Wrote this for a scholarship. Here's hoping it's good enough.

The Last Step

Twenty five million. I’ve taken so many souls. It seems as if I’ll never stop.

-

White, empty, cold. The sharp, endless beep of the flat line rung through the room like nails on a chalkboard, interrupted only by the loud sobs of the woman. Her body shook as she clung to the body of her son. He was only seventeen. He was dead.

-

I worked in a team with other reapers. Whenever they brought back the souls of those dead from the disease I was the one who wrote down all the details. When did you get it? How long have you had it? How did you get it?

Most were reluctant to answer. I never blamed them. I can barely remember when I was brought in, even if that was only three years ago. But time was irrelevant here. A day felt like a year, a year a second. What I do remember is not answering any of the questions. The woman who had questioned me had still written things down though just as I do now because I already know the answers to the questions.

-

She will step out of the building. The doctor will have told her that the reason she’s been sick for months isn’t because the flu is just that bad but because she’s got the virus. She will cry. She will fall on her knees and she will cry. Four months later, because of the ulcer in her stomach that her body can’t defend her from, she will die. Then she will meet me.

-

People have a tendency to deny the fact that they’re dead even after they’ve been suffering from the virus for eleven years. It always amazes me when I get a soul who can’t stop pacing around my room telling me, ‘I’m not dead. That’s just not possible. I exercised every day. Everyday! And, and I took the medicine. There isn’t anything I didn’t do!’

I want to tell them that it’s not their fault. I want to tell them that eventually they would have died, virus or no virus, but the words are futile. They won’t listen. They never do.

-

On the day I meet him things change. Not wildly or dramatically but they change. In me mostly. Because this boy is only seventeen. He dated a girl for three years, she cheated on him and then he suddenly had the virus. He didn’t die from it; the gunshot wound is still repairing in his soul. I can see the fibres joining back together.

I want to ask him why he grew so desperate, why he didn’t fight it but I have no right. I’m only here to write down the numbers, the names, the souls. Then I show them to the Room and they disappear behind the white door never to be seen by me again. But he’s different.

‘How long did you have it?’

‘Six months.’

‘How did you get it?’

He swallows, breath caught in his throat. ‘My girl…’ His jaw clenches before he begins again, ‘My ex-girlfriend.’

I pause in my questions. He hasn’t protested. He hasn’t even insulted me. The younger ones are always angry. Always desperate, always scared. ‘You…You shot yourself?’

‘With my Dad’s gun.’

I’m not supposed to ask but I can’t help it. ‘Why?’

He doesn’t answer. I meet his dull brown eyes and he looks back at with me with venom. With the sort of venom that you can only attain after feeling betrayed. I know the feeling. It was the same with me.

‘You don’t have to answer.’

‘I wasn’t planning to.’ And with that the conversation ends. I show him to the door and he steps through it without a moment’s hesitation. The wound in his head has healed. I stare at the door for a moment before the newest soul appears before me. I look at her and I wonder, will she tell me how it felt to be unable to do anything to save herself because no help was available?

-

There was this point when I saw hundreds of kids between all the adults. They would be crying and asking for their mommies and I would never know what to do with myself. I knew how they had gotten it. Rape. Every single little child. I wondered how the myth had started and I wished it hadn’t.

Every time I saw one I would hold their hand and tell them that they were going to a better place. I hoped they were going to a better place.

-

She’s 42 and has two kids. Her husband left her five years ago after the two of them couldn’t stop fighting. They got a divorce and she got custody of the kids. After working in a marketing company for seven years she got laid off. Two months later she finds out she has the virus because of a quickie with a male prostitute. Four months later she’s sitting in front of me crying.

‘My kids, oh God, what about my kids?’

‘Their Dad will take care of them,’ I say. I’ve forgotten how to smile, to sympathize. It’s all the same. They had sex, they got the virus. Or worse, the hospital didn’t check for the virus and some accident victim suddenly has it thanks to a blood transfusion. I’ve heard every single story. I’ve become immune.

‘That jerk won’t know what to do,’ she cries, tears spilling out of her eyes.

I don’t respond. I don’t know if he will or not. I don’t know what will happen to those kids. ‘You have to let go of it.’

She looks up at me sharply and I can see the fury building up behind her eyes. She leaps out of her seat and she yells. Every obscurity, every obscenity and I take it because she needs this. She needs to know that she was struggling to keep her kids happy. She needs to know that it’s okay if she dies, if she’s already dead because of this. She needs to know that it didn’t matter what she did, she would have died from the ulcer anyways.

When she deflates and stands in front of my desk, eyes tired, breath ragged, I get up. ‘You just need to go through his door Angela.’

She looks at me, her eyes have softened. Perhaps she understands. Perhaps she’s just sick of worrying. Either way she walks through the door quietly. Her shoulders are slumped, her head is hung low. She is defeated.

-

Some souls refuse to go through the door. They fight, they scream, they do everything they can so that they don’t have to “die.” Those days I let them wait and as they watch others step through the door they eventually follow someone in. Sometimes I just look up and they’re gone.

I wasn’t like that. I had waited, quietly sitting in the little chair the woman had provided for me watching others go through the door. I hadn’t been able to get up and step through. I had been angry at my boyfriend and at myself. How could I have given up so easily? And just like that I sat there, hating myself until the woman stepped through the door one day.

I watched as soul after soul appeared in the room until there was a crowd of them. The room was stuffed and I felt like I was trapped. My throat had constricted tightly and I had realised. I didn’t need to breath, I didn’t need to eat. I was dead beyond return, beyond hope.

I had gotten up then and wandered over to the desk. When I sat down I suddenly knew everyone’s story. I knew how all of them had gotten it. I knew how long they’d all suffered. Without raising my voice I had them all quiet down and one by one I sent them all through the door.

Most of them left without a fuss. To me, on that day, sending souls away was far better than going away myself so I stuck to it. It’s been two and a half years since then and I think I’m ready to leave.

As I watch the man sitting in the corner I think that he will need time to get over it. He’ll need to hear what everyone else who’s dying from the virus has to say. Nodding to myself I get up. He stares at me, probably the same way I had stared at the woman: What’s he doing? Why’s he leaving? The questions are probably driving him crazy but I don’t need to be here anymore. I’ve accepted it.

I’ve accepted that I had to die because of HIVs. I had to die because I did contract it. I can’t deny it anymore and somehow that frees me. Now it’s this man’s turn to accept it and I hope that it frees him too.

I smile at him and it feels foreign but I don’t care because when I reach the door I step through without vacillation.

-

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