Death's Lullaby

The Reaper

She knew he was coming.

She once told people about him; the Reaper. The grown-ups laughed at it and called her an 'imaginative little thing.' 

Then just as she predicted, the good doctor died.

"I saw his car go boom." She said.

"Car accident; fuel tank exploded... We're still looking into the cause." The stern-faced policeman said. 

After that, the grown-ups had a look on their faces that none of the other kids did;

They were afraid of her.

Not long after, the weird bald man that the grown-ups called the good Father for some reason arrived. He called her and asked her weird questions that she did not understand-what was a God anyway?- before pouring some weird oil on her head and started saying stuff. He told the grown-ups that the 'Devil's influence' was gone, or something like that.

After that, she knew that she had to keep quiet about it.

A lot of people and animals died that year, but the man walking around with a dagger in his pocket was ignored. She knew his name now; he called himself Marty.

His real name was Mrtyu, and that meant death. He was Death, and he had come to take.

She once asked him why he had to take, and he smiled at her in that way only he could before answering,

"I take because... It is my purpose. The reason I am here."

"Then what if you gave back?"

"It doesn't work that way, Child. I am destined to take, and never give, because... I can never have."

"Well..." She began, biting her lip and looking down while drawing her dainty little foot in the sand of the playground that she was sitting by.

"What?"

"You have me." She said, hugging him as best she could.

Marty made a weird face that she had never thought someone could ever make when she did that, and he quickly left. She felt like she did something wrong, that she had made her only friend angry...

.. Until she realized that no one had died for a whole month.

Marty came to visit her a few times after that, and he was always smiling. He would listen to her, help her play pranks on some of the matrons in the orphanage, and would tuck her into bed at night before leaving. He always said something to her before he left.

"Goodnight, my voice. Goodnight, my light."

She now knew what it meant, now that he was coming. Just as much as she knew why he was coming.

She was dying, and he was coming to take her.

And he would do everything in his power to keep her.