Death and His Retirement

         The reaper waited with the patience of eternity. While he didn’t show up in person for everything, he felt he really ought to make an appearance for the last. The last human had died eons ago. The last life, slightly more recently. The last star, millennia ago. He had watched all things come to an end, for hundreds of billions of years. And now his last crop was growing ripe.
         Gripping it between his skeletal thumb and forefinger, the reaper wielded a scythe smaller that the naked eye could see. Counting under what would have been his breath if he had lungs, he reach the scythe out with subatomic precision and sliced through the last proton as it decayed. The proton’s “soul” hung in the vacuum for a moment before fading away. Most wouldn’t think protons had souls, but everything that had a beginning and an end had an essence of wholeness to it. It was the reaper’s job to separate that essence from the physical world.
         And now his last crop was harvested.
         He looked at the universe. It was as close to nothingness as possible. A sea of quarks floated aimlessly in a vacuum. There remained energy, but it was evenly spread throughout everything. The universe had reached equilibrium.
         The reaper gave the universe one last glance. He gave a satisfied nod, his harvest complete.With a skeletal grin, he stepped out into his home.
         The reaper’s home was not inside the universe. It wasn’t in any neighboring universes either. It just existed, regardless of what all the other dimensions thought of it.
         The reaper heavily sat at his sober table and sighed. He remained there, motionless for an indeterminate amount of time. Then he slowly rummaged about in the recesses of his black robe. His bony hand emerged, clutching a deck of cards.
         He stared at them for a moment, his head tilted in confusion. He wasn’t sure how you played solitaire with a deck of tarot cards but he had an eternity to find out.

         After an amount of time so vast we have no name for it, the reaper was growing bored. He was discovering (like many elderly individuals before him) that doing nothing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
         He stalked through his home, because when you are the grimmest of reapers you can’t just walk. You have to stalk or creep or slink or some other word that brings about images of things best left untouched. Death may be able to stride purposefully and he may be able to get away with a run. (Albeit, a very sinister run.) But he will never, ever, skip.
         He passed through the vast room that had once contained the hourglasses of every living thing. It had been filled with the hiss of lives being lived. Now the silence squeezed the room in its deathgrip (no pun intended). The room was empty, save for a lonely, black hourglass, devoid of sand. On the base the name “Death” was inscribed on it.
         The reaper picked up his timer and stared at the empty glass bulbs, longingly. He halfheartedly turned it over. The absence of any sand seemed to snigger at him. He replaced it with a sigh and voiced the question he had been trying to avoid:
         WHAT NOW?
         The two words bounced around his skull with such force that, had anyone been around they would’ve heard the echos.
         He slunk (See? Told ya.) into his office and sat down. With the grinding of bone on bone, the reaper scratched his chin thoughtfully.
         WHAT IS MY PURPOSE NOW? He aimed the query at nobody, as there was nobody. WHAT CAN THE MATHEMATICIAN DO WITH NO NUMBERS? WHAT CAN A TEACHER DO WITHOUT STUDENTS? WHAT IS LEFT FOR A CARPENTER WITH NOTHING TO BUILD? He laughed bitterly. WHAT IS THE REAPER MAN WITH NO HARVEST TO CARE FOR?
         He glumly rested his skull on one arm and stared at his desk. It used to overflow with papers and the odd hourglass. Now it was barren for a dark sphere in a stand. It had a sense of incomprehensible vastness even though it was only about the size of a basketball. The reaper picked it up and stared at the empty universe. Of course the reaper would keep a model of the universe on his desk. He liked to keep an eyesocket on it.
         It’s blankness sparked a tiny primordial memory, of a time long ago. Before there was even the hint of life. Before galaxies, before stars, before atoms. But there was always Death. This sparky memory happened amidst a cloud of inspiration and ignited it. The new idea exploded into the reaper’s mind. He placed his other hand on the universe and started to compress it. Of course, it was merely a metaphor, you can’t hold the entire universe in one hand. But then again, the reaper was only a metaphor as well. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be real as well.
         He squished the universe down until everything was compressed into a space the size of a grapefruit. The reaper held it between his finder and thumb and stared at it for a moment. It twinkled like a diamond, or even better, like potential. The old universe was dead. The reaper had to abandon the old barren land and move to his next field. Then he stepped inside.

         In the beginning was nothing, and the nothing was with the reaper, and the nothing was Death. The universe was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the reaper was hovering over the sea of fresh new atoms.
         And the reaper said LET’S GET SOME LIGHT, I CAN’T SEE WORTH HELL. And there was light. GOOD. NOW I CAN SEE.
         The reaper grinned. Of course, skulls can’t do much else, but now he gave the impression that it was of his own free will.
         Every beginning must have an end. It just so happens that sometimes the end is really a beginning.
         Death had planted the seeds.
         Once again, the reaper has his harvest.