Hospitals catching on was the worst era of my existence. Hello -?love. Would it kill you to die in childbirth more often?
Maybe that was a bad choice of words.
But the only time I get to see Life is when a baby's first breath happens with its mother's last. New death, new life. It makes the air smell a little funny, and the scent clings to me for days, but it was always worth seeing Life in all his slightly-glowing glory.
But then humans made hospitals and?ruined everything. Giving birth was all the rage, but suddenly it was safer, and I saw Life less and less. If I was lucky, some nurse would swat a fly at just the right moment, and I could sneak in for a quick glance.
You can imagine my disappointment when he started wearing skinny jeans, and I was stuck in a corner sweeping a tiny, buzzing soul into my pocket.
I've digressed, and the story hasn't even started yet. So here we go.
First of all, I am not some gloomy skeleton with a black cape and a scythe.?I actually like to dress in bright colors to cheer up my unwilling clients. I'm not?mean. I'm not?scary. I'm just doing my job like my clients used to. Every night I do one final sweep, take a few dying suns out of the sky, then I go home and put on my fuzzy slippers like anybody.
Then I usually day dream about Life. His dark, slightly curling hair, the way he gives a part of himself to every new thing, the way his sparkling green eyes meet mine those precious few times I got to be in the delivery room. Just thinking about him sets my world on fire for a moment.
Then I go to sleep, and when I wake up, it's off to work again; collecting souls, taking them to the waiting room, seeing them safely through whichever door is on my little ticket, get the receipt, and I'm off again.
It usually goes something like: "So this is the end?"
"Sucks, right?"
"Yeah."
"You did a lot while you were alive."
"Think it really meant anything? Think I made a real difference?"
"You'll find out just as soon as I get this receipt printed."
"You're not what I was expecting."
"What'd you think I'd be?"
"Not a girl in a polka dotted c***tail dress, that's for sure."
"Yeah, whoever came up with that scythe had some serious issues."
"Whoever? Didn't you meet him?"
"I meet everybody. But confidentiality and all that, so I can't tell you much.”

"This sucks."
I like to think of myself as a type of counselor, helping out with the transition between life and death. It can be hard sometimes, especially if you end up going through the wide door on the left, but I'm there to calm you poor souls down. On slower days, I'll even allow a few last goodbyes (though the living aren't as grateful for this). I provide closure. It's not such a bad job.
But then one day I had a particularly feisty soul who insisted I call him Dave even though his name was meaningless at this point.
"I just don't get it, "Dave said. “I was the?only one?wearing a seat belt. I was the careful one. How come I died and the rest of those jerks lived?"
"I don't have those answers, Dave. But if you just sign this receipt, you can head to the small door on your right. I understand there are a lot of answers there." I handed him the pen I let my clients use, but he snapped it in half and threw it onto the carpet. Ink spread out in a wide splotch. "Hey, I'm going to have to clean that, you know."
"I don't care! Take me back. I want a word with my so-called friends."
"Sorry Dave, it's not Christmas Eve." I was getting really fed up with his attitude. "Besides, if I let you do that, they'd all just get survivor's guilt."
"Good. They deserve it."
"Maybe so, but if they commit suicide, that just makes my job harder."
He glared at me, the memory of his arms crossed over the memory of his chest. I glared right back. The longer he kept me in the receiving room, the more the bunnies overpopulated.
And then the plain door everyone entered by opened.
And Life walked in.
His faint glow illuminated the motivational posters on the walls, but his stormy look made the place seem darker.
"What are you doing, Death?"
I sucked in a breath. My name on his beautiful, full lips sounded like dreams coming true. "W-what do you mean, Life?" My voice cracked on his name. For a second I wished I wasn't the one constant in the universe.
"You know what I mean! He's-" he pointed at Dave "not dead."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the shiny slip of blue paper that sealed Dave's fate. "But I have his ticket right here!"
Life snatched it out of my hand before I could even reread it. "He's in a?coma. You were probably just supposed to take a few brain cells." He shook out the ticket. It instantly changed from blue to green in his hand. Dave's Ticket Back. "Contain your greed for a couple more years, Death. You'll get him soon enough."
I froze. Life thinks I'm...greedy?
Life hustled Dave out the door – the door that only I leave by.
I stood there, thinking of Life’s words – the only words I’d ever heard him say – for several long minutes. Across the world, bunny populations skyrocketed.
*
That night I found myself lying face down on my couch with my hand in a bag of chips. I was so pathetically heartbroken that I could smell myself (musty soul is a strong odor. I have industrial strength soap).
As my chips went stale, it became clearer and clearer why Life hated my guts. He loves his work – I see it on his face when he gives life to a new infant – and I methodically undo his work every day.
And I grin like an idiot when I do it.
The smiles meant for him during all of those hard labors over the eons – he interpreted them as some kind of sick pleasure in the deaths of others. All those times I was trying to get him to like me, he thought I was delighting in his undoing. Maybe he even thought I was mocking him. After all, life can be taken away, but death is irreversible.
I was Life’s enemy.
I ate four bags of chips that night.
*
When the ticket printed out, I almost cried. A new mother in some tiny Amazonian tribe would breathe her life just as her baby filled his lungs. For the first time in the history of ever, I didn’t want to see Life’s shining face as he did his job.
I kept my eyes glued to the dirt when I appeared in the hut. No smiles from me today. I quietly took the woman’s soul, feeling Life’s glare on me the whole time.
“Am I dead?” said the woman.
“Yeah.”
“So who are you? I was expecting a god.”
“I’m just the taxi, really. Sometimes I council a bit.”
“Is my baby okay?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard. “Life will take good care of him.”
The woman frowned. “I know that look. Spill.”
And so I did. We sat down on the plastic chairs in the receiving room and I told her everything. Thousands of deaths piled up, but it felt good to talk. I was tired of always being the one consoling distraught souls. When I finally finished, the woman took my hand in the memory of hers.
“Don’t give up yet, Death. You have an eternity to show him he’s wrong about you.”
“You really think so?” I sniffed back a few tears.
“Yes.” She winked at me. “I didn’t get my man in day. Of course, it’s his fault I’m here, but it sounds like I died at just the right time.” She patted my hand one last time and stood up to finish her final journey.
“Thank you,” I said, and left her to the doors.
A few souls later, I was still thinking about what she said. About how to show Life that I wasn’t a greedy jerk who thought it was fun to tear down his hard work so easily. Looking somber when I took souls wouldn’t be enough. Especially since he ignored me most of the time. Though I was starting to think this was intentional snubbing.
It hit me just as I knelt down next to another bunny. I stared at its flat, fuzzy body. I stared and stared. My eyes got tired. I kept staring.
And then I left it there.
*
No on noticed at first. The animals kept on doing what animals do, plants reached for the sun to get energy they no longer needed. They didn’t realize they were slowly decomposing. Even the humans didn’t notice that first day. They had a hard time recognizing that their souls were still in their bodies. Bodies with no heartbeat, no unconscious breathing. They figured this was eternity – trapped in an immobile body. Dead, but still somehow not.
Until, of course, someone moved.
Just the slightest twitch of a finger at first. Moving a body your soul isn’t exactly connected to is hard work. Especially when dead bodies don’t technically process energy. The animals managed, but the humans knew about death. Rational minds in irrational conditions overcomplicate things, so they all moved clumsily. 
The finger twitch became an arm jerk. The trainee at that first morgue laughed, thinking it was part of his hazing. But more muscles moved, and he broke into a sweat.
“That’s enough, guys!” he yelled. His voice echoed in the empty refrigerated room, and he just creeped himself out more.
The corpse, a pretty woman killed in a car crash, slowly sat up straight.
“Seriously! C’mon, guys,” said the trainee. His voice shook, and I felt kind of bad about it. But I pictured Life, smiling at me, so happy at the gift I was giving him, and I felt better.
The woman’s eyes opened. The trainee shrieked and dropped dead on the floor. My ticket said heart condition. I think I scared him to death.
But the idea of the zombie apocalypse was really in style, so the trainee already had that in his head, coupled with the display he had just seen, and he was moving pretty quick.
It all kind of happened at once after that. People who had been dead for a day finally got bored and started twitching. Grieving families started freaking out. The dead started to get up and walk clumsily around in bodies that didn’t quite fit anymore. They couldn’t speak because they weren’t breathing and the mouth movements that shape words were a little too complicated. But they were distinctly not dead.
I felt kind of itchy about the whole thing, but I just knew that Life was happy. There was no way he could think me greedy now. No way he could view me as his enemy.
The tickets kept printing out, but I ignored them all. I circled the globe a few times to see that things were progressing nicely, then I went home and made cookies. I’d never had time to do it before; I was always working. For a whole day, I binge watched dramas and shoved snickerdoodles in my mouth. That itchy feeling was annoying, but I ignored it. I was going to enjoy my vacation, no matter what.
By the time I got around to checking on Earth, things were very different.
I noticed that one of the countless unfulfilled death tickets on the floor of the receiving room was a new mother. Those tickets I had hoped for every day. And after what I’d done, I wanted to see Life.
Really, really badly.
So I went.
Everyone in the delivery room looked tense. The doctors, the nurses, the expectant parents, everyone’s eyes were dark and tired. They moved erratically, they jumped at every sound. They whispered instead of spoke.
“What if something goes wrong?” one of the nurses whispered to another.
“That chance is always there.”
“But now it’s different. What if the baby…?” 
“We’ll be extra careful with the baby.”
Minutes later, Life appeared to oversee the infant’s first breaths. He pointedly ignored me. He, along with everyone else, watched the baby closely. Extra careful, like the nurses said. No one noticed when the complications began until it was just a second too late to save the mother.
Life finally met my eyes as we both sensed the woman’s heart stop.
I gave him the smallest of smiles. His eyes softened just a tiny bit. The woman’s soul was immediately uneasy. I instinctively wanted to take it up and comfort her, bring her easily into eternity, but I squeezed my eyes shut instead. I couldn’t take her soul. I couldn’t take anyone. Not when leaving them gave me this chance. I felt it; something had changed between Life and me. Finally, I was getting closer, if only a little bit.
When I opened my eyes, Life was gone. Of course he was, he had important things to do. I had nothing. All the snickerdoodles were already gone. I sighed. I had no right to follow Life around. I could still only go where death was. When would I get the chance to see him again? How would he feel about me when he-
Wait a minute. What was I thinking? Death was everywhere now. I could go anywhere I pleased! But I couldn’t just stalk Life like a creeper.
I stepped over the nurse that had fainted and wandered into the hall of the hospital. Suddenly, I had nothing, and that cut deep. The last few days had been fun, but I had done all the things I liked doing already. If I wasn’t taking souls, I had no purpose. And I didn’t yet have Life to fill that emptiness.
I walked out of the hospital into the light of day. The streets of the small city were deserted. No cars, no bikes, no families walking even though it was a beautiful day. The roads looked as pointless as I was feeling. But now I knew for sure that Life was pleased. I hadn’t imagined that look he gave me. And Isn’t that what love is? When the other person’s happiness was more important than your own? When Life felt the same way about me, which was now a certainty, he would want me to be happy and that would make up for how I was feeling now.
No pain, no gain, right? Who needed a job when love was so near?
Right?
*
At home, I felt itchier and itchier, but I shook it off. I tried to distract myself with exercise, but I couldn’t help feeling that I was forgetting something. Of course, knowing the source of my anxiety didn’t soothe it at all.
The doorbell rand I my hula hoop thumped to the ground. When did I get a doorbell? Very few people asked for me and no one bothered me at home. Except for those awful dingdong ditchers. It usually only takes one or two accidents a generation to remind kids not to play games with me.
The bell rang again. I pulled my bat out of the closet. Whoever wanted to mess with me had to be crazy, or a stalker. My hands started to shake. Man, I hate adrenaline junkies. Following me around, trying to reach out and touch me, stroking my hair when I least expect it. I shivered, remembering that one guy who licked my neck.
A third ring.
“Death? Are you home?”
The bat dropped almost as fast as my jaw. “Life!? Is that you?” I yanked open the door, and there he was, not twelve inches away. The closest we’ve ever been. His glow almost hurt my eyes. I don’t know how long I stood there, speechless, but it was definitely awkward by the time he broke the silence.
“Can I come in?” His voice was low and smooth, like quality gravy.
“Sure.” I stepped back to let him by.
Regret. Oh, such regret. I couldn’t remember the state of my living room. I mentally catalogued every pair of underwear I owned, hoping they were all tucked away in my bedroom. A thousand worries passed through my mind, but under it all was the sheer awe that Life was in my house. Life was sitting on my couch. I was offering Life coffee. He says he doesn’t drink caffeine because it makes him feel jittery. I practically melted because I had learned something about Life, something he himself told me. After generations of watching and imagining, here he was. And I was getting to know him! Why hadn’t I stopped taking souls years ago?
“Death…” he began after a short silence. My heart beat uncontrollably. “You stopped taking souls.” He furrowed his brow, but said nothing more.
“You said I was greedy. I wanted to show you that I’m not.”
“Why would you care?”
Oh no. He couldn’t want me to say it out loud. My thoughts raced wildly, trying to come up with something to say. He kept looking at me. His eyes were unnervingly beautiful. Everything about him was. It spilled out: “I really like you,” I said. “I’ve been watching you work forever and I…” I trailed off. I wanted to take myself to the receiving room.
“It took you long enough to tell me.”
“W-w-well, I-“
“So you did all that on Earth for me? You stopped for me?”
I fixed my eyes on my lap. I loved him, but I hated how calm he was about all this. “Yeah.”
“To prove me wrong?”
“Yeah.”
And then – a miracle. He smiled. Just a slight upturn of the lips, really, but it made my heart melt into my lungs just the same. “Then maybe I was wrong.”
I could only sit in awe. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was so different from how I imagined it, but this was two steps away from a confession of love! My insides burned with a fire unlike anything I’d felt before.
“I’m flattered you went so far,” Life continued. “I’d like to get to know the real you.” I nodded mutely because I’m an idiot. Life stood up. “I’ll call you.”
As suddenly as he came, he was gone. Typical Life.
*
Though I stared at it all day, the phone did not ring. I ran out of chips. I ran out of ice cream. I even ran out of carrots. Still, no ring. And on top of all that devastation, I was itchy all over. I felt like running a marathon and sleeping for eighteen hours at the same time. It was a really bad day.
*
When the phone finally rang after another agonizing day, it sounded like the music I can sometimes barely hear coming from the behind the door on the right of the receiving room. I waited two whole rings, the perfect model of nonchalance, and I answered the phone.
“H-hello?” I kicked myself for stuttering. Totally ruined my nonchalance.
“Hey, Death.” Life sounded beautiful even over the phone. It was like even his voice glowed.
I cleared my throat. “Um. Life? Is that you?” I saw that in a movie once. He would think I had boys with glowing voices calling me all the time.
“It’s me,” he said. “I just got off work. I was wondering if you were free.”
I barely contained a squeal. Was he asking for a date? “I’ve been free since last week,” I joked.
“And…you have no plans to ruin that free time in the future?” He sounded hopeful. He sounded happy.
“Not at all. It feels…”I thought of the itchy-jittery feeling I couldn’t seem to escape. “Good. It feels good not to work.”
“Well, you’ve been working since The Beginning. Maybe it’s time to retire.”
Retire? I went so far to win his love – would go farther still. I proved him wrong. I opened his mind. Would keeping him mean quitting? Would I be this itchy forever? Would I feel this useless for eternity? Certainly not with Life by my side.
“So, can I come over?” His voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Umm.” I looked around my house. It was clean enough. Or, it would be after I picked up the food wrappers. “Sure, come on over.”
“Great. I’ll bring Chinese.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
I waited until I hung up the phone to scream. I’d made plans with Life!
Then I realized that I hadn’t brushed my hair since the first time he came over.
*
I hastily buttoned my jeans, then pulled open the door. Life smiled when he saw me. Oh, his smile!
“Come on in.” I waved him forward.
He was carrying a canvas bag of fresh ingredients, not the Styrofoam takeout containers I was expecting.
“You cook!?”
He raised his eyebrows in the most adorable way. “Don’t you?”
My freezer is full of microwave meals. My fridge has only pizza boxes. I ducked my head. “I don’t have time for all that. I’m surprised you do.”
“I get breaks all the time. Famines, drought, you know. The plants and bugs take up most of my time.”
“Tell me about it! Pesticides ruined my last chance for a break.”
He paused in the middle of taking a head of cabbage out of his bag. My stomach sank. I’d said the wrong thing!
He resumed and I found the courage to breathe again. “This is what I was talking about,” he said. “You look tired, Death. I think it’s time for you to stop forever.”
I shuffled my feet. “I don’t want to talk about work. Tell me about you. What do you like to do?”
And so a lovely evening passed, just the two of us and the ghostly spectators of all my previous fantasies cheering. By the time he left, I’d fallen in love all over again. But it felt truer. He was more than a pretty face and impressions made from a distance. He’s funny. He likes to cook. He draws beautiful pictures. He charts genetic drift as a hobby. He’s real now.
And I was pretty sure he liked me.
*
The days passed in a happy haze. He came over every night and cooked dinner for us while I watched. I baked all the desserts and together we were a pretty good team. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy than when he looked at me.
But each day I’d wake up a little itchier, as if the souls of the technically dead were pinching me all over. After two weeks since leaving that first rabbit, the feeling was almost unbearable. But when Life arrived, I could forget about it.
I mentioned the feeling to him one night over spaghetti. 
“Itchy?” he repeated.
“Yeah, but kind of on the inside.”
“I’m sure it will go away. Maybe it’s a virus.” He had the cutest way of slurping noodles – one at a time.
“I don’t think so. It began almost immediately after I stopped taking souls.”
“You think it’s connected?”
“Yeah. It’s really annoying. I wish it would go away.” I studied Life closely for a moment. “How are you feeling?”
He glanced up at me. Smiled his heart melting smile. “Fine, why?”
“You just…” I pushed my noodles around in my bowl. “I don’t know, you look tired. You’re not glowing as brightly as you were.” Before, his presence lit up a whole room, now he was barely more than a flashlight. The beginnings of dark circles shaded the area under his eyes. He looked weirdly pale and gaunt, like he was recovering from a long illness. “Maybe this is all getting to you, too. You have a lot of souls to-”
Life abruptly put down his bowl of noodles, startling me into silence. “I have to say something,” he said. “And if I don’t say it now, I won’t find the courage again.”
“So say it.” My heart stopped midbeat as he fixed me with the most intent look he’d ever given me.
“I like you, Death.”
A beat of silence passed before I finally squeaked, “Like me?”
“Yes.”
I choked back a hysterical giggle. “I don’t know why you were nervous to tell me. You already know I like you.”
He lowered his eyes to his noodles and stabbed his fork into a meatball. “I thought you might have changed you mind,” he muttered.
“No. Never. In fact, I think I like you even more now.”
We both shoved a too-big bite of spaghetti into our mouths, not daring to meet each other’s eyes.
“So…” I said. “Are we like a…couple now, or…?”
He smiled. “That seems natural.”
I grinned. “You have seasoning in your teeth.”
And so we became a couple. Cool, right? Happily ever after – wedding, a new house, maybe a dog? Wrong. Because nothing ever goes that well for me. Of course not. Misfortune is usually how people get to meet me. 
Evenings with Life were the only time I didn’t feel unbearably itchy. During the day, I did nothing by lay on my couch moaning and trying not to scratch. The day after Life professed his like, I woke up covered in what looked like a full-body carpet burn. Miserable, but in love.
And then I made a bad decision.
I hadn’t been out of my house in weeks. Stir-crazy, I decided to visit the receiving room.
I pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge. I leaned my whole weight on it, pushed it in an inch, and death tickets came spilling out the crack. After this long, all the untended deaths – plants, animals, humans, stars, bacteria – had completely packed the room. From top to bottom, packed as densely as snowflakes under a boot. I couldn’t move the door in either direction now, and more slips of paper spilled out. Along with barely detectable whispers – so low it was almost subconscious to me. The filled my ears like white noise, the voices behind those tickets. I clawed at my head. I couldn’t take it! They buried into my skull. I regretted stepping foot outside my house more than I regretted anything. And I’ve been around since The Beginning. I had a lot to regret.
I had to get away. Scratching at my ears, I escaped to Earth.
Which was another bad idea.
The stench hit me first. I doubled over, gagging. The smell of rot hung heavy and nauseating in the air. Then the deafening sound of thousands of moaning bodies rose above my awareness of the smell. I looked up.
The world was on fire.
I had come to a small town in the middle of Canada, and even here, chaos reigned. Dozens of buildings burned, cars sat abandoned on the streets, and everywhere, the moans of the not entirely dead. They stumbled through the streets, aimless, bone visible under the rotting flesh that peeled off them. The exoskeletons of flies in the same situation flocked around them.
I heard the anguish of their souls.
I didn’t see a single truly living human.
I bounced across the planet. Everywhere was more of the same. Windows were broken, stores were looted, soggy brown plants reached for the sun even as petals and leaves rotted.
I stopped in front of a deserted shopping center in London. I pictured Life, smiling as he cooked shrimp in my kitchen. This was what made him happy? Could he not hear the cries of both the living and the not quite dead? I could barely stand it. It was so much worse than I ever could have dreamed, if I had been thinking about Earth at all. I thought of all the other planets in the universe. On the ones without humans, the should be dead probably outnumbered the living.
A nearby moan pulled me out of my thoughts. I turned to see as decomposing figure clumsily moving towards me. It met my eyes, pleading. More and more bodies joined the slow march toward me. My heart rate picked up. Of course they could see me! They were supposed to be dead! Their souls screamed at me. Tears filled my eyes as they drew steadily closer. They were miserable! No doubt as itchy and restless as I had been. I wanted to take their souls, grant them peace as was my whole purpose. But I couldn’t. Not when Life cooked me dinner every night. Not when he laughed with me, smiled at me. He’d hate me all over again if I took them now. I was happy. I wasn’t so alone. For once, someone was interested in me, not just what lay behind the doors. I couldn’t give all that up. 
I stepped back as the mob leader reached out to me, but I walked right in to someone’s chest.
“Death?” Life’s voice. I’d walked right in to Life! “What are you doing here?”
I twisted and leaned my forehead onto his chest. His hand came up to cradle my head – but that’s not his hand. The pack leader had reached out to touch me. I let him. No point fighting.
“I was just feeling restless. Oh, Life, why didn’t you tell me it was like this? I can fix everything. Don’t worry, I-“
“No, Death.”
I looked up at him. His eyes were steely.
“I don’t want you to take their souls. Didn’t you do this for me?” He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up to see me better. My legs turned to jelly, but several almost dead people held me up. “I’m happy,” he said, grinning. “I’m giving so much life!”
That’s when I noticed his hand was shaking. “Maybe too much,” I said. “You’re not well, Life. This is hurting you too, even if you won’t accept it.” The dead plucked at my dress, reached out to touch my hair like a dying child reaches for its mother. “I don’t think I can let this continue.”
“Please, don’t take them.” He spun me around, out of the clutches of the clawing corpses. “Please,” he said. “I love you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
And then he kissed me, and the world was on fire a little differently. I melted into his arms as he pulled me closer. My head spun. He loved me! The words I’d been waiting to hear!
A hand that was mostly bone yanked me away. Almost dead pushed to fill the gap between Life and me, but Life reached out, touched my hand, and took me someplace quieter, where the smell of rotting bodies wasn’t so overpowering.
“You love me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
There was no way I could stop the grin that spread across my face.
“I’m so happy!”
He smiled at me. I imagined seeing that smile every day for all eternity.
“We’ll get married,” he said. “Find a big house and fill it with lots of things for you to do all day, so you won’t get bored. Maybe we could get a cat?”
I felt my smile slip. “Wait. You want me to stay home all day?”
“Yeah.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be able to support both of us.”
“It’s not that,” I shook my head slowly back and forth. “I told you about how I’ve been feeling. Itchy and purposeless.”
“Death-“
“And you said you love me!” I barely kept myself from shouting.
“I do!” He took a step forward, but I put a hand on his chest to stop him.
“Then don’t you want me to be happy? To do what I’m supposed to do?”
“Of course I do!”
“I stopped to get your attention. To show you that I’m not greedy like you thought. Now I have. Now you love me. There’s no reason for me to keep on like this. And you! Look at you, your eyes are ringed in dark circles and you’re shaking all over! You’re obviously under a lot of stress keeping this up, and it grows every day! Let me take the burden, Life. Things can go back to normal in just a few days.” I remembered the room packed with tickets. “Maybe a little longer.” I turned to leave. “I should get started right away.” I smile at him again. “We can start wedding plans tonight.”
I wanted to kiss him again, but I was nervous, so I just winked before pointing myself in the direction of the nearest town. I’d start with humans. Oh, it would feel so good taking them up again!
“Death.”
I halted, startled by the serious, dark tone of his voice.
“I can’t marry you if you take souls again.”
I slowly turned back to face him. His bronze skin was almost as white as mine now. He was holding on to a tree to keep himself upright. Now that I was really looking, I could see that he was nearing his limit. The sight ripped my heart right down the middle. “I can’t let either of us continue like this. For that matter, I can’t let those souls continue either. We’re all suffering.”
His eyes darkened. “Then I can’t love you.”
Tears filled my eyes. I almost sank to my knees at the sudden pain in my chest. “Then you never did.”
With those words, it suddenly all became clear. He said he loved me when I was almost about to take souls again. He said he liked me when I mentioned the toll this was taking on us. All of this. Everything was…
“You liar!” I yelled. “You used me!” I stifled the sob that threatened to spill out. “Think of how great it could have been! With Life and Death working together, maybe it would stop seeming so unfair! Maybe each of us could have meant something. No wasted life, no untimely death. There could have been balance! But you know what, Life?” I snatched the soul of a passing fly that should have been dead ages ago and put it in my pocket. “You’re the greedy one.”
He glared as I plucked a nearby plant away from him. Effortlessly undoing what he does. “I hate you, Death.”
I left before I could cry, those words echoing in my mind. He hated me. And I hated that I still loved him. In his own way, he thought this endless life for all was better, and maybe I would be inclined to agree if I wasn’t so necessary. Life is beautiful, but I’m what makes it that way. I wish Life could see that, see past the fact that I take souls from him, and notice that I give a part of myself to my clients, too. I offer a release, a resolution. I’m not as glamorous, but I’m nothing to fear, nothing to be jealous of. No one asks for me, but I comfort those I meet even though I don’t have to. And I am most certainly not greedy. I take souls when it’s their time to leave, to make room for the new ones.
I work for four days and four nights without stopping. And then I go home alone.
*
“Am I dead?” asked the soul of an old woman.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“I wasn’t expecting someone like you.”
“I get that a lot. But don’t worry, I’m just the taxi. Could you sign here, please?”
She wrote her name on my receipt and sighed heavily. “So this is the end?”
“Yup.”
“This sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”