Death by Beauty

He was asleep. Fast asleep.  He was a dark person in more ways than one.  His eyes glittered like opaque, his skin like crystal stone.  Oh yes he was beautiful.  And tonight he was breathing deeply, his chest rising and falling with every inhalation.  He was the epitome of life.  He glowed with vibrancy.

She was just doing her job.  You would think that she would shroud her slight form in black cloaks to hide herself from her clients.  Instead she wafted in with the scent of flowers clinging to her skin dressed in a simple white dress that danced around her knees with every step she took.  She was the opposite of him in every way.  Pale, clear, lifeless.  Her eyes took in his masculine body toned from the past two years of high school soccer.  His hair was too dark she thought critically, too long and shaggy.

It didn't matter.  She had a job to do.  She leaned over his bed and carefully reached out to brush his forehead with her fingertips.  Just as she was about to touch him, his eyes fluttered open

He saw the girl leaning over him.  Saw her delicateness, her paleness.  He noticed the ways her eyes were endless, with death.  He knew her for what she was.  Death.  Yet all he could think of was how wrong humanity had been.  Suspecting death to be a man of brutal ugliness, hiding behind a dark robe and deep hood.  Instead Death was a girl with elfish features paler than the moon.

He felt his heart thud once heavily and then still.

"Who are you?"  He wasn't scared.

"The Reaper."  She whispered and music played with her words.

"You're more beautiful than I thought you would be."

"Does that make it easier that you're going to die?"

He shrugged.  "It doesn't make a difference in the end."

"True."  She leaned over him and carefully placed her cold hand on his bare chest.  She tried to ignore the heat of his skin and began to carefully extract his soul.

She was surprised  when he leaned forwards and place a soft kiss on her lips before slipping into the sleep of death.  She froze, aware of his body now just a shell and the glowing orb that was him in her palm.  

Breathe, she told herself, and immediately giggled at the thought.  Why she hadn't breathed the breath of life in over a century!  She stared thoughtfully at the light and then carefully brought it to her lips and exhaled.  Her chest hurt from the effort of exercising the muscles that had gone so long in dissuse.  

Immediately he was beside her, at the foot of his bed staring down at his own body.

"It was painless.  What was wrong with me?"  He asked her.

"You started hemorrhaging."  She too stared at his body.  "But I let you skip that part."

"What happened to make me hemorrhage?"  He wanted to know.

She shrugged.  "My superiors wouldn't tell me."

"What happens now?"

"I have given you a choice.  You can either return to your body or you can let me bring you to the Underworld."

"Will I see you again?"  He stared at her intently.

"Not if you live."  She looked away to avoid showing him her desire.

"Take me to death then."  He smiled at her and turned his back on life.

She looked at him surprised and then blushed.  Odd, since she hadn't had blood flow in over a hundred years.