I have been given life, thought, and being. My eyes open and the first thing I see is my creator. His hair is like fire, his eyes like a lush grassland and his skin pale, a gentle pink underneath. He was looking at me, and I at him. I did not know my name, but he was Charlie Byrne, The Redman, the ruler of all realities. I could not yet speak, despite my efforts, as I had not been given that gift yet, but he spoke. ‘’Hello, little one.’’ My father had spoken to me, in such a calm, even voice. It filled out in my heart- I did not have a heart… It filled me with joy all the same, to hear my father speak to me, to recognize me as alive. I wished to reply, I wished to say ‘Hello Father, who am I?’, but he knew that, and he answered my desire. ‘’You are Death itself, my son.’’

  I am Death. My mind, or, my essence perhaps? I was filled with images of death, suffering, and grief. Of hell, and heaven. I saw it all, in just a moment. The catastrophic consequences of death, and how it destroys people, their families, and their communities. Why was I this thing? I did not wish to be pain and suffering. ‘’You are not those things.’’ His voice was calming, but I still could not talk. ‘’You are Death itself, but you are not people's perception of death, you are merely its custodian.’’

  Custodian. I was the one who looked after death. ‘’What does that mean Father?’’ I spoke. My voice was nothing like his. It was low and heavy. Drawn out, and gruff. I sounded tired and old, yet I had just been born.

  ‘’It means that you will watch over a special place for me, the void.’’

  The world shifted, gone was the desert we were once in, gone was the sky, and replacing it was nothing. Just an empty blackness. ‘’I do not understand?’’

  ‘’This is yours. The souls that perish, across all realities, they will be brought here. You are to watch over them until I return.’’

  ‘’There is nothing here.’’

  ‘’Not yet, no, but you’ll create what they deserve, my son. You will give each soul, exactly what it deserves.’’

  ‘’I do not wish to be humanities great foe.’’

  ‘’You’re not their great foe, you are the reward of rest, after a hard life. The calmness of relaxation, after difficult times. You are the peace that all souls yearn for, deep inside themselves. You are not heaven, nor are you hell, nor any of those things across all of mythology. You are Death, keeper of the void, and the void is whatever you will it to be.’’

  I nodded, barely understanding what I was to do. ‘’Yes, Father.’’

  He smiled at me and then left. I was alone, in this void, this black hole of nothingness. I myself appeared similar to it, dark, except I appeared to have a purple hue about me, about my glimmering skin. What was I to do? I didn’t even know when this was supposed to begin. That is of course exactly when it began, a woman appeared across from me, her skin dark, as though she were made of obsidian.

  She was panicking, frantically looking around. Eventually, she found me in her confusion, and she stared at me. I stared back, unsure of how to proceed. I was to watch over her until Father returned for her soul. ‘’Hello mortal.’’

  She was on guard, my voice not helping anything. Father had made a mistake, surely. This place was not- This place was whatever I willed it to be. Before she spoke back, I moved my hand, and we were suddenly in a different place. A savanna. This naturally made her panic more. ‘’What are you? Where am I? How did I get here?’’

  I sighed, looking out over the grassland, the seemingly endless fields of golden yellow stalks. It was where her mind was, and it didn’t calm her. ‘’I am the custodian of all souls. You are in the void. You died.’’

  My direct approach upset her even further. She ran, she ran far and she ran fast. I simply stood there, watching, waiting. She would accept this, eventually. They all must accept the end, for it is over. I would have comforted her if I knew how, but father hadn’t told me. He hadn’t told me much of anything, but I knew all there was to know, except that. I could see everything, every life, every soul. I was interacting with them all, simultaneously. We were in so many places, so many beautiful places. This woman though, was my focus, the others could wait. I saw her first.

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  I appeared in front of the woman and grabbed her shoulder. She calmed down quickly. ‘’I’m dead?’’

  I nodded, so matter of factly. ‘’Yes, you are.’’

  ‘’How did I die?’’

  ‘’I do not-’’ This was my world. I blinked and we were in her hut, a man next to her, their bodies emaciated, a dead child between them. ‘’This is how you died.’’

  She wept. The sight of the man, of the child, it was too much.

  ‘’Would you like me to make it go away?’’

  ‘’No.’’

  She continued weeping, and eventually, she pressed her head against me, her tears running down my cold, hard skin, as though I was just a robot, made to serve this purpose. I was, in a way. Father had created me for this, he had given me this world, and he told me what to do. I did not enjoy it though, inside of myself I could feel the pain of their souls weighing on me. I wanted it to end. How long had I been doing this? There were so many… Millions. Billions. Every time I blinked, they grew in number. My mind fractured just a little more, with only a blink.

  I looked down at her, she was wiping her face now, knelt next to the bed, holding the man's bony hand. ‘’Bring him back to me.’’

  ‘’I can’t give him life.’’

  ‘’You said I am dead, and he is dead, and our son is dead… I want to see them.’’

  I could do that. I could give them each other, for all eternity, they could have each other. I blinked again, another hundred million appearing in that single flash of darkness, but, the hut was emptied of the dead. She was sitting there now, with her husband, with her son. They looked so happy, they were crying. I had given them some kind of joy, in this ultimate destruction. This finality.

  I left them and gazed out upon my work, hundreds of billions now, with their loved ones, or waiting patiently for the time they were reconnected to them. Some though, some I had seen the lives of and had judged differently.

  I found myself in a room, a man covered in blood. He wasn’t alone. He was with corpses, and with corpses he would always be. He looked at me. ‘’Please! Make it stop! I don’t want to hear them anymore!’’

  I just looked at him, unblinking. My gaze heavy against his soul. He began to choke from the intensity of it and I looked away. ‘’I have weighed your actions on the mortal coil, and for them, you will live here, for all eternity.’’

  ‘’I can’t take this!’’

  I gazed back at him. He had killed his family, a wife, two daughters, and a son of only three months. Why had he done it? He simply did, as was his right as a sentient being. He was to be punished for this, and his actions would be his torture. ‘’Goodbye mortal.’’

  I was gone again. My echo was removed from him entirely. He was to stay there until father came back for them. I had done this to billions, tens of billions. Living a good life as a mortal was not difficult, not as far as I saw in their souls, but so many failed to even try. Others tried, and I considered their atonement. They repented for their wrongdoings, to gods, to churches, to themselves, and to those they had hurt. Sometimes it was enough. Other Times, it wasn’t.

  These people had such interesting concepts of paradise. My favorite was a woman who simply sat on a covered porch, in her backyard, while it rained. A cat was in her lap, a cup of hot tea always at her side, and books, any book she wanted. I found it so curious how that, of all the things, in all realities, across all of time, was what she thought was paradise. It was so simple, so mortal.

  Mortals charmed me now, trillions of them at this point. My echoes stretched thinner and thinner, an echo for each soul in the void, living or dead. One had even come to usurp Death itself, and to him I granted modest power, and the illusion of rule over my realm. He would be dead before I noticed he had ever visited, and he was. In one blink his entire bloodline was here. His brother, nieces and nephews, his father, his mother.

  I found it quaint though, that he had tried. Only mortals would think they can usurp death, or run from it. There was no escaping me, there was merely living a life that you thought was good, and then being judged for it. Like so many incarnations of his father, whom he hadn’t punished once.

  They died, and when he met them, they simply stared, and he stared back. That was the most curious part for me. Of all the mortals, the untold trillions of souls, of gods, and humans, only Charlies just stared at me. Even God himself had panicked when he met me, but Charlie? He didn’t seem to care. I had judged them, the horrible things they had done, and despite all of them telling me that they deserved to be punished for what they had done, for who they had killed, the millions of innocents whose blood soaked the sands only because he drew breath… I had not punished one yet.

  I had come to learn that for some people, the guilt of their actions weighed on them more than the actions themselves had, or ever would. Some of those people were still punished, but some of them, like my father's incarnations, had been punished enough. They had felt the consequences of their actions across their lifetimes, and they had repented through that suffering. To each of my father's incarnations, I granted wasteland, endless wasteland, bottomless tobacco, and the sun always high in the sky.

  Paradise was a strange thing, truly. They were beautiful and unique. Some of them are desolate, some of them serene, but all of them are paradise to the soul that inhabits it. Some paradises can only be found with a partner, some with friends. I have learned what I am. What my father had meant at the beginning. I am truly the reward that all people wait for in life, the one that some reject and then begrudgingly accept, and the one that some crave more than life itself. I understood my purpose, to grant all who would ever live and die, salvation in paradise.