A Tale of Death

A Tale of Death

         Occasionally I look in the mirror and ask the pale reflection "Why do I do this every day?" No response. No indication. Not even a blink of contemplation, or the wet eyeballs of pity. Shame. Well, I mean if I had any eyelids, or eyeballs for that matter, I probably would blink in thought and weep in sorrow. But unfortunately I am without the gift of eyes, amongst other things. And in any case it's incredibly difficult for me to feel emotion as the necessary organs for such activity are not currently residing in the bone cage of yours truly. Organs such as the heart, the brain, and of course the appendix. 
         The appendix is not, as most of these Earth-dwelling beings perceive it to be, a useless chunk of intestine which every once in a while throbs uncomfortably. No. It is the centre of all dark thoughts and emotions of the human psyche. The heart is commonly misrepresented in this department. Where humans and factual information do concur is in terms of emotions of a positive nature. They believe these come from the heart. They do. The problem with human understanding is that they believe dark and evil feelings originate in the heart as well. Here, they are wrong, as I have explained.
         In any case, even if I was equipped with a clean brain, a well-oiled heart and, of course, a perfectly functioning appendix, I would still be without the ability to feel and express emotion due to my lack of a soul.
Souls are like cement, holding things together; like wires completing an electrical circuit; like tendons and tissue connecting one bone to the next. Without them, people would be like eggs with no yolks, like football without a ball, like a snake with no backbone. But they are not as simple as these comparisons make them out to be. A human's soul brings together the spirit of the heart, the brain and the appendix, combining forces like an orchestra, resounding out hundreds of individual notes from different instruments all at once in a single magnificent chord. But a soul doesn't just bring these forces together; it emphasises them with its own special quality. A soul is not made up of material atoms, like trees, or food, or grasshoppers; it is formed of a substance so complex and unique that even my extraordinarily superior intelligence has difficulty understanding it. And even if I did understand and the ability to explain was within my capabilities, still I could not tell you. For it would be to break one of the Great Taboos, and that, I cannot do.
         It is time now to introduce the author of these words. Though I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of who I am, please don't spoil it for others and allow me a moment of theatrics.
         It's always amused me, in fact, how humans perceive me. To them I am the Scavenger of Souls; I am The Undertaker, the Life Devourer, the Harbinger and, my personal favourite, the Grim Reaper. It was always the scythe that got me.
         But I am all these things. When life comes to an end, I am there. When calamity strikes, I am there. When your time runs out, I will be there. Death by name. Death by nature. Remember me.

         Though I expect no applause, indeed it is rare I am greeted in any way but with a statement of absolute disgust and disdain it almost (almost mind you) brings at tear to my sockets. Usually I am threatened and insulted with profound language involving many four lettered words. Just to give you an idea I shall retrieve an example from my monumental collection of memories.
         I believe the particular soul that I was collecting went by the name of Joe and on his time on Earth had undertaken the profession of Professional Fish Decapitator. For the benefit of those of a delicate disposition I shall tone down his opening words to me.
         ‘"Hello,"' I said. ‘"Pleased to see me?"
         "Sheep you, you sheeping sheep! Why now? Huh? Of all the sheeping times to take me, why now?"' came his response thick with colour and vibrant nouns. Though he was little more than a fresh soul I could still see the, for want of a better word, slight irritation emanating out of him.
         You see, humans are incredibly short sighted. Not only do they only see in the third dimension, but they are unaware of so many things surrounding them.
For one, emotion.
To me people's feelings shroud them like coloured mist. They are as clear to my eyes - excuse me, to my eyesight - as ultraviolet is to the butterfly, or danger is to the dolphin. (I'm not strictly in charge of the deceased souls of animals, but I have become acquainted with one or two on my travels. I assure you that the myth that animals are more intelligent than humans is anything but!)
I understand that occasionally people feel a distinct emotion radiating off another, but their failure to understand it results from their blinkered method of scientific reasoning. I cannot explain why this breed is so afraid of broadening its mind.
Let me tell you something.
Beyond the stars, beyond even the Blackdrop (the end of the universe), there still exists a region, known collectively as the Void, that harbours beings not of this universe.
I used to be one.
The origin of my existence is hidden to me; the extent of my memory recollects every moment right back to a shadow. That is all I can remember, and all that the Maker allows me to remember. The Maker (original, I know) was the first of that which is. He made everything from then on, from the universe to the bluebell, he is present in all things.
That is how I came into existence. First there was Life, and then there was me. As she is there at your beginning, so I am there at your end. 
After us came Fate, and Luck, the manipulators of fortune and of the life path of all things. They decide what happens in life; who your parents are, who you fall in love with, when you're going to die, that kind of thing. I am the one who greets you upon your demise, but they are the ones who control your every move right until that moment.
Fate takes the guise of a voluptuous female, consistently in the nude. (I have the decency to at least put a cloak around me.) She gives the impression of being extremely casual in the way she throws people's lives away, but I assure you she is the nicest individual if you give her a chance.
I can't, I'm afraid, be as complimentary to Luck. For beneath that fiercely attractive exterior lies a heart not dissimilar to a gigantic appendix, seething with mischief and evil. All situations resulting in terrible circumstances for the involved parties are instigated through her will.
I alone of the First Four resembled the Maker in sex. That was until the creation of a fifth member to our party: Love.
The common misconception is that Love takes the appearance of a naked little boy under the name of Kewpid, firing pathetic arrows into the hearts of creatures, to arouse ultimate passion and desire in them. Love did in fact, from the off, take on the appearance of an elderly gentleman, with yellow teeth, more wrinkles than an elephant's hide, and an oaken staff.
         It is this staff that awakens in two lovers the soft and subtle fluttering of love's first clutches. Like a bird it rises and perches in their stomachs, beating its feathery wings. On his direction it spreads through the elbows, the knees and the head, creating an airiness and ecstasy in the culprit unlike any other feeling experienced on Earth.
         I have seen the stars. The many uninhabited planets. I have seen the blind sea creatures that populate the ocean floor. I have seen moonlight reflect in the eyes of unicorns. I have heard fish sing and have witnessed the birth of a solar system. I have seen beauty in colours of the ninth dimension. I have listened to the whisper of starlight stroking waves, and have held a fresh soul in the palm of my hand. But I have never felt love. I understand it perfectly; but understanding is incomparable to experience.
         And every day; while I went about my daily business and saw humans feeling emotions, a feeling of my own began to emerge in the lower right hand part of my abdomen. Like an itch it started, gnawing at my bones as I chose to ignore it. But when the irritation became unbearable I realised this was more than just a physical ailment. It chewed at my mind as well. Slowly a dawn of understanding broke over the horizon. Before me danced a monster with wicked green eyes. The eyes of Jealousy.
         Jealousy.
         An emotion I had seen in my travels, but one that I never imagined possessing as my own.
         As my brow furrowed in thought for time immeasurable a thought grew in my mind. I was jealous of them. They can feel, and I can't. The more emotions I saw being experienced by these uncaring selfish creatures, the deeper my resentment grew. The itch was an itch no longer. Nestled where it had originated lay an organ, throbbing with the swollen pride of life. An appendix.
         Now make no mistake. I knew what I was getting myself into. I realised that the more time I spent around these people, the more my appendix would swell, until it eventually devoured me entirely. I took a holiday. I went as far away as possible from Earth. I went to the Blackdrop.
         Though I cannot yet return back over into the Void, my place is with the universe, I scaled it nonetheless, looking for a flaw in its sleek obsidian surface.
         Needless to say, I found no such blemish. But while searching my mind distracted itself from my obsessions (for that is what they were) of the human race, and slowly but surely, inch by inch, the appendix consumed itself. When I eventually turned my thought back to it, it was little more than an itch, as it had started out.
         From that moment onwards I have remained detached from human civilisation; going about my duty with as much enthusiasm as a rotten grapefruit.
         When I returned to work, not a single human second had passed. Such a feat can only be carried out by one whom time has no grip upon. Time came into existence with the creation of the Universe; I was there before it was even conceived.
         I guess that makes me ageless, or immortal, whichever way you want to put it; it makes no difference to me. Time has no hold on me and so I am able to slip in and out of it as easily as a fish bisects water. But such an ability comes at a price. Only once can I move in time, either forward or backwards. And that time (no pun intended) has not come yet. It will come when the universe has exhausted itself and what was created will be destroyed. But to say more than this would be breaking another Great Taboo; and that, I cannot do. Though I am only allowed to move forward or back in time once, an infinite allowance of time stopping is completely at my mercy. I take thousands each human day. How else do you think I could cope with so many people dying?
         I think now would be a better time than any to give you a little idea of what I do.
         Death is a very simple process on my part; all I do is welcome the souls as they cross the boundary from that life into the next. A lot of people wrongly think that I'm in actual fact the instigator of death. The being responsible for when death occurs is in fact Fate. The process of your entire life is one of many stitches upon her tapestry of the universe. She decides when you die, not I. Every footstep that you take has been predecided. Sorry chum, there's nothing I can do about that.
         Many of the souls, when I greet them, whinge about how it was not their time to die, and so on; but I always have the same answer to their complaint: "Life can be a bitch sometimes, can't it?"
         Even Death has a sense of humour.
         However; there are some very rare cases where individual's predecided destiny does not play out quite as smoothly as it should. In these isolated cases Fate herself is involved directly in affecting how events play out. She changes her own pattern of life, usually allowing these "heroes" to live a little longer than expected. This can, on occasion, be rather confusing for me.
         I've been in the business long enough to know at what precise moment every single person on Earth is about to die. As a result I am never late. I always arrive at the exact time and place of death. But in the case of these "heroes", they are not there. A brief moment of confusion covers my sockets. I think I may be early. I wait. Still they do not come. I think that perhaps this ageless body may just in fact be succumbing to the human time frame. While I wait I think about life, and death, and all things in between, until eventually the idea that this person may just in fact be one of the mythical "heroes" crosses my mind. The time span for all of this thought and consideration is less than half an Earth second. With an intelligence the size of mine, and when you're in such a busy profession as mine, you learn to think on your feet.
         Just to make sure, I pop over to Fate, who currently resides in a beautiful planet three billion trillion light years away from Earth. She tells me that I'm not getting old and that the individual I wished to collect was biding his time a little longer.
         There have only been a handful of these so called "heroes" in the lifetime of human existence, and they really can be quite irritating.
         This brings me onto my next topic. How is it that I can tell when and where an individual will die. Well, I am aware of every living soul on the face of the planet. Every soul tingles on an isolated part of my body. When I was new to the job I found they tickled somewhat, but now I'm used to them. Where the tingle is on my body isn't important, what are important is the nature and the strength of the tingle. The more prominent the tingle is, the sooner the person is about to die. From this fact I am able to pinpoint the exact time of death. The nature of the tingle is a slightly more complex feature. To understand what I mean by the nature of the tingles you'd have to experience them yourself. You see, the nature of a tingle is what it feels like on my bones. Some feel like moonlight, others like tree-bark; some like spring rain, or sea mist, or wind, or even the sound of a galloping horse.
         This, I'm afraid, is the best I can do.
         The nature of the tingle tells me whereabouts on Earth this person will die. It's hard to explain why, but each individual nature represents a particular place on Earth. I have become extremely familiar with every atom that makes up the Earth and its inhabitants; I am able to understand and recognise the nature of every single spot on Earth. As such I know exactly where people die. Armed with this knowledge I am never late. Never. Not even for you. It's a strange thought, but I assure you, some time in the near future, we will meet. I already know the time and place, but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise now, would I?
         One other curious feature of the nature of a tingle is that it also tells me the way in which this individual will die. Most feel like the taste of salt. Old age. Some sound like the beating of a squirrel's heart. Illness. Some even feel like burnt water. War. But some, a very small number, have the unmistakable metallic stench of murder.