BETTER NOT FEAR THE REAPER

An old lady starts wandering through the forests around G.H., and people start dying

         Verse 1:
         All our times have come
         Here, but now they're gone
         Seasons don't fear the Reaper
         Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain
         
         Chorus:
         (We can be like they are) Come on, baby
         (Don't fear the Reaper) Baby, take my hand
         (Don't fear the Reaper) We'll be able to fly
         (Don't fear the Reaper) Baby, I'm your man
         La, la, la, la, la
         La, la, la, la, la
         
         Verse 2:
         Valentine is done
         Here, but now they're gone
         Romeo and Juliet
         Are together in eternity (Romeo and Juliet)
         40,000 men and women everyday (Like Romeo and Juliet)
         40,000 men and women everyday (Redefine happiness)
         Another 40,000 coming everyday
                   - (Don’t) Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
         

         Wednesday, 24^th September 2025

         At BeauLarkin High School, in the Victorian countryside, they were planning to go on a camping trip. At the front of the stadium, three teenage girls were looking bored.
         “Why can’t we just go already?” asked Dandelion, Dandy for short, McKenna, a tall, honey blonde, fourteen-year-old.
         “You said it, Dandy,” said Caitlyn, Katy, Lawson, also fourteen, a raven-haired beauty, “the buses are already outside waiting for us.”
         “You know Mr. Williams,” said Morticia, Tisha, Waitlynn a tall leggy redhead, “he loves the sound of his own voice.”
         “I don’t know why, he has such a thin, reedy voice,” teased Dandy and the three girls had to cover their mouths as they giggled.
         “Have you girls got your permission slips?” asked Boris ‘Pizza-Face’ Anderson, a tall geeky boy who fancied all three girls.
         “Yes, Pizza Face,” said Dandy, and the three girls took out their permission slips.
         “Ah, you may tease me,” said Pizza face, “but you are all so hot for me.”
         “Ooh!” said Dandy and Tisha.
         “So, are not,” corrected Katy.
         Turning toward the stage, where Mr Williams, and other teachers were standing, Dandy shouted, “Get on with it.”
         Unfortunately there was a sudden lull in the crowd noise, just as she shouted.
         “Thank you, Dandy,” said Larry Williams, making the girl blush, and everyone else snicker.
         “Sprung badly, hot stuff,” said Pizza Face.
         “Why must you sit near us?” demanded Tisha.
         “Because you’re all hotter than a blast furnace in hell.”
         “Yes, we know,” admitted Katy, “but you are so not.”
         Clapping his hands to get their attention before the two hundred students started nattering again, Larry Williams, a tall, fifty-something man with short black hair and glasses said:
         “All right, we are almost ready to go.”
         “Thank God,” said Dandy, again during a lull in conversation.
         “But before we do, what is the most important thing to know about nature, before going camping?”
         Tisha stood up and put up her hand.
         “With a due sense of trepidation, Tisha?” said Larry.
         “According to my Uncle Bob, Mother Nature is just the Grim Reaper in drag. She’s an evil bitch and she wants to kill us all.”
         “Yes,” agreed Mr. Williams, “very good. So everyone remember that when we’re out in the forest. Trust nothing and assume, as Tisha said, ‘Mother Nature is just the Grim Reaper in drag. She’s an evil bitch and she wants to kill us all’,”
         “On yah, Tisha,” said Katy.
         “I wouldn’t mind being on you, Tisha,” teased Pizza Face.
         “Ooh!” said Dandy, Katy, and Tisha together.
         
         Over in the police station in Morcambe Street in Lenoak, Terri Scott and company were enjoying some raspberry lamingtons and tea or coffee provided by Deidre Morton.
         “These lamingtons are fabuloso, Mrs. M.,” said Sheila Bennett. At thirty-six, Sheila, a Goth chick with black-and-orange striped hair, was the Chief constable of the area from BeauLarkin to Willamby.
         “Mmm, divine,” agreed Terri Scott. The same age as Sheila, Terri was an attractive ash blonde, Senior Sergeant of the area, and was engaged to be married to Colin on December 10^th.
         “Lovely and fluffy,” said Colin Klein. A tall, redheaded Englishman, Colin had worked as a top London crime journalist for thirty years, before retiring to Glen Hartwell, and getting employed by Terri.
         “I’m gonna miss your heavenly treats when I go to Melbourne for my final police exams,” said Suzette Cummings. A seventeen year old, with long raven hair, Suzette was only a police cadet.
         “You’ll only be there a few days, honey, before returning to us,” said Deidre Morton, a short, dumpy sixty-something brunette, who had trained as a cordon bleu, she had never been married, but had adopted the Mrs. After inheriting the boarding house where Sheila, Colin, and Terri all now lived.
         “Assuming I pass my final testing,” said Suzette.
         “Relax, anyone can pass the police exams,” assured Sheila, “even I did.”
         “I thought you cheated off Terri,” reminded Suzette.
         “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”
         “No,” teased Colin, Terri, Deidre, Suzette, and Paul Bell.
         “I may have cheated on my original exam,” admitted the Goth chick, “but I breezed through the make-up exam which Col, Tare, and Mrs. M. nagged me ... I mean encouraged me to take.”
         “Well, you passed it,” teased Terri.
         “You told me I breezed through?”
         “I was being kind,” said Terri before giving it away by laughing, “okay you did breeze through the make-up exam.”
         “I thought so,” said Sheila, glaring at Terri for a moment, before also giving it away by laughing.
         
         “Okay everyone,” said Larry Williams as they piled off the buses an hour’s drive into the countryside, “what’s first now we’re here?”
         “We have an early lunch,” said Dandy McKenna hopefully.
         “Good guess, but no. First we have to set up the tents to sleep in over the next two nights.”
         “Damn,” said Katy Lawson under her breath.
         “Can’t the boys do that, while we eat lunch?” asked Tisha, Waitlynn.
         “As long as we can share tents with you,” offered Boris ‘Pizza-Face’ Anderson, causing the boys to snicker, and the girls to ‘Ooh!’
         “On second thought, we’ll set up our own tents,” said Dandy.
         “Good idea,” seconded Tisha.
         “Now, the question is ... How?” asked Katy.
         
         “Don’t worry,” said Eloise Mawson, the girls English teacher, a tall, busty redhead in her late thirties, “the teachers will help you, if you had any difficulties.”
         “Wouldn’t it be faster, if the teachers just set up the tents for us?” asked Dandy more from hope than expectation.
         “Good try, Dandy,” said Eloise, “but you’re not out here just to skive off from school. You’re also here to learn basic woodsmanship.
         “But we’re girls, not men,” insisted Tisha.
         “All right, basic woodsgirlship,” said Eloise with a laugh.
         “In other words, unless you want to share your tents with us,” said Pizza Face, “you have to set up your own tents.”
         “Ooh!” said Dandy and most of the other girls.
         “You have to learn the facts of life eventually,” said Pizza face with a broad, toothy grin.
         “Ooh, not from you,” said Katy, “I’d rather find out on my wedding night, many years from now, than learn from you.”
         “It doesn’t hurt to get some experience first,” said Pizza face with a broad, shit-eater grin.
         “Ooh,” said every girl, plus the female teachers, in the camping area.
         It was after 1:00 PM when the tents were finally all up, with the teachers having had to do most of the setting up for Dandy, Katy, and Tisha. Finally, Larry Williams announced:
         “Okay, we can stop for lunch now.”
         “About time,” said Dandy, caught out again as everyone else stopped talking just as she said it.
         “Thank you, Dandy,” teased Eloise Mawson.
         “Why does everyone always shut up, just as I’m about to speak?” asked the honey blonde.
         “Because no one else talks as much as you,” said Yasmin Hashmi, a fifteen-year-old Muslim girl.
         “That it so not true,” insisted Dandy as everyone else snickered at her expense. “Shut up!”
         “Now calm down, and eat your sandwiches,” offered Eloise. As they all took out their sandwiches and accepted small plastic bottles of flavoured milk, she added: “Tomorrow you can only eat what you can forage in the jungle.”
         “What?” demanded two hundred shocked teenagers.
         “You heard her,” said Larry Williams with a broad shit-eater grin, before taken a bite of his smoked salmon sandwich.
         “I bet that’s not Vegemite and cheese,” said Dandy, again just as everyone else shut up to eat. “Oh, come on.”
         “Told you she talked more than everyone else,” teased Yasmin.
         “No, it’s smoked salmon,” said Eloise, “when you girls leave school, get a job and start earning money for yourselves you can have smoked salmon sandwiches too.”
         “If I said I’m a vegan, could I have a smoked salmon sandwich?” asked Tisha.
         “No, because I’ve seen you chowing down on steak sandwiches.”
         “She used to be my favourite teacher,” muttered Dandy, careful not to say it too loud this time.
         “Give me the good old days, when women just got married and had babies and their husbands went out to work, earnt money, then spent it on them,” said Katy.
         “Now Caitlyn, did equality of the sexes pass you by somehow?” teased Eloise.
         “I’ve got nothing against equality of the sexes,” insisted Katy, “as long as women don’t have to work for a living after getting married.”
         “If you marry me, you’ll never have to do anything again,” offered Pizza Face, “except at night when we’re in bed together.”
         “Ooh!” said all of the girls and women as one.
         “Maybe working for a living wouldn’t be so bad after all,” said Tisha. “Anything would be preferable to marrying then having sex with Pizza face.”
         “Morticia, don’t be rude!” chided Eloise: “His name is Boris.”
         “Pizza Face,” said all of the kids, except Boris himself.
         “Kids!” corrected Larry.
         “What?” demanded all of the kids, except Boris.
         “Go back to eating your sandwiches,” instructed Eloise, “remember tomorrow you’ll be down to yams, Witchetty grubs, and anything else you can find.”
         “Yuck,” said all of the kids, including Boris.
         After they had finished eating, Larry asked, “Okay, who wants to go and gather some firewood?” When no one answered, he explained, “That was a rhetorical question.” When, still nobody answered, he added, “That means we’re all going to hunt for firewood.”
         “Yippee,” said Eloise, getting glared at by two hundred-odd teenagers.
         “But it’s twenty-five degrees,” insisted Dandy, “why do we need firewood?”
         “Because it’ll get below freezing point in the evening,” said Eloise.
         “Couldn’t we just go home again tonight, then come back again tomorrow?” asked Katy.
         “Or not,” added Tisha, “school work is starting to look good compared to this.”
         “Now, now girls,” said Eloise waving her hands at the three girls, “shoo, shoo, shoo.”
         “What does that even mean?” asked Dandy.
         “It means we’re all going to have fun, hunting for firewood in the forest,” explained Larry.
         “I wouldn’t lay odds on that,” said Katy, whose father was a bookmaker.
         “Okay, chop-chop,” said Eloise clapping her hands hard as the students reluctantly paired off to head off into the forest.
         “Can I walk with you, Yasmin?” asked Lavender Green, a tall strawberry blonde and close friend of the Muslim girl.
         “Sure, Lav,” said Yasmin, taking one of her friend’s hands in hers.
         Yasmin and Lav wandered off into the sweet smelling wattle, pine, and gum forest, occasionally picking up fallen branches, after carefully checking them for spiders or other creep crawlies.
         “Ooh, that’s one’s got a big spider on it,” said Lavender, and the two girls backed away from the blue gum branch.
         “Should we crush it?” asked Yasmin.
         “What if we miss, and it gets onto our shoe?” asked Lav.
         “Ooh,” said the two girls.
         “Anyway, I think we’ve got our fair share of firewood,” said Yasmin.
         “More than our fair share,” insisted Lav.
         The two girls turned back the way which they hoped would lead them back to the base camp, and almost collided with the small, dumpy, grey-haired old lady, wearing curlers and a long, grey dress watching them.
         Going across to her, Yasmin asked, “Can we help you, madam?”
         “Yes, I’m afraid I’m lost,” said the woman in a fragile voice.”
         “Let us help you,” offered Lav, grateful for any opportunity to drop the firewood, which she still feared could have spiders or other creepy crawlies hidden in it.
         “Thank you,” said the old woman. She took the twso girls by the arms, gripping with surprising strength.
         “Hey, lady, you’re stronger than you look,” said Yasmin.
         “So, like where do you come from?” asked Lav.
         “I live in a little cabin about halfway between here and Bromby,” said the little old lady in her frail, cracked voice.
         “Wow, that’s like four or five Kays from here,” said Lav as the old lady started leading them deeper into the forest, until they are lost too.
         “Like, I think we’re lost too,” opined Yasmin.
         “Don’t worry dearies, I think I know the way from here,” said the old lady, careful not to release the two teenagers from her strong grip.
         “So, like do you need our help anymore?” asked Lav, started to feel afraid as the deathly strong old lady dragged them along.
         “Of course, dearies,” insisted the old lady, “you wouldn’t want me to fall over in the forest and die of malnutrition would you?”
         At the moment, I wouldn’t mind, thought Yasmin.
         “That’s no very nice, deary,” said the old lady, making Yasmin wonder if she had spoken aloud.
         Finally stopping, she asks, “Do you girls know what is the most important thing to know about nature, before going camping?”
         Lav puts up her hand and said: “According to Dandy’s Uncle Bob, Mother Nature is just the Grim Reaper in drag. She’s an evil bitch and she wants to kill us all.”
         “Yes,” agrees the old woman now in a strong voice.
         As they watched in mounting horror, the old lady started to transform, into a swirling grey misty. When the mist finally cleared instead of an old lady, before the two girls stood a skeleton in a long black robe and hood, carrying a scythe.
         “Oh, my God, it’s true!” screamed Yasmin, turning to run back the way that she hoped the camp site was.
         “That’s right, dearies,” said the Reaper, in a deep male voice.
         The Reaper swung the scythe, which passed straight through Lav, as though she was a ghost.
         “Aaaaaaaah!” screamed the girl, as her soul rushed out of her body, and vanished up into the sky to float away.
         Already dead, Lavender’s body fell to the thick coating on pine needles and gum leaves which blanket the forest floor, spraying up leaves and needles.
         The Reaper, grinned for a moment, then started through the forest after Yasmin, who is screaming and running.
         “You can’t outrun death!” cried the Reaper as he pounded through the forest after the terrified girl.
         Although still a long way behind the teenage girl, he swung his scythe at her, hoping the swish would terrify the girl into falling.
         The scythe passed through a huge old-growth Blue Gum, which instantly withers, and crashed down into a pile of matchstick sized pieces, as though termite riddled.
         “You can’t outrun death!” repeated the Reaper.
         I can bloody well try! Thought the terrified girl!
         “Try all you like, you are doomed to failure,” insisted the Reaper: “Doomed!” he repeated to terrorise the fleeing teenager further.
         Hearing the crashing of the tree, the girl tried to run faster, but she knew that the Reaper was catching up on her.
         He swung his scythe again and again, and two more great trees were reduced to termite fodder.
         “You can’t outrun death!” repeated the Reaper, as he finally got within range and swung the scythe straight through the girl.
         Yasmin whimpered, and then fell to the forest floor, her soul fleeing her dead body, in a puff of smoke, whooshing up into the sky, before the Reaper could scythe it also.
         For a moment the Reaper stood, staring up at the girl’s departing soul, sad that he had failed to reaper it also. Then he turned and smoke covered his form, revealing the innocent-looking little old lad, when finally it cleared.
         “Oh, dearie, you seem to be dead,” said the old lady with a chuckle, before turning to head back into the forest.
         
         “Now where the Hell are Yasmin and Lavender?” asked Larry Williams, the head teacher as they finally finish setting up tents and collecting firewood.
         “Skiving, knowing them,” said Dandy, and all the students tittered. Having never liked the two girls she was pleased to be able to get them back for all the times that they had accused her of skiving.
         “Possibly,” said Larry sounding doubtful. He resisted the temptation to say that he would find that easier to believe about Dandy and her girlfriends, “Well, I guess we’d better go find them.”
         Three teachers and a dozen students set off into the forest, calling, “Yamin? Lav?” repeatedly as they wander further and further from the camp site.
         “Lavie,” called out Dandy.
         “Don’t call her that,” chided Eloise, “she doesn’t like it.”
         “I know, so I thought if she was hiding out here for some reason, it would bring her running toward us.”
         “Lavie!” shouted Dandy, this time with Katy and Tisha giggling as they joined in the chant.
         Shaking her head, Eloise avoided telling off the girls again.
         “Lavie!” chorused all of the teenagers in the search.
         “It sounds like they’re calling to a toilet,” said Larry Williams, shaking his head ruefully.
         
         It had gone 5:00 PM, and Terri Scott and the others were looking forward to knocking off in half an hour to return to the Yellow House where they lived, to tuck in to Deidre Morton’s wonderful cooking for tea.
         “Just half an hour to go,” said Terrie looking at her wristwatch.
         Seconds later her mobile phone rang.
         “Oh, why do they always ring just as we’re contemplating scoffing down Mrs. M.’s divine tucker?” protested Sheila Bennett.
         “We don’t know that it’s work related,” insisted Colin Klein.
         “It’s always work related,” insisted the Goth chick, “nobody ever rings us, unless it’s work related.”
         “That’s not ....” began Colin, stopping as he failed to recall the last time that they had received a non-work related call on Terrie’s phone.
         Terri talked on the phone for a few minutes then disconnected.
         “Well?” demanded Sheila.
         “It’s work related.”
         “Told you!” said the Goth chick.
         “We’ll have to ring Louie Pascall to pick us up in his Bell Huey, we have to go within a few Kays of BeauLarkin,” said Terri, then to the raven-haired teen, “feel free to sneak off early, Suzette.”
         “Can’t I come too, to get some work experience?”
         “From what Larry Williams said, it’s pretty gruesome.”
         “Oh, then I might sneak of home.”
         “Nothing is too gruesome for this Goth babe,” boasted Sheila.
         “Yes, but Suzette is only seventeen,” reminded Colin, “she hasn’t beaten up as many werebison, weremoose, lamia, or God knows what else that you have.”
         “That’s true, but then not many people have,” agreed Sheila. “Give me a monster, no matter how scary, and I’ll duke it out with the beasty.”
         “Unless it’s a Daddy Longlegs,” teased Colin.
         “Hey, fear of spiders is natural!” insisted Sheila.
         “Natural,” agreed Suzette.
         “They have eight legs ... eight legs!”
         “Eight legs!” agreed the raven-haired teenager.
         
         An hour later Terri, Colin, and Sheila arrive at BeauLarkin, where air ambulance choppers have already landed with Jesus, Elvis, Tilly and various medics.
         “Yeech!” said Sheila, looking at the corpse of Yasmin Hashmi, which looked as though it could dissolved into dust at any second like a vampire in a horror movie. The corpse was a cheese cloth yellow, and looked as though it had somehow had all of the fluid drained out of it.
         “How long was she missing before you found her like this?” asked Terri.
         “Half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes,” said Eloise Mawson, who looked as though she could faint as any second.
         With Terri’s help, they led the English teacher across to one of the air ambulance choppers.
         After taking the crime scene photos with her mobile camera, Sheila asked, “Did you say there were two corpses?”
         “Yes, the other one’s a few hundred metres deeper into the forest,” said Larry Williams.
         He looked reluctant to go back there. But finally he led Sheila into the forest where the remains of Lavender Green was waiting, where Elvis Green and Tilly Lombstrom were waiting.
         “Pelvis, Tils,” said Sheila, before taking the crime scene photos.
         “Sheila,” said Elvis, the local coroner, nicknamed due to his devotion to Elvis Presley.
         As the medics started examining Lavender, as best they could, wary of her dehydrated corpse falling to pieces, Tilly, a tall, shapely, fifty-something brunette said, “According to the Head Master she was only missing for forty-five minutes or so.”
         “Maybe an hour,” amended Larry, ‘but certainly no more.”
         “So what could dehydrate someone so thoroughly in an hour or less?” said Elvis, thinking aloud.
         “Other than the Sun, you mean?” asked the Goth policewoman.
         “Frankly if the sun wasn’t neary a hundred and fifty million kilometres away, and she’d been missing a lot longer, I’d consider it,” admitted Tilly.
         “Then there are those,” said Larry, turning he shone his torch upon one of the trees which had withered and collapsed into termite fodder.
         “Wow,” said Sheila, “I wonder how long it took to get into that condition.”
         “It was perfectly solid a week ago, when some of the teachers came to find a good place to take the kids camping,” said Larry.
         “Jesus what could reduce a tree to that in a week or less?”
         “I’m guessing, whatever could reduce two girls to this state,” said Elvis, pointing at the remains of Lavender Greene, so relative of his. “The poor little bitch. She had so much life ahead of her!”
         “It’s not like you to get maudlin,” said Tilly, looking across at him.
         “Maybe it’s because she has the same surname as me. Or maybe I’m just getting to old for this job?”
         “Nonsense, Pelvis, you’ll outlive us all,” said Sheila, trying to cheer up her close friend.
         “Maybe,” he said, looking at the Goth chick with sad, brown eyes.
         After the medics had finished examining the two corpses as best they could, the paramedics struggled to get the corpses onto stretchers, without them collapsing into mounds of dust.
         “Damn it, our last case ten days ago concerned teenage girls too,” said Elvis, failing to come out of his mélancolie.
         “Yes,” began Sheila, not knowing how to continue.
         The Goth chick was rarely lost for words, but this time she hesitated, not wanting to upset the coroner any further.
         “Don’t worry, Sheils, I’ll get over it once we find out exactly what happened to these two poor girls,” said Elvis, “and punish the bastard or monster that did it.”
         Monster is most likely in the Glen Hartwell area! thought the Goth chick, careful not to say it aloud.
         Back at the site of Yasmin’s death, Terri said, “We’d appreciate it if you could do the autopsies first thing in the morning.”
         “Like Hell,” said Elvis Green, “I’m starting tonight, as soon as we get back to the Glen Hartwell hospital.” He sighed, then added, “Why are the villains all picking on teenagers now?”
         Terri started to say that it was only the last two cases which had involved teenage girls being murdered. Then seeing Sheila shake her head, wisely the ash blonde kept the thought to herself. Instead she said:
         “Thanks, Elvis.”
         They waited until the corpses had been taken away in the air ambulances, then Terri, Colin, and Sheila returned to Louie Pascall’s Bell Huey.
         Seeing their glum faces, Louie asked, “Pretty bad was it.”
         “Two teenage girls had the life sucked right out of them,” said Colin.
         “Although God only knows how?” said Terri as they climbed into the chopper.
         “Poor Elvis is taking it very badly,” explained Sheila, “he was talking about retiring.”
         “Who, Elvis?” asked Louie, shocked: “Never, they’ll find the old bugger dead, collapsed over his autopsy table one of these days.”
         “That’s what I always thought,” admitted Sheila, “but I’m not so certain anymore.”
         
         Back at the campsite, the teachers arranged for the children to be bussed back to their homes, to the delight of Dandy, Katy, and Tish, saying, “Maybe we’ll try again, closer to Christmas.”
         Don’t bother on our account, thought Dandy, careful not to say it aloud.
         
         
         
         
         
         "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die" is a famous couplet from H.P. Lovecraft’s
         The Call of Cthulhu (1928), referring to the non-linear time, mortality, and cosmic existence of the Great Old Ones. It implies death is not absolute for these beings, merely a different form of slumber.
         
         

         THE END

         © Copyright 2026 Philip Roberts

         Melbourne, Victoria, Australia