaguely heard her calling after him, but the pain was so excruciating that he couldn’t be sure.

he had to get HOME

What... what was this feeling?

a girl embracing him in the doorway

It...

carrying her on his shoulders

He couldn’t tell if he was tortured or elated. Whether he wanted to laugh or break down sobbing.

never kissed like that anymore

The echoes around him grew louder.

that bitch wouldn’t DARE hurt their girl

“...come to give her a good night kiss?”

it was too DARK

A muzzle in his face—

a glint of silver

SHE WASN’T

A flash of light before his world went—

ENOUGH!

HOME HOME HOME SAFE HOME HOME SAFE HOME

He wailed, slinking onto the blackened ground. The ashes froze in place. The chill air tensed. He was suffocating.

he wasn’t ALIVE, it was IMPOSSIBLE for him to suffocate

After an eternity, the torment ebbed. He never thought he’d welcome that dull, incessant throbbing.

He couldn’t do this anymore, he realized numbly. He couldn’t feel anymore. It was killing him, from the inside out. That wasn’t possible.

Wasn’t supposed to be possible.

_______________

“This will be the last time we meet.”

“Huh? But why?!”

“I have to leave now. That’s all there is to it.”

“That's not a good enough reason.”

“I'm sorry. I have a job I need to get back to.”

“Outside Crowhead?”

“Yes. Outside of Crowhead.”

Cate pouted. “Are you gonna be gone for a long time?”

No. Not those eyes, he couldn’t take those eyes—

“Yes.” he said.

Suddenly, her small arms were squeezing him tight, as if he’d evaporate into thin air if she let go. He froze.

“I don’t want you to go!” she cried into his chest.

It took a moment for him to gather his bearings. Then, before he really knew what he was doing, he wrapped his arms around her in turn.

“I have to go,” he said quietly as he ran a hand through her hair. “I’m sorry.”

Cate sniffled. “’S okay. Everyone leaves eventually.”

Not like this... Why would a child think like that...?

Enough. Questions like that didn’t matter. They. Didn’t. Matter.

Firm in his resolve, he pulled away from her, but he kept his hands on her shoulders for a moment. “I wish I could stay, but I’m needed elsewhere. I have another assignment.” It wasn’t a lie, technically.

She looked up at him with sad eyes for a moment, before realization filled her gaze. She gained a conspiratorial grin. “Are you a secret agent, Mister Guy?” she whispered, “Do you have to go on a top-secret mission?”

No. I don’t want to leave you.

Don’t let me leave you—

“Yes,” he lied. “I trust you can keep a secret.”

Cate gasped, eyes wide, before she pantomimed sealing her lips shut and throwing away the key. His heart melted into his stomach. “My lips are sealed!” she said with a grin.

His head burned. His smile was more like a grimace. “Good girl.”

He gave her one last squeeze before he stood from their park bench. He looked back only once as he left. Cate was smiling, but it wasn't her happy smile that warmed his chest. It was something sadder, one that didn't reach her eyes. This smile strangled that warm feeling and twisted it into something ugly.

She gave him a small wave.

He swallowed, waved back, and walked away as fast as he could without seeming like he was fleeing.

He never returned to Crowhead again.

_______________

He wondered about her, years later. Who was the woman she grew into? What was she like?

One day, he would come for her. Somehow, he just knew it would be him. Death had a funny way of handing out assignments, and no other reaper had connected with Cate like he had. (Not that reapers make many connections.) Would he even recognize her? Would she recognize him?

He chided himself. Such thoughts distracted from his work. He would never know Cate. He should never have known Cate in the first place. She interfered with his work, so she needed to be cut from the picture. After all, since he’d dissociated from her, the throbbing in his forehead had returned to its usual dull ache. It was still ever present, but it was manageable once again. He should be happy. Why wasn’t he?

His job was all he knew. His one purpose for being.

Somehow, that wasn’t enough anymore.

_______________

Years passed. He fell back into his routine, as best he could. He was called, he collected. Rinse and repeat, until one day, he received another new assignment. Someone was marked for death. Not just anyone: a high-ranking member of the FBI.

He appeared at the agency as a typical bureau worker: slick workplace suit, badge at his belt. On his way to the scene, he ran into a woman carrying a stack of old newspapers and a coffee in her hands. Coffee spilled all over the cold floor tiles as they both fell to the ground.

“Shit! Augh, I’m so sorry!” The woman cried.

He shook his head and brushed himself off before looking up. “It’s not a problem, miss—” His voice caught in his throat.

It couldn’t be. Those big brown eyes...

The woman in front of him grinned. Her brown hair was held up in a ponytail with a yellow hair tie. “I haven’t seen you around the office before! The name’s Cate. Cate Ashburn.” She stuck out a hand. He didn’t reach out to shake it, stuck frozen in place.

“Uhhh, you awake in there, buddy?” she said, uncertain.

He blinked. “Sorry.” he said before shaking her hand woodenly.

Cate grinned. “I haven’t seen you around here before! You new here?”

“Just started today.” He felt vaguely sick. There was no way... “You seem awfully cheerful.”

“Finally got permission from the supervisor to investigate a particular cold case,” she grinned, “I’ve been trying to get it for ages, but he kept saying no one cared enough about it to have it solved. Small-town crime and all that. Well, that’s bullshit!”

He had so many questions. How did she come to be an FBI agent? Was the rest of her childhood okay? Did she miss him at all?

Had she been happy?

“You know who did it?” he asked instead.

“Oh, well, officially, I don’t know. But unofficially, I have a pretty good idea. And I’m pretty sure my hunch is right.” Cate said with a determined glare on her face. “Besides, this case is personal.” She held out one of the newspaper articles for him to read. It was dated in the winter of 1954.

‘MURDER IN CROWHEAD! Local Man Found Shot in Head’

Crowhead... there was a name he thought he’d never see again.

“A small-town murder?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She folded the newspaper between her arm and her chest and crossed her arms. “Crowhead’s my hometown, you know? Anyway, the victim was George McDonnell: a down-on-his-luck mailman... and my great-grandfather. He found himself at the wrong end of a pistol. Got shot point-blank square in the middle of his forehead.”

Something shattered inside him. No, inside his head. His heart? His... everything.

“He left behind a wife and 11-year-old daughter. His daughter’s my grandmother.”

Strangely, his head didn’t hurt. If anything, it felt... numb. As if the pain was so bad, he couldn’t feel it anymore.

“At first, the heat was on the wife. She was a young brunette beauty, had classy taste, and well, you know the type. The initial investigation had turned up that he and his wife had been estranged for years before he was murdered. They’d actually been effectively separated and looking into an official divorce when he got killed. Not that people could really get divorced back then. Anyhow, the charges were dropped, due to a lack of evidence. They say she went crazy with grief later on in her life! Haaa... funny, right?” she said with a smile that said she in no way found it funny.

He couldn’t bring himself to say anything. George... George...

oh, my darling George

Was that his name...?

“Grandma told me stories about my great-grandfather when I was little,” Cate continued, oblivious to her conversation partner’s internal crisis, “How he was a family man, how he cared about nothing else in the world more than his darling daughter... he even tried to superglue his broken marriage back together just for her sake. He was a father who forced a smile so his daughter didn’t have to, who had a special twinkle in his eye when he saw his little girl padding down the hall, who worked long, hard hours into the dead of night for chump change so he could give his daughter everything she could possibly want.”

Suddenly, she stopped and rubbed her neck with a sheepish grin. "Sorry, you probably don't care about all that."

He stared more through her than at her as he processed this information. What could he say in the face of all that? It... it was too much. It was all too much.

“I... I need to go,” he choked out.

Cate blinked. “Oh, are you okay? Sorry, I’ve just been rambling on without thinking about—”

“It’s all right. I really must be going.” He brushed past her.

He thought that was that. After a moment, however, a voice called back to him. “Wait! Come back!”

And, God help him, he stopped and turned around.

Cate bit her lip. “I’m sorry but, I swear I know you from somewhere. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

Every instinct in him screamed to run back to her, wrap his arms around her, and never let go. Tell her the truth, of what he is, of who he was to her, of everything.

She was his great-granddaughter...? He'd been...alive, once?

It took everything in him to ignore these stubborn urges.

It felt like something was stabbing him in his still heart as he said, “No. I don’t think we’ve ever met before.”

Cate scrutinized him for a moment longer, but that moment passed, and she seemed to accept this answer with a shrug. “Alright then, if you say so. Good luck on your first day!”

It hurt that it was that easy for her to accept the lie, but he couldn’t expect anything different. He nodded shakily. “And you, on your investigation.”

She brightened. “Thanks! Speaking of that...” she looked at the newspaper wedged between her arm and chest, “I better get to work.

“After all,” he heard her say as he stumbled down the hall, “I've got a job to do!”