The man fated to live death

Date: 9/9/2018

There was a man who was hated by nearly everyone, simply because of his job. Even he hated the job he’d been given. In a way, he was the grim reaper, because his job was simply to kill wherever he went. The Kings and Queens of the world were afraid that soon there would be too many people roaming the earth that resources would not be able to provide for all. So they called upon the gods and together they gave the man his job. He was allowed to kill freely and as often as he liked. The Kings and Queens agreed to bend the law for him, and the gods promised no recompense would fall on his soul. The man was not happy to receive this assignment, but he knew this was his duty, his allotment in life, so he grimly accepted it. Everyday he went out into the villages and towns, and he would kill. Usually his victims were chosen at random—whoever happened to be at the right place at the wrong time, anyone who happened to end up cornered and alone. One day he came across a mother and her daughter on a dusty road as they tried to get home. He could feel a sort of pull towards the young girl, which usually came when he knew that was the person fated to die. The girl spotted him first, and shrieked away, clinging to her mother’s long skirts. The mother’s eyes went wide in fear and she cursed the man away. They tried to run, but the man had no difficulties keeping up. He had them cornered now, and the girl was sobbing at the end of his long, curved knife, that may as well been a sword. The mother was a few feet away on the dirt, begging the man to stop. “She is meant to die,” he said flatly. The emotion had been drained from him many years ago. “She is only a child, she cannot deserve this!” the woman wailed. “If anything, take me instead.” All he had to do was flick his hand, and the blade would go through this girls throat and the whole thing would be over. Maybe he’d kill the woman too, just for good measure. But for some reason, his brain couldn’t seem to make his muscles obey. He realized he was crying. Silent tears beaded from his eyes and trickled down his cheeks. He never wanted to kill, not from the very first life he took, but this one seemed worse somehow. He’d never had to kill someone so young—not unless you counted the ones who never took their first breath outside the womb. That was the moment he decided to do what he’d never done before—the thing he was never supposed to do. He let her live. He pulled the blade from the girl’s skin, then backed away slowly. The sobbing as the woman pulled the girl in her arms drowned to a blanket of noise in his ears. He walked back through town. Like usual, villagers scattered like bugs the moment they caught sight of him. He’d had enough killing for one day. He wanted to go home. There was only one person in this world who didn’t despise him the way the others did. Only one who saw him for more than his actions. Something in him always softened when he was greeted by the gentle smile of his wife when he stepped through the front door. Why she loved him, even after everything he’d done—with everything he was destined to do—he didn’t understand. She never asked him how his day had been. They both knew the only answer to that question. Instead, she would tell him about hers, about what new thing their infant son accomplished that day. She told him he was sleeping now, but that he could go see him if he liked. The man nodded quietly. He gazed down at the innocent, soft face of his son. Would he grow up to hate his father like everyone else? Would he see everything he’d done, the lives he’d taken, and see a monster? “No more killing,” the man said gently. His wife bit her lip and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You know that you must. You have been given this fate, you cannot leave it.” The man closed his eyes, hearing the girl’s sobs once more. “If it were his life I had to take, would you still say that?” He shook his head. “I will not take anymore innocent lives. If that is what the gods want, they must do it themselves.” His wife didn’t know what to say, so she settled for wrapping her arms around him. Her understanding was all he’d needed. The man stayed true to the words he said that night, and never again did he find himself staring at a child at the other end of his blades. He only killed criminals, despicable men, those who took the lives of others when they had no authority to do so. It was also when the disasters began to happen. Plagues tore through communities. The very earth herself responded to this rebellion against fate by swallowing up entire villages with earthquakes, and drowning legions of ships at sea. These catastrophes killed without prejudice or discernment of who was innocent or deserving. But still, the man refused to take those lives himself. Recompense for his soul or not, he didn’t want to be responsible for those lives. He lived this way for many centuries, solemnly moving through life surrounded by death. In all that time he felt he’d grown an old man, but outwardly he had only a few gray hairs to show for it. His son had now grown to the size of a three year old, and his wife still young and pretty as the day he’d met her. Of anything in his life, he was most grateful for them. The more he witnessed of life, the more lives he saw fit to spare. One day he came to realize he hadn’t taken a life in weeks. The bomb sirens went off through the city. Men, women, and children scrambled for cover, scattering from the streets the way they used to scatter from him. He should get back home to check on his wife and son. They had a decent shelter, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure they were safe. He rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. Slashed bodies of civilians littered the street, and their blood coated the pavement like rain. With a sickening feeling, he took a closer look, and in an instant he knew exactly the type of blade that had taken these lives. The man started running for his home, terrible thoughts plaguing him all the way. A burden flew off his chest when he saw his wife and young son safe inside, preparing to head into the shelter below the living room floor. “We were waiting for you to return,” his wife said. “Get in, now. You must keep him safe.” “Why are you so worried? We have survived many wars before. We will be fine.” He shook his head vigorously, fear blazing in his eyes. “Someone is coming.” “Who?” “I don’t know. But I need to know you both are safe.” She furrowed her brow in concern. “But you are not coming with?” He ushered them down into the bunker. “I must handle this. This is my fate.” With a bit more assuring and convincing, she agreed to go into the bunker with the young boy, and the man quickly latched the trap door and reached for the rug to hide the entrance. “Don’t think you can hide from this now,” a woman’s voice said from the front door. That sickening feeling was back. She stood in a long white coat that flapped at her ankles, yet the whiteness of the fabric was only an echo. Even in the gray cast of the light, he could see that it was more a shade of orange, stained by the blood of those she’d slaughtered. The blood that still dripped from the two blades at her sides. “You didn’t have to kill them.” She stepped into the room, her eyes fierce. “Of course I did. I had to kill them because you wouldn’t.” “Things don’t have to be this way. The weight of all that blood spilled shouldn’t be on one person.” The woman wiped a splatter of blood from her face. He couldn’t bear how young she looked—as young as he’d been when he’d first been assigned his fate in life. “You think they haven’t noticed what you’ve been doing? Or should I say what you haven’t been doing? The gods have let you slide by for too long. This,” she raised her arms as if to point out the air raid sirens piercing the town, “is what happens when you don’t do your job. The world needs balance, and our job is to bring that balance.” The man stepped in front of the shelter door as if that could somehow hide it from her sight. “The kings and queens, they were wrong. They said the earth could not hold more people. But look, look what it has become. Millions, billions of souls. And each one is deserving of a chance. At happiness, at love, at life.” “You are weak. You are a failure, and I am here to fix the mess you have made.” He couldn’t believe it, she actually seemed to enjoy the task she’d been given. She enjoyed the killing. She enjoyed the bloodlust. “You’re here to kill me, then?” She gave a piercing grin. “No, I will bring you to the brink of death, and it is there I will leave you. I will bring you to the edge, and then I will make you watch as I take from you what you treasure most.” She glanced at the trapdoor, then back to the man. “And then, only if I’m feeling gracious, will I kill you.” The man seethed with years of boiling hatred. Hatred for himself of what his hands had done, hatred for everything they’d fated him to do, and hatred for her because she now threatened everything he loved. Stoic and unwavering, he felt the handles of his blades forming in his palms. He would take only one more life, and it would be hers.

AI generated interpretation “You are the man fated to live death,” the woman said, her voice a whisper. “And death is coming for you.” The man’s dream is a reflection of his struggles and inner conflict. He has been given the task of taking innocent lives, a burden that weighs heavily on him. He has tried to avoid it as much as possible and to spare innocent lives, but he is aware that his actions are disrupting the balance of life and death in the world. This dream is a manifestation of his guilt and fear, as the woman in the dream represents the other side of his job, the side that he has been avoiding. She is trying to take away what he loves most, in order to force him to resume his duties and fulfill his destiny. The dream highlights his inner struggle between his personal morality and his obligation to carry out his job, and it is clear that he is determined to choose his morality over his obligation.