Checkmate

Close Call

"Hi there I'm Lexie, and are you the reaper? " She said while having a smile plastered on her face still. I said "Yes I am, You can call me Atticus." She stared and said "You look much more friendly than I expected you to be."

So in return I said " Yeah, you expected me to be much more scary didn't you?" And she said yes. Since she was having a good laugh, I invited her to play chess. It was an intense game, I got close to being replaced already. She almost got a checkmate but somehow she wasn't too great in chess as she did not see and take the opportunity, a reaper can only pass on the responsibility of being a reaper when a person who you accompany gets a checkmate in a game of chess. So we began our walk.

She asked if I ever felt lonely being here. So I responded "No, It's peaceful here, I do miss my family sometimes though." She was quiet when I said this.

"Hey, I'm only going to tell you this because I know we'll never see each other again. When I was alive, I went to a therapist and I was clinically diagnosed with depression and PTSD. When I tried telling my friends they all just laughed and said it was all in my head. When I got home, my family was fighting again, as usual, this is not really my type of thing, I hated getting involved in fighting as I experienced how much it breaks people so when they get to fighting which is almost every minute if every day. Fighting is the reason why we would never be in the same room at the same time. However when were bonding outside we pretended to like each other as we were required to by our father since we were a well known models of the seemingly perfect family. Which could be why my friends just laughed and said that this was all in my head." She said. I stayed quiet through all of that as I didn't know the right words to say. A few seconds later we arrived at the light.

"Here we are" I said, before taking a step towards the light. She hugged me and said "Thank you for listening to me. You take care here okay?" I said okay and told her to have fun on the other side. As I walked back I wondered who in their right minds would say to a clinically diagnosed person that it was all in her head. I shook it off.

As I was arriving, my pup greeted me with her wagging tail and stuck out tongue jumping up on my robe for me to pick her up. So I did and walked back to my space. I put her down on the ground and started to keep the board I left on the table. I placed it back where I usually placed it, as I sat, the pup brought me a stick. It was always her favorite to play fetch in the waters of the lake. So we walked a short distance to the lake and I sat on the ground just a couple inches from the lake. I threw the stick out across the lake, It was deep but not too deep to cause my pup to drown.

I threw the stick out a couple times until my pup got tired and sat by me soaking wet. We just sat there until eventually she fell asleep on a piece of my robe and I couldn't stand because she would've woken up. So I sat there with my thoughts. I thought, what kind of horrible brain washed person would tell a mentally ill person that it's all in their head and then proceeds to laugh at them.

I said to myself I could never do that, because what if it's their last straw and then they'll lose hope that the world could ever be great again? What has the world become. Two years has passed since I've been here. I'm willing to stay here for years as this experience is making me realize a lot of things. I just really hope I won't have to accompany a kid as that would really break my heart. I got tired and fell asleep.

Pup woke me up to play again as he was now fu of energy after a good nap. I decided I'd go into the water, I gently splashed him with water, pup just happily jumped around. I threw the stick and she fetched it. Again after a couple minutes she headed out and went to the shed where we'd always rest and fell asleep. I just thought how lucky I am to have come across her or I wouldn't know what to do if I were alone, certainly I couldn't play chess with myself.

I just got nostalgia with playing in the waters as my family and I would usually do that in camping or hiking trips during our breaks, or when we'd stay at a beach overnight. The late night conversations was the part I enjoyed most, we'd never notice that the sun was almost rising until it was. We always enjoyed night drives so in an event where we'd stay up all night, we would sleep for a couple hours during the day and check out at night. Then we'd start our drive back home with all windows down and music blasting with us jamming to it.

As I was smiling with tears of joy to the nostalgia I was feeling. I sat there and looked at my pup giving her occasional pets here and there. I stood up and walked around a bit as I was bored to death, which is ironic because I actually am dead. My back was turned from the path when I felt a tug on my robe, when I turned to see what the tug was, my heart broke to pieces and sadness took over.