Fortnightly Writing Competition: The Grim Reaper (Results)

[Sinitrena]

The Grim Reaper

Personification of Death, skeleton, wearing a robe and carrying a scythe, sometimes a foreboding pressence, sometimes a nice helping hand into the afterlife. Thousands try to cheat him, try to flee from him, bargain with him. Some embrace him. He is forebouding, dangerous, scary, inviting.

This FWC is about the Personification of Death specifically, not just death as an event. The character of Death needs to show up and has an important role, either as the main protagonist or as an important meeting with the character. (I'll allow death-adjacent concepts as well, like Charon, the ferryman from Greek mythology.)

So, have fun killing a few characters for me, or save them, maybe they win against Death, or maybe Death is actually nice. Whatever you choose to do with the Grim Reaper, the time of our appointment is 1. September.

[Stupot]

I’ve drafted a short one by hand and typed it up. Gonna sit on it for a few days and give it another once over.

[Mandle]

Gonna sit on it for a few days

Be careful of that scythe.

[Stupot]

My Friend, Joanna.

I stepped toward the automatic door and waited longer than I was happy with for it to open, then I stepped into the coffee shop. Its beautifully conditioned air quickly made me forget about the door. Though it was still early (only 7:50 a.m.), it was already a hot and sticky morning, so the air inside was bliss.

My friend Joanna, sitting by a window, stood up and waved me over. We said our hellos and then sat down and waited to be waited on.

The thing about Joanna was: she was twitchy. Really twitchy. She never told me why, but always insisted it wasn’t Parkinson’s or something. And to her credit, it never seemed to affect her all that much.  Often the spasms were barely perceptible (a nose-flicker here, a finger-tremble there) but occasionally she would shudder violently. It was constant. But despite this, she functioned surprisingly well.

Nevertheless, despite her insistence that she wasn’t sick, I could never help shake the feeling that one day, maybe soon, she was going to fall seriously ill or worse.

“Nice café” I said, shaking off my negative thoughts.

“I come here nearly every day.” She pointed her chin to the window. “See that lady there?”

“With the pushchair?”

“Yeah.” Joanna’s ear was twitching now. “You know. Every time I come in here, she’s out there walking that empty pram.”

“Weird. I wonder why.”

“I reckon she always wanted kids, so she walks around pretending she has one.” A shudder in the neck. A jolt of the thumb.

“Possible. Or maybe she lost a child and can’t let go... literally. Pushing around an imaginary baby.”

“She might be homeless, and pushes this buggy around collecting cans.”

“I don’t think so. She’s a bit unkempt, but she doesn’t look homeless... plus, no cans.”

Now her eyebrow was going for it.

“I hope she’s alright though,” Joanna said.

“So do I.”

“Maybe we could invite her in here for a coffee.”

“Nah, she might turn out to be a clinger.” I immediately felt bad for saying that and considered running out to talk to the woman, but by this point she and her pushchair had disappeared halfway down the road.”

Just then, the door opened and a man walked in. He was middle-aged and good-looking with short, dark hair, and a well-trimmed black beard, and he was wearing a black hoodie with the hood down. The man sat down and ordered a drink. He checked his watch and I couldn’t help involuntarily glancing at my own: 7:56.

We sat in silence for a couple of moments. I had learned that Joanna would often sit in silence for short periods. Her eyes would glaze over and a sadness would come over her briefly, and then she would shudder violently for a few seconds and just as suddenly return from wherever she’d been, slightly out of breath, but no worse for wear. I let the moment pass and suddenly had a thought.

“You come here every day?”

“Nearly.”

“And that woman with the pushchair. She always walks past at the same time?”

“Oh, I never really checked.”

“What if she’s just on her way back from taking her kid to nursery, and they don’t let you leave the pushchair there?”

Joanna looked at me as though I had just solved the Times cryptic crossword blindfolded.
“You know. That’s probably it,” she said. A flicker of the nose, a twitch of the pinky.

Just then, the good-looking man stood up from his table. He pulled his hood over his head and started approaching us, somewhat nervously. I wasn’t sure if Joanna had noticed him or not. He reached his arm out in front of him and extended a pointy index finger in her direction. I shouted “Joanna, look out!” But I was too late. He had touched her on the shoulder.

Then he said “You are free now.”

I looked at her, I looked at him. I was fully expecting her to keel over. Instead, she lifted her head up, smiled at the man and said “Thank you.”

It was then that I noticed Joanna was no longer twitching. But the man was. His cheek buckled, his shoulder convulsed. He didn’t look quite as used to it as Joanna had been, but he turned and twitched his way back to his seat, where a fresh coffee was now waiting for him.

I looked at Joanna again. She had her head down, avoiding eye-contact with me.

Suddenly she seemed to remember something, stood up, and walked over to the man. She removed something from around her neck and handed it to him. “I’m supposed to give you this.” He said “thanks” and she put a gentle hand on the man’s twitching shoulder before coming back to the table. The man put the item around his own neck and I saw that it was a necklace with a gold pendant. I recognised it as a small scythe.

I looked at my friend as though she had just taken a copy of the Times cryptic crossword, rolled it up, smoked it and then snorted the ashes. “What on Earth was all that about?”

She just took her bag and said “Let’s go shopping. I need a new necklace.” And so we did. It would be the last time either of us mentioned it.

Later that morning, in the shopping arcade, we walked past an electronics store. The large TVs were all showing the same breaking news story. Joanna quicky walked on ahead, avoiding the images. A large passenger plane had crashed in the Swiss Alps this morning. Time of crash was 7:56. There were no survivors.

[DBoyWheeler]

If only I could do these competitions again...

But, hypothetically, if I did something like this... maybe the "Reaper" character could instead be Anubis from Egyptian lore?  Just a thought.

[Sinitrena]

If only I could do these competitions again...

But, hypothetically, if I did something like this... maybe the "Reaper" character could instead be Anubis from Egyptian lore?  Just a thought.

As I said, I'll accept death-adjacent characters, and as the god of death in egyptian mythology, I do consider Anubis death-adjacent. Anubis and other gods of death are perfectly welcome here.

I hope you find the time and energy to enter.

[Mandle]

I've had my first-draft done for like a week now, but got covid in the meanwhile. I'm over all symptoms now, but the wife has worse so it's gonna take me a while to get the second draft done, but I'll make the deadline easily.

[lapsking]

Can it be a poem about death?

Fighting Death During a Pandemic

They are all shit scared of death today
Never thought soon they’ll die anyway

They take Vitamin C to cause death a delay
Never thought at last under clay they decay

To live one more day alcohol they spray
Never thought the death they have to obey

To avoid death even atheists cry and pray
Never thought they are death’s doomed prey

Taking booster jabs and think it’s okay
Never thought life inevitably will betray

[Sinitrena]

Can it be a poem about death?

Of course it can be a poem about death.

And while I always prefer more entries and would never not allow one, I'll still point out that this entry technically doesn't follow this month's rules:

This FWC is about the Personification of Death specifically, not just death as an event. The character of Death needs to show up and has an important role

But don't mind this too much. Welcome to the FWC!

[Sinitrena]

Your appointment with Death is in a day. You cannot run from it, you cannot fight it, you cannot bargain (well, actually, if you ask nicely, you might get a few more days...) All you can do is play Scheherazade and distract the Grim Reaper with a few tales, so get them in.

Anyone still working on something? Mandle, are your family and you feeling better (hope so!), will you make the deadline?

[Mandle]

SOMETHING IMPOSSIBLE

Spoiler

CHAPTER ONE

Vito had cheated them all. He had cheated the police. He had cheated the FBI, and even those IRS bastards. He had even cheated Holy Judgement itself.

It was going to be tonight. He felt it. There was no more denying it. The priest had left about half an hour ago after hearing his confession, and giving him the last rites, as he had requested.

Vito Maraffa had been vague with the priest, of course. He had been cautious. But he had confessed just enough that he knew God must have understood that he was now a pure soul ready to rocket his way up to Heaven.

He had thought that the priest was legit of course. It was Father Fratino, or at least he was fairly sure of it. Vito's eyesight wasn't worth all that much anymore, but he had a good ear. It had sounded just like his priest of twenty-odd years to him, but there was so much they could do with technology these days. So, he had couched his confession in general terms. The fucking Feds could still be trying to screw him and his family over, even at this late hour.

But God had understood. That was the main thing.

Vito's felt a little rattle-tat-tat in his chest. In his narrow 87-year-old chest. His vision dimmed slightly and then came back as his heart regained its steady... ish beat. So, yes, it was going to be tonight.

And he had fooled them all. Even God.

Vito, his one narrow, bony hand that was out over his bed-covers stopped stroking his dog's back and slid down its furry flank, as he dozed off.

CHAPTER TWO

All was dark and peaceful for some time.

And then Bastone Maraffa snapped awake!

Something was wrong. Someone was here. An intruder was here in his master's bedroom and he had to do something about it! But he was afraid.

He had been through so much that was confusing to him over the last few days. He didn't know why his recent memories were flashes of a walk with his master, and then a sharp pain and blackness, and then waking up from the blackness and...

And then, there it was; The intruder. It towered in the low light from the wall-lamps in the corner of his master's expansive bedroom.

Bastone leapt up onto his four feet and wanted to bark the world down, but could only produce a low growl, deep in his tiny throat, as the intruder glid forward rapidly across the hardwood floor. Bastone, his eyes wide and rising higher in their sockets, fixated on the terrifying face of the intruder, wet himself shamefully on his master's bed and then fled from off its side.

CHAPTER THREE

His limp hand falling away from the furry flank of his little Terrier as it snapped to attention made Vito wake up. He heard a frightened growl coming from his side. It was unmistakably coming from his lovely one; Bastone. He hadn't heard such a vibrating growl of sheer terror for his beloved little dog since it had cornered a rat, and then didn't know what to do next.

Vito felt wet warmth spreading in through the mattress under his lower back as he looked up into the face of his nocturnal intruder, who was obviously Death Himself.

The black cowl over His head gave it away even before Vito fumbled around on his nightstand, knocking the alarm clock he would never ever need again off onto the floor, and then finally finding his glasses.

Vito fumbled the fish-eyed lenses of his round spectacles onto his withered face and saw what stood at the foot of his bed. There, between the carved oak pillars of his four-poster bed, the face of The Grim Reaper came into focus for Vito and, although he had thought himself prepared for anything, he added to the liquid warmth spreading out on his mattress.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Grim Reaper looked down on his latest assignment. He rapid-fire thought to himself "Why are they all so pathetic like this? They tried to be bad-asses and live large all their lives, and then, when we catch up with them, they just fold and show all their cards. Well, that's the job, I guess... And I love it!"

Through the hinged jaw of his skeletal mouth he boomed "I AM DEATH!"

His target, gripping the bedcovers up to his chin, stuttered "Y-y-yes... I k-k-know. I-i'm rea-ready to g-g-go," tears starting to well up in his hazel, poached-egg eyes.

Death allowed himself a dramatic pause, starting to enjoy this disgusting worm's wriggling, before pumping what he hoped sounded like diabolical laughter through his skeletal, gap-toothed mouth:

"MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA-BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"Look, j-just take m-me. I... I'm r-r-ready for hea-h-heaven!" spluttered Vito.

"IF ONLY THAT WAS WHERE YOU WERE GOING YOU *MIGHT* BE READY!" boomed the robed skeleton at the foot of Vito's bed in its crackling, raspy voice.

Vito's eyes locked in their cowering, terrorized pose he had felt up until now, but then slid into a more suspicious expression. Down into slits, his eyes narrowed beneath their almost-nine-decade-old wrinkles.

"I m-made a d-deal w-w-" he stuttered, before finally finding the steel within him that had made him what he is, and shouted "WITH GOD!".

The Grim Reaper, his black robes rippling around him, let his skeletal jaw start moving before he spoke "God did NOT get the memo!"

CHAPTER FIVE

Back in his office, barely 15 minutes after administering the Last Rites to Vito Maraffa, the man known as Father Giuseppe Fratino took off his priest outfit and hung it up on the rack next to so many others.

He thought back on the life and times of this despicable man. He thought back on how many lives the man had ruined, or even ended, though his Mafia kingship over the distribution of drugs and hits in his vast territory.

He thought back to the comforting... to the hugging and weeping with grieving parents over the deaths of their children from overdoses... and he thought back to the zipping-up of body-bags of dealers who were once wayward children themselves.

And he took comfort in the thought that this fucking bastard was being judged right now by the ultimate judge, the one who stood tall above all of the intricacies of the laws of the land.

CHAPTER SIX

Under his master's vast bed, Bastone quivered in fear, squat to the hardwood floor on his haunches.

He felt fear and shame and some third emotion his unequipped little doggy brain couldn't deal with. He only saw it as flashes of bright purple across his vision and, in his ears and nose, he heard and smelt it in the same pallette.

He was in fight-or-flight mode and was conflicted between the two.

Bastone's brain didn't know whether he should defend his master from this intruder or just make a run for it.

So, within its tininess, it just decided to do both at the same time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED, AND HAVE BEEN FOUND GUILTY, AND OWE AN ETERNAL DEBT!"

"No! Wait! The rules s-say that..."

"THEY SAY THAT WHAT?!"

"They s-say that I had a-an out!"

"WHAT WAS THAT OUT?!"

"That... That I w-would be... f-f-forgiven."

Death leapt at this chance. He felt that he was so close, but mishandled it and boomed "FORGIVEN FOR WHAT?!"

Vito's eyes slid down into a suspicious squint, with the decades of the wrinkles of his experience folding apart on their lids, and said "Wait!"

"WAIT FOR WHAT?!"

"This is some kind of trick! Are you going to ask me to confess my sins in some particularly specific manner?" Vito rattled off, feeling himself back on the solid bargaining ground he had always been used to, and had been missing for quite some years.

"IF THAT WILL BRING YOU PEACE."

"Like what?"

"CONFESS TO ME THE SINS OF YOUR BLOODLINE."

"And then I get what, exactly?"

"WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WOULD WANT?"

"Not to die tonight? Another chance at life?"

"THIS IS... POSSIBLE."

"You have a tell."

"A TELL? WHAT IS A..."

"You always pull your head... your... skull... to one side when you are lying. That's a 'Tell'."

"I AM BUSY. YOU WILL COME WITH ME NOW!"

The Grim Reaper reached behind his back, pulled out the short hand-held sickle, and leaned in over the bottom end of the big four-poster bed with the weapon held out in front of him in his skeletal claw of a hand.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bastone launched himself out from under the bed, its hanging covers flapping, and went straight for the ankle of the intruder.

The dog's tiny mind was scrambling between "ATTACK!" and "PISS MYSELF AGAIN!" and couldn't decide, and so, once again, did both at the same time as it bit into the hard, fleshless ankle of the intruder. He hung on by his teeth as the intruder's foot thrashed around.

Bastone bit deeper into the ankle of Death but did not find flesh, and then an especially vigorous shake of that leg sent his body flying off into the wall with a brief yelp followed by a longer blackout.

CHAPTER NINE

The Grim Reaper clambered over the bottom edge of Vito's bed and scrambled up to loom over him, face to face. Vito looked up into the skeletal face above him with its cowled hood drooping in folds around his face, enclosing them, as if inside a tent together. They were exactly that intimate within the moment.

Death was close.

His voice and jaw back in synch now, Death whispered "Your life for a secret?"

Vito had thought his bladder must be empty, but it proved him wrong. However, he was beyond embarrassment now, and croaked out "What secret?", his head turned, eyes wincing in terror, to one side.

"TELL ME OF YOUR SINS! AND THOSE OF THOSE YOU BIRTHED!"

Despite his terror, something lit up in Vito's head. This sounded too much like the interrogations he had gone through for months with the fucking FBI and the fucking IRS.

He pulled the steel in his balls up into his soul, just as he had done his whole life to get through rough spots with rough characters. He brought back his courage in the face of impossible opposition for the last time in his life and said:

"This is bullshit! This is a fucking con from you fucking feds!"

"YOU DARE DOUBT DEATH ITSELF?!"

"Yup! This is a setup! Prove to me that you are what you say you are!"

The Grim Reaper looked from side to side, and then the low, throaty growl he heard over the side of the bed made him enact the "contingency plan". The plan that The Almighty One had granted permission for him to carry out in these specific circumstances.

He snapped his skull-face back down, all up close and personal with Vito, under the intimate tent of his hanging cowl again and said: "WATCH THIS. WATCH HOW I STEAL THE LIFE FROM YOUR PRECIOUS DOG."

CHAPTER TEN

He was only out for a moment, off in Terrier dreams, and then he was back.

Bastone shook his little doggy head to clear it, and then gathered his four paws under himself, using the wall he had been smacked against as support, and then growled, low and awesome, and then rushed the ramparts of the bed his master was being held hostage upon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Vito, his humanity already long lost, watched with curiosity as his little pet dog cleared the side of his bed in one leap, tiny teeth bared in a snarl. Would Death make good with his demonstration of power, or would this all turn out to be a farce? Maybe just some kind of con the feds had pulled on him at the eleventh hour?

The Grim Reaper kept his right hand pinning Vito to the bed while he extended his left and pointed at the little Terrier rushing across the crumpled covers.

And then Death, pointing his skeletal finger at the little, snarling dog rushing up on him, said "DIE!" and the little dog yipped once, sharp and brief, and fell over sideways and rolled, only once, to a stop in a fold of gathered cloth.

Vito lifted his ancient head, on the creaking tendons of his thin neck, off from his pillow to see better.

The little dog was still. Its little tongue lolled out over its little fuzzy chin. In the Y-shaped fold of his bed's covers, the dog lay dead.

"OKAY! I believe you! Fuck! Talk to me! Whatever it takes to get me to Heaven!"

The Grim Reaper leaned in closer. It was so intimate right now that their nose and lack-of-nose were almost fucking.

"CONFESS YOUR SINS TO ME!"

"And then I go to Heaven, right?"

"NO! BUT IT WILL BE A START!"

"Okay! I killed people! A lot of people! I stabbed them and then I shot them when I got old enough and then I..."

"YOUR CONFESSION IS HEARD!"

Vito relaxed the tendons in his straining neck and allowed his head to fall back onto his pillow with a sigh of relief.

"BUT THERE IS ONE MORE THAT MUST BE SPOKEN!"

"What? What could be worse than..."

"THE SINS OF YOUR OFFSPRING!"

Vito hesitated barely a second before he squealed on his children about their crimes and then THEIR children's crimes to the Angel of Death that crouched, panting, over him.

And then the Angel of Death was crawling backwards down over the covers of his bed away from him. Vito couldn't feel its breath on his face any longer. He closed his eyes, for what he thought would be the last time, in peace, ready to rocket up to Heaven. But then a thought, one that had eluded him until just now, popped up in his mind:

"BREATH?" he thought. "Why did it BREATHE on my face?! The dead don't breathe!"

Vito opened his eyes in panic. FUCK! Had he been had?!

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jim Phelps spun around in his chair, away from his monitor, and smiled that smile that the rest of his team knew and loved. It was that smile on that face, under its immaculately-parted head of silver hair, that meant that another impossible mission had just ended in success.

Phelps said "Vito just ratted out his whole family! All that mob money is now fair game for the IRS to grab, and no inheritances either! They are broke as all get-out!"

Barney put down the boxy remote-control device he had recently pushed the big red button on to deliver the sedative into the dog's neck from the needle hidden under its collar.

Paris turned his head back from his own computer station and, looking at his boss said "Okay, we break the bedroom set down as usual and then ...". But, just as he was taking the bug-feed plug out of his prominent ear, Paris' long face grew intense.

He turned back to his console and spoke into his microphone.

He said "Agent Rollin! You were ordered to STAND DOWN! Do NOT continue with the operati..."

"Yeah, man... I'm not even anymore. I'm back here," said Rollin Hand from his own mouth, the animatronic skull-head he had been wearing throughout the charade tucked under his black-robed arm.

Paris glanced back from his console and saw Rollin standing there in person, back from acting in the set of Vito's apartment, his Grim Reaper mask off, and suddenly nothing made sense anymore.

He pushed the earplug, the one that was connected to the bug in the lamp next to Vito's bed, back into his ear and heard the whole insane mess that followed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The end of the tape that the top council at IMF headquarters eventually listened to was a one-sided conversation; Just Vito talking to himself, but with pauses in between. Gaps just long enough that it was uncomfortably easy to imagine an unheard party filling them in.

It went like this:

"Why... wait... you said you would leave me alone if..."

(silence for 3 seconds)

"What do you mean 'NO'?! You were JUST HERE! We had a deal!"

(silence for 5 seconds)

"NO! I spoke to you already!"

(silence for 3 seconds)

"Whaddaya mean?! Whaddaya mean 'Not affiliated'?!"

(silence for 1 second)

"NO! GET AWAY FROM ME WITH THAT THING!"

(silence for 2 seconds)

(A death-gurgle)

EPILOGUE

Bastone's snout wrinkled in his sleep. He let out a snort and his back legs pedaled twice as the last human sound from the tape grew still. Then the recording let out a final CLICK and faded into fuzzy static.

There was something about that gurgle that infiltrated the little dog's mind and briefly disturbed his sleep, but then the comforting hand of his new master stroking his haunch drew him back into his warm and simple Terrier dreams, and he was quiet.

The IMF Director waved his free hand, dismissing his subordinates from the long meeting table. His other hand continued stroking the new pet on his lap, in a way that would become an unconscious reflex over the years to come.

Once he was free of all human company, he pushed a button under the lip of the dark mahogany table.

A panel swung over on its surface in front of him, revealing a small stand microphone.

He pushed the red button on the microphone's base and said into it "Your mission Jim, should you choose to accept it..."

Bastone slept on in newfound peace, his only dreams informed by the warm, deep tones of his beloved master's voice.

[close]

[Baron]

Hey peeps, long time no ready.  Sorry about dropping off the face of the Earth, but I've been travelling with kids which entails both patchy wifi and zero me-time.  But we're back home now, so I whipped up a little something for the comp.  It was kinda going in three directions at once, which basically just tears the plot apart at the seams since I have zero editing time (you've been warned, Sini!  ).  Enjoy!

A Grim Task

     Decimus carefully straddled the highway.  He kept the newly risen sun to his back, so that its glare would not distract him from his task.  Towering fifty feet over the surface of the asphalt he would have cast an impressive shadow, but he was not truly part of this world of life and matter, and so he left no trace of his presence.  Only his sickle could interact with the world around him, and that only in a limited capacity.  Basically it cut a temporary hole between this world and the next, to let the spent souls through.  Simple stuff, really.

But there was nothing simple about Decimus’ technique.  He was Reaper First Class, winner of the Best Harvester award in his division fifteen years running.  For most reapings he was more efficient - his expertise was in harvesting on the fly without even slowing down.  But this one was special.  Not the soul of course - Frank Whatshisface who was late for work couldn’t stir up excitement if he had a cake-mixer grafted onto the end of his arm - no, not the soul.  It was the number that was exciting: this was Decimus’ ten-thousandth soul!  As such, he intended to make it memorable.

Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be rockstar memorable, or political assassination memorable.  Those were always fun, but you couldn’t help the order that souls' times ran out.  It was a part of the job to work the list you were given.  But the manner of the harvesting - that was left entirely up to the discretion of the reaper at the scene.  And this one was going to be spectacular!

Decimus squinted into the distance and spied Frank coming over the hill about a mile distant.  He was speeding down the highway as fast as his old Buick Regal would take him, swerving across the centre line as he tried to simultaneously shave and eat his donut breakfast, all while he drove into the blinding brightness of the rising sun. 

Decimus’ skull-like face cracked into a wicked grin.  He inverted his grip on his sickle so that he held it as a golfer might hold his club.  He did a few practice strokes, as he had seen middle-aged men do on the golf course right before they dropped dead.  He moved the sickle up to the centre line of the road, then carefully drew it back to let Exotic Dancing Rhonda drive past on her way home from the night shift.  Another practice swing up to the centre line of the road, and then the sickle was again drawn back, allowing Super Dad Jerry and his two-year-old son to make it to day care on time.  Decimus allowed the sickle to fall once more to the centre line of the road, before drawing it back for the last time.  Frank hurtled towards him, choking as he spilled coffee on his pudgy lap.  He screamed as he approached the invisible tunnel beneath Decimus’ legs….

…And then Decimus swung.  Frank’s soul was mercifully sliced from his body just as the Buick Regal flipped into the air, sailing over Hungover Steve’s pizza delivery van (by a remarkable coincidence he’d be seeing Steve again next month on this same stretch of roadway) before caroming off the highway and wrapping itself like a pretzel around a telephone pole.

It was a moment of pure glory for Decimus.  He felt like he closed his eyes to savour the feeling of accomplishment, except that his skull-like face lacked both eyes and the means to close them.  But how else to explain how the world faded to total blackness?

*   *   *   *   *

   Decimus awoke with a start.  “The fuck?!?” he muttered, shaking his cloudy head.  “Did you… did you just harvest me?!?”

   There were howls of laughter from around what Decimus realised was the office.  The entire division hooted and hollered from their desks.  His boss, Captain Scarabus, cracked a large smile and slapped him on the back, making the vertebrae inside his cowled-gown ring like xylophone keys.  “All right you numb-skulls, back to work!” he shouted.  “Decimus, I need to see you in my office.”

Decimus still felt a little unsteady, as if his soul were not put back in its proper orientation, but he tried his best to hide it as he followed his Captain past his still chuckling colleagues.  He was grateful having reached the office to have the opportunity to sit down across from the Captain’s desk.

“Ten thousand souls!” the Captain congratulated him.  “That’s quite an accomplishment, especially for a reaper of your years.  You should be very proud!”

“Thank you, sir,” Decimus nodded graciously.  “I strive to do my best.”

“I know, I know…” the Captain trailed off.  “That’s why I’m promoting you.”

“Sir?”

   â€œYou’ve done good things for this division, numbers wise.  It’s great, it’s really great.  But I’m catching a lot of heat these days about leakage - do you know what that is, son?”

   Decimus had a vague recollection from back in basic training.  “Something to do with souls that aren’t ready to let go?  Don’t they float around as ghosts until they finally make their peace?”

“Precisely,” Captain Scarabus nodded.  “It’s the latest vogue, reducing leakage rates.  And I’m sorry to say our division’s leakage numbers are dismal.  That’s why I’m reassigning you.”

   â€œWait, what?”

   â€œI think I was pretty clear,” the Captain said, suddenly quite serious.  “As of this moment, you’re plugging leaks for us.  Your first case is Sally the Cheerleader Wannabe.  Slit her own wrists in the bath-tub a month ago.  Since then she’s haunted the high school girl’s changeroom.  Your job is to bring her in.”

   Decimus felt like he was going to vomit, and this time he was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the prank his colleagues had played on him.  “Sir,” he started, “I’m not much good with this touchy feely stuff….”

Captain Scarabus just shook his head.  “Look around you, son.  We’re all heartless sons-of-bitches here - reapers are trained to be ruthless killers, after all!  But we all gotta move with the times, and you’re the best I’ve got.  Now get down there and convince Sally to give up the ghost.  We’re counting on you!”

   *   *   *   *   *
   Decimus gritted his teeth.  He didn’t so much mind shrinking down to mortal size - he did that plenty to get those hard to reach souls down in parking garages or stuck in water slide tubes.  Nor did he so much mind the crowding, like cattle in an abattoir pen - he’d worked Travis Scott concerts, after all.  No, it was the grim, prison-like sense of hopelessness in the highschool hallways as the third period bell rang that really stuck in his craw.

   â€œPoor kids…” Decimus muttered as Brady the Washroom Comic Drawer passed right through him, shuddering.  Brady was followed by Gloria the Whippit Queen and Dayna the Cat Lady in Training, who also both shuddered as they passed through Decimus’ invisible body.  Then it was Morris the Clammy Creepy Guy who passed through, but this time it was Decimus’ turn to shudder.   Some of the students at this school were into some weird, weird shit!

   â€œOK, you can do this,” Decimus said to himself, superfluously taking a deep breath to calm his nerveless bones.  “Let’s see…. Second floor, third hallway to the right, fifth door to the left…”  Alas, he ended up in an American history lecture where he was truly sorry that he couldn’t reap the students’ souls and save them the agony of living through it.  Decimus retraced his steps but managed to accidentally scare the wits out of an art teacher who was particularly attuned to the occult.  He got turned around again in the science hallway and received two weeks’ detention from the ghost of a die-hard vice-principal before finally finding the girl’s change room.

   â€œRight,” Decimus said, cracking his neck bones and getting his scythe ready.  “This is it.  Go time!  I’m just gonna march in there and set that ghostly teen drama queen straight.  I’m gonna make her see reason.  This is going to be an after-life altering moment!”  He was about to open the door when he overheard two girls inside swapping yeast-infection horror stories.  Decimus paused.

   Two hours later he was still hiding in the bushes out behind the sports field with Dale the Pot Head and Jimmy Day Drunk swapping incoherent stories.  Decimus was pretty sure they couldn’t hear him complaining, but the thread of conversation was bizarre enough that he couldn’t quite tell.  “Honestly, I don’t know the first thing about girl-drama,” he confessed, his head spinning from the psychedelic clouds wafting off of Dale.  “Sometimes I think I try so hard because deep down, I feel like I’m really just a failure trying to fake it till I make it.”

   â€œIt’s like a pig’s gotta wallow, man!”  Jimmy Day Drunk replied, swaying distressingly far to his right.

   â€œJelly bean,” Dale the Pot Head agreed.

   â€œDo you know what?” Decimus said, taking up his scythe again.  “I am going to march right into that girls’ change room.  Sure, it might be a warren of awkward feelings and body angst and disturbingly rancid smells considering that no one has died in there recently, but dammit I’ve got a job to do!  And there’s a young lady-ghost down there who needs me, whether she realizes it or not, despite her weird hang-ups and petty rivalries and obsession with Tik Tok and morbid fear of processed meat and her sixth toe that disturbingly haunts her beyond the grave in tiny toe-ghost form!  Wish me luck, boys, ‘cause I’m going in!”

   â€œAztec dance party, man,” Jimmy Day Drunk said, raising his hand to salute Decimus.

   And that’s how Gormanville High got its twenty-third ghost, who haunted the hallway outside the girl’s change room (except when the vigilant ghost of vice-principal Henworth was patrolling that particular hallway).  The students would shudder as they passed through him on their way to and fro on their busy schedules, but no more so than they would when the morbidly obese Mrs. Chaucy would council them into imagining everybody in their underwear when public speaking.  Indeed, Decimus fit in pretty well, especially during awkward student dances and at the anti-anorexia club.  As time passed and he slowly forgot his life outside the institutional bleakness of the education system, Decimus began to enjoy his role as a provoker of additional anxiety.  But for all that, he sadly never did work up the nerve to meet the ghost of Sally the Cheerleader Wannabe.

[Sinitrena]

Death has come, and now it is time for you to be judged (or to judge - they're kind of the same around here, though everyone is allowed to vote, of course).

The following people had a recent encounter with the Grim Reaper:

Stupot - My Friend, Joanna
lapsking - Fighting Death During a Pandemic
Mandle - Something Impossible
Baron - A Grim Task

Now, weight the scales and tell me your judgement (by sending me a PM). You have 10 points you can distribute among the candidates as you see fit. And if you want to, you can add comments here. You have until 7.September.

Read, enjoy, don't die!

[Mandle]

Voted. Feedback later. Also interesting that the thread has 400+ views and yet nobody except us guys vote. Are the 400+ views just us guys over and over? Or do people just duck in and go "Naw, don't wanna read anything." and then duck out again?

[Baron]

It's them bots not voting!  Someone should invent a voting bot.... 

I've voted as well.  Comments concealed below because Mandle is fond of fig leaves.... 

Spoiler

@Stupot:

Short but sweet.  I liked the details (stupid automatic doors, think they're smarter than you!), and the mundane normality of the meeting at the cafe, complete with selfish thoughts as to why it would be a bother to meet with the push-cart woman.  The periodic twitches were particularly well woven into the fabric of the story.  But the best part was the big reveal at the end - what WAS Johanna doing when she zoned out all those times!?!

@ lapsking:

A bit fatalistic for my tastes, but I guess you're right that death inevitably gets its way in the end no matter how we dodge or plead or struggle.  From a technical perspective the rhymes work well but the meter is all over the place, which somewhat detracts from the effect.  There are a few awkward wordings to make the rhymes work (e.g. putting the subject and verb at the end of a sentence), and there are minor tense issues ("Never thought" usually uses the conditional tense - i.e. "would":  so "Never thought they'd be death's doomed prey", etc.).  It's always hard to compare poetry to prose in a writing competition, but I feel more attention to technical details would really improve this poem.

@Mandle:

Double crosses, triple crosses, my head is spinning faster than Bastone's little terrier legs on a freshly waxed floor!  I liked the writing (your "pulling the steel" line was great, but your "nose to lack-of-nose" line was priceless).  The end just threw me though, possibly because you used "new master" and "warm deep tones of his beloved master's voice" together in the last chapter.  Was Vito playing the players as the shadowy IMF Director?!?  Or was the director of the IMF actually the grim reaper - which raises all kinds of other questions?!?  If the axiom "always leave them wondering" applies to writing competitions, then you sir have done your work well!   

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[lapsking]

At least 12 visits are mine  but I don't vote in competitions I participate. Thanks for your comment Baron, I'll think about it.

[Stupot]

At least 12 visits are mine  but I don't vote in competitions I participate. Thanks for your comment Baron, I'll think about it.

Unlike some situations where it might be seen as unfair to vote in a competition in which you participated, here we encourage participants to vote (nobody else does, so we kind of have to). Also, it’s good practice if we all try to vote to avoid any skewering of the results. We generally do not vote for ourselves though. I’m certain that myself, Mandle and Baron will all be voting, but will not award points to ourselves. So, it would be helpful if you could do the same.

[Mandle]

Reply to Baron... Thank you so much for the great feedback about the writing... Those were also two examples I was pretty chuffed about. And also:

Spoiler

"The end just threw me though, possibly because you used "new master" and "warm deep tones of his beloved master's voice" together in the last chapter.  Was Vito playing the players as the shadowy IMF Director?!?  Or was the director of the IMF actually the grim reaper - which raises all kinds of other questions?!?  If the axiom "always leave them wondering" applies to writing competitions, then you sir have done your work well!  "


There was no intention on my part to infer that kind of third twist in the story. To be honest, the original version ended with the death gurgle, but then I realized that the whole story was really about the arc of Bastone's journey and that the rest was just window-dressing and it should finish with him in blissful sleep on his new (human) master's lap, with the line that he would be there for quite some years to come.

Yes, I have killed cats willy-nilly in some past stories but I cannot kill a dog. I'm the opposite of the Discworld's Grim Reaper.

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[lapsking]

Unlike some situations where it might be seen as unfair to vote in a competition in which you participated, here we encourage participants to vote (nobody else does, so we kind of have to).

OK, voted!

[Stupot]

I have voted. Here is a little bit of brief feedback

Lapsking

Spoiler

I liked the rhythm and rhyme of the poem. (although rhyming 'pray' and 'prey' was a bit dodgy - or was it genius, I don't know). However, I was struggling to work out the overall message of the piece. Was it a comment on people in general, and the futility of trying to prevent one's own inevitable demise? (In which case, I disagree, because there is no harm in trying to avoid death *this time* even knowing it will eventually come one way or another). If this is intended as from Death's own point of view, it would have been better to say "I/my/me" instead of "death/death's". This would have also made it fit the brief suitably.

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Mandle

Spoiler

I loved this story, especially the character of Vito. His encounter with the Grim Reaper was tinged with humour, tension and creepiness in equal measures. The twist where it turns out there WAS a Grim Reaper after all, really caught me off guard and deserves applause. I personally felt the prior reveal (that it was the feds -or indeed the IMF) would have been a bit more powerful if Vito hadn't himself been wondering this throughout the story. But that was just my reading. I really liked the story

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Baron

Spoiler

I enjoyed this story a lot, too. A very unique take on the Reaper. I loved the world you created with all the offices and bureaucracy. It gave me something of a Good Place vibe (a show I loved). This story is also tinged with just enough humour without going over-the-top.  I have to say I didn't quite get the ending though. This is certainly just my own stupidity, but I can't quite see what happened to make Decimus go from being about to go and deal with the bathroom girl to becoming the school's 23rd ghost.  At first I thought he just ended up enjoying the company of the stoner kids, then I thought he was just too scared to go into the girl's toilet because it's a grim place to go. Then I re-read the last line "he sadly never did work up the nerve to meet the ghost of Sally" and wondered if it was just a joke about boys who take an eternity to pluck up the courage to talk to girls (this hits home). I'm still not sure exactly what your intended reason was, but apart from that, it was a very entertaining read.

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