Big Barry Longhorn

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Brother of Jill. Son of Keith. Grandson of Keith snr. Mother deceased (suicide even though they pretend it wasn’t). Oldest brother deceased (suicide even though they pretend it wasn’t). Youngest brother deceased (Motorbike accident).
Big Barry Longhorn tried to see the good things in life, say, let me give you an example; he liked when a kettle was boiled long ago and before he puts it on to make his coffee he pours himself a glass of clean lukewarm water and sips it slowly as he awaits the joys of caffeine.
Big Barry Longhorn couldn’t help to see the bad things in life, say, let me give you an example; finding his mother hanging in the shed three weeks before finding his brother gassed in a wagon. He wondered if he was death, Big Barry did. If all of these tragedies happened before him because he was in training, that one day the grim reaper will show up, rest his scythe by the front door, take his grim reaping shoes off, ring the doorbell and ask, “Is big Barry Longhorn in?”
Together they sit on the side of his single bed.
“So,” said Barry. “You here to kill me?”
“Kinda,” replied Grim.
“How can you kinda kill someone?”
“Well,” said Grim from the shadows of his cloak, “I am giving you a job.”
“I have a job,” replied big Barry who worked two hours a night at the local bakery.
“I am almost finished my time, you were always going to be next. No one is ever ready, but don’t worry, you have three hundred years to get the hang of it. Hang of it,” Grim repeated this and laughed, as it was a pun about his dead mother. Big Barry ignored it.
“Alright, what do I got to do, go around and kill people?”
“Big Barry Longhorn,” said Grim in a disappointed tone. “You have witnessed so much life, so much death and you think that this job is murder? No Barry, we do not kill people, we arrive to help them Passover. We are nothing but shepherds, men with boats helping those cross a river home.”
Knock, Knock, Knock.
This awakened Big Barry from his daydream, there he sat alone on his single bed, alone without death. The knock was his sister, Jill.
“I am going to the beach with Jane,” she said.
“Jill and Jane at it agane,” said big Barry.
“Don’t tell Dad, okay?”
“I wont lie to him, but I wont bring it up, if he asks, well, I can just be silent, but I cant lie.”
“You a fuckin buddha or something now?”
“I am just not going to lie.”
“He wont ask so don’t say anything.”
There a set of feet walked up the stairs. Barry knew everyone who lived in the house by the sound the stairs made when they walked up them. It was not Jill, because she is in front of him, but also she is always fast, always on the move, these steps were courteous. It was not his Dad because they were too light, too free from the relentless force of gravity. It was not his Grandad, because he cant get up the stairs. It was Jane. He probably didn’t have to listen so much but just put two and two together because she just mentioned her name. Jane stuck her head in the door. Jill told her to stop as if she was acting in a show made for kids.
“Hey Barry,” said Jane.
Jane had a red tone to her hair and blue eyes. She had a round face and a large smile that lit up like the moon. Her teeth were in perfect order and her lips were big enough to look pretty but not big enough to get in the way.
“Hey Jane, what's happenin’ going to the beach?”
“Yeah, wanna come?”
“No Jane,” said Jill.
“Nah, I'm good,” said Barry.
“Hmmmm, shame,” Said Jane.
As soon as they left Big Barry Longhorn jerked off over Jane. Then he didn’t think about her for a few hours. In those hours he decided to kill himself. If it is just a passing over, a return home, then what am I waiting around here for? he wondered to himself. You see, Barry adored life at times, but all of that adoration would get drenched in dread for the next time it came. It. Do you know it? Not that clown. The beast. The one who gets into your heart and turns you inside out. Oh, it does not create stories. It does not create. It inhales. Wherever you go there is a dead end. Every road leads to the same place. The vacuum. The black hole. The whisper. The truth. It lives inside of you this parasite. It overcomes you. It leeches into the vessels of your pink flesh. You become it. Searching for whoever is close. To sink with you so you are not alone. There is only one thing to do, one noble, brave thing, before this beast, this leech, this parasite, the tentacles in your brain turn you into a murderer, a rapist, an animal, you, noble man, take that rope, tie that noose, get on that chair, and let this gravity have you as it has craved since you triumphantly stood.
Big Barry Longhorn carefully watched a video and meticulously tied one of the most splendid nooses ever tied.
“Look like a cartoon,” he said to his noose.
Too lazy to leave a note he hauled his fat ass onto the chair, got the same beam his mother got, kicked out the stool and said adios.
“What are you doing?” asked a voice.
Big Barry Longhorn looked up, before a broken beam a dark figure hovered over him. His blurry vision focused. There he stood, the Grim Reaper.
“I'm done with it mate,” replied Barry.
“Well you broke the beam fat ass.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because, I have come to give you a job. It is about three decades too early but if you are just going to kill yourself you may as well start now. You can work with me for a few years because I haven’t qualified for my pension yet, then you should have the hang of it…  You are going to be one of the youngest reapers still. Gee, have a look at you, how old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen years and you’ve taken up that much space.”
“I don’t want to leave my family,” said big Barry.
“They will be here when we get back,” said Grim Reaper.
Grim Reaper touched Big Barry Longhorns smooth shoulder and took him to a scene outside a beach house.
“I know this,” said Barry. “Dad punched Mum in front of me for the first time. There is me there, inside the car, I can see what he can see.”
“You died this night,” said Grim.
“No I didn’t.”
“Not in the sense that you define death, but who you were before this incident died and was reborn as who you were after it. This death, above you, didn’t effect your body, your memory or your timeline, it birthed it.”
Grim Reaper touched Big Barry Longhorns smooth shoulder and took him to a scene inside a school class room.
“I asked her out and she said no,” said Barry. “Boring, but yeah, I get it.”
Smooth shoulder touch.
“I can’t,” said Big Barry. “Please, I just cant.”
On one side of a closed door stood Barry and Grim, on the other, a swinging mother.
“Do you understand?” asked Grim.
“Yes,” replied big Barry.
They walked to a diner and ordered coffee.
“Why me?” asked Barry.
“What?”
“Out of all the people in the world, why do I have to be the next Grim Reaper?”
“Because you have a soul that can withstand it. It is a strong burden to a closed mind, but in time you see the necessity. To pass over, to lose the thickness of linear, to be cleansed by the cosmic oceans, to fall gracefully as a brown rose petal, to be reborn as purity.”
“Then why cant I be reborn as purity, why do I have to keep being me?”
“Because you have a soul who can endure it and you are a soul that can endure it because souls who could endure it showed you how to endure it, therefore, it is your duty to repay the deed to your depth by being there for those who cannot yet be there for themselves.”
“If I have depth,” said fat heap big Barry Longhorn. “Why is my life so bad?”
“So you would accept the scythe when offered.”
“Everything was taken away from me, by you, so I would have nothing to lose?”
“Yeah, I guess you could put it that way, if you are a narcissistic romantic. This is the cycle of life. It is beyond your grasp of understanding because you had not yet seen it, now you have, now your system will adapt and in moments time this will be as normal as sunshine. Then you will realise that all people are here to play a role, because the role created them in the first place. Sound created the ear, beauty the eye and love the heart. You are a cosmic creation, my apprentice, my little Grim Reaper, my big Barry Longhorn.”
The dialogue needed a break so they paid their bill and left, walking alongside a long country road.
“How can I help people with death if I am afraid of it myself?” asked Barry.
“Why tie a noose to meet death if you are not afraid of me?” asked Grim.
“It was because I could not handle the torment of not knowing who you were. The one who lurked behind me. The one I could see in the eyes of everyone alive. The one I could feel. It was because I had become so obsessed with not being afraid of you I begun to worship you. I pictured death as my home, the last place to look.”
“Whatever man. I am the Grim Reaper, you are the next Grim Reaper, it was fate, you weren’t looking for me, you were becoming you, don’t sweat it man, it isn’t all that serious. Eternity is a pretty long time.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“You have to let go to understand. You have to surrender to accept. You pretty much just have to die to be reborn type of thing.”
Big Barry Longhorn felt kind of nice about it, he always knew he was special, different but not wrong, just meant for something none of us could see.
“I was groomed by fate to become death. So be it.”  
So the grim reaper hauled his scythe and cut the large head of Big Barry Longhorn smooth off.
He opened his eyes and there stood Eve. He looked at his arm and a black serpent had its fangs buried deep into his veins. He slowly and naturally grabbed the head of the serpent and handed it to Eve.
“Are you okay babe?” she asked.
Adam looked around, he sat beneath an apple tree on a comfortable healthy lawn. Eve lay beside him, resting her skin on the tree.
“Okay. Just keep me upright if I get sick… Adam? Adam!”
“Ahh yeah, yeah sorry, I will. ”
Adam rose and watched Eve inject the serpents fangs into her veins. She gasped, her eyes rolled to the back of her skull and her body sunk into the generosity of the garden, looking pale, looking sad.
Adam touched the blood that run down his arm and said, “Thank God that wasn’t real.”

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