Dear Author of My Book:

I suppose I have to say “thank you” for bringing me into existence, or rather I mean I suppose I’m supposed to say it. I do not want to thank you, for you, ma’am, are a terrible Maker. You made me Death. You made me suck life from the sick, the poor, adolescents, children, infants.

I would not hate you so much, Creator, if you had not also given me a heart. You created me to run around this earth for millennia, snatching souls while their loved ones sat near, sobbing in uncomfortable hospital chairs. I watched twenty-somethings become widows, saw them wailing over their husbands’ coffins as they took their slow descent into the earth. I watched their husbands die in wars no one understood why they were fighting. I heard every gun vomiting its bullets. I saw every bomb commit suicide in the sand, desperate to take as many with it as it could.

If only, my Architect, you had built me without feelings! I could very easily despise you less had you instilled in me militant, unbreakable stoicism. I do what I have to do because I was made to do it. And yet, after centuries of harvesting souls, I still feel it in my bones when a human dies. I still shed gut-wrenching tears when I carry a toddler across that threshold. I have spent lifetimes doing this, and taking children never ever gets easier. When I walk with an old woman and see her gnarled, arthritis-ridden hands and hear her weak heart and forced shallow breaths, I know I am taking her to that so-called “better place.” But don’t you see, Master, that I just took someone’s grandmother away from them? She taught someone how to sew and made her grandkids hull peas when they were kids, and you would never have known how much pain she was in because you were not there. I was there.

I still ache for humans every single day. What is it called? Empathy? It hurts. All I can say is that I pity you, Madame, for you are a sad and desperate, and you are alone, and you will not live forever. You are temporary. But I am Death. I am Death and I am a Story and I am everlasting. I will carry your cold black heart away from you at some point, and I will do my job joyfully for once. Carry on, Creator, for you and I are both very busy doing what we do.

Yours Truly,

Your old pal Death

P.S. I’ll be seeing ya