Sometimes I wonder: is this a curse or a blessing?
Power. People would do anything to have it: theft, homicide, torture, sacrifice, hatred and genocide. Insatiable thirst in each man's throat.
Some powers though, nobody wants, they just happen to be yours, you just HAVE to obey to them.
Isn't it ironic? How mankind ever so often creates something so powerful, so strong, that suddenly all magic in this world, all the laws of nature, are turned by his hands only to... later become slave of that very same strength?
I still curse that day.
But I ought to talk about another one first. My father, I was walking with him down the vineyard.
"Beautiful day, isn't it boy?" he said.
"Why Dad" I said, unknowingly "Why did you bring me here? IT'S SOOOO LAAAAME"
"Oh come on! Don't you feel the sun? Look at the sky. Smell the dirt. I missed this. I'm always going to miss it."
"You're weird dad. Jeez why did you have to bring me here? I wanted to go downtown with the others-"
"With that girl, what's her name, Elizabeth you mean"
"WHATEVER OLD MAN! JUST-mind your business. I really wanted to, why did you have to insist so much?"
My father stood for a moment, looking at the sky, a small suitcase in his hand, then he looked me in the eyes with his all-knowing ones and smiled : "That Elizabeth, you like her don't you?"
I was ashamed. Angry. I felt naked and weak as my cheeks hurt.
"Does she like you back?" he added.
I choked a little "I guess..."
He suddenly grasped my shoulders letting go of the suitcase, and kindly ordered me with his piercing gaze "Then fight for her, live this, this feeling you have, right now. Risk it. Do it. Live it. Never let go of it..." he softly stopped "Well, I mean, after today."
"O-okay" I said shyly "D-dad?" I suddenly felt a shiver down my spine, scared to death. My father started crying as he held me tight and I just felt it, I just knew.
"D-ad? Wh-what's up? Wh-why are you so w-weird?"
"Don't be scared" he said. Then he stopped and said "Oh no, please, please be scared... God knows how much you'll miss it one day..."
"Dad What are you saying? Scared of what?"
But, oh, was I scared: my bones were made of jelly and my muscles danced with the devil.
He gently pat me on the back and then on my hand.
"You see this?"
He handed me a small scroll. I opened it and it seamlessly unrolled itself. It seemed old, like the oldest thing I had ever seen, but the ink could'nt have been more than 40 years old. Names, thousands of names. Crossed out.
"I don't understand Dad what is this?"
"That was mine, it's finished now." He opened the small suitcase in front of me on the ground. "You'll just have to do it. You may have questions, but they're going to be answered immediately." he handed me a small scroll. "The can only be one. It's unavoidable. Now it's your turn. I'm sorry. I love you." he said kneeling on the ground, with his head bowing towards me as he handed out the scythe.
But that's not the day. Oh no.
Once you hold the scythe, once you wear that hood, once you see that scroll, it all feels... obvious. Not less sad, not less painful. It's like breathing: you just have to do it, you just do it, you can't avoid it, it doesn't have to make sense and it doesn't matter how sore or ill your lungs are. Claiming the lives on the scroll, travelling in light and darkness to reach those souls... it's bad I'm not going to lie. Nevertheless, like a very hard exercise at the gym, it gets easier, you get numb, with time. Untill...
I loved Elizabeth, that my father knew. I did as he said. I married her. We knew everything about each other, she even knew of my "job" in full details. She accepted me. I never felt happier than when she said to me, softly that evening, how much she wanted us to be a family, to have a child. I almost feel guilty for the souls I harvested that night: usually I'd try to be as compassionate and sweet as possible, to help them accept their eternal rest. That night I was kinda distracted. A child. A future. A new happiness with my sweet Elizabeth. The pregnancy was hard but we faced it together and everything looked fine to the doctors.
The great day had come.
It's so hard. Even to tell, to write. I just need a moment...as I was saying: the great day had come. That night however, as I felt the scroll calling me I read it. I refused it. I tried. Multiple times. I tried to burn the scroll, to cut it to pieces, to throw it away, to melt it in acid. I knew it wouldn't work as I tried many times before, he'd always come back but I still had to try. I had to. I had to erase that word, that mocking from above: Elizabeth. But I couldn't.
That was the first time I cried and hugged a soul since my father's.
Maternal death technically speaking: she died of childbirth officially speaking, but that's not how I felt, how I feel. She even forgave me and welcomed death.
"Take care of the child for me, for us, all right?"
"All right...what, what shall we call him?"
"What about... Gabriel?"
"Gabriel."
"Take care of Gabriel for us, my love" and she vanished between my ghostly arms.
I still couldn't believe it when the doctor told me. I didn't want to.
I later realized that must've been why I never knew my mother.
Fortunately little Gabriel was perfect, healthy, strong and most importantly as beautiful as his mother.
Some days later, once I brought home our child I found something weird in his crib: a small suitcase, just like my father's. I took it and I opened it in another room, even though Gabriel was a newborn, hardly capable of even recognizing me. I opened it. A hood. A scythe. A scroll: and I already knew what the first name would turn out to be. I closed the suitcase. I hid it and I went to my son and I hugged him.
"Hey big booooy. Look at you. I know your mother can see you somewhere somehow, and she's so happy. Yes sheeee is little Gabriel." I looked at him in the eyes "Daddy is not going to bring you to a lame vineyard is he? No he isn't. Eheh... not that it matters I guess, still going to suck isn't it?" Gabriel looked at me with his beautiful eyes.
I cried.
I held him close to me.
"I'm sorry. I love you".
