Death's Narratives

Prologue

Where should I start?

Certainly, not from the start. I don't even recall the time when I got here. It has been so long since I have been conscious, I already forgot all about my very own existence. Did I just appear out of nowhere like a thought popping in someone's mind? Or was I already here since the beginning of time? Perhaps time, itself, will be able to tell. But for now, I do not know.

I have been existing ever since that I see no difference between days turning into years, or years forming a century or even a millennia. These are just passages of time which I have been wandering in endlessly. Oftentimes, I ask myself: what if the reason for my being here is to tell what actually happened out there? But to whom?

People do not live long enough. In general, death is an imminent and an inevitable part of life. However, for the people who are about to die, it is always a scenario of acceptance and moving on to the other side. They already have their stories, which I already know, to tell to me when they were living. But if telling these helps them even in a littlest way possible, then why won't I let them?

The mere thought of dying is already hard for them. What more if they experience it themselves? Natural cause, murder, suicide, or accident, you name it. They already have their plates full upon their passing that is why I decide I would no longer give them any inconvenience. It is better for me to endure the weights of their left emotions than for them to know mine.

No one knows my story, and those stories I have kept hidden that also became a part of me entirely. So I will just write them just in case someone is interested to read them. Somehow, it gets to be my form of therapy, as people call it. I do not need sympathy, or much less a pity. If there is something that I need the most, it is rest—even just for a day—unoccupied by the thoughts of those who were forced to be rested, just marveling at the beauty of the star-filled sky.

This is the most grueling and hardest job ever. Ah, when will this ever end? Is there really an end to this everlasting predicament? If there is, I do not anticipate it coming just yet. There is still a long way to go, especially when the current world is continuously growing and evolving.

It was not the beginning, just a glimpse of memory. But if this earliest fragment of time serves me right, it is a woman whom I talked to thousands of years ago. She was helplessly lying on a terra firma, clutching her stomach. From her mouth, a slimy fluid was flowing through her sunken cheeks. Beside her is a poisonous fungus, yet to be known at the time, which made her crawl in pain crying for help until she just could not move. Her hourglass was slowly emptying of sand, signifying the end of her life.

There are countless instances akin to this where people died by having a dearth of enlightenment. These types of death were prevalent, and lasted for as long as I remember due to humankind's lack of knowledge about the world they were living in. Howbeit, I would not call it ignorance when first and foremost, there was just simply no information ready for them to obtain. People were merely existing, but unaware of how they came to be. With this notion in mind, I apprehended a connection between them and me.

Death by having a common cold, or thoroughly being frozen alive. Death by open wounds or being bitten by animals that caused infection. Death by sickness that has yet to be cured. Death by fighting for food to sate hunger and dehydration. Death by inhaling airborne toxic substances. Death by being buried alive. Death by false trials and verdicts of their own people.

Undoubtedly, there were way too many deaths untold throughout the history of humanity. Every single person of all ages and status who had convened to their end, had met me. I had seen how every person died, even in the grossest and worst ways imaginable.

All forms of death, I was there, watching as they gasped for the last air, as they slowly died before my eyes. Collecting their souls and ferrying them to the other side have been my task ever since. Truth be told, I was having a good time observing people as they were desperately gripping on the last thread of their lives. To feed my curiosity, I would even intentionally touch them all to die.

As I laid my finger, they would lose their consciousness and immediately die. Some were still alive after, but not aware that what they would do, would eventually lead them to their own unmindful death, mainly by committing suicide. It started out as a measly entertainment, to kill the boredom I was feeling. I was never passionate about this work so I diverted my urge to humanity, I thought they were the reason I was being constrained. Ergo, I convinced myself that it was just not dullness I was feeling to justify my actions, it was emptiness—a void that was devouring me owing to the fact that it was a forever state that I cannot escape. I was utterly unaware that I was already messing with nature doing its own course by taking the lives of the living at my own discretion.

Just one day, on a mountain of burning corpses, which marked the end of another hard-fought battle, I stood atop as I was looking at the decimated battleground. Souls of every man drifted in the air filled with ashes of their own bodies, finding their way to the other side. It was the time when I guided thousands of souls at once to the Gate that made me reconsider my conducts. I felt sorry for these people by dying unpleasantly and in such a way that hinders them to pass peacefully. Their souls were still furious, even in their death.

I never thought that it was just the beginning of large-scale deaths for humanity. Hundreds of years later, many leaders carried out conquests that were driven by personal ambitions to assert power within their rule to different parts of the world. These reasons were primarily fueled by their desire to expand their empire and people, to impose more taxes and tributes denoting more resources to further advance their military might. For centuries of invasions, leaders had used their power to declare dominance to overrule a society and change it under their reign. Some were successfully conducted without bloodshed, but major of these involved wars and years of battle in which millions of people died, people who just wanted to live but were forced to submit at the hands of the conquerors.

As some wars in various regions of the world ended, there would be another that would start not long after. A war was halted when some of the forces of Mongol, under the ruling of Khan, died due to an unknown sickness. But before withdrawing, using their catapults, they launched the burning corpses of their own men to the grounds of the people in Caffa. Helpless, soldiers in Caffa cannot do anything but to watch as these bodies fell from the sky. They tried to get rid of these rotten bodies by disposing of them in the Black Sea, but it was not enough to prevent an impending doom.

Soldiers in Caffa returned to Europe by ship, carrying the still-unexplainable sickness with them. The people in the wharf were left aghast after seeing that almost all the soldiers in the twelve ships were already dead upon arriving. Some were still alive but in a serious condition, their bodies were covered with dark lumps that released blood and pus. These ships were later called the Ships of Death and were ordered to be removed by the authorities. But it was too late, Black Death had already commenced.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, Black Death or Black Plague consumed the lives of people from Europe and some parts of Asia. It was spread by rats and fleas, and people who caught this disease had their bodies full of lumps that oozed blood and pus like the soldiers that brought it along with them. High fever, extreme cold, vomiting blood, diarrhea and aches throughout their bodies were other symptoms of this vicious plague. At most instances, people were not able to experience these symptoms because they died hours later upon contracting the disease. Over twenty-five to fifty-million or thirty to sixty percent of the entire population of Europe died within the span of five years.

People believed that it was a god’s sanction due to prevailing humanity's greed and selfishness. But I had something in mind. Perchance, it was me that brought this plague to humanity. I defied the Law of Natural Order as I took the lives of countless people for merely filling the emptiness that I felt. Perhaps, this is my punishment, my sin. And I must atone for it.

On a cliff, I arose and watched as the mass graves were made. Thinking of the hundreds of millions of souls I ferried prior to this day, I knew that it was time for me to join them. All of the remaining venturing souls would have to find their way to the other side. I just felt so tired and ending my existence would possibly benefit all of humanity, I thought. Using the scythe that could cause extinction, I reaped myself.

Before I knew it, I was awakened in the same place as people were throwing the dead bodies into the pit. I thought that the blade of my scythe just missed my body, hence, I reaped myself again... and again... and again. But nothing happened. That same time, it hit me. This is already my punishment. And to make amends with my transgression, I must carry out my task for as long as the last living dies.

Perhaps, I had to go through millennia to tell how histories from different parts of the world took place. How eras and generations ended. How wars were declared and won. How notable leaders were acknowledged. How humankind thrived to reach the prosperity they were longing for the longest time.

Or perhaps, I am also a reminder that every ruler of nations and territories, every conqueror and ender of civilizations, every leader of religions, ideologies and doctrines, every general, every dictator and tyrant, every emperor and king, every monarch, every person who rose to power, every powerful being that had ever lived, had begged and knelt before me when their time came. And I was there to attend to their inevitable death.

I am not a superior being. In fact, I am just a bystander, a storyteller, a witness that guides souls to the other side. And as a mere witness, I have neither the privilege to decide whether people have lived their life the right or wrong way, nor have the right to cast a judgement upon them.

I am Death, and this is my narrative.