Broken Ocean

The Reaper

     An Old Man came home from a small get-together at an Old Friend's house. The ripe age of eighty-seven had done things to the Old Man - he was small, limp, fragile, and weak. But most importantly, his confidence of the middle ages had passed, and he was stricken with the same insecurities that he had when he was in his youth.

     His Old Friend, however, was quite the opposite. Healthy and bouncy, he and his riches had everything to live for.

     The Old Man questioned as to why his Old Friend invited him over. Not three years after they had graduated university, the Old Friend stocked up a successful business, soon rising to the richest man of their hometown in Richmond, Virginia. The Old Friend eventually abandoned the Old Man and a number of other university pals, for his new life was much more important and satisfying than it would have been with the middle class buddies.

     The Old Man began questioning himself. Why did he invite me? Did it mean something? Or was it just to look good, posing for pictures with the middle class? That was it; and the Old Man, oh how he believed it. No man that has been absent for sixty-seven years in his life would randomly invite him to a get together.

     The Old Man grew angry. As he entered his small cottage home, he threw his arms, pushing vases onto the ground and knocking an accent table over. He cursed the Old Friend, making accusations of being used to improve the Old Friend's reputation. "Foul elder!" he screamed to himself. "Foul, evil!"

     He limped to the sink in his dirty bathroom to splash water in his face. One, two, three, splashes. Readying for the fourth, the Old Man heard a noise. A strange noise, not one you would hear during the middle of the night. He stopped and let the water seep through his hands. The noise came again. And again.

     "Fearful beast," he whispered, "what are you, and how have you come into my abode?" The Old Man dragged his feet quietly out of the bathroom, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. The noise came again, this time easily distinguished for what it is. A squawk, as a bird, maybe a crow or a raven. "Oh, for shame. How has a bird of the night made its way into my house?" He walked from the kitchen into his dining room, which was pitch black, as all of the lamps and all of the ceiling lights were off. "Bird, where are thou, reveal yourself." He flipped the light switch on and readily looked around, but the room remained pitch. The Old Man looked back and flipped the switch off and back on, but to no avail. The Old Man felt his way on the walls to the nearest lamp to turn it on, and the room was still dark. "Blasted! What is wrong with my damned lights?"

     He turned back, greeted by a faint glow not but seven feetoff the ground. A noise came again, but it was not a squawk. "A fearful beast, I am," came a voice, in a croaky, soft voice. "A fearful beast!" There came two clacks on the ground, as if it were an elder with a cane. The glow became slight brighter and its circumference grew, revealing a large, grey and black bird, standing over six feet tall, maybe three or four feet above the Old Man. The Old Man backed away slowly. One effect of his old age is his unresponsive fight-or-flight reflex. He was frozen, not in fear, but in anger and curiosity. "Good Sir, if I am a fearful beast, then what are you?"

     The Old Man puffed out his chest. "Why, I am the Old Man! Humble and smart, but weak and frail. What are you, and why have you broken into my home?"

     "Humble andsmart, weak and frail. Is that what you are, Sir?" The bird laughed. "Aye! it is I, and I am known as the Reaper."

     "The Reaper!" the Old Man hacked. "Goodness my boy, for you are but a large bird, what are you? A crow, a raven, a buzzard, even? You are not a skeleton! You are not the Reaper! Such a fraud!"

     "I am that I am. I suggest you not accuse anyone of any crime, for you have committed one yourself, and any accusation of another would be hypocrisy on its own."

     The Old Man laughed again. "Crime! What crime? Boy, you are ridiculous! I hath not committed any crime! By George, may the worst crime I have committed be wasting my time speaking to you. Begone, bird, away from my presence!" The Old Man shooed the bird, and turned to go to bed. He was snatched back, unable to move.

     "Fool! You call yourself humble, and that is a lie! You say your Old Friend is foul and evil, yet you are accusing what you do not know! You say I am fearful, but you act as if you are above me! You are nothing but ignorant and selfish!" The Old Man grew angry again. "Your Old Friend invited you and your mates from university because his wife had died from tuberculosis but a week ago and he shall die from it soon. His last request was to see the people one last time, the people who kept him alive through his depression. Are you blind, boy?"

     The Old Man gasped, and grew angry with the bird. "Liar! You are being sinful, bird! You hath lied! The Old Friend is selfish, not I! Begone! Begone!" The Old Man, once weak, gathered strength from his rage and picked up a vase and threw it violently at the bird. "You are the only one accusing someone! You pathetic beast!"

     The bird flapped its wings and gabbed the Old Man with its talons as it hovered in the air. "You damned idiot! How selfish you are! How ignorant!" The Old Man screamed and curse, turning into a being of hate and violence. The bird yanked at shook him, fighting to keep the man alive to teach him what he should.

     The Old Man drew a pocket knife from his pants and opened it. "Die, bird, you pathetic fraud!" He reared the knife up. As he got ready to sling it down onto the bird's leg, eight sharp talons pierced through is skin, popping the Old Man like a bug. He screeched as the talons met one another in his now destroyed body. Blood excreted from any hole it could, leaving numerous streams of blood down random parts of his body. This went on for another two minutes until the Old Man stopped making sounds, and his body, punctured and decorated, was dropped onto the pool of blood in his dark, dining room floor. The bird did not say another word. The lights flickered on as the bird looked down at the corpse on the floor. He flapped his wings and fluttered out of the small middle class home, leaving the Dead Man on the floor.