"I don't want to die, Jimmy. I just don't." The old woman sat in her creaking rocking chair, her eyes wide with fear and her voice quivering.

"Ma, I…" Jim Barnes sat beside his mother, hunched over with tears trickling down his face. "I don't want you to die either. But sometimes…"

Dolores Barnes said to her son, "Jimmy, don't say that." She lifted her head to look at him, fear in her voice. "I'm afraid. I don't wanna go. Don't let me die alone. I don't want to die alone." Her voice was soft and constricted by tears.

The two embraced together. Jim put a quivering hand through his thick brown hair. "Dr. Janice, she says that your life is… no, I shouldn't.

"I know what Dr. Janice says. But I'll dodge the Reaper. I promise you that!" Dolores said. "I've wasted these seventy-nine years of my life. Please, Jimmy, help me live this last day I have on Earth." And the two locked eyes.

"Jimmy…" she said, "Let's go to the beach." Jim was dumbfounded, opening his mouth to protest, when his mother interrupted. "No, we have to do this. For me, at least. We'll take your car. And the beachside is only a couple of hours away."

Jim shook his head, saying "Ma, I can't do that. We don't have money or time or…" Dolores held a single finger up to stop her son's mouth, shaking her head. After a moment, Jim relented. "Come on, Ma. Let's go to the beach."

The mother and son hopped into the scratched, old truck that made strange sputtering noises now and then. And then, they drove out. Jim took the steering wheel and Dolores rode in the passenger seat. They rode away from Dolores' house, a kind old cottage with faded pink paint. "Goodbye," Dolores said. Dolores would never see that pretty pink cottage ever again. And accepted that

It was raining furiously, thousands of droplets pinging onto the windshield. The clock read 4:54 P.M.. You could just barely see the sun through the thick storm clouds. Still having his doubts, Jim looked at the fuel meter. The twitching arrow was just hovered over the letter 'E'. He groaned and said, "Ma, we need some gas."

They pulled into the Blue Oyster Gas and Grill Shop, driving to the empty stall. Dolores stayed inside while Jim filled the tank with gas. Dolores drummed her fingers on the armrest, nervously glancing towards the clock. She assured herself that she still had enough time.

And then, she gasped. Outside of her window, meters away, a tall, imposing figure cloaked in a dark robe and holding a skeletal scythe stood. The figure stepped forward. It was Death itself. Dolores screamed and knocked on the glass window to alert Jim. Jim, confused and shocked, looked to where Dolores was pointing, and yet saw nothing. "Ma! What's wrong?"

"Jim! Oh God, Jim! It's coming, Death is here for me!" Jim looked over again and saw nothing. But Dolores saw the Reaper slowly marching, every footstep causing a rattling crack in the sidewalk. It stepped closer. And closer. Until it was mere feet away. "Jim! Get in the car!"

Frantically, Jim finished paying for the gas and jumped into the vehicle. And the Reaper stopped, its red eyes pounding and glowing in a face of nothingness.

"Mom, are you okay? What happened?" Jim asked, his eyebrows slanted up together in concern.

Dolores shook her head. "Jimmie, it was there. And it was coming for me. And it had this cloak and the scythe. It's like that Grim Reaper they talk about in stories. You didn't see it? It was right there."

Jim took a deep breath. "The Grim Reaper, Ma? Seriously? That's not… that's not possible." Dolores' mouth was wide open in shock. She knew what she had seen, and it couldn't have been some prank or hallucination. She sniffled, and tears ran down her face. "Jimmie, I knew what I saw. I saw Death."

Jim always knew his mother hadn't been right in the head. But in her dying days, it was even worse. "Ma, nothing was there though. You're… I think you're too ill to go on this trip. Let's go home and fix you up some soup. I'll stay with you until you-" Dolores slapped her son's cheek, as Jim kept driving forward. "Don't use that tone. My eyesight may be really poor. And I may not be as present as I was. But I saw Death as clear as day, and you can't make me say it was all some big hallucination."

They both remained awkwardly silent for twenty minutes, Jim with his eyes on the road and Dolores with her eyes out of the window. All was calm. The roads were clear, and the streets were empty. The rain had stopped

Suddenly, Jim screamed and swerved the car to the side, the wheels screeching and Dolores bolting up in her seat. "What happened?" she shouted, eyes wide open in panic. But before he could answer her, Jim was already outside. Dolores opened her door and exited the car. Jim had steered it to the side of the road, out of harm's way. Behind the car was the body of the deer, accidently run over by Jim. Jim's gaping mouth was covered by his shaking hands.

He had killed the doe.

They both stood in silence for a moment and looked at the deer. "It's… I killed it… I saw the deer in the middle of the road, so I swerved, but it dodged the middle of the road too… Oh God," he cried. He looked at the doe and the doe's lifeless, beady black eyes looked into him.

And suddenly, Dolores had to rub her eyes once more. From the deceased doe's body emerged some ethereal translucent being that looked exactly like the deer itself: a ghost, as some may say. The ghost deer looked solemnly at its dead body, then up at Dolores, who was too shocked to say anything.

The ghost doe gracefully walked away from its corpse with elegance, leaving its former pain behind.

And there he was. The Reaper.

The figure cloaked in black stepped forth to the deer. And the deer saw the figure as well. Dolores' eyes widened, sputtering out panicked sounds. "Ma? What's wrong?"

At first, the doe made some bleating sound of fear and ran off. But soon, the doe became calmer and seemingly recognized the Reaper as a friend, not a foe. So, the ghostly deer walked towards the cloaked figure, and a skeletal hand emerged from the robe sleeve. The Grim Reaper gently pet the deer, who smiled in return. And before looking straight at Dolores, the ghost doe and the Reaper vanished into thin air.

Dolores didn't know what to feel. But she sensed that perhaps the Reaper wasn't much bad. After all, it had helped the doe. And besides, it wasn't the Reaper himself who had killed the doe. "Mom?" Jim asked.

"I'm fine, Jimmie. Come on. Let's get to the beach." she said, with more confidence than before, and what looked like a smile.

Soon, they arrived at the beach. The sun was reduced to a sliver on the horizon, casting gorgeous hues of yellow and red across the water. The waves slowly came in, small, soothing splashing noises ringing out every so often. The beach was deserted, except for the mother and the son. Jim pulled a pair of beach chairs from the back of his car and set them just by the shore, where the sand was soft and cool, and where the tide just barely touched your feet. It was serene perfection.

They sat down and simply stared off into the sky, thinking. Thinking about life, and death, and nature. Finally, they talked.

"Ma, are you… afraid of death?" Jim asked softly. Dolores tilted her head to meet his gaze. She chuckled a bit. And then she replied. "Heh… oh, Jimmie, I'm not afraid of death so much as I am of being alone when I'm dying. Your father died about five years ago," she said, bringing awful memories to both.

"Well, your father died and you just stopped calling me and visiting." Dolores reminisced gravely. "So then, yesterday, when I got the news from Dr. Janice, I cried the entire night. And it took me the entire day to muster the courage and call you. But we're here now. And I'll die a happy woman."

And suddenly, something changed in her. "Ma?" Jim said calmly. Then, Jim's voice raised to a frantic yell. "Ma? Wake up! Oh God!"

Dolores stood up and got in front of Jim. But Dolores felt lighter. She felt more graceful. She looked down at her hand, and saw a faintly blue, translucent hand that was supposed to be hers. She looked at the chair she was just sitting in. There was her dead body. She was dead now.

She was dead now.

She was dead now.

Dolores screamed out in shock, trying to wake herself from some horrid nightmare, shaking Jim, her hands only going through Jim. She was a ghost.

Suddenly, she felt a eerie, cold, hard hand on her shoulder somehow. She turned and saw the figure, draped in his black cloak, and his huge, slender scythe in the other hand. "Please! I don't want to go! Jimmie needs me!" The Reaper didn't respond. But he stuck a hand out for Dolores to take.

Dolores' breath slowed down, as she wiped away her tears. And that was when she realized the Grim Reaper was never the villain. He was a guardian. He was a guide to the afterlife, damned to be seen as the villain in stories and books. The Reaper nodded, as of he realized her sudden change of heart.

"Where will I go?" Dolores asked. "Heaven or…" The Reaper held a single hand up to silence her. Then, he pointed towards the glowing skies. And a staircase, made of glistening gold, descended. Dolores smiled and cried tears of pure joy. The Reaper held her hand gently as he guided her up the staircase.

Dolores looked back to her greiving son. Jim was calling an ambulance to recover her dead body. He checked the pulse, but found none. And Jim broke into a desperate cry. "Goodbye… I love you, Jim, the way all mothers should."

And the Reaper and Dolores ascended the golden staircase, holding hands, Dolores smiling at the chance of a new future.