He stole a prolonged moment in bed, enjoying the sheer joy of simply feeling well again, until an overwhelming sense of dread forced him into action. He sat up, disoriented and still a bit weak, surprised to find himself alone in the isolation room, the door bolted from the inside.
A sudden jolt of icy fear sent the president scrambling over the side of the bed.
The gaunt figure in the ragged hooded robe was standing in the corner of the room, watching him through eye sockets flitting with hundreds of tiny pupils. The being’s scythe, held upright, dripped blood from the curvature of its olive green blade.
The skeleton animated, approaching the foot of his bed.
“Help! Somebody get in here!”
A burst of frigid air emanated from the Reaper’s mouth as the ancient skull spoke. “There is no one here to help you. The ark your people built to isolate your failed leaders has been breached. Plague has taken every living soul on this island, save one.”
“Oh… God.” The president gasped to catch his breath, then gathered himself and stood in defiance of his impending death. “Just tell me one thing before you take me… will humanity perish as a result of our stupidity?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Will my death serve a greater purpose?”
“No. But your life can still bring Light to the world.”
Kogelo’s skin tingled with adrenaline. “You’re sparing me?”
“You are a righteous man born in a time of greed and corruption, tasked by the will of the masses to bring peace. You have not gone far enough. You have struck deals with the dark forces and been manipulated in the process. To unveil the Light, you must end war. To end hatred, you must make peace with your enemies.”
“It’s not that easy. Ending two wars… there were loose ends in Iraq. Afghanistan is complex, we’re dealing with Pakistan. There are issues… we’re making progress. I could set a new timetable—”
“Should ten more innocents perish in Iraq, the eleventh shall be your wife.”
“What?”
“Should ten more innocents perish in Afghanistan, the eleventh shall be your child. This is my timetable.”
Kogelo collapsed to his knees. His throat constricted. “Please don’t do this. Take my life, I don’t care. Not my wife and daughter. I beg of you.”
“Cause and effect. You hold the power over life and death. Reap what you sow.”
Fueled by desperation, the president stole courage. “I will end the war. But there are enemies about… entities who prefer the darkness. How do I bring peace when all they want is war?”
“For those who seek to harm others, Judgment Day has arrived. This is my covenant to you.”
The Grim Reaper extended its skeletal right hand—
— the bony appendage instantaneously wrapping with blood vessels and nerves, tendons and muscles, all sealed within a layer of warm Caucasian flesh.
For a brief second, Eric Kogelo swooned, then he willed himself to shake the offered hand, gazing up into the face of its owner.
The man who looked back at him was in his thirties, bearing Jim Morrison features, his long brown hair matching his eyes. The dog tags around his neck identified him as a US soldier. Kogelo squinted to read the inscription. Sgt. Patrick Ryan Shepherd…
Shep pulled back, releasing the president’s hand… and his own humanity—
— casting his soul to the underworld.
"Greatness is not what you have achieved
but what you have overcome.”
“Are you going to get any better or is this it?”
Lost Diary: Guy de Chauliac
The following entry has been excerpted from a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written by surgeon Guy de Chauliac during the Great Plague: 1346–1348.(translated from its original French)
Time has passed. So much has happened, and yet I am at a loss to account for everything. Perhaps that is best.
When last I recorded an entry, I was worse than dead… a hapless soul, drifting in and out of torturous pain. In my delirium, I prayed to my Maker to take me.
Death finally paid its visit one wretched night in May.
My confines were stifling, my fever refusing me a moment’s respite. Perhaps it was an incessant blood-soaked cough, perhaps divine intervention, but at some juncture I opened my eyes to the night. At that moment, the cloaked figure emerged from the shadows of my bedroom, his ragged garb blending with the darkness. The candlelight flickered in his presence, its orange glow revealing a scarred skull tinged brown with age, as if the bone had been left to rot in a pond. Or, by its overwhelming stench, perhaps a cesspool.
The room cooled noticeably as he spoke, his French twisting in an Asian accent. “I was once like you, a slave of the flesh, born in a time of greed and corruption. In my early years I bore witness to unaccountable bloodshed delivered by my own father’s blade, and many a man suffered by my family’s rule. But I turned away from the violence following my first battle as Emperor in order to pursue the mysticism of the spiritual realm. Instead of war, I waged peace, and in doing so, I changed our sworn enemies into allies, bringing prosperity to our entire region. But the knowledge I sought eluded me. And in my final hour, I was visited by Death, and he, too, offered me what I now offer you — the secrets of creation… the path to immortality. Agree to my terms by your own free will, and I shall extend your days in this world, and the knowledge of the ages that abandoned me shall be yours, bringing joy to the rest of your days… and beyond.”
I sat up in my deathbed, my mind waging a war with my own sanity. “And if I accept your offer… what then? What is to be my end of this covenant?”
“When the natural end of your days transpires, and you have taken your final breath, you shall relieve me of my burden as the Reaper of Souls. Complete this spiritual task, and you shall be forgiven all your earthly sins and be guaranteed a place in Heaven’s endless fulfillment.”
“And how many days,” I asked, “must I wander the Earth as Death?”
“Time is not measured in the spiritual realm, monsieur. But fear not, for a worthy soul, tarnished by his own past deeds, even now awaits his next rebirth. Together with his soul mate, they shall relieve you of your future burden as you shall relieve me of mine.”
He left me then, this Angel of Death, to ponder whether his visit was real or a delusion brought on by the fever. But soon after, my symptoms improved, and by summer’s end, I was my old self.
But while I was gone, how the world had changed.
More than half the European population that existed a mere two years earlier were dead, entire villages wiped out by the plague. Religion was brought to its knees by its own corruption. Papal rule was forced from its partnership with the Royals, who gradually lost their own coercive hold on the masses when food and land proved plentiful in the sudden absence of more than 45 million people.
I, too, have changed. Titles no longer have any meaning to me. I wish now only to serve mankind, sharing my acquired knowledge of the human condition with others.
Then this!
No sooner had I begun penning a manuscript that would become The Inventory of Medicine than I was visited by a peculiar fellow of Asian descent. That he knew of my encounter with death was outweighed by his most unusual gift — a journal accumulating the greatest medical wisdom of the ages, authored by Aristotle and Plato and Pythagoras, as well as some of the most renowned sages in history.