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Hi. I’m Safryn, the Angel of Death. Most reapers wouldn't bother to introduce themselves to you. I, on the other hand, see no reason not to. Yeah, there are several of us. It’s a big world and even I can’t be in more than five places at once. Tried for six one day and nearly pulled a muscle.
I’m the youngest of all the reapers, which is funny. I’m only about fifty years dead myself and I was the one Death chose as his replacement. It didn't go over too well. Oh well.
I remember how it all happened too. I don’t remember my birth date. I don’t remember most of my family, my friends. But I remember clearly Death. I remember my death. I remember becoming the Angel of Death. I can remember every time Death visited me or when I was around when Death came for someone else. The longer I’m dead, the less I remember of my life. That doesn't make me sad or anything. It’s just a fact.
The first time I saw Death was when I was two, my birthday party. I blew out my candles and there he was, standing next to my mom. She smiled and clapped for me for blowing out both candles with one breath. I called to her though I don’t think any sound came out, to ask her about the man standing next to her. That’s when she grabbed her chest. The paramedics said she was dead on the scene. But I knew before they did because when her body fell her soul stood next to Death. He looked at me, confused. Mom said goodbye and they were gone. I didn’t cry that day because Mom didn’t cry that day. I could be strong and brave like Mom.
I met Death again the day I visited my aunt when I was eight. We just finished baking a fresh blueberry pie and my aunt was pulling it out of the oven. And there he was, standing next to the sink. When he caught me staring at him, Death cocked his head to one side, squeezing his dark hollow spaces where his eyes should have sat together, confused again. My aunt asked me what I was staring at right before she slipped, dropping the fresh pie on the floor. The glass dish shattered. My aunt, when she slipped, fell in the small space between the sink and the oven with half her body lying across the oven’s hot open door. She died almost instantly. The paramedics said she must have snapped her neck when she fell. Again, I didn't cry. Again Death disappeared. My aunt’s soul wasn't there to say goodbye to me like my mom’s was. That made me sad.
Death appeared many times after that, almost every few months after a while. But he didn't always come for a soul. Once from the back seat of their car, I watched him take both of my friend’s parents and again with my dad as he slept on the couch while we were supposed to be watching a movie. Other times Death just stopped by to see me. He’d stare and I’d stare, then he’d leave.
I ended up in foster care bouncing from home to home. People didn't want me after I told them I could see Death. It made people nervous. One foster family sent me to therapy. I stopped telling people about Death after that. It was funny to me, how I began to miss seeing Death. He became the only constant in my life. So when I was twelve, sitting in a room of my own in yet another group home, I almost smiled when Death came to me. But now I was the confused one. It was passed ‘lights out’ and the late night check had already happened. No one else was coming to my room that night. Death sat on my window sill with his dark clothes, hollow empty eyes, and black cap, waiting.
“Are you here for me this time?”
Death almost smiled at me. It’s not like I had a choice. It’s Death. For the first time, I was scared of him. I wanted to scream but that was pointless. People screamed all the time throughout the night at that place.
“Will it hurt?” I asked him, with a tear rolling down my cheek.
Death took a long breath, if what he did could be considered breathing since he was dead. In a blink, he was at my side, wiping away my tear. I could feel my chest cave in deeper and deeper with my every exhale until…
Until Death put his cold damp hand on my forehand and shook his head. I closed my eyes and could feel my mom’s warm arms around me and my dad stroking my hair. I fell asleep and that was the end of my life. The twelve year old foster child who died in her sleep in a room alone with Death himself, waiting patiently on the other side.
I was grateful to Death. For letting me pass over to the other side pain free. For letting me have my parents one last time. He let me walk with him as he reaped one soul after another. The other reapers, seasoned, bitter, some brutally violent, detested every fiber of my afterlife. I didn't understand this at first. I thought every reaper was, in essence, Death. That’s not true. There are reapers all over who deliver death to the living but only one is the Angel of Death. The reaper most feared, most respected, most… How can I begin to even describe him? He was the reaper above all reapers. Don’t be confused. The Angel of Death is not Satan and he’s not God. The Angel of Death is the balance between them. He does not decide who goes to heaven or hell. He only delivers the soul to the right gate. When an earthquake takes out a neighborhood or a tornado wave clears half a country, it was most likely the work of the Angel of Death. It is the goal of every reaper, to be chosen as the next Angel of Death.
This is the reaper who keeps me at his side, who shows me how to reap a soul and when to reap a soul. This is the reaper who took me under his care and that made me most hated of all.
There is a list of souls that come up or down on a regular basis. Some on the list have very specific instructions on how the soul should be retrieved while others simply say when. Those may be the ones I was most afraid for. If the wrong reaper took hold of one of those, there was no telling how gruesome those would turn out to be. Children raped and murdered. People wrapped around trees or trapped in burning cars, slowly dying. I feared for those.
Death never said a word but I could understand him perfectly. I found deep respect and almost admiration for my mentor. The way he reaped a soul was almost kind. Sometimes he would catch me smirk and give me a swift kick. For how ridiculous would it be for a reaper to have a heart? But I saw it in him. He would take the soul of a child about to drown and stop their heart first. Or the time he killed a teacher with a drunk driver before she was able to make it home where she would've walked in on a home invasion, raped by multiple men, beaten bloody, and left for dead. To me, that was a kindness. Even my aunt’s death was a kindness. With the way she fell, she would have ended up a vegetable until all her organs failed and she was pulled off life support.
For years I stood by Death’s side without reaping a soul of my own. I tried but could never finish. With each failed attempt Death grew angrier. The souls he would reap after each of my failed attempts got more and more violent, more gruesome. Ruthless. Unforgiving. I made sure from that point on that when I reaped a soul, it was flawless. I took the stance that I could save people from a fate worse than Death on a really bad day. Death made me take a gruesome pull every once in a while once he caught on to my methods.
I still took trips with Death, standing quietly at his side. But with me still being a young reaper, my emotions were not completely gone. So when the grandmother turned her back and the infant walked into oncoming traffic, a tear fell. When one wing of the hospital collapsed under the stable feet of the thirty year old that’s been fighting leukemia since he was a child and just found out he was cancer free, a tear fell. I could feel Death roll his eyes every time it happened. He and I never spoke a word, but I could always understand him.
One random night, Death and I reaped souls again as we often did. But this night I noticed that we have visited this family before, several times in fact in the last year and a half at least. It’s hard to tell sometimes as time has no meaning here in the afterlife. So how did I know how long? The little girl with the soft brown ringlets, cooper skin, and golden eyes. We first visited her cousin as he saved her life in the icy pond in the backyard where she fell through the ice. The second time she was celebrating Christmas with family and we took her uncle who got electrocuted in the kitchen while making spiced eggnog with the old blender and its frayed wires. That was the first time I noticed, the little girl looked my way. I thought nothing of it and left. The third time we visited her was after her birthday, when her friend’s dad choked on a cashew during a slumber party. She came out of the bathroom, looked at me, and then stood beside me as the man gasped for air and the family ran around in a panic. I turned to leave when she looked at me with those golden eyes. It was then when I realized why Death used to look at me so oddly as a child. I could see him. Reapers are invisible to the living yet I saw Death clearly and was unafraid just as that little girl did me.
This night we came for her brother. Every night she tucked in her older brother, who was terminally ill, and read him a story until he fell asleep. I waited patiently until she finished reading and he’d fallen into a peaceful and deep sleep before taking his soul. He smiled at her as his spirit left and she took a huge sigh, smiling at me with those big golden eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “He was so tired all the time. All he wanted to do was get out of this bed. He was twenty-five. Didn't look it though. The cancer made him so frail. You gave him peace. Thank you ma’am. Thank you,” she yawned, lying down next to the body of her brother and fell asleep. Death disappeared. I stayed and made sure her brother’s body stayed warm through the night as she slept. When she woke and left the room, I took the last bit of warmth from his body and went on my way.
When I returned, Death was waiting for me as he always did, though he wasn't himself. I know this will make no sense at all but he almost seemed ill. Normally we didn't talk as I've said before. Actually none of the reapers ever did so I never tried to myself. Just figured we weren't able to. I wanted to ask him if he was ok but again this seemed like such a silly notion because we are dead. What more could possibly happen to the dead? Death stood and turned his back to me, answering the question I never asked. His wings, which he kept small and tucked under his shirt, were on full display in their true size; easily six feet tall each and they too had become so frail. Even as he turned, some of the beautiful midnight feathers fell vanishing into nothing. Death began convulsing, so hard that his wings detached, floating between us. Both Death and the wings looked much improved now that they were two. Death smiled and nodded at me once.
The transfer had begun. I turned my back to Death and the wings quietly hugged my back becoming forever mine until I decide to relinquish them. Death’s thoughts of our time together raced in my mind. Death, as I will forever call him, was also a child when the Angel of Death took him. He was sixteen and very ill, practically begging to be released from his prison of a body and it was Death who answered. My Death was a kind soul, so much so that it transcended into the afterlife with him. That night was the last night I saw my Death, the night I became the Angel of Death.
That’s my story. That is how I met Death. That is how I died and became a reaper of death. That is how I became the Angel of Death. Like I said, reapers don’t bother to introduce themselves. I, on the other hand, see no reason not to. Well, I suppose we have stalled long enough.
Are you ready?
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