This is just a rough draft of a short story idea I’ve been thinking about.

Death’s Note

Everyone always believes that the most important moment of a person’s life is the beginning. It’s the moment of entry into the world, the birth of a new life. Well I am the taker of life and I can tell you from personal experience that in fact it is actually the end of a person’s life that is the most important. It’s always at the end that people remember life the most. People live their wholes lives without ever getting noticed, but steal the last breath from them and suddenly the world cares. People cry as if the dead can still hear you. They bring you flowers as if your eyes can still enjoy their beauty. They sing songs and tell tales of your life as if your ears can still hear them. People say more things after you’re dead than they ever dared to when you were alive.

This however, is not a lecture on the emptiness of the human race to appreciate what they have while they have it. No, this is a note about me for a lucky living soul to find that they may have a little piece of mind when their time comes. I am the bringer of death, the taker of souls, the light stealer, the grim reaper. I have been called many names yet all of them have failed miserably to fully describe me.

I lurk in the corners, the dark spaces of the room, the last thoughts of the dying and sometimes the random thoughts of the surprised. I am rarely noticed but on some occasions, from those who have seen me often, I can be spotted. People try to avoid me though. They don’t want to find me and so it makes my job of going unnoticed a whole lot easier.

But I don’t like what I do. I know what you must be thinking. I am death, therefore I must be evil. But if I had a soul it wouldn’t be an evil one. The loss of life is not an easy business. See, whenever I choose to collect a soul and yes I choose to, I don’t just absorb their light, I take on their pain as well. Every ache, every piercing, throbbing pain goes straight through me like a freight train. Every empty heartache courses through me and fills every corner of my being. For that moment I am consumed by the pain, the fear, the very human essence of that life that I both crave and dread at the same time.

My job is not all pain though, for I get to witness the brightest moment of a human’s life. After that I can’t stand the stupidity of the race to suddenly worship what they never cared about before. I leave that mess for them to clean up. It is in the last moments however, the ones right before I reach in and collect my soul that a person explodes with the most powerful of human emotions. Before the pain and fear sails through me, I experience the memoires. People often try to remember as many happy moments before they die as quickly as they can and so these are the first that I receive. That is until the sinking realization of my presence sets in and they’re jolted from their happy thoughts as if they have been woken from a dream. It never lasts too long, this stream of happy moments, but it’s long enough to encourage me that my job is worth it. I must continue collecting souls and passing them along to a path that will lead them to their earned paradise.

I have no knowledge of their destination once I release them on this path. I have heard that the road varies for every soul depending on their life’s work, but of this I have no care because I have no need to ever meet their soul again.

This is but a snippet of the story of me. But I’m afraid my whole story would take more than a human lifetime to tell. With this note I hoped to give you but a glance at the true nature of death. Maybe now that you know a part of the journey I undertake when collecting a soul, you will look upon me when the day comes not with fear, rage and disappointment, but rather a little bit of acceptance, knowing I am not evil. I am but a collector.