Nobody recognized the reaper without his black-hooded cloak. All they saw was a skeleton with what appeared to be a walking stick. And who could blame him? It was the beach in August and deathly hot for a black robe. This was all new to him as he was on PTO and in a jurisdiction he did not patrol. When he saw a portly man in distress just left of the pier, in water about chest high, his jaw dropped as if coming unhinged. He waved at the portly man, who frantically waved in return to unrecognizable death. The reaper intended it to be an encouraging, come-on-back wave, not a so long! gesture. A stray dog running along the beach stole the reaper’s right tibia and fibula, making him collapse like a Jenga tower. An amateur archeologist with a metal detector then gleefully collected the pile of bones in a beach towel, putting the skull to his ear and listening as if it were a shell. He heard mild splashing and a jellyfish performing Last Rites to a man named Tony, the same name a growing crowd kept repeating while pointing toward the water.
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