The Grim Reaper is no longer able to claim lives directly. Instead, when your time is up a mark appears on your body and it is the duty of every other person to kill you on sight.
I am not a careless person. I cover my tracks, monitor what I say, look before I cross the street. At least, I do now.
When I was 20 years old, I walked home reading a book. I was so engrossed that I failed to notice the heavy metal vehicle moving at my frail, human body at 40 mph.
It swerved, I stopped, no one was hurt, no one died. They never do.
It was only when I took the cookies out of the oven that I noticed the mark on my arm. I knew what it meant. It was my duty to report to the authorities to be murdered. If I didn’t, anyone who saw it would kill me on sight.
I didn’t want to die. I was only twenty years old! I hadn’t even finished college, much less gotten to all my grand plans and ambitions (never mind that I didn’t have any. I had time to plan out the rest of my life later. So I thought.)
I burned my arm on the cookie sheet. The scar covered the black mark somewhat, and I put a bandaid over it. The people at work didn’t question it.
After some time, the burn healed. The mark remained black over the scar, bigger now. I tried carving it out with a knife. It was winter now, and long sleeves were the norm - no one would notice my injury. The mark remained, the bloody lower layers of my skin black as death’s robes.
From then on I wore long sleeves. When I went to the doctor I covered it with paint and hoped they wouldn’t notice. They didn’t. I was lucky.
The mark grew.
I was in trouble when it reached my wrist. As soon as it covered my hand I would be discovered. I ran.
Soon I will be nothing but a shadow in the night. Perhaps some of the stories they tell of night creatures originate from people like me. Those who escaped, their marks covering them, even the whites of their eyes turned deepest black. In a way, we are no longer human. Isolated, undying, immortal, betrayers of nature’s most fundamental law: all things must come to an end.
If I outlive humanity, will I ever die?
When the sun goes nova, will I still exist?
When the universe ends, will I endure?
Or is death simply a shortcut to that end? When the last star has gone out and matter has been erased, will Death greet me with a weary sigh, saying “where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you for an eternity.”
At that point, will I even remember who is waiting for me?
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.
Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”
