I Ate A Happy Meal With The Grim Reaper

I Ate A Happy Meal With The Grim Reaper
— a short story

“I knew you were real,” I told him as we both watched the glowing lights of the Brooklyn Bridge, with the sky getting darker as minutes pass by. Cold air seemed to pass through between us. “No one believed in me. They told me maybe, I was just imagining things. I was just imagining you.”

It was a snowy evening on the last day of October, and every street and avenue in New York City has been decorated with Halloween stuffs, with almost everyone walking down the busy streets dressed up in their chosen costumes. And I wasn't an exception. I was wearing my usual clothes, a black sweater and an old black sweatpants that went with good with the old-fashioned combat boots my grandmother has given me for my fifteenth birthday. Like the past years, I'm dressed as a psychopathic murderer, with nothing unusual about my getup except for the small Swiss knife inside my pocket. But this year, things are different because I decided to spend the night on the riverside of East River, anticipating the view of the Brooklyn Bridge. And like I was expecting, he showed up again. When I was just a kid, I thought he was just a product of my imagination. That maybe, I was just creating things in my head, but no. It got even worse. For the past Halloweens, he appeared wherever I was. Inside my bedroom, outside the streets, inside the shopping mall— everywhere. And tonight, he appeared again, but this time, he stood beside me. He looked at me as if he has known me for so many years. I could still remember those black eyes, those cold and expressionless eyes. And I wasn't wrong, he was the same guy I saw when my grandfather died.

My grandfather was a veteran in the second World War, he was a great man and a good Grandpa to me. He was healthy, even healthier than me and he exercises regularly, which made everyone in our family wonder how he had a heart attack on exactly my seventh birthday. I was the one he was with that night, and before he fell on the floor, I saw the same guy standing beside me smile at me. And the next thing I knew, he was gone. Since that day, I always see him every Halloween and once on my sixteenth birthday. I went to see a psychiatrist at the age of nine all because my father and grandmother were worried I was having weird hallucinations. I knew he was real, but I've been telling myself the past years, that maybe it was all just in my head. That maybe, there was no guy in some black hooded cloak showing up to me every year. But he's real. And he's here.

“Well,” he started before his pale lips formed into a mischievous smile. “You can't expect people to believe what they think is unbelievable, Alice. Who would believe that a weird guy in a black cloak has been showing up to you every year? Well, it would be awkward to say it but I somehow appeared in the wrong place this time. I was supposed to be in the house of the last veteran from the World War but— well. Nevermind it. The view is good, such peacefulness is rare nowadays.”

I looked at him, his pale face shone faintly under the silvery moonlight. “I know who you are.”

“Of course you do,” he said, making it sound as if it was clearly obvious that he knew. “The black hooded cloak, the scythe, the pale face and cold aura. Of course, it was obvious, Alice Williams.”

I tried to remove the thought that it was him. It was impossible. It couldn't be him. He can't be—

“The Grim Reaper?” he continued the sentence I had in my head. “The man who walk the dead safely to where they should be? Sometimes, I forget that mortals don't believe I exist. You have created religions, beliefs and teachings that say it was angels or other things more impossible than the existence of unicorns that bring people to your so-called heaven or hell. And here I am, having a hard time explaining to dead people why it was a gloomy man in a ragged cloak with a glowing black scythe that has to walk them off and not some angel with dashing white wings.”