Years
ago, as part of a fiction writing exercise, I wrote the first third
of a story about something that scares me—a young man with Prozac
Dementia, armed and out to kill. Read scene one here.
I
don’t know how many people followed the links to the second third
of the story another participant wrote—here. It built up the
horror. We started with a madman; now he’s possessed. He’s still going
down in flames, but the body count could be much higher.
I
was looking forward to someone else’s ending for the story. Nobody
wrote an ending. Like most of the stories, mine remained unfinished.
So I’ve had to finish it myself, drawing on the “archetypes”
trope (best handled by Piers Anthony, in his Incarnations of
Immortality series)....
Entering
the building, Blake began to giggle uncontrollably at the thought of
the evening ahead of him. He envisioned hmiself darting from couple to
couple, his sickle slicing through body after body. People tried to
follow him but he, Blake, the Grim Reaper, slipped through their
fingers and capered on, mowing down one couple after another. The
force he had felt at home would possess him and...
He
found the prospect so very amusing that he needed to stop in a
restroom. Only one other guy was in there and, to Blake’s surprise,
the man had chosen the same costume he had. He felt a kind of force
field around the other man. It was not the one he was looking for.
“Two
Grim Reapers at one dance, huh?” Blake muttered, pulling up his
robe.
“No,”
said the other Grim Reaper in a voice so deep and sinister that it
made Blake fumble, dribbling on his own shoes. “No…I came
for the drunk drivers myself.”
“Ha
ha ha!” Blake tried to recapture his lost merriment.
‘Ha
ha ha,” repeated the other Reaper, but there was nothing giggly
about his laugh. It was the laugh to end all laughter.
Definitely
alarmed, Blake looked at the face under the other black hood. The man
was older than he, shorter by an inch or two, darker by several
shades. “Great costume, man,” Blake said, forcing good cheer.
“Were you ever in movies?”
“Various
actors have played me in movies,” said the other. “I am
the Lord of the Harvest. Some call me Saturn. Some call me Grim.”
“Sounds
good,” Blake said with sincere admiration. He looked at himself in
the mirror. “I am the Lord of the Harvest!” His mind groped for
the memory of the deadly power he had expected would fill him, but he
couldn’t feel it now. Was it intimidated by Saturn, or Grim, or was
he?
“You
are no such thing,” said Saturn, or Grim. “You are very sick,
though very young. It is possible I might help you.”
“I
don’t think I want your help, thanks.” Blake felt very sick and
very young. “Someone else...”
“You
don’t think. You feel. That is the trouble.” Blake felt as if the
older man were holding him with his glittering black eyes. “I know
who offered to help you, and he’s exceeded his harvest limit for
this year already. I’m the Reaper now. Lay down your weapons.”
Blake
found himself laying down not only his blade, but a lighter and a
little flat can he’d filled with kerosene.
A
swirling trail of metallic glitter seemed to gather itself up and
pour itself out through the sealed, opaque window. The weapons had
disappeared from the floor.
“The
atoms will reunite in similar configurations after everyone has gone
home, when no one will stumble over them,” said the Reaper. “Give
me your arm, lad.”
Blake
felt compelled, though quite sure his arm was about to come off at
the shoulder.
“Have
you not read,” said the Reaper, “that the Lord of the Harvest was
wont to show his age by leaning on a young attendant’s arm? Forth
to the dance, my page.”
They
walked slowly down a corridor. Small groups of students stopped
chattering and watched them pass. They entered the main gymnasium,
hung with orange-shaded lanterns, draped with orange ribbons of crepe
paper, and full of costumed students. None of them said a word.
“Dance
on,” the Reaper boomed. “Death awaits only a few of you tonight.”
“Let’s
go home now,” suggested the male to the female of a couple of black
cats. Catching their tails up over their arms, they almost ran out of
the gym. So did a half-dozen ghosts, a dozen witches, sixteen Disney
princesses, and a racing car.
A
young man with a large envelope attached to a chain around his neck
approached. “I am a Chain Letter,” he said. “The last
fellow that introduced me to ten girls got promoted the next week.
The last fellow that failed to introduce me to ten girls got mono and
flunked out of school.”
The
Reaper laughed. The young man looked at him and suddenly hurried out
of the buildng.
“I
think one of the Sleeping Beauties was waiting for him,” explained
the Reaper. “Well, page, find us a pair of partners, that we may
dance.”
Wondering
whether he was about to faint, Blake approached a pair of misfits who
looked as if they might be desperate enough to dance with a pair of
Grim Reapers. The one without a costume rushed toward Saturn, or Grim. The
one with the pencil behind her ear looked at Blake, shrugged, and
stepped forward.
“Don’t
you have to pay if you’re not in costume? Or something?” Blake
said, tapping his foot more or less in rhythm, which was as close as
he came to dancing.
“I
am in costume.” The girl showed him her pencil. It was yellow. “I’m a dull student. See how dull?” She
touched the point before replacing the pencil behind her ear. “And
you’re that loser who passed out in that math class and never came
back, aren’t you. What were you, sniffing glue?”
“I’m
the Grim Reaper,” Blake muttered furiously. “I’m here to kill
people.”
The
girl danced away and spoke to a teacher. Blake sat down on a bench.
The music stopped. The girl dancing with the other Grim Reaper
screamed and ran out. The Reaper approached Blake.
“What
did you say to her?” Blake wondered out loud.
“I
told her not to have the abortion. Now be truthful.” The Reaper
moved away, back to the dance floor with another girl dressed as a
real Renaissance princess.
The
school guidance counsellor approached Blake. “What did you tell
Lacey you were here for? People care about you…”
“I
told her I was here to dance,” Blake said, locking eyes with the
counsellor, daring him to dispute Blake’s word.
The
counsellor moved away. One of the stoner crowd held out a hand to
Blake. Blake stood up and followed her moves. He never had had much
sense of rhythm. He danced badly with her, and with some other
people. Dancing strained his stiff, tight muscles. Each costume was
less attractive than the one before it. He had no idea who any of
them really was until he found himself facing Saturn, or Grim.
“You
should have been truthful,” said the Grim Reaper,
Then
the music built up to a scream, and Blake felt himself dissolve into
a trail of dust, and knew no more.
