Reaper Maddness

Preface

I stood over the grave and felt nothing. Head bowed in reverence to someone I barely knew, as people stood weeping all around me. A soliloquy of good deeds, misadventures and laying to rest this body that, now lay immortalized in the ground, and I feel nothing for her.

It was only a month ago that I had met her, followed that beautiful body into the bar and watched her. She looked sad, not outwardly, but inside, like her life was crushing her from the inside out. If I could see her pain from a distance, while all she showed those around her was a false happiness, I knew that I should save her from this farce of a life, and send her on to the next. That night I followed her home.

For a week I followed her, to make sure what I was seeing was truth, not just a moment of depression, caught in time that one night. The more I followed her, the more I got to know her pattern, her likes and dislikes, it seemed that she was crying out for help, wanting to be seen for who she really was, needing help in her release from this existence that she obviously, desperately hated with every ounce of her being.

This time when she went to the bar, I decided to go closer, to speak to her, to get to know her better. I slowly stalked up to her. In the crowd of the bar, I could move without being seen. I moved close enough to smell her hair, her perfume, like a cloud of sweet surrounding her, like a death shroud around a body that was lifeless inside.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked.

She must not have heard me. I moved right up next to her, choking on the stench of her perfume, trying to compose myself before having an attack right there.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I said, louder and with more force.

Still, she didn't seem to hear me, or was ignoring me, either way I wasn't about to ask a third time. I despise being ignored, but I moved away again, understanding that if she didn't see me, it might be a good thing. I could stalk her from a distance until I could give her what she wanted. When I was close to her, I could smell the desperation, the want for a release, for an escape, she needed to get out, to leave, to become one with the Earth, and I decided I was going to help her in that fatal pursuit.

Again I followed her to her home, this time, slipping in through the door as she was checking the mailbox to her apartment. The desperation when she was at that mailbox, the twisting of the key in the hole, the shaking in her movements. She was nervous to go, but she knew it was time.I followed her to her apartment, she was drunk and I helped her up the stairs, twice, helped her open her apartment door, and she almost beckoned me to come in. I locked the door behind me.

She stumbled around her apartment in a drunken stupor, neither one of us speaking to each other, neither one of us actually understanding why the other had become such an amazing facet in life as in this moment in time.

She went into the bathroom, I chose not to follow. Instead I looked around her apartment. Another façade, a mask to hide her true feelings toward this life. Pictures of family and friends lined the walls, her leather couch beckoned me to sit, but I decided against it. Her kitchen was so organized, to find something out of place seemed in itself, an idea out of place. She was obsessively clean, like a meth addict just after a cleaning binge. I was amazed at how immaculately organized everything was, at how well placed everything had been.

She left her bathroom, scantily dressed, a t-shirt and underwear, as if she were begging me to follow her. I did as she wished. Straight to the bedroom where all things, good and bad, secrets never to be told, happened.

She stood by the bed, staring at me, as if not able to focus, not able to move, as if seeing me for the first time. A look of recognition and horror embraced her face as the realization of who I was, who I am, who I will always be, was now etched into her memory like the ten commandments, a stone memory that would forever be a part of her, for however long forever meant at this moment in time.

I slowly glided over to her, reached out to touch her face. She was warm to the touch, her body, trembling in the silence of the nothingness of the room.

I helped her to sit on her bed, her eyes, affixed in mine, as if she'd entered a trancelike state and was begging me not to do what she had earlier begged me to do for her. I glanced to see pills at her bedside, the bottle overturned, the glass of water half full next to her alarm clock. It was time to take hold.

I looked into her eyes, smelled her breath, and slowly reached into her chest, feeling the webbing of her soul surround my hand, like a sticky essence ready to be released and pushed on to the next world. As I drew it out, I could feel her last breath upon me. She mouthed the words, "Thank you."

As I lay her down on her bed, I placed her soul in my bag, tucked her under her sheets and left her apartment. Her funeral would be the last thing she saw before she entered the afterlife. I would see her one last time, and then move on to my next client, maybe if she would have seen me, perhaps she would have taken that drink