Normally in this situation it’s all fun and games. Given a knife? The victim is stabbed, pills lead to suicide, guns turn into a number of events that lead to death.
This time though, he’s caught off guard. There are just a few thousand Grim Reapers in this world, this guy isn’t much different. He’s been doing the job for years, millions of years. Animals make their way into human deaths plenty of times… but.. not often animals like this one.
Staring at his list, this Grim Reaper can’t keep himself from letting out a sigh. He hasn’t taken a breath in or out of his lungs since the first few years of his creation. When you live forever to do one job, there’s no need to. Breathing, eating, breaks, and other things? Pointless. But this case won a pause as the ancient being lost himself in thought.
The person on his list was named Jennifer Isabella Garcia. The tool for her death? A humpback whale. It was a ridiculous notation, but that’s how it would have to be done.
With one thought, the reaper took form of a young college man around twenty two in age, in a park setting. Sitting on a bench, he pulled a manila folder from his interior jacket pocket. Opening it, he could see the schedule of Jennifer for the next month, including the events she hadn’t knowingly scheduled herself. That’s the longest any reaper has been given to kill someone, technically speaking, simply a month. Not that it mattered, reapers were beyond time. They bounced around along the timeline of human kind as they pleased.
While this reaper sat in what would be known to most as present day, there was another who was tending to the death of someone in Ancient Rome. Another ten, twenty, even a hundred years into what might be thought of as the future, a different reaper, or maybe even this one, will be overseeing the end of someone else.
All reapers did their best, it’s all they knew. Relationships were another one of those pointless things, whether it be an attachment to a human or another reaper. So this one was caught a bit off guard when he looked up and found Jennifer to be… Quite pretty, he supposed. She was in the park, playing with a content four year old black Labrador retriever.
One swift glance and the reaper knew the dog wouldn’t live past twelve. Now to schedule Jennifer’s death. He had a month to get it over with, he concentrated on her schedule, on his task at hand. She had a week off the one after the next one from this week. Three weeks to over see her death was a bit much, but it was all he could do with what he was given.
Watching her again, he put the manila folder away and crossed his legs with the delicate grace of an ancient being. He chose to enjoy his time, just this once. When Jennifer reached into her pocket and answered a phone, he knew what the call would be about before she did. Her mother would be inviting her to go on a whale watching cruise off the coast of one of Hawaii’s islands in the middle of March when they both had a break from work.
Naturally, Jennifer accepted. A soft grin spread across the reaper’s pseudo-face. Not because of how Jennifer would die, falling off the boat and her neck breaking against the moving tail of one of the whales, but rather because of how happy she seemed to talk to her mother. There was a friendliness and respect there that many humans lacked, it was nearly sweet, to say the least. The reaper’s gaze was so concentrated on his target, he nearly jumped out of his new skin when the black lab dropped a tennis ball at his feet.
He had to recall how humans spoke before he could utter a word, “Shoo.. Shoo, away, creature.” he grimaced, waving the animal off. When the dog continued to stare up at him with big brown eyes, the reaper cautiously stood and retreated to a different bench.
Yes, this would be a long three weeks.
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This is a great start to what I hope to be a longer work. I’m already intrigued in the Grim Reaper. Will he fall in love with Jennifer? It seems like he might at least become emotionally invested in a way that he hasn’t with his other victims before. I hope to learn more soon!