The Reaper Wept

“No!” The old woman cried out in a mortified shrill.

Standing in the doorway with a grin like a shining crescent moon lurched a tall figure.

The head on its thin shoulders nearly touched the ceiling, and when it moved, its feet made an awful noise that sounded like wet socks against a dry floor. 

The cloak this ancient figure of terror wore was as pitch black as the moonless sky from outside, and the sleeves were so long they touched the ground. It was holding something in its hands, and the woman was even more horrified when she made out the point of a blade.

A scythe! Oh, Jesus Christ, it’s him! He’s come to lay me down to rest and take my soul!

Now inches away from her bed, the poor woman could smell the aroma of what she thought was a storm drain, crumpled leaves mixed with garbage and wet sewage. The smell of death, now in a physical shape that was now standing before her.

The Reaper pulled its hood down, revealing a pale face with skin that had been decayed and shriveled away. Its eye sockets were vacant of color, as though she weren’t staring into eyes, but a dark and waterless well that had never seen life for many years.

The Reaper raised its scythe, gleaming a fearful shine in the hospital room’s light.

“I’m not ready to go!” the woman cried, and the figure ceased. A single tear ran down its thin cheek.

“I’m sorry,” the Reaper said.

* * *

Life itself had begun in the darkness of nothing, and so it must end the same for those whose days were ending. 

The world was like a bath bomb. It was physical, and you could feel it in your touch, so vividly. Yet once dropped, it would fizz into the water──the void of eternal darkness. Your organs would start to shut off, and the strangest part of all would be the realization──you are now going to die in minutes. 

People believed that when life began to leave your body, memories of all that you had been given would flash before your eyes. That didn’t happen for Jake. What instead wavered in front of him had only been the guilt.

The sharp pain of the bullet piercing his chest was now gone, along with the clothes on his back. Darkness had been amongst the naked man.

The store he set foot in that very day of February 19th had disappeared. There was nothing. No store shoppers who trembled by his presence, or the gun-wielding cashier who took him down in an act of bravery. 

A sudden hit of thoughts came flooding through the young man’s head as he waited in the void.

This is it. I finally got what was coming to me. Who was I to think skipping town and living a good life after all this? You’ve beaten people up, shot, and robbed them of what they earned legally while you were living under a bridge. Robbing stores for so long, it was about time that someone stood up to the one and only Jake Harkin and shoot him down. You’re a horrible person and deserved to die!

Suddenly, the light that Jake thought would never be seen again, lit up from all around with a burning glare. He felt meaty hands wrap around his arms so tightly that he cried out in anguish, air filling his lungs.

Hallelujah, I can breathe again. They were the only words he could think of at that very moment. He was then led down a long dark hallway. Jake looked from side to side and was hit with a vile gut churn of terror.

The hands gripping him were long and covered in crimson scales, their bodies immense and human-like. Mouths of salivated hunger gaped so wide that he could see their black gums. Pairs of long fangs that curved like the tips of fishhooks stuck out from the roots, and their tongues were thin and separated like a pair of daggers on the tip──the tongues of bargaining serpents.

Jake shook his body from side to side, shrieking as though his legs had been sliced off clean off, but the creatures gripped tighter and continued to pull forward.

Out of nothing, a door appeared in front of the young man and opened for Jake to be precipitated into weather that was colder than glaciers looming over the waters of Antarctica. Cackles that erupted like the sound of chiming bell towers came from the serpent guards.

Jake looked up at the sky──a reddish-brown of dust like the rocky surface of planet Venus. There were flying creatures in the air, all growling with guttural shrieks that shook Jake with the freezing wind.

Across from where these things dragged him, had been an endless icy lake. There was a figure the size of a towering skyscraper, bounded in the ice from the waist down. A pair of skeletal wings stuck out on its lower back like long branches of an old tree, with remaining specks of grey feathers latching on here and there.

It had the head of a man, with long and brown wavy hair and a beard that ran down to its shirtless body. A pair of goat horns were sticking out from the sides of its head. Deep gashes covered its pale chest.

Where am I? Jake Thought. Is this what Hell is? Not a fiery lake where you’ll boil for all entirety, but a cold wasteland?

“Jake,” the creature’s thundering voice said. It opened its eyes──as green as the land of a thriving vineyard with pupils so thin they were the spinning image of the eyes of a snake.

“Are you the devil?” Jake asked. The creature's glare was like a singular gaze upon the burning sun.

“What do you think?” 

The scaly guards then released his arms and Jake fell to the icy ground.

The fallen angel spoke. 

“Betrayal is such a malevolent thing. You’ve betrayed your family, friends, and now you’re robbing gas stations for your self-greed.”

Jake’s legs gave out, and he fell to his knees and began to cry out in a guilted plead of mercy.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to do anything. You don’t understand I──

“You blamed your childhood for your actions,” the devil sneered, cutting him off.

“Your mother had died young, and your father was an alcoholic who took his stressors out on you. Then you ran away from home and became a thief. You think because the world turned its back on you, that you can do the same to others?”

“I wanted to find a better life, I needed money!” The man was now sobbing, Snot dribbling down his nose which quickly turned to ice.

“There are other ways to earn wealth than to steal and cheat,” the devil said.

“What are you going to do to me?” Jake asked.

“Luckily for you, free will is still adequate for you humans. You shall forever burn in the lake of fire. . . or reap!”

"Reap?” Jake asked. “I don’t understand.” The devil’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, revealing a pair of yellow shining glares of light. In them, Jake saw a vision──a woman in her early eighty's lying on a bed in a hospital room.

“This is Greta Whitlock,” the devil said. “At exactly, 8:00 PM on earth, her time will finally end. She’s lived long enough and is expecting a visit from her grim reaper.”

“Hers?” Jake asked, wiping the icy tears from his eyes. 

The lights in the devil’s sockets flashed again, and Jake was hit with another sight. In the light, he saw millions of figures standing in a void of darkness, limp like dolls on a shelf. They were all wearing black cloaks over their withered faces.

“Every one of them was once like you. So lively and coated within ripe flesh. Hopeful and beautiful. . .but they gave up.” The devil shook his head.

“I was once beautiful as well, but my pride grew. . . and I've fallen like you did.” The devil’s loud and sinister voice then lowered, sorrowful.

“I’ve given up on heaven long ago, Jake. Beings like us can now only pay.” The yellow beams faded, and the serpent-like eyes rolled back into place. The devil blinked.

“So, what fate do you choose?”

* * *

“Please,” the woman said. “I don’t want to die!”

“I have no other choice, Greta.”

Tears continued to stream down the reaper’s face. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t care if this was the woman’s time to go, nor the fact that reaping was forever his job. Spending that very time in hell had opened his eyes to the crimes he committed over the years. He wanted to be good.

“Go on, Jake,” the devil’s voice whispered from behind the reaper’s back.

“She’s been far too long on earth.” The Grim reaper turned his head to look at its scythe but saw that he was now holding a pistol.

It was the same one he had used for so many years.

A faint sound, as though from a dream, came from the weapon; screams of terrified store shoppers and crying children. It was a sound he had heard for years that had never bothered him, but at that very moment, while standing by Greta’s bed, it made him hate himself.

The devil’s voice echoed from the doorway once more.

 “If you don’t, you have to pay for your sins!”

The grim reaper turned back towards the devil’s voice and screamed.

“I don’t want to hurt people anymore!” And he threw the scythe to the floor which then dissolved into a pile of burning ash.

“Fine, then take me. Take me to the lowest part of hell if you must!”

With that, the Grim Reaper's entire world began to fade away into darkness. He was now back, naked in the void with flesh and a name that he had been given the day he was born. He wasn’t the grim reaper anymore, but Jake Harkin.

“Jake,” the devil’s voice said in his right ear. “Are you ready to burn?”