“Well! I am here. Let’s go!” said the Reaper.

She turned around to look at him. A very handsome-looking man, in a black overcoat, stood there with his hands behind his back, smiling. He had well-combed, laid-back hair and features that looked far too perfect for his identity. It seemed as if he had slithered into the most perfect version of a human being. Had she not known who he was, she would have consented immediately. But just by looking at him standing there, calm and composed, at the very face of death itself, she knew at once.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“Your time? It has come, owing to your promise?” the Reaper replied calmly.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her heart sinking.

“I guess you already know who I am,” he said with a smile, as if taking pride in his existence.

She shook her head in disbelief, unwilling to answer the question.

“I can tell, but why?” was all she could manage.

“Well, you made a promise, remember?” He tilted his head, trying to make her recall it.

“What promise? I have never met you before,” she responded, exasperated.

“Not me, duh!” he rolled his eyes. “You made a promise to Karan, remember?” he pressed.

She continued to look at him, completely baffled. Merely hearing that name spoken aloud seemed to open every pore in her body. She immediately remembered Karan, her one true love, whom she had once cheated on with a stranger in a bar. After that, things were never the same between them. Eventually, she had to leave him, for her own good, to hide her guilt.

Karan was devastated by the heartbreak. The last time she had inquired about him was two years ago, when a friend told her that his pre-existing medical condition had only worsened. But she could never muster enough courage to go see him. The guilt inundated her judgment and swallowed whatever good was left in her.

“Yup, the same guy,” said the Reaper, as if reading her mind.

“What was the promise?” she asked, gulping as she carefully walked along the thin parapet of her memory lane.

“Oh, you had said…”

Before the Reaper could even finish his sentence, she was already lying on a bed beside Karan, tightly holding his hands.

“I’ll be the one who dies first. I can never go through the pain of seeing you gone. I should be the first to go,” she said glumly, looking into the only thing that mattered in her life—his eyes, which shone brighter than any stars. They put to shame every ardour that existed in her world.

Karan silenced her with a kiss. “Hush! Never say such things out loud. It’s bad luck.”

She kissed him back even more passionately, “I promise I will die first. If death were ever to come near you, I would willingly give my life instead. I wouldn’t be able to live in a world where you don’t exist.”

“Hush! Hush! Don’t say that! Nothing will happen, I’ll be fine as long as you are,” Karan replied, kissing her even more fervently now.

“I swear, I would go first.” Tears rolled down her eyes, and Karan wiped them away before hugging her so tightly that all her worries instantly melted away. They wept for a little while, but then soon the tension in their eyes softened as they made love for the umpteenth time that night, tiring each other out before finally falling asleep, unfazed by the hour.

Back in the present, she didn’t realize she was staring into the eyes of the Reaper, who stood there waiting for her answer.

“Yes! I do remember,” she replied solemnly, slowly retreating from the vision.

“But I no longer love him, I have moved on. I am in love with another man.”

“Wait! What?” The Reaper looked confused.

“Yeah, it was a long time ago. Everything has changed. Everything is so good right now. It’s all in the past.”

“What do you mean…in the past?” The Reaper didn’t understand the concept of time.

“Yes, it was just something I had said. I didn’t mean it,” she said, trying to correct her folly.

“It very much felt like you meant it,” he replied, shaking his head reassuringly.

“Nope! It was all in the heat of the moment. I never meant any of it.”

She paused to check herself. Maybe a flicker of conscience stirred in the back of her mind. Vexed, she replied, “Well! Or maybe I did mean it, but it is all irrelevant now.”

“Irrelevant? You think this is all a game?” the Reaper was growing impatient.

“You know what, it was just something people say when they are in love.”

“So you were in love?”

“No, I was never…wait, what’s the question?”

“Love?”

She flustered. “Look, man! You seem like a very naive guy to me. I take it back, whatever I said, it was just a relationship. People say weird shit they don’t mean all the time. It was just like that.”

She recklessly tried to shake him off, as she struggled to remember where she was and what she had been doing before the Reaper had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

The Reaper looked deeply disappointed. In that moment, he understood the fickle nature of mankind. But to be called naive, especially by a liar, struck him hard.

He turned grim as he replied calmly, “His time has come.”

She was about to shake him off again when she suddenly stopped. A bell tolled within her soul. It rang again and again, like the very bell of Judgment Day. All the moments she had spent with Karan came rushing back one by one, right up to the moment she had met another man at the bar. Then came their fight later that night, followed by how she had ended everything under the pretext of his illness. How she had made it all about him and his disease.

“As the promise clearly stated, it has to be you first, before I take him,” the Reaper said. He wasn’t fooling around.

“What?” She immediately abandoned all thoughts of Karan, snapping back to reality.

“You heard me.” The Reaper shrugged.

She tied her hair back with both hands, trying to grasp the gravity of the situation. “So let me get this straight. You are here for me because of some foolish promise I made years ago to a guy I am no longer with?”

The Reaper only stared at her.

“No!” she blurted out, rejecting the very idea as absurd.

The Reaper’s smile waned. He seemed to realize that his offer had been declined.

“No! not at all! You can’t take me. I am happy now, much happier than I could ever have been with him,” she replied, staring straight at the Reaper.

“Okay!” the Reaper placed his hands behind his back, and awkwardly pulled his pants up before turning around. “Then I suppose I’ll just take him.”

“Yes, go ahead! Do that! Take him! I don’t care. I never cared,” she said, at her wits’ end.

“You know how it is. I am just trying to take as many as I can,” the Reaper said, nodding as if trying to make her understand.

She forced a smile, relieved that she was being spared and that the Reaper was finally leaving.

Before disappearing into oblivion, the Reaper turned back, looking utterly disappointed as he whispered, “I have never really understood mankind, you know. You lot are a very weird concoction. You never mean what you say, and you never keep your promises.”