The shift that doesn't end

Shift xxx

Clocking in it seems I never clock out I scuff along the corridors happy joyous paintings splatter the walls they hide the decaying beings behind them. It smells clean. Too clean. Sterile. Like the ward nothing lives as I traverse my way through sharp and hard turns there's a constant beeping a great symphony of live,how ironic. I enter the room two beds empty only four to go I pass a thirteen-year-old, gaunt with sunken tired eyes, his skin ashen, flaking. Nevertheless, I carry on he's not who I'm here for. BEEP. I arrive at the last bed on the left. The noise on the monitor is fading as is he there's no point getting the doctor its to late for him. Beep. Lungs struggling convulsing trying to vacuum in air, his eyes frantically shuttering as if he was a camera his brain the memory card trying to fill itself before it was too late. Beep. He notices me coming closer my out stretched hand shadowing is already grey toned face he's crying now little beads of life flowing and disappearing. Beep. He doesn't want to die but its time. Does anyone truly want to die? Beep...beep.........  The sharp knife of a life too short stabs at me all day.
White now grey creased shirt, faded worn trousers, stain riddled ripped tie, holey thread bare jumper clinging to his wireframe, gnawed bloody finger nails, grease slicked tussled hair. He wishes he was dressed nicer. He smiled so bright when we met at half elven between two filth drenched cinder blocks people call their home.
We met by accident at quarter to two near a train leaving the mish mash concert city to the fields of frolicking animals in the dream haze country. His hair was brown silky coils with shaven geometric patterns cutting their way across the sides. Clothes tight to show his Adonis like body he was a perfect picture of masculinity and kind hearted. - rare to find such traits together nowadays.
He wanted to meet me right away he was ill however people intervened forcing us to wait they pray whispered he wasn't ready but we both knew the inevitable. He was Sick of waiting he was exhausted when we finally met. He was an angel incarnate beautiful tan skin framed by freckles and lushes' dark brown locks. After long delay we held hands at midnight and we left them all far behind.
It was seven in the morning when I took him away he was a quivering ball of torn clothes and bloody flesh hiding in a crumbled shrapnel splattered building from people who would've only used him as cannon fodder his fingers grasped at cracks he was afraid of me I waited as long as could however I had more do. I dragged him from the shell shaken war-torn city.
we had met before a few times he was older; his eyes were now cold coloured akin to grey steel surrounded by folds of lifeless skin and porcupine eyebrows. He kept me away from the angel so I made him wait for me. When I was done with watching him suffer I appeared before him; the smell in the room was horrible. His fingers and toes had all but fell off his organs were rotting inside him on all accounts he should have been dead. When I showed him what he had done to the golden boy he felt no remorse. Selfish. Instead he spurned and spat curses at me albeit there wasn't much strength behind them. I made stumble along the long path to where he was to end up as consequence when he could no longer walk I made him crawl through the filth of his sins. This was his purgatorial rite.
Some worship me some spurn me. I am nothing and everything I am death but also life. I guide the masses to their final destination. I wander from place to place always taking, leaving nothing but tears and broken people in my wake. I don't know where they end up everything gets blurry and their gone. Sometimes it long drawn out leaving them to fester and rot in their filth agony never ending. Other times they leave too soon. I'm plagued by what or what isn't on the other side. Is there another side? Does everything just end? Is there no more suffering for those who have committed great atrocities? Is there no safe harbour for those blindingly bright souls?... Sometimes I stand with them at the tops of buildings or motor way bridges, I stand on the chair wrapping ropes with them plummeting down towards the ground but no other side. I wander with their souls towards an end that I never get to see.l