When the grim reaper came, I wasn’t ready. I was still carefreely riding the wave of my youth. I wasn’t ready to come violently crashing down from my high just yet.

After closing my eyes for the last time on earth, I found myself trapped in a void, dreary ether, alone save for the imposing, darkly cloaked figure that unflinchingly stared me down. I couldn’t see a face beneath its hood, only a relentless darkness.

I begged immediately, just as the figure raised its gleaming scythe high above its head and got ready to decisively swipe me away forever.

I was quickly on my knees to feebly plead for my life, even claiming I’d do anything for immortality at a low, almost surreptitious whisper.

I held my breath, then heard the clatter of teeth before a voice rasped from beneath that hood.

“There is… a way,” the reaper uttered hoarsely, like the dry rustle of dead leaves.

To my relief, the foreboding figure lowered its scythe. It was willing to negotiate.

“Though I must warn that this way is not for everyone,” it continued. “That is the most I can reveal to you.”

I gulped and said, “I’ll take it.”

All my life I had been petrified at the idea coming to terms with death. I’d already mulled it over in my head, and it wasn’t a difficult decision. It was either to die here or to brave a path of the unknown, one that led to immortality. That’s what I called it to soothe myself: bravery. More likely it was desperation. Officially sealing my fate, I steeled my voice and said, “I accept your offer.”

The reaper extended a gaunt hand of bone to me and said “Come.”

I accepted the gesture and let myself be helped to my feet.

Once I was stood up, the bone hand suddenly gripped my right hand’s wrist painfully hard, then forcibly yanked my arm towards it. Before I could utter a word of protest, I felt my fingers being closed around the crooked, blackened wooden grip—of the scythe.

When I strained to pry my hand from the implement, I found that it couldn’t. It felt stuck.

I viciously snapped my head up, and with a panic gripped voice asked, “What did you do to me?”

“I’m afraid I do not have the power to give you your old life back,” the primordial being began, its weary voice sounding almost rueful. “But what I can do is to pass on the scythe, and let it bind to someone new. Thank you for giving me release, Samuel.”

The reaper removed the hood, so I could now witness its haggardly shaped, skeletal face.

Abruptly, that same face splintered, mosaic-like, then crumbled, until nothing remained of the former grim reaper except a restful pile of remains and his dark robes that were now mine to pick up.