The Reaper's Mission- 2013

Chapter Seven- The Streets of Burlington

I walked up and down the dark streets, listening to the sounds of cars and dogs barking. It was only about nine, so most houses and apartments were still lit up, and I'd occasionally see a family sitting around a table or a child dancing across a room through the windows. It wasn't anything special, that particular night, but for some reason, it felt different. Karolyn had made an interesting point about living, and though I wasn't sure how to take it, I was definitely going to think on it for a while.

As I pondered over Karolyn's words, the people rushing past me in their cars began to come alive to me and take on identities for the first time in a long time. I began to see them as faces and personalities instead of numbers and assignments. In the past, only the few I interacted with had any humanity in my eyes, but now, I was beginning to see that each life I passed by was unique and alive and human.

Even so, I didn't feel like I belonged among them; I was still a Reaper, and they were all still human. I sighed as I realized this and continued walking onwards, not thinking about where I was going and instead just walking through the moment.

When I came to a dead end a few miles from my apartment, I stopped and sat down. Could I keep doing this? If I began seeing humans as people again, then would it inhibit my ability to kill them on Reaper death assignments? I thought back to the last time it'd ever been hard for me to kill someone and shivered at the memory.

It had been a boy, not a day over nine years old, and he had just fully recovered from severe tuberculosis. His family brought him home and had a celebration with all of his joyful, teary-eyed relatives while I sat and watched from the corner, invisible to them all in my ghost form. When he went to bed that night, just after he said his prayers and thanked God for his chance to live again, I snuck in and ended his life. The verdict was that he accidentally smothered himself with his pillow in his sleep. The truth was that I had been the one to look him in the eyes as his life drained from them and kill him with my Reaper's touch.

Since that night, I'd never so much as flinched at having to kill someone again. I'd already gotten over simply reaping those who died in other ways, but that was the assignment that cured me of feeling pain in killing others. How? It had forced me to stop looking at humans as people with lives and feelings and personalities, and to start looking at them as assignments.

What Karolyn had suggested meant that I had to stop doing that and start enjoying those around me again, but could I do that without sacrificing the shield I'd built around myself to keep from feeling for humans?

I lay back against a pile of gravel and looked up at the stars. In all of my years of reaping, they had never changed. They looked different in different places, but the sky was the sky, and the stars were constant. I'd always taken comfort in this fact, but tonight the sky felt stagnant and faded, perhaps from all of the years of never changing.

Or maybe it was just me.

"You miss out on all the happiness in life now because you're just focusing on the sadness that could come in the future."

She was right. Without knowing barely a thing about me, Karolyn had described me to a tee in a single sentence. I had been missing out. My entire life as a Reaper I'd been missing out, because I knew that if I let myself start enjoying life, then I'd miss it later. And so I went through my "life" like a dead man, not feeling human and not being alive.

Perhaps I had been dead for too long.

I knew then that I couldn't ignore what Karolyn had told me. I'd spent too long doing the same thing and only ever thinking about the next assignment, and it was time for a change.

I decided that night that from then on, I was going to live. Maybe not fully, like the human that I wasn't, but I was going to live.

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I know this chapter is really short, but it is important to Donovan's character. Remember, I actually wrote all this about 3-4 years ago and am just going back through editing it and test running it on Wattpad. 

Anywho, as always, hoping you're enjoying the story!

-Haybails