Strapped

[WP] Upon returning home from your job as a security officer, you are assailed by a man dressed in all black. He misses and slices his sword through your car like it is tissue paper. "I am Reaper, Black Blade of the Crimson Edge of the Illuminati. Prepare to --" You shoot him in the face.

*****

When I was younger, in my adolescent years precisely, there was this show called 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy' about these two kids that managed to win a game of limbo against the Grim Reaper, thus making him their slave or whatever. By managed, I mean the mean, sassy and smart Mandy cheated, but you don't care about these details, do you?

Maybe my daughter was right. Maybe I was beginning to show some signs of the senility associated with aging even though I was just 38, or maybe it was just the nostalgia that came with a somber reflection on how one's life played out from terrible choices. 38 with an 18-year-old daughter who was getting wilder every day, and three jobs that I was running to make sure that food stayed on the table and there was a roof over our heads.

Either way, that wasn't the point of this long rambling. The point was that their situation was similar to mine except, well, there was no limbo, and it was just me instead of two kids, and it wasn't exactly Death, the Grim Reaper, but yeah, there was a reaper, and there was me, and yes, he was my slave, protecting me from dying until I reached old age naturally or I chose to die.

How?

I'd have to take you back to three days ago, nighttime to be precise when I was on the way back from one of my jobs - a security guard at the local supermarket. I was in my 2009 Toyota Camry, not exactly cruising through my dark, unsafe neighborhood in the Bronx, but I was heading home to safety when a cloaked figure suddenly appeared in the middle of the road.

I use 'appeared' now because of the information I have now. Then, I thought I had blinked for a second, or even worse, fallen asleep at the wheels and this failed to see this person enter the road wearing a cloak when it wasn't even close to Halloween. But then, it was as I came to a screeching halt, and as the figure flipped its hood back, that I knew what I was dealing with,

A man, tall and gaunt, with arms so thin and pale that I could almost see the muscle, bone, and vasculature underneath. His head was bald, very bony with his cheekbones too defined - due to his look of severe malnutrition. The skin around his eyes was dark and sunken, and his eyes were bulging. In short, he was just a bare skeleton with some scraps of meat and skin thrown onto the frame.

And then there was a red, glowing scythe in his right hand.

Before I could speak, he swung the scythe once at me, but my somewhat quick reflexes - refined from a long life of gang involvement, running up and down on the streets - reached for the level to pull my seat backward, and I escaped the reach of this scythe, which went through my car like a knife through butter.

The whole top half of my car, including the windshield and the back windows, flew off, My car had become a convertible in the blink of an eye.

"I am Reaper, Black Blade of the Crimson Edge of the Illuminati. Prepare to --"

I whipped out my gun and fired twice, cutting him off quickly. At that point, even as my hand moved mechanically to grab, aim and shoot, again due to a life that was full of actions like this, I felt that it was pointless and stupid. This man was certainly a supernatural being, and it wasn't going to work, but then I'd be damned if I didn't do anything. I didn't expect the Illuminati reaper to fall back to the ground, before rising shortly after and getting on his knees, bowing at my feet.

"At- your... service."

"Sorry... what?" I asked, believing that I did not just hear him right. There was no way this being just bowed to me and declared that he was at my service.

"You heard me, your stupid, silly, urghhhh," He screamed as his head immediately burst into flames, burning at a searing heat until it all turned to ashes. His head grew back after that.

"I knew it was stupid to take that risk, but I never knew how bad this binding slave-master contract could be. I can't even so much as speak to this b*stard rudely without - DAMN IT!"

His head burst into flames again, combusted completely, and then grew back. It was then I understood that he was really at my beck and call, and he couldn't speak o me anyhow or speak badly of me unless his head would burn as so, and it looked painful.

"What can you do?" I asked.

He looked at me for a few seconds, seething with anger and apparently in a mood to kill me. I somewhat understood how he felt since I'd be angry too if I was left as a slave to someone like myself. But then, I knew that he could not do anything to harm me, because if just a few insults did that, then the price for killing me would be too disastrous to imagine.

I smiled. "I asked a question. What can you do?"

*****

TO BE CONTINUED