by Elle A. Rose
to keep us from collecting the souls. Any spirit that is not gathered within the minute or so that it takes to depart from its body, will enter into Purgatory, as some would call it. In other words, they become a ghost. Left in limbo in the area in which they lost their lives, that apparition will not enter Heaven or Hell. It doesn’t transpire often, but the humans that happen to occupy those locations after the body has been removed are known to have visits from said ghost.
It typically occurs when a great number of deaths take place all at once. Take for example, the civil war. In Gettysburg alone, there were so many casualties that neither vampire nor faerie working side by side, were able to reach all of the bodies in time to collect the souls. In that case, as with the rest of the civil war, Father Time seemed to be pushing time forward, making the surroundings move faster if you will. You see, he likes to have the restless apparitions moving about the earth. Making the occasion move faster or slower depending on the situation leaves soul collectors nothing but hard work. If we don’t make it in time to gather the soul, the ghost is left to terrorize the living. Father Time recognizes poltergeists put the living on the edge, and when such fragile beings as humans are on guard they are more open to hurt one another. Father Time since the Beginning has been racing to the finish line. He wants nothing more than for the world to turn on itself, so once there are no living breathing objects left, and he can rest.
Mother Nature is his worst enemy. She loves everything living…including vampires- if you want to consider us living. She refuses to sit back and watch Father Time ruin her world. Because of this, she and her minions work constantly to keep the world moving smoothly. Her fleet of minions or shape shifters will stop at no cost to keep humans alive. Taking on a form that will best suit the scenario, her shifters will try to defuse, block, or divert death. These are only in instances where Father Time has had his hands in things. If it is a natural death, her creatures will back down. But take for example, the John Doe I just deliver to Hell. Let’s say before getting into his car and driving drunk, he was at a house party, where of course he was drinking heavily. A girl walks up to him and asks him to go home with her. Now this is some stranger that he has never met, and if he had gone home with her, he never would have seen her again after that following morning. The girl would have been one of Mother Nature’s shifters. Most likely before the minion changed into the pretty girl trying to coax John Doe into not getting into his car and driving drunk, she was a fox running through the woods. Since the boy turned down the invite, he was then set in my path. However, Father Time seeing he was a stubborn soul knew that I would be slowed down. Alas, I may have collected that one soul, but in the mist of the sluggish departure, I must now work harder to make it to the next soul so that it will not be stuck in Purgatory. If Father Time accomplishes what he has set out to do, the question for us vampires is: Where does that leave us?
Being a vampire is punishment. Of course we are not allowed into Heaven, or Hell, and because we are in a flesh and earth bound Purgatory there is nowhere left for us to go. Without the warm substance we drain from our departing souls, we will be left to walk the earth as the living dead. The thought of going without blood forever is torture enough, but to know that we walk this land of the living because of the act of kindness is the biggest punishment of them all. You see, everyone has a path in life, and once your path has been marked with death, once that final decision is made that will end your life, there should be no stopping it. Nevertheless, there is. My un-souling came five days after I wed my husband.
Our neighbor seemed to have thought a few acres of our farming land were his. The men bickered for two days. Come the third day, things became physical. In the mists of the quarrel, the neighbor lunged forward with a pitchfork in hand, and I having sensed the danger my adoring husband was in, stepped in the way at the last possible second. Hence, I became a grim reaper. Everything happened so fast. There were two moving objects, one was the pitchfork going towards my husband’s chest, and the other was a black blur. As the manure riddled prongs began to pierce my chest, the vampire paused, sensing that a chain of events was about to occur. After falling to the ground, pitchfork nicely wedged in my heart and lungs, I was lifted into the hands of what felt like cold metal. Moving quickly, the vampire, Dugan, transported me to a new location where the exchanging of blood commenced. Because it was during the day, Dugan was not able to shroud himself in the cover of darkness and my, like so many other births of reapers was public, which leads to legends of vampire attacks.
Being older and wiser, my reaper knew it was best not to change me on the spot. He relocated me, but not too far away, to make it easier for those who loved me to find the body. As the exchanging of blood continued, he explained that I’d committed the worst crime known to mankind-the shift in history, some call it the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect being that history is already written, and if for some reason it is changed-as a result of stepping in front of a pitchfork at the last second that was meant for someone else- you have in effect changed the course of history. The Powers that be have to then work in overtime to make sure this history that isn’t already written remains correct. Once the change was complete, I was then enlightened on my new role in my life of the undead. You can say it was a rude awakening to the real universe. My husband of five sun rises remarried in less than twelve settings of the sun, and I was stuck walking the earth as a blood sucking, soul snatching, Hell greeting beast.
Besides welcoming souls to Hell, this undead life hasn’t been too bad. With seniority, I don’t have to travel as long of distances as in the beginning and have been located in the States for the last five hundred years. Willem, my mate of two hundred years and I share a small underground residence. He also is a reaper, having pushed a young slave out of the way of his father’s pistol, he, too joined the ranks of the undead. Our underground house dwelling is modest, but necessary so we can walk around without all black on. There are times when we are both drawn to the same occurrence, however, most days we have to go our separate ways, and sometimes weeks will pass without seeing each other.
I’ve found my next destination. Still holding the cover of darkness around me, I watch as the next death transpires. I always find it a shame when an elderly person dies of something other than natural causes. I know the next demise will be of an elderly lady. The trail of fatality is shining bright and leading its web towards her. It appears that she has just left the local corner market. There are two men waiting at the end of the dimly lit street for her. I can hear their murmurs. The guys have tracked the old lady for two weeks, and tonight they plan to rob her of everything on her person. Once they have her keys to her house, they’re going to shoot her and then raid her apartment. These are times that I would like to be a corrupted soul snatcher, like Dracula. Choosing the souls I’d like to drag to Hell would be nice. No one knows how he, like so few others are able to break from the internal commands we receive. Although, I wouldn’t go around trying to turn others and taunting the living, yet, I would definitely choose to snatch the souls of these two men with the gun before having to take the old lady’s soul. However, on second thought, I’m bringing her to the gates of Hell, so perhaps she isn’t as she appears either. Besides, like the barrier that keeps me from entering the warmth of Hell, the same barrier holds me in place as I wait the next death.
The street light has caught the reflection of my insignia, reaching up I place my hand over the small piece of silver. Centuries ago, when there were more farmers than townspeople, us grim reapers used to walk around with what most call a sickle; it was part of our disguise. To the untrained eye, we carried farm tools, but it was actually a replica of our fangs. As times have changed, we have done away with the sickles and now we wear such insignias as necklaces, bracelets or anything else we can find on the internet that resemble fangs.
Other things have changed with the ages. Vampire hunters aren’t as prevalent. As the world revolutionizes most don’t believe mythical creatu
res exist, which leaves less and less men of the cloth wearing garlic around their necks hunting us. Outside of smelling really awful -garlic for some reason has the strongest smelling aroma, and makes us gag- it has no real effect on vampires. We just don’t like the smell. Garlic or no garlic, men of the cloth are the only ones who can end a vampire’s life…with a stake. The stake must be blessed in holy water and the man must be of the purest heart and soul to accomplish the task. So all-in-all, most attempts to stake a vampire fail. But those that succeeded… well, it only begs the question, what happened to that vampire? We have no souls to become a ghost stuck in Purgatory, and we are not allowed into Heaven or Hell. Some believe when we are staked, we become reincarnated. I only wonder if you need an essence for that.
Another change that doesn’t partially go with the shift in the world, but with a vampire becoming reestablished in the world, is after a few decades we no longer need to carry our caskets around with us. You see, while the transformation to a vampire is processing,