• “You...” I remember that night perfectly. It was stormy, rain and wind swirled around me. I was standing under a street light starring down at the man before me. He was broken. His limbs cracked and bleeding. I could see the blood pool around him just begging for death.
    “Your...” he was trying to say something but he wasn’t able to spit it out. Suddenly a gust of wind blew my black hood off my long brown hair. That’s when his face went into shock. That was first time I had ever seen the reaction of my hunting form on a human being.
    His mouth had opened before I swung my large scythe down into his heart but I can’t remember what he had said. The sound of the blade swinging through the air had taken over my mind... his words... I know them. But what are they and why can’t I remember.

    “Hey!” I snapped my head up at the teacher suddenly aware that I was in class. The eyes of every student were on me. I couldn’t remember what the teacher had been talking about.
    “Are you listening? Ms. Conner.” Mr. Mathis sauntered over to my desk and glared at me over his square glasses.
    I turned from his eyes and looked at the wooden desk. “No.”
    “Ms. Conner,” I looked back at him coned in it by the sound of his voice. He was the strangest teacher. He was holding a book in one hand and petting it with the other. “This is one of the best text’s I have required in this class and I would hope that you would pay attention to it.” He leaned in getting his nose inches from mine. Don’t touch my skin, I thought. “You will read the next page out loud for the class as punishment.”
    “Alright...” I reached for my copy of the book and opened it trying to find the right page. He still stood over me as I searched hurriedly for the right passage.
    “Page one hundred and eight, Ms. Conner.”
    “Yes, Sir.” I nodded hurrying to the page and reading it aloud.
    After the day was over and the other classmates were leaving I starred at my desk one last time trying desperately to remember what the man said. Cold wind, rain, and his breathing. His mouth opening, moving and... splat. The sound of my scythe cutting into his skin and sliding through the muscle and ribs to his heart. It plunged in and stopped its beating instantly and as I pulled it out of the dead tissue the mans soul came with my blade.
    I grabbed the white puff of light and felt for it’s essences. The good of the man filled me and I knew that it must go up to the sky. I lifted my arm into the air and let the ball go whispering, “May the light of God fill your soul with peace and salvation.”
    “Ms. Conner?” I dragged my eyes up slowly un-clouding them of my memories. Mr. Mathis stood in front of my desk fidgeting with his glasses.
    “Oh,” I looked around noticing that the room was empty. I stood up and began filling my bag with my books and homework. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mathis.”
    He said nothing for a second then suddenly reached out for my hand. Instinctively I pulled away and fell into another desk hurting my back. The cry that left my lips wasn’t human because I was not. It was dead and screamed short agony. The cry had meant that the section of my body that had been hurt was now healing. My body needs to use my voice as a way of letting out energy to heal itself.
    “What...” I looked up at Mr. Mathis. His face was frightened. The sound was scary to any human. It had frightened him more then I had imagined. “What.... are you?”
    I grabbed my book bag and headed for the door not wanting to be around him any longer and hoping he would choose to forget. As I reached for the door handle he asked one more time. “What are you? Ms. Conner.”
    It was his most serious of tones. I turned around eyes on the ground. “I am Gabriel,” I lifted my head to his eyes. “The Angel of Death.”

    Mr. Mathis was my homeroom teacher and he was also my researcher. It was weird. The day after I told him the truth he didn’t look at me or acknowledge me but at the end of that awkward day he asked me to stay late. Once the other students left he sighed slowly and asked me if it had been true. I nodded. Then he did something weird. He walked to me and placed a large book on my desk. He claimed it would help me and then he said he wanted to research a few things with me. It was a weird beginning.
    “Gabby?” he asked on our third week of researching after school hours.
    “Yes?” I replied not looking up from the large book.
    “Do you...” I glanced up to see his awkward form behind the desk. His face was lit up by the screen of his laptop. “Do you really go around killing people?”
    I smiled. “It’s not killing when their dead.”
    “What?” He looked outraged and frightened.
    I laughed lightly. “Mr. Mathis, when I release a spirit they are already dead. I am just pulling them from their bodies and sending them to heaven or hell.”
    “Oh,” he looked back at the screen. “There are so many people who die... you can’t be the only one.”
    At this I closed the book. It was useless to keep looking if he was going to ask me questions. “No, there is only me.”
    “Then how?”
    I sighed to myself. “There is only one of me because I am only needed in a few cases. When somebody is left to die alone or when the soul is too close to both sides.”
    “So, how does that work?”
    “A soul can go its way on its own. Actually it happens every second of the day. I can see all of the souls that leave this world. They are small balls of white light or black. I see them rise to the heavens and even sink into the earth. But when a soul is alone and left to die I have to release it from its body because without another being there the soul feels trapped and can not escape.”
    “How do you know all of this? How did you come to be the Angel of Death?”
    My eyes traveled to the setting sun outside of the windows. “My father was the last Angel of Death, the last Gabriel. He was the best the four worlds had ever seen. But everything has it’s end. When he died I took his place and being given his abilities I had to hold my own fathers soul to fully become the Angel of Death. When my fingers touched that ball of light I knew everything he did. Everything that had been passed down through the blood line of Grim Reapers. But there is so much I don’t know, that no one ever knew.”
    “So, that’s why you agreed to research with me?”
    “Yes, I want to know it all. The reason I’m like this, dead but not dead, killer of the body but savior of the soul.”
    “Your a very interesting person, Gabby.” He smiled at me it was a calm happy smile. For a second I felt my cheeks blush. He was a very cute teacher just out of college at the age of twenty three. He was young. Younger then me.
    I started to laugh then covered my mouth as I couldn’t stop.
    “What’s so funny?” he asked watching me.
    “Nothing...” I giggled then sighed and watched him. “Your twenty three right?”
    “Yes,” he looked confused. “Is that what’s so funny? Your laughing about my age?”
    I nodded holding back a giggle.
    “Why is that funny?” he pointed a pen at me. “Your only seventeen.”
    I shook my head side to side then took a deep breath.
    “Your not?” he asked. “How old are you?”
 I sighed. “What you should be asking is how long have you been the Angel of Death.”
    “Why?” then his eyes widened. “Wait... that’s connected to your age?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Then....” he watched me for a moment then asked quietly as if he was afraid of knowing, “How long have you been the Angel of Death?”
    I smiled at him stood and walked to his white board. I took one of the markers and began writing my age in hieroglyphics, latin, roman, chinese, japanese, and french. Then I turned to his wide eyes.
    “Hieroglyphics?” He turned to me confused as ever. “How old are you?”
    My smile grew at his stunned face. “I have been the Angel of Death for five hundred years.”
    “Ah....” he eyed me then pushed the bridge of his glasses up and stood. “Five hundred years?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “Whys that?”
    “Because you look like a high school student... a seventeen year old girl.”
    “Well, you see, I’ve been around doing my Angel of Death duties since I was seventeen. Actually seventeen. That’s when my father died and my aging stopped, being human stopped. I became the demon that releases souls. I didn’t grow up knowing Hieroglyphics, that was my father. You see, each Gabriel lives for about a thousand years before giving their soul to the intermediate. Of coarse they are not allowed to die until their is a successor and that successor is old enough to carry out the duties of the Angel.”
    “Wait...” he put his hand in the air. “What is the intermediate?”
    “Oh,” I took the eraser and started to erase my age from the board. “That is where all the Angels reside after death.”
    “As in the Angels of Death?”
    “Well, there are more then just us,” I smiled at him. “I must be confusing you so much.”
    “Maybe...just a little.” He sat back down in his chair slumping his shoulders and looking at the floor. “This is all to much...”
    I leaned close to him putting my nose inches from his face. “Why don’t you come to my place and I will make you dinner.”
    He looked up at me suddenly, a blush filled his cheeks. “I can’t do that! Your one of my students!”
    I smiled and put a finger to my lips. “That’s true... though I could drop out of school, I don’t need to be here. Then you could come have dinner with me.”
    “You know what,” he began. “Your crazy. I don’t think I believe anything your telling.”
    “Oh?” I stood up straight and crossed my arms trying to find a way to prove to him. “Don’t you remember that noise I made when I got hurt?”
    His face dropped instantly. I hadn’t realized that the noise was that in-human. “Yes.”
    “Well,” I continued. “Shouldn’t that be enough proo-” I felt it then. The calling of a trapped soul all alone on a street nearby.
    “Gabby? What’s wrong?” his tone was filled with fear. My body began to pull in weird ways. My skin stretching, forming and releasing itself from my body to create my scythe. Then my school uniform began to shift into my black cloak and roman garb. My eyes turned blood red and each of my teeth sharped to a point. The final piece of the puzzle was the black tattoo that appeared in the center of my forehead. Three swirls that connected at their center. An ancient symbol for the three stages, Birth, Life, and Death.
    “Holy s**t!” He pushed his chair against the wall in pure frightened instinct. Mr. Mathis was the second person to see my hunting form. “********!” He was breathing extremely hard and I could hear his heart beating a mile a minute. I knew if I opened my mouth no words would come out just messed up demon sounds. So I nodded my goodbye and walked to the window then I went trough the wall as if I were a ghost.