September Prompted Fiction: Afterlife: Becoming Death: 526 words

[k_a_webb]

Based in the prompt 'becoming Death' from meeks.

Richard walked into the room, looking carefully at each member of the spirit council. There were eight of them in total, four feminine and four masculine. Normally they only called someone in to talk to them if the council was going to give the spirit in question a job in the afterlife. His spirit guide had told him that he would be spending a long time in the afterlife so he had been expecting the coucil to call him in. No one spent a long time in the afterlife without a job. It was a part of the learning experience.

“Welcome, Richard,” the masculine spirit in the middle said, smiling at him. “We have called you in front of us for a very special reason.”

The feminine spirit to the right of him continued, “It is not every day that we find someone who is capable of filling the role that we are going to ask you to take on.”

“The spirit currently in the role has been in it for many Earth centuries and she wishes to move on,” the feminine spirit to the left of the centre spirit said.

“It is a very important role and it's not one that we would ask you to take on if we didn't believe that you would be capable of filling the shoes of our previous worker,” the centre spirit continued. “Richard we need you to become Death.”

All Richard could do for a minute was stare at the spirit sat in the middle of the council, wondering whether he was being serious. Breathing deeply, he asked, “What does the role entail?”

All three of the spirits who had spoken to him smiled. “You will be a psychopomp,” the first feminine speaker explained.

“The spirit who guides those who are lost somewhere into the afterlife,” the masculine spirit continued.

“You will help those spirits who cannot step away from their bodies because of the shock of their death,” the second feminine speaker said.

“Using the sword of the position that was once a scythe,” the masculine spirit continued.

“You will become the keeper of the mythological places of death,” the first feminine spirit said.

“You will do all those duties and more,” the masculine spirit finished, “some of which we don't even know.”

“I will train you in those duties if you agree to take the position from me,” a female voice said from behind him.

Richard turned to look at her. She didn't look like he'd been expecting Death to look and he hadn't really believed that Death was a woman. Their eyes locked.

“I'm not going to lie to you. It's a difficult job and it's a lonely job, but it's also rewarding. The dead will never truly understand why someone like Death exists, but they need us. Without us some of the dead would be wandering the world forever.”

“How long have you been looking for someone to take the position?”

“Several decades. There have been possibilites throughout the years. None of them took the job in the end.” She sighed. “I understand if you don't want it either.”

“I'll take it,” he said.

© K A Jones 2011

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.