1 I Wish

I could throw a number at you and tell you it was how many souls I have harvested. I could throw several numbers and hope it were accurate. Hundreds…Thousands…Millions… I wish I could say I remembered the exact number. I wish I could tell you each name of every soul I plucked from their body, how old they were, how I found them and how their body failed them the moment I met them. I can't. In truth, I can only remember at least as many fingers on my hands, at most as many tears in my eyes. I have sat alone and counted. Hannah Scott. Louis Miller. Alice Denver. Dekota Jones. Ali Burton. It must be one of my days to forget. I like those days. The days where I forget are the days I have put a little more good out into the world, or so I must believe. How would I cope with myself otherwise?

"I wish" is all I find myself saying.

Questions are all I hear.

If you were smarter, more blunt, more ready to ask, I would only hear two questions. Instead, I get far too many of the same, meandering, boring questions that ultimately have unaccepted answers.

1. Was I a good person?

2. Who was right?

Simple? Very. I used to answer the first. "Depends who's definition you want to use," I'd say, "There is no objective good or bad." More questions and arguing. So, I started to answer, "I don't know." Another truth that was met with bickering. Eventually, I learned to just accept it as very human and remained silent. I say only three quick statements that will cause the least amount of debate…questions…argument…flat out stupidity to occur. They still don't accept my answer and continue to ask the questions repeatedly. They don't realise that to answer one is to answer the other. So human – to get bogged down in the details and forget the bigger picture. They die and they want to know about their pets. Not my department. "I don't know," I might mutter, "You are dead. I am here to collect you." Such a repetitive bunch.

Jack FitzGerald, Louis Miller, Karlie Johnson...Bea Stuart...Lexi Roberts...Hanah Scott. By the time the day is done, I should have collected three hundred and forty-two more. Yet, I will only be able to list less than a tenth of that. It is important, I feel, to remember. As idiotic and pointless as they are, humans are individually idiotic and pointless. It is easy to look at the bigger picture for so long, you can no longer see the tiny details. What scares me is, tucked away in those details, there exists my very being. This job will not kill me but slowly wear me down until I am fine powder and dust and atoms and nothing and forgotten. Until I merge with the legends of death and become one with...

I don't wish to lose myself.