The dawn hadn’t yet broken the skyline when Death arrived in the city. No one was yet awake; it was too early for that. Time-eaten shutters were still thrown over the windows of houses, the streets still void of human life. The silence was unnerving to the Reaper-it resembled only too well the silence to come. The sky was a deep orange color, one that even he could admit was beautiful-but another horrible foreshadowing of the flames and conflagration on its way.
    Yawning loudly, Death sat down on a small wooden bench. These last few years have been my worst ever, he bemoaned. Thank God they’re finally over. What was the year again? ‘45, ‘46? It was hard to keep track anymore. He’d been doing this for 10 billion years, with never any breaks of any kind. Death did not ever take a sick day. This job will be the death of me, the Reaper thought. Then he laughed, realizing just how ironic that statement was.
    Not many people realized that Death could indeed laugh. He was not that skeleton-like, gloomy character popular society made him out to be. Although, Death admitted, that robe is pretty cool. Death could be amiable-likeable, even. Sometimes, he could even be lenient.
   It wasn’t that Death hadn’t, at first, liked his job. Far from it. At first, he had enjoyed it. It had been a great honor, God had told him, to control the souls of man. So Death had done it. He had done it with enthusiasm and exuberance. But there was a simple fact he had figured out the hard way. There may be different gods, and different Angels, but there was only one death, no matter where one was. The Grim Reaper had the wonderful duty of being everywhere at once in the Universe, all the time. And over 10 billion years, that took its toll. Death began to feel… tired, worn-down. His job had become a necessity, something that just had to be done.
   Behind him was a small antique shop, barely large enough to fit ten people. Old, faded Japanese characters were painted on the window. Death had no idea what they said-he had never taken the time to learn Japanese. German he could speak fluently, since he intended to have a serious talk with the Führer once he died.
   There was a little ceramic plate sitting placidly in the window of the shop, gathering dust. Silently, Death reached right through the window and snatched it up. This I think I’ll save, he thought. Death always saved something from his travels, little mementos of who they were and how they passed.
   The first people were finally poking their heads out of the houses and taking to the streets. Of course, no one paid him the slightest bit of attention. Death glanced dismally at his watch. They had maybe an hour before they all died.
   For that hour Death sat watching these people perform their final moments. If people knew they were going to die, what would they do? Death had often wondered that. What would they dream of? Who would they go to see?
   Near the end, a woman and her baby sat down next to him on the bench. The baby was crying softly, and the mother began singing to it with a voice sweeter than anything Death had heard before. Kawamoto Asako, thought Death as he stared at the baby. Aged approximately a year and two months. Softly the baby giggled and reached out towards his mother. Death had to look away. The world is cruel, and I am its enforcer. None of these people have to die.
   Death could hear the sound of the massive B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, coming. Some people were beginning to look up, confused. So this is it. Standing, he took the three-foot pole off his back. Grimly he pressed in a button on the side, and the pole extended until it was his height. Then the scythe blade swiveled into position with a metallic whoosh.
   The bomber appeared above the city. Death prepared to strike, lifting the scythe straight over his head. The bomb, the weapon of mass destruction the Americans called “Little Boy”, dropped from Enola Gay. People seemed to just now realize they were being bombed, but none of them knew just how powerful the Little Boy would be. The mother of Asako took off and ran. Goodbye, little one, Death mourned. See you on the other side.
In a flash brighter than the Sun and and explosion louder than a supernova, Little Boy bursted into a massive fiery inferno. At the exact moment 70,000 citizens of Hiroshima died, Death buried his scythe deep into the pavement. As 70,000 souls fluttered to him like wounded butterflies, Death sighed.