Simspiration 5-31-10
Zane placed his heavy fountain pen across the page of the journal he was writing in, taking care not to smudge the ink on the pages, and then leaned back in his chair. He stared at the book without seeing it as he let his mind wander. I wonder what happened to the other journals I kept. Momma probably destroyed them after she--he chased that thought out with a shake of his head.
A small sigh from Tina caused him to glance over at the bed where she was sleeping, but she didn’t wake up. Instead, she had only rolled over which had caused some of her blond hair to fall across her face. She let out another sigh and mumbled something in her sleep. With a soft smile, Zane watched her for a few moments before turning back to the journal. He ran a finger lightly over the writing to make sure that the ink had dried before he flipped the pages to the very beginning and he began to read.
~First Entry
I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know where I am, really. I’m scared, but I’m pretending to be brave because I guess I have a very big responsibility even though it’s a real sad one. I don’t want to be a Grim Reaper because they are scary and I don’t want to be a scary person. It made me sad when Alexander Goth called me creepy. I wonder what he would think of me now.
I want to go home. I want Momma to tell me that what she did was an accident. And then she would be so sorry that she would let me go to school and let me be with Tina and then maybe go over to the house where Grandma and Grandpa live and then we can all be together like a big happy family. Whatever made Uncle Sebastian sad would be gone and then we would all have dinner together and I would get to swim in the pool. Even if we couldn’t live there and they still didn’t want us to come around, I want to maybe just have Momma tell me that everything would be okay and then she would hug me and tell me that she loves me.
I want to pretend that this is all a dream, but it’s not.
I want to go home.
~Second Entry
Ruth and Jezebel are nice, I think. I didn’t know who they were at first, but Ruth told me that they come with me when an old person dies really happy. They were real surprised when I said that I didn’t know what they were around for other than to keep me company in this big scary house. Ruth asked me a strange question, she asked me how old I was when I died. I told her that I had just turned into a teenager just a day or so ago and I asked her why I was a grownup now. Ruth looked kind of sad and she then said, “Well, that explains a lot.” I didn’t know what she meant. Jezebel looked kind of mad, though. She said, “After two hundred years, we finally have a Grim Reaper who isn’t Thaddeus or a girl, and he’s mentally just a kid. Just effing great (Except she said the bad word, not effing).” That made me sad because I wanted Jezebel to like me and be my friend because I’m lonely and scared and I don’t like it when people are mad at me. And then a strange thing happened. When Jezebel said that and I got sad, they both looked at me like they knew I was sad. They then looked at each other and said a strange word that sounded like “Emotion Leak” and Ruth looked at me real close.
“You’re a Reaper Child, aren’t you?” she asked me. I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t know. “Yeah, he is,” Jezebel said then. “He has the same features.” And then they told me that I had to be real careful about what I felt and making sure that I didn’t feel it too strongly because otherwise I could possibly become worse than Dead. And they told me that Dead has a capital D when referring to people like me. They kept saying “People like you” but they didn’t tell me what that meant. I guess they meant Grim Reaper.
I wonder if they could tell that I didn’t want to be a Grim Reaper. I wonder if they could tell that all I wanted to do was go home be with Momma and see Tina again.
Zane flipped ahead a few pages. He knew that about the first dozen entries pretty much had the theme of ‘I’m scared and I want to go home,’ and he really didn’t want to reread, or re-live, the basic terror and confusion that he had during those first few weeks on the Dead Realm. When he was sure that he had skipped over enough entries, he began reading again.
~Entry 19
I made my first collection today and it was Grandma. Ruth and Jezebel seemed rather surprised that I personally knew the person I was collecting. Apparently it’s not supposed to be like that; we’re not supposed to know the people. I guess it was an accident that I was allowed to be the Grim Reaper for the dimension that I originally came from. I wonder if I’ll be allowed to stay here when the Reaper office finds out that I am here by mistake.
Collecting Grandma was very sad, but I tried to be very careful about how I was feeling because I didn’t want to scare her. I tried to be very happy; happy that she had lived a good life and that she was having a ‘happy’ death. She didn’t look like she was in pain. She wouldn’t have any bad memories of fire and hurting. She seemed very nice and I really wish I could have told her who I was. I wish I had known her better when I was still alive wasn’t the Grim Reaper. It’s too late now.
I also found out that time in the real world moves a lot faster than it does for me here. It seems like I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks, but it looks like more than a decade had passed since I died became the Grim Reaper. I think this because when I came for Grandma, there were two little children present, my cousins, and they looked to be at least ten years old. I have cousins and they will never know who I am. The little girl that I saw seemed familiar to me. She felt familiar. When I later asked Ruth why that was, she told me that the little girl was also a Reaper Child. Apparently Reaper Children can sense one another.
I wonder why there was another Reaper Child and I wonder if the little girl knows that she is one.
Thinking about and knowing that Grandma is dead makes me sad and I am afraid to watch all my other family members die. I would have nobody to call family. But, I’m dead the Grim Reaper now, so I guess I wouldn’t have a family anyway.
That makes me feel lonely.
~Entry 20
I found out that I’m not restricted to my house like I thought I was supposed to be. I was told that I could go wherever I wanted either on the Dead Realm and even the Mortal Realm. I just had to make sure that I didn’t ‘interfere with the mortals’ because otherwise I could get into trouble. But, when Jezebel told me that, she also kind of winked at me. I don’t know if she was winking at me and really saying that it was okay to talk to the people who are alive (as long as I don’t tell them who I really am) or if she was winking at me because she wants to be my girlfriend. She’s been dropping a lot of hints about how I’m cute and stuff (which I think she might be teasing me). All I can do is smile nicely but tell her that I already love someone else. Jezebel then tells me that I’ll get over Tina, that I have to get over Tina, because Tina was going to die someday while I was going to be the Grim Reaper for much, much longer. Ruth then tells her to ‘Hush!’ I didn’t want to listen to Jezebel anymore anyway, so I left.
I didn’t want to go onto the Mortal Realm because I didn’t know what I would say to my family if I would have run into them, so I explored the Dead Realm.
The Dead Realm is a very strange place. The sky is always orange and the ground is like the desert. There is no air, no wind, or anything like that. It’s completely still. I learned a while ago that I didn’t need air because I didn’t need to breathe. It’s been so long since I’ve had to that I have almost forgotten how. Anyway, the orange sky and barren ground goes for as far as the eye can see. But there are these weird little sparkle like things that I could see out of the corner of my eye, but whenever I tried to approach one of them, they would shift out of my line of sight, like they were repelled by me. Before they could shift though, I could almost sense what they were. I think they were where other Reaper Children, Dead ones, stayed. I wish I knew some of them because I got the feeling that if I did know them then I would have been allowed to see inside the glimmer like worlds.
But, even stranger than the glimmer worlds were the Fog Men. They hovered around some of the glimmers, but when I tried to approach them, I could feel them scream and I could feel how scared they were. I tried to call out to one of them. I tried to tell them that it was okay, I wasn’t going to hurt them, but they wouldn’t come by me. They were scared of me and I didn’t know why. I wanted to be their friend because I could feel how lonely they were and I am lonely too. But they wouldn’t come by me.
The Dead Realm was very lonely, so I went back to my house, which doesn‘t glimmer, and I asked Ruth and Jezebel why the Fog Men wouldn’t come by me. They told me it was because I was a Grim Reaper. They said that the Fog Men are really called the Nameless (which is silly because everything has a name, so I’ll just keep calling them Fog Men) and being a Fog Man is actually worse than being Dead. They are what happens to a Reaper Child when they let their Emotion Leak get out of control and they are the guardians of the Punished Realm where they make sure that the people sent there can’t escape. They are essentially the Boogie Men of both the Dead Realm and the Punished Realm.
I wanted to ask what that made me if the Fog Men were scared of me, but I really didn’t need the answer to that. If these supposed monsters were so scared of me that they ‘wouldn’t dare’ (as Jezebel put it) come near my home, then that makes me worse than them. I am worse than a nameless monster.
~Entry 21
Grandpa died today and I didn’t want to collect him. It wasn’t only because that I was sad that another one of my family members was dying and I had to be the one who collected them. It was also because I saw what the Spirit Realm looked like when I collected my Great Uncle Merlin yesterday. The Spirit Realm was both sad and beautiful at the same time and it hurt to know that I will never get to step foot inside of it, never see more than a glimpse through a door, even when I’m done being a Grim Reaper. I was told that when I’m done being the Grim Reaper then I would get a glimmer world, but I would never see my relatives again. So today, when Grandpa died, I knew that when I collected him that I would never, ever see him again. All of my hopes of seeing all of my family members together and all of my dreams of being a big happy family will never come true for me.
I now understand why it would have been much easier to be assigned to a different dimension.
Ruth and Jezebel scolded me for procrastinating. “What are you going to do?” they asked. “He has to die; you can’t leave him uncollected,” they told me. They were right. It would be wrong for me to leave him without Grandma, so I went and I was very late. Grandpa was angry that I kept him waiting, I think. I made the mistake of telling him that everything was going to be okay and that I had specifically assigned myself to this dimension. As I was getting his papers together and taking him to the Spirit Realm, I told him why. I told him that my name was Zane.
He had no idea who I was. He forgot about me.
I was going to explain who I was, but we had reached the door to the Spirit Realm. It was too late. The security guard, who everyone at the Reaper office jokingly refers to as ‘The Gatekeeper’ opened the door and Grandpa walked through it. I turned my back and tried very hard to forget about the beauty that was beyond that door. I tried very hard to ignore the bright, white light that shined through it. I tried very hard to ignore Grandma’s happy voice greeting Grandpa. Then the Gatekeeper shut the door. That was it. Grandpa was dead and I would never see him, or any of the others, ever again.
I turned in my paperwork and went back to my house. I wanted to cry. I still do. But I don’t want Ruth and Jezebel to think that I’m a baby, so I won’t. Even as I write this, I’m making sure that they can’t feel how sad I am.
I really hope this gets easier as time goes on.
~Entry 22
Today was not a good day. Not at all. First, I find out that at least another ten years has passed even though it was only a week ago in my time since Grandpa died. But that is very small in comparison to everything else that had happened.
Today, I found out that my mother never loved me. I can’t even put into words how that makes me feel.
I can’t write about it. I won’t write about how worthless and unlovable I feel. My own mother couldn’t bring herself to love me. What kind of person am I?
So much happened today and about the only good thing that came out of it was that I stopped Momma from killing my cousin Mary. I had received Mary’s paperwork last night and the cause of death written on it was ‘Murder.’ I managed to get to the collection sight early and I heard Momma bragging about everything. But Momma made a mistake. Mary couldn’t have been me, because I was standing right there. So, I stopped her and brought her to the doorway to the Punished Realm. I couldn’t bring myself to just leave her there without telling her that she would be somewhat safe if she went through the door. I can’t help but realize that if she would have been in my position, she wouldn’t have done the same for me.
Considering the fact that she murdered me for her own gain just proves it.
I suppose I’m being too pessimistic about this day being terrible. I mean, I got to actually talk to my Aunt Kitty and Uncle Sebastian and I got to meet my cousin Mary. It’s kind of weird to realize that she’s like me in that she’s a Reaper Child; she’s kind of my sister as well. Everything was going pretty well, especially once my Uncle Sebastian realized that I wasn’t a trap that Momma sent. My Aunt Kitty even invited me to stay for dinner. It was almost like I always wanted.
But then I got notification that someone was committing suicide and that it was happening right at that exact moment instead of the waiting period that most people who commit suicide do.
And the person who was doing it was Tina.
I had to rush out of my aunt and uncle’s house so I could save her.
I had been avoiding her all of this time because I didn’t want her to see what I had become and I was afraid that much like everyone else, Momma would have done something to her memory as well. I didn’t want it rubbed in my face that she, Tina, of all people, didn’t know who I was.
I got there just in time. Tina almost died, but I saved her. I couldn’t let her go to the Punished Realm. I couldn’t let her be exposed to the Fog Men. I couldn’t let her feel such sadness and despair that the Fog Men would be able to find her in the Punished Realm and make her one of them. I couldn’t. So I saved her. I also made sure that her daughter would be okay.
Her daughter. When I saw her, I wished, with all my heart, that all of this was a dream and that the little girl was mine. I held the little girl and I prayed with every inch of my mind, body, and soul that things were different. I tried real hard to change everything.
But that’s not how it works. I should know better by now.
I really hope that everything will turn out okay for Tina’s little girl, Karen.
So, I brought Tina back here. I waited until she woke up to make sure that she was okay. She was scared of me. I yelled at her and said that she was selfish for doing what she did. I was so upset with her. She had so much more than I ever did and she threw it all away! I couldn’t understand, and I still can’t, why someone would do such a thing. When a person is alive, they have all the options in the world to fix their bad situations. Instead they opt for the easy way out. What I would give to have the chances that the people who are alive do.
On the other hand, I also realize that I could have helped her before she did what she did. I could have sent her money or something, even if it was anonymously. Instead, I avoided her because I didn’t want her to look at me like how she looked at me when she saw me in my Grim Reaper outfit.
And then I did another dumb thing. I told her that I loved her and I kissed her. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have waited until everything had calmed down. I should have waited until I could explain. But I didn’t and I think I scared her more than she already was.
I think I ruined everything.
Zane smiled slightly at the last sentence and he looked fondly over at Tina again. Her arm was flung out over her head and half of her body was sprawled over on ‘his’ half of the bed. The blanket that had been covering her had shifted down to her waist, exposing the fact that she was wearing only a thin nightgown. He was tempted to cover her back up, but he restrained himself. He knew that it would wake her up and he wanted to wait a little bit longer before doing that. So instead he went back to reading his journal.
~Entry 23
A lot has happened since I last wrote. I’ve met this dimension’s Pet Reaper, Thaddeus (who I really dislike and I‘m not afraid to admit that), and he promptly blackmailed me into trading houses with him. Honestly, I don’t mind as I like my new house much better. It’s smaller, yes, but it’s more comfortable. Unfortunately, the close quarters are causing tempers to flare up between Ruth and Jezebel and Tina. They are mad at her for not only revealing herself to Thaddeus against our warnings, but for the fact that she just confirmed my suspicions that she thinks I’m a monster.
After the move and fix up of my new ‘living’ quarters, I found myself stuck in a rather bad dream; a dream that revealed to me that I am apparently very depressed. Even now, I’m rather shocked by this revelation. Am I sad? Of course I am. Depressed to the point where I would find a way to end my very existence, though? Apparently I am. Or was. I’m still not really sure.
I think that I was more lonely than anything else, even though my house is full of people. To be honest, I still am, though I’m really working on that. Tina is talking to me, so that’s helping a bit. More than a bit, actually. It’s just the little things that she says that makes me aware that I was embracing my Dead state more than I had originally thought. I’ve taken to physically breathing, though it is unnecessary, because Tina made a comment that I seemed too still to her. I’ve also taken to spending time on the Mortal Realm for a little bit everyday, so that when I come back, I am hungry and tired; hungry and tired enough to eat dinner with her and retire to my bedroom.
Tina is making me feel human again and as much as I promised her that I wouldn’t pressure her, I love her even more for it.
~Entry 24
Today I met another Dead Reaper Child! His name is Spider Jerusalem and he seemed very nice. I was so excited to meet someone who was kind of like me that I’m afraid that I regressed a little bit and acted rather childish around him. He didn’t seem to mind all that much, though. We talked for a little bit and he seemed to understand how I felt, which was so nice!
I’m not alone on the Dead Realm anymore. I mean, I wasn’t alone before, but now I’m not the only Reaper Child that I know anymore. I’m not alone!
I think we might be friends. He said that he might come by and visit me and I hope that I might be able to visit him in his glimmer world.
I think I’m going to bring him a cake from his brother’s husband’s bakery. Besides, I want to see Gil and Cassidy anyway. They don’t know who I am, but I know that they adopted me in another dimension, so even though they don’t know who I am, it still makes me happy to see them.
I wonder if Spider likes chocolate cake?
~Entry 25
I got Aunt Kitty’s papers today. Not Uncle Sebastian’s. Just Aunt Kitty’s. I don’t know what to do. I know that I have to collect her tomorrow, but I also know that Uncle Sebastian will be very upset having to outlive another wife.
I’m going to go see Aunt Kitty one last time. I want to say goodbye to her, but at the same time I don’t. I’ll never see her again. How do I tell her that she was the first person on the Mortal Realm who accepted me for who I am and WHAT I am and how much that meant to me?
I don’t want to do this.
~Entry 26
I murdered Uncle Sebastian. He asked me to. He begged and pleaded.
I almost became a Fog Man. Everything hurt too much and I realized that I couldn’t do this anymore. No matter how much I try to pretend that I’m human for Tina’s sake, I’m really not and I haven’t been for quite some time, apparently. A human isn’t able to take someone’s soul.
Tina told me differently. She told me that I am human. Tina told me that she loves me.
Tina saved me.
He blushed as he recalled how Tina saved him and how she continued to save him. Not that he minded her methods, not at all. He had come to the realization that night about how little physical contact he had over the course of his existence and he realized that what made him feel the most human was the touch from another one. A hug, a kiss, even a soft touch to the cheek went much further than just the words. He never wanted to lose that feeling ever again.. His brow creased slightly as he read his most recent entry.
~Entry 27
I think I am about as happy as someone in my situation can be. I have a few good friends who understand me, family members who know who I am and know my name, and the reciprocated love of the woman who I had a crush on since I was a little boy.
I am happy. I never thought I would even be able to think those words.
But, if I am so happy, then why am I avoiding sleep? Why am I avoiding my dreams?
Tina suspects that I don’t sleep, but thankfully, she has yet to question me.
I am plagued by the same dream every night. It’s nothing solid and it’s very vague.
It’s a dream about how I am alone, in the cold, and nobody remembers me. It’s a dream of utter hopelessness and despair. Why? Why now?
Why now, at all times, am I having this fearful dream? I am not alone, and if luck is on my side, I never will be again.
So why do my dreams tell me that a storm is coming? Why are my dreams telling me that I will lose everything that I hold dear? Why now?
I can only hope that it’s just a throwback of how I felt when I first arrived here, in my Dead state. Because I know that I will do everything in my power to make sure that I will not lose anything ever again.
Zane closed the journal and placed it on the desk. He looked at Tina for a moment and then slipped into the bed next to her, waking her up in the process.
“Zane?” she said, half asleep. “Why are you still up?”
He gathered her into his arms and said, “I’m not tired.” They were both silent for a moment before he spoke again. “Are you still awake?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled.
“You know I love you, right?”
“I love you, too.”
“I want to ask you something.”
Tina’s eyes opened fully and she looked at him. “What?”
“Will you marry me?”