The Grim Flea Market Vendor

After a thousand years doing the whole scythe thing, Death decided he had grown bored of the whole Grim Reaper image, and so he sought the services of an undisclosed but reputable ad agency/PR firm in New York.

“Yeah, the Reaper thing has to go” said the PR man. “It’s unrelatable. Not many farmers left in the world, and most of ‘em don’t even do their own reaping. They use machines to do it.”

“So I should look more like a Terminator?” Death asked with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

“Nah,” said the man. “First, the terminator loses too often. Bad for your image. Second, people love their technology. That’s all about what’s new. What’s coming in, not what’s on its way out.”

“So your idea is…?”

“The Grim Flea Marketer,” he said. “He sweeps through homes taking objects that were once beloved but have outlived their use. He takes those old and broken things to a place many talk about, some positively, some poorly, a place people talk about going to someday but always put off. He takes them to a place where all your old stuff--that old couch you found in college, your scratched boyband cd, the blender with only one working speed--a place where all the ghosts of your former life go, never to return.”

Death thought the idea silly, but what did he know? He was in the business of taking souls, not image management. And so, the Grim Flea Market Vendor he became.

- Originally sent to K.B. in Kentucky