I swerved off the road and into a gully in the woods. A layer of kudzu concealed its true depth, and I crashed at the bottom." He nodded but she didn't see him. He remembered it vividly. He had come to take her, but he could not. Half-conscious, she lay in a crumpled heap, her limbs wound around the pretty pink bicycle. Her red hair, more like dark copper when she was a child, glittered in the dappled sunlight that fell through the trees. He wanted then, as now, to touch her pale cheek, but doing so then would have freed her soul. He had watched her shallow breaths, and the last remnant of his humanity stirred. Compassion awakened in him, at first a thin trickle, then a flood. He hadn't experienced it or any other emotion since he'd been chosen and given the role of a soul reaper. He had known then it signified the beginning of the end of his turn at reaping. He wasn't the first and he wouldn't be the last. Many soul reapers retained a spark of humanity buried deep within them, and it emerged when they least expected it.
What do You think about At The Stroke Of Midnight?
