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.
No comments:
Post a Comment