A Dance With Death

|| Chapter 7 - Griffith ||

                       

"How many reapers are there anyway?" I'm surprised how this question hadn't crossed my mind earlier. It's hard to keep up with the reaper. Her long thin legs carry her fast enough from place to place.

"Why do you ask?" She gives me a doubtful look.

"Just curious," I say.

"Well," she says. "More than you can imagine. We're quite abundant." She smiles.

"Why didn't you call them before?" I ask. "Why didn't you call them right after you figured out something was wrong with me."

"I did," she states. "Nobody answered my call. It seemed like nobody wanted to help."

"And what makes you think they'll answer this time?"

"I'll summon them." She stops at the desk of the reception.

"Summon them?" I eye her with doubt. Is she really going to force reapers into coming over here? Or maybe she'll just call her friends. But I doubt the fact that reapers are friends with each other. I have a feeling that this isn't going to end well.

"Whatever happens, stay calm," she says looking at my direction. "Just don't freak out or anything."

I wave her off, representing my calmness. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna freak out," I say. "The worse that could happen is that I'll die. Oh wait, I'm already dying." I cross my arms as I smile.

My sarcasm receives a glare from the reaper. I guess reapers don't get sarcasm.

She then faces away from me and raises her hands upwards with her palms facing down. She stands still for a moment, her posture reminding me of ballet dancers. Slowly, she starts mumbling a few words again and again. The words seem highly unfamiliar to me.

However, her strange chanting seems to have no effect. Except for the muffled voices of the people in the hospital - the ones who are alive - and her weird chanting, nothing else can be heard. It feels really strange how we're not noticed by people considering that the reaper is acting like an actor from one of Shakespeare's plays. I stand behind her, unsure of what to do. I try to look around to find someone who looks like a reaper but in vain. I see the same 'lively' faces all around.

The reaper stops her chanting and slowly brings her hands down. She lets out a breath and turns to face me.

"Let me guess," I say. "It didn't work."

The reaper tilts her head and starts to speak, "Actually-"

Before she can say something else, I hear a husky voice behind me. "Come on Althea," the voice says, "Seriously? A summoning?"

I turn around and find a young man, maybe in his late twenties, leaning on the table of the reception. He's wearing a black coat over a white shirt with black jeans. He has short blond hair and pale skin. Even he's skinny, like the girl, with his cheeks hollow.

"Griffith," the reaper says behind me. "So nice to see you again."

I can hear her approach the man called Griffith - God knows how he got that name - and she lets out a hand, asking for a handshake. Who knew reapers were into handshakes?

Griffith just stares at her hand for a while. "You know," he says, not removing his eyes from her hand, "I was happily minding my own business, trying to reap the soul of a poor old man who was suffering from stage-four stomach cancer, trying to end his sufferings once and for all, when I heard your pathetic chant. Thanks to you, the poor guy might be roaming around aimlessly as a ghost, not knowing where the hell I went."