Death was facing a dilemma. There were too many people coming into the underworld. "Now what are the humans up to now ?", He said to himself. He liked talking to himself. He rarely interacted with someone worth talking to so he found that talking to himself broke up the monotony that was his work.

Death glided up to Earth and saw what was going on. "Looks like there's been a war. A nuclear one at that. no wonder so many people are dying. " He roamed around the sky, riding his black horse, noticing what was going on.

"Well this is not good. If the last person dies, I die as well. " He noticed that there seemed to be just a small number of people left living on an island out in the middle of nowhere ocean.

"Looks like the war hasn't touched this place yet. "

He descended down on the island. There was not much food on the island the people on the island were all were acting restless. Death decided that he needed to grow some food first.
He put his hand into his pocket and brought out seeds that he carefully planted into the ground. When they were grown, everyone was amazed by the sudden abundance of food that was prevalent that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

He saw to it that no bad weather ever came near the island. If a storm ever tried to come close to the island, he chased the storm away. He would make it so that there was enough rain but not too much so that the rivers would flood and destroy everything.'

The final thing that he did that he considered a bit risky was to prevent accidents from happening. As Death himself, he knew when an accident would cause a death from a mile away and so could easily prevent the accidents from happening in the first place. People that fell down cliffs somehow miraculously survived. People weren't affected by snake bites in the least and people ate fruits without fear of them being poisonous to them as well.

People started noticing this happening to them and so wisely decided that a God was responsible for it. Since the God helped people live, they decided that the God would be called Life - much to Death's chagrin.

"Just you wait" said Death. "You people become more populous again and we'll see if you'll call me life once more."

But that day never came. There was one thing that Death could not do - and that was give the people more babies. Generation after generation less babies seemed to be born. Nothing Death did seemed to be able to stop that.

He tried to stop the decline over a couple thousand years, but nothing he did seemed to work. Finally he was right back to a handful people.

"Oh well. " Death said. "I did whatever I could. In fact, I feel like protecting this island was more fulfilling to me than taking the souls to the underworld. I'll die knowing that I don't have regrets. "

And when the last human died, Death closed his eyes and was no more.

Death needs humanity as much as humanity needs her, that's why at the end of the Great Dying she decided to help the last survivors herself.

It's been over a decade since the appearance of Disease X, a deadly prion hidden in the common cold virus, a piece of bad news wrapped up in even worse news. Civilization fell in a few years, decision makers started pointing fingers followed by guns, someone had the finger over the button, got trigger happy launched and rained death and darkness from above; it was the busiest days for the Reaper.

Some survivors began to receive instructions in dreams to start rebuilding civilization, it was explained to them that the pathogen had disappeared with the nuclear firestorm, now they could repopulate the earth, helped by a supernatural force that was always with them, they called it Vida.

Vida was in charge of making them survive accidents that must have killed them, guiding them to better places and ensuring that they had provisions keeping the population stable, but she never spoke to them directly, her messengers, dream and delirium always spoke for her.

Since the appearance of Vida, people began to live longer and die peacefully, so they began to suspect that Vida also controlled death.

They began to prepare someone to investigate, instructing him to negotiate face to face with Vida after he died, he was old and shouldn't have problems getting an answer, but this wasn't needed as they confirmed it when their subject lived longer than all those who had instructed him, so in a way the lack of answer was an answer.

Little by little the population rose and civilization recovered, 65 years have passed since the appearance of Vida and there are rumors that there are landline phones in Boston again and that Guadalajara has a new makeshift grid. Vida sighed and sharpened her scythe, returning to her old job but always taking care of the society that she helped create.

Please give me feedback as I haven't written in a while

You might think life as a Death would be fun and cool, but you are highly mistaken. Being one of millions of Deaths around the world, is not all that it lives up to. It's what these humans call a 9 to 5 job. But instead of you sitting in an office all day at the computer you are constantly having to go out and retrieve dead humans souls. For the first couple thousands of years it seemed pretty cool being Death but after millions of years of just going around collecting souls it gets dull. Us Deaths, we go around collecting souls like homeless humans used to do collecting cans for a couple of cents. Surprisingly enough you would think that "Death" does not make money or needs money but you'd be surely mistaken. Ironically this job is soul sucking literally and figuratively. The only time I see my fellow Deaths happy is when there is a mass extinction or war happening on Earth. But are job is not only taking souls from dead humans, we can also help humans whether it be them dying or helping them live. Some people call us "Angels" watching over them, I guess it gives the humans some sort of comfort knowing that there is something watching over them. Well after world war 6 the humans began to disintegrate figuratively, they started to go off there on their own and stay away from other humans. It was like watching the caveman all over again. One soul sucking evening I got an alert on my device saying that North Korea has declared war on all countries, and they've already sent out 15 nuclear warheads overseas to Nuke all strong countries. If I could smile I would be smiling as hard as I can because I love when humans attack of the humans does that means a boost in paycheck. So I did what humans call skipping cheerfully all over the globe trying to get as many souls as I can. I found this group of around 10 humans and I was surprised to see them not fighting over food water or land. They were actually sharing food together and sharing stories. And in my non-existent heart I felt something to say not to kill these people but instead help them to survive. They were just so happy in the time of conflicts and sadness that it little spark in my non-existent heart and I decided to send them a herd of five pigs run over to them and be slaughtered for food. Running the distance I hear what sounds like battle cries of the homo sapiens of this Earth. So I turn around and I see a group of 20ish people wearing well looks to be rocks and metal as sort of armor while they're all holding pipes, wrenches ,big rocks and really just junk. When I turn back to the 10 humans they all look scared and they started to pack up their things very quickly and ran. So I fold them and I gave them a little bit of a stamina boost since it's above my pay grade to give them anything else. They run for about a mile reaching a shore, and for some reason I decided to send them a boat with food, water, and gas so they can escape unharmed. Now you might be asking yourself if you're Death why not kill them and get more money? Well it's not as simple as killing all the humans and getting more money, because on the first day of the job they said do whatever you can to keep at least one human alive because if you don't and you fail you will also die, along with all of your coworkers your bosses and everyone you know and love. Even though that might be a reason to keep the teams alive before I remembered my boss saying that to me I honestly wanted to help them and I did and I feel proud knowing that at least some humans will survive either all Deaths will die with them or not. I'm not the best at speaking the humans languages but I can hold a conversation with one theoretically if they could see me but what really spoke out to me is when they were on the boat eating the food drinking the water putting the gas into the boat I could make out something that they were saying, they said "do you guys feel that presence? Like something is watching over us protecting us, helping us? And for the first time ever a human who despises death and fears death called me "Life". Suddenly I hear crackling so I look down at my hands and they're growing tissue, muscle, veins, blood, and skin. I thought this overwhelming sensation of fear, happiness, sadness and glee. My black robe started to deteriorate and human clothes started to appear. I fall down from 10 ft in the sky where I was watching over the humans and I fell on their boat while they all screamed and panicked I looked up and felt the same emotions. Emotions? What are these, I've never felt these before what's happening to me, is this truly whut dying is? My now existent heart is beating out of my chest as I'm afraid and shivering. They finally say something, saying "who are you and how did you get on this boat?" I look back up at them and said "I... Am... Life..."

Consider the chicken farmer. He hatches the chicks, raises them into hens, breeds them with the right rooster, then expands his farm with each generation. Ten birds turn into a hundred, then a thousand, then so many chickens that the farmer loses count. Each day the farmer rises, feeds the chickens, and selects a few dozen for slaughter; he plucks them, cleans the meat, then takes them to market. His routine changes little, but it is a pleasant one; the farmer likes regularity, and the feeling of a job well done.

Then, one morning, the farmer exits his farmhouse to find that the chickens have discovered nuclear weapons. One of the hens flies a passenger jet over the wrong henhouse’s airspace and the rooster in charge shoots it down with a surface-to-air missile. An alliance of henhouses launches a retaliatory strike on a military base in Chickistan, and within a few hours the chickens are launching thermonuclear warheads at each other, annihilating almost the entire farm and massacring all but a handful of chickens. They have ruined years of the farmer’s careful efforts to grow his chicken farm, and now he has to start all over with a tiny clutch of surviving chickens in South America whom the fallout did not poison and who managed to survive the famine that killed almost every other chicken.

I don’t eat souls, so the analogy begins to break down here, but just as the farmer depends on his chickens for food, I depend on the human race for my own existence. I could explain more, but you wouldn’t get it—which is why I ordinarily make up some fable about what I actually do with the souls on the rare occasion I talk to humans. I think there’s a bit of a humorous irony in you people killing each other over what happens to you after you kill each other.

By the way, if you find that sadistic, it’s only because you think your suffering matters more than it really does. Your soul is immortal, and eventually you’ll think of it as a hilarious prank. Starting a holy war is like putting a chicken on an inner tube then pushing it into the middle of a pool. It’s funny. It doesn’t really hurt the chicken. I just want to see what it does.

But I don’t get to mess around with my chickens when I’m too busy keeping them alive. Humans will inbreed themselves out of existence if I let the population drop below a few hundred, and even that number is playing with fire. It helps that most have regressed to hunter-gatherers, since those societies have longer lifespans than agricultural ones, but the human race is only a couple of bad days away from extinction.

Did you know that after a nuclear exchange, there is a massive infestation of insects? They feed on the corpses of people and animals that die from radiation poisoning, and they spread unimaginable amounts of disease. I’ve killed trillions of these things trying to keep them away from my colonies. Flies, wasps, hornets, beetles, and especially ants. Trillions and trillions of ants. They cover the rubble in Europe like a carpet: each corpse can feed a colony for weeks. Not only have I had to keep them all away from my chickens, I even eradicated mosquitos, which had taken me millions of years to perfect. They’re just too good at killing people, and that’s the last thing I want right now.

I’m not omnipotent. I can’t control the weather. I can’t bring down bread from heaven or part the seas. My only leverage on the physical world is death. Ironically, people have started worshipping me as a life-giving deity for eliminating the creatures they don’t like, which will make for some very entertaining wars once they re-evolve into settled societies and start fighting crusades again. But for now, I have to kill the jaguars that try to ambush them in the jungle, smite the poisonous snakes before they can strike, and make sure no fighting breaks out.

That’s actually the easy part. Take Colony 11, in Argentina, who had a leader named Pablo who thought it was a good idea to make war on Colony 13. I set him on fire the second he finished his speech, and just like that, Colony 11 turned into inveterate pacifists. Their priestess, who used to be in PETA, went a little too far and started preaching it was a sin to kill animals, but those things are full of valuable calories, and the 11s needed all the calories they could get. So I set her on fire as well. Now the 11s are doing fantastic: they’re one of my best colonies, and all it took was a little bit of spontaneous combustion.

But most of the problems I’m facing right now are not so simple. I need some help, and since you people couldn’t keep your dirty little fingers off your nuclear buttons, you are going to be the ones to help me clean up the mess you created. None of you are going anywhere until I have a stable population of at least five hundred thousand for five straight millennia. You’re going to do whatever I tell you, whenever I tell you, because you really have no other choice. When the last human dies, I stop existing shortly afterwards, and any souls I fail to deliver—to wherever I deliver souls—are stuck here forever. That will include you. You will stay here until the heat-death of the universe, orbiting the burnt-out husk of the sun with your little murder buddies until you wish I had eaten your souls.

If you people feel bad about wiping out nearly the entire human race, and you want to undo your mistakes, this is your chance to atone for your sins. If you want to help me, I’ll send you to haunt one of my colonies and gather the information I need to keep your species alive. You’ll tell me what they need, how I can protect them, and who needs to be smitten to keep the civilization alive. I suspect you did not become presidents, premiers, and generals without a certain skill for logistics and an understanding of human needs, so I imagine you’ll be rather good at it. If you are, then after five thousand years, I let you go.

I’m not going to tell you what happens afterwards. Maybe there’s a God, and I can put in a good word for you. Maybe God just eats your souls, and I really am just a chicken farmer. I won’t tell you. You’re never going to know what happens, or if you’re going to heaven or hell. But the one thing you will know—and know with certainty—is that I can make a hell for you if you finish what you started and the human race goes extinct.

Are there any questions?

A Guiding Chill

~ It was a modest group. Frighteningly so. For as their numbers dwindled, so too did the sand fall ever faster from the hourglass encapsulating my existence. Chronos might very well be giddy in his throne, his Fates equally amused by the irony it would be to sever my Silver Cord.

This world would have no need of me soon. No need for the Wraith that I am to ferry them across the Veil and into Elysium, or —more commonly— the Underworld.

A large part of me danced with the idea of ceasing for many a millenia, and yet as I come to face the possibility... well, it's much less romantic than I'd assumed it would be. Perhaps this is what mortals call fear, a term I have long known but could hardly empathize with.

I haven't a mirror, but I see my face in their own now: the surviving few with whom I've begun to feel a sense of kinship. An astounding 37 to be exact. All of them presently engaged in some manner of quiet panic as they idled on menial tasks or some other such method of distraction.

I drift past them as a cool shift in the air within their makeshift stronghold: an underground subway far enough from the epicenter of the long foretold outbreak of Undead that it offered some measure of safety. Its walls and, thanks to no small amount of resourcefulness or effort, fortifications were especially useful for keeping the "Walkers", as some of the mortals had taken to naming them, at bay.

Unease is never far, however, with the guttural moans echoing deep throughout the labyrinth of tunnels every so often. The mortals tell time this way now, knowing night has fallen when the din of ghouls is at its highest.

Many of them, the living that is, have made friends and whisper together in hushed, shaky tones. Amongst all the worries they share, the doomsaying, and despair ridden nightmares, I am warmed to find each mortal still yet harbors a wild hope to go on. To live.

I had last accompanied from their number a weathered old woman of 71, precisely 194 days ago, and not another soul since. For their hope was contagious. Rather, I've found myself to have adopted my own idle behaviors, such as staying the hand of the Nosoi; ancient spirits of plague, sickness, and disease. A bargain was struck, of course, and for now, they would settle for assisting in the expedited rot of the Undead.

I, on the otherhand, was better suited as a different sort of guide these days. While the mortals could neither see nor hear me, it was evident they could very much feel my presence. So whenever I wasn't privately repairing some form of barrier or causing a strategic cave-in to redirect or stop the Undead, I would use my presence to steer the mortals away from danger.

For a while, they merely assumed the Undead were always preceeded by dreaded cold air.

Pathfinder was the first to trust the ethereal cold that was my presence for what it was, and was so named by his peers for consistently leading them to safety and good fortune. Be it shelter, food, or safety whenever there was a need to venture out for supplies.

Death, ironically, became a cold comfort.

The old woman had been grandmother to this Pathfinder; a curiously driven and bright young man of 31, who likely sensed me more clearly ever since I'd recklessly tried to comfort him the day I claimed his last living relative. I might have known by his lack of usual reaction at the time, somehow overcome with truly taking in his simultaneously dignified and purely emotional way of mourning.

These moments are all the same, I had often thought, so trivial. After so very, very many, I had stopped watching, even caring. I do suppose my sudden urge to observe may have had something to do with the very real possibility that these moments were now numbered. Perhaps they always had been.

But, rather than jump, shiver, or even faint as anyone normally might do when touched by the hand of Death, he'd instead taken in a deep and steadying breath. If I'd been tangible, it might have been as though he'd relaxed beneath the cool feel of my pale hand upon his shoulder.

That moment had somehow emboldened me to help them. I felt it was a gesture of trust on his part, and somehow, it was endearing enough that I wanted to try.

By proxy, of course, I'd also be helping myself... but if my existence in this realm truly was meant to end, then I'd be damned if I didn't at least make that pompous bastard of a God Chronus wait. He always did hate waiting.

And so it was decided: I would stand against whatever came for the flock of mortals that I, along with this Pathfinder, would now shepherd.

Be it until the very final grain of sand. ~

—S. PhiaKey

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