I can hear the voices of the souls I take inside my head. I hear and feel them like they’re mine as I fly over the town to find the place where they die. And among them, it’s the soft sound of a thousand black butterflies flying around me, trailing me like a giant black cloak. They’re actually all the souls I’ve taken.

Although, even if you look up and catch me at the right moment, I doubt that you’ll even notice. No one can really see me. I can stand right in front of you, with all of my butterflies, wave my hand over your eyes, and you still wouldn’t see me.

I’ve been The Reaper for years and yet my body is still that of a child, just like the way I looked when I died. I don’t know what the last Reaper had thought, but he had decided to become human. That’s what would happen if I lose all my butterflies. Nobody had told me. As far as I know, there’s only one of me. But when I woke up, I just knew everything I have to know about being death himself.

“Enough,” the voice says. Just like that, I feel the way her pain’s being lifted off her, the way it would when you’ve decided. I can hear it as she tries to even her breathing and I know she’s calm.

The last time I’ve heard that word, said in the same painful but peaceful way, was when I died. While flying over the rooftops, I catch a glimpse of that memory. I remember broken glass and crumpled metal. I can see blood and her sweet, sweet smile as she told me that it’s enough. I was crying so hard - everything around me felt like a nightmare - but she was there to tell me it’s time to be strong and to stop crying. I can see my sister’s eyes. I can see the pain in her eyes. But for her, just as she was trying for me, I tried.

I’ve never let her butterfly fly too far from me.

I see the girl in her bed. I see her fingers wrapped loosely around an empty bottle of pills. Her eyes are closed, but I can feel her shallow breathing. She had chosen to die tonight, unlike they way my sister and I had taken. And I’ve come to get her.

But I’ve felt what she felt.

It must have been different for her. This isn’t the kind of pain my sister and I had felt. In a way, it feels harder. I look at my shoulder and the black butterfly that sits on it. I think of what I’ve felt sitting inside that crushed car with my sister, and I want her to feel that way.

I want her to feel okay.

So instead of taking her soul, instead of her taking her butterfly, I give one to her. I raise my hand and point my finger to where she lies. One butterfly takes off and flies towards her. It sheds its black color and its wings turn blue like the sky. Now, she won’t die tonight.

Tomorrow perhaps, when she wakes up and this thing is in the past. She’ll see a beautiful blue butterfly, waiting for her to live her life.