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Rated: ASR · Short Story · Death · #2262348
Death, The Grim Reaper, Spectre, makes another appearance. A character I can't leave alone
         Do you recall?

         Our friend Spectre found that his vacation was to be truncated by a significant amount. Two days into his holiday he became aware that duty calls continually. Management demanded the presence of all available Deaths, it is an occupation, who were required to attend a Mega Volcanic Eruption that would take many lives simultaneously and continuously, for some time, until the eruption subsided.

         Now that the major work of the Death squad was complete there were a number of Deaths that did not have pressing deaths to attend too. In the aftermath, we find Spectre and a number of his compatriots, Occupational Deaths, gathered around a pyre left on a sliver of beach that somehow remained after the devastation of the mega eruption. As Spectre sat there by the bonfire of tropical trees with a number of his coworkers he thought, These are my people, Morticia, Armageddon, Mephistopheles, Nocturn, and Eden. I've known them for nearly forever.

         Spectre's thoughts as always delved upon his inhumanity, Why is Death repeated time and time again? Of course...Death is everywhere. It's a motto that every Death lives by. We're greater than USPS, UPS, FEDEX and AMAZON combined. There is an army of Death that roams the world. If your time is up, one of us will collect the package. That's what Death does.

         Spectre was an early apostle, he preceded most of the Sun gods, the Greek gods, Buda, Jehovah, Allah and all of the rest. Death is an occupation that has no spiritual connection. Death is just death. Death is everywhere. On this world, it is a constant. From the smallest to the largest of the inhabitants, it is all the same. If the organism has life, it's function is as follows; live, breed and die. Death's function is to escort defunct life to the next door. For animal life it is simple. The door is a turnstile. One life to another of the same breed, on and on and on. With sentinel beings such as humans, the process is a bit more complicated. Humans create their own doors, their own afterlife realities. It can be a heaven, a nirvana, a purgatory or a hell. The doors are singular to the person. It is not uncommon that one persons door is identical to another. It happens.

         Spectre's ruminations were disturbed as he became more aware of his cohorts around him attending this bonfire on this beach bordering the hell fire of a volcano where numerous souls had been collected and escorted away only a short time ago.

         Morticia was telling a tale of how she escorted a bell hop from one of the recently devastated resorts to a afterlife that had him living the life of luxury in his own beach retreat. Armageddon, unsurprisingly, spoke upon how this volcanic eruption was not that dissimilar to the nuclear devastation of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Upon that note all eyes turned to Spectre. Apparently, it was his turn to regale the attending party with some entertaining note on his recent escapades.

         Spectre complied to an extent. He began his story from the beginning, dating back centuries before. The tale of woe began with a young pregnant woman. This woman died giving birth to her child within a burning grass hut. The child survived only to burn alive within another family dwelling again giving birth to another surviving child.

         His story continued through ages in which many of his current compadres were not even active in the occupation of Death. As he resumed Hi tale, Spectre began to realize that the routine of death had not yet affected his fireside friends as much as it had himself.

         With that realization, Spectre skipped multiple generations along the same story time line and finally spoke about the escort that he had endured once again recently ago. With sadness within his speech, He continued, "I attended the death of another young woman today who was a direct progeny of the first of this line of women to be escorted to the same door of her line. she was consumed by a river of lava as her husband was able to whisk the new born child away to safety." The attendees at the fire were quiet as he completed his recount.

         At that moment Spectre had his own epiphany...Death delivers you to the door of your own making. Some score years from now Spectre was going to close two doors. This generational door of burned women and his own. His retirement from Death would be because he would go off schedule. When next he had to attend to the death of another burning mother, he would take the child too. These doors would be closed and locked forever after.

         Until then he had work to do. Spectre excused himself from his brethren at the fireside, claiming that he had appointments that he had to attended too. Really, not a bad excuse.










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