Atlas's Good Day

Soul #630789, as of December 24, 2019, at 2:30 a.m. you have passed after a 32 year term on the plane. Cause of death is loss of blood after a car accident. This is your third cycle of reincarnation. To pass onto the celestial plane pass through the gate." Reaper Atlas indicated towards the 2-meter-tall mirror gate after looking up from the death notice.

The man dressed in a pair of casual jeans with a dress shirt looked at Reaper Atlas with a mixture of mortification, fear, and disbelief at suddenly dying. Atlas had seen many a similar look before, 630, 788 to be exact, although all of them were slightly different in how they took to their death at the end of it all one thing was the same in all of them, fear.

"Please enter the gate soul #630789." Atlas spoke again, making sure to keep his no bullshit face on. He was rushed for time today and had not a minute to dilly dally on a singular soul. Today was Christmas eve and God knows a day of too many stupid fools dying after getting drunk off their minds.

"What will happen to me?" the man asked with a quivering voice.

You'll go to hell that's what. You drove over a family of four and killed the father and the baby! Atlas thought in his mind but was much too wise to say it out loud, he would be breaking way too many code rules if he did.

"I do not know. Your judgement is to be passed in the celestial plane, so please enter." He pushed again.

This time the man stepped towards the mirror gate hesitantly. After all a grim reaper's appearance to the dead was something that conforms to their own fearful image. So, he probably looked scary as hell right now. As the man stepped through the gate, the searing pain of death, oxygen being pulled out of the lungs and a soul being extracted from its mortal vessel could be felt throughout Atlas' body.

F**K! Atlas cussed in his head as his body curled in on itself from the pain.

He gasped heavily as the pain started to dull down. This wasn't the first and it sure as hell won't be the last.

It was God's sadistic joke on Reapers he liked to say. Those who became reapers were cursed to be so. It was said that they had angered God so much that they were cursed to live out the death of every single soul they passed through the gate. Yet they were forced to comply for only once they had passed a million souls through the mirror gate and experienced a million deaths could they then receive his forgiveness and be allowed to join into the reincarnation cycle. The worst part of this entire thing was that they didn't even know how it was that they angered God. So much so to deserve receiving a punishment of a million deaths since all their memories from before being a Reaper are taken away and only returned once they have completed their penance.

Once the pain completely faded, he stood straight up continuing onto the fourth of his twelve death notices assigned today. Christmas and New Year's Eve was the time around which they always got more death notices than normal since humans just couldn't control themselves. On normal days throughout the year, he would only be given somewhere between 3 to 5 death notices a day but as luck would have it today was one of those days. He was tired as hell and all he wanted to do was go back home and sleep peacefully on his silk and bamboo sheets and curl up against his plush lavender scented covers.

Don't Judge!

Yeah, Reapers have homes and soft beds and covers, they don't sleep in caves, in the pits of hell, or on a creaky old wooden boat on the Nile River. On the contrary they live much like a normal human except for the death part, they even get salaries and loans for housing if need be. In fact, Atlas himself has already paid out 85% of the house loan he'd taken out on his beautiful house in Cape town.

Never mind all that he had to get going if he wanted to get their own time for his next pick up. He reached out to grab his key card and opened the portal to get to the location of his fourth death notice. Once the gate opened, he stepped in while straightening out his pristinely pressed Black suit and combing back his Light brown hair.

D*mn! He cussed in his head silently. Rule Number 5 in the Reaper Code stated that Reapers were not allowed to make use of vulgar language so the silent head cussing.

Now the reason why he cussed. The next death scene was crazy chaotic. It was a car crash site with over a dozen cars in a collision together. Fire burning on a few cars, paramedics, firefighters, and police running all around and the victims panicking and running. That's when he knew it, that today was not going to be a good day.