Delilah - a personification of Death

Name: Delilah

Gender: either/ neither but with a preference for the female

Age: approximately 2237 years old; but might be older



Role in story:

Delilah is one of a multitude of so called ‘agents of Death’, known by a variety of other names such as Reapers, Valkyries or Dullahans to name a few. Their personal or individual titles are a matter of preference. Each agent has their own specialty, but in some cases, a specialty can be shared. Delilah was born, or created, with the outbreak of the first plague, and has since been responsible for reaping during pandemics.



Back story:

Delilah is the protagonist in a short story called ‘The Graveyard Shift’ and a secondary character of a sequel called ‘Funeral Flowers’. In the first story she is presented as returning in full force as a reaper for the European outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 14th century, with little memory of her initial creation which had taken place more than a thousand years before. However, as an agent of death she has access to all human life, both past present and future, even though this is a subconscious form of access.

At this point she has to decide on an image that she would like to project to souls she has to lead into the afterlife and settles on a young, dark haired woman, she ‘remembers’ from a painting that, in fact, has yet to be painted.



Personality and appearance:

Delilah has green eyes that shine like beacons out of sculpted, round sockets, stained by foreboding dark circles. A chiseled nose with defined nostrils and wide mouth with lightly bruised lips in a perpetual down-turned, disgusted expression are carved out of alabaster skin and framed by an elongated, oval face. She prefers the pronoun ‘she’ to ‘it’ as well as dressing in a simple, hooded jet robe as opposed to anything else. During the middle ages she had taken to wearing a doctor’s beaked plague mask and tricking confused souls into thinking she was taking them somewhere where they would be treated.

Delilah is feisty, short tempered and opinionated. Every death agent has a ‘life’ assigned to them, a little ball of sentient light with a code as its name. Delilah makes a deal with her ‘life’, C-1328, that if she manages to gather one hundred consecutive souls, she will get a chance to be human herself. Unfortunately, the overconfident agent makes the deal long after the last plague-related death. In addition, by ‘consecutive souls’ the deal entails that none of those souls will ask to be sent back to their normal lives ‘whatever the cost’.

Due to the lack of pandemics in her present time-line, Delilah finds herself obligated to steal souls from other death agents. But she remains inexperienced on how to deal with souls who have died due to, say, horrific accidents, souls who, as such, are not prepared to die or go into the afterlife, or who are skeptical about the existence of heaven and hell and who ask Delilah questions she cannot answer.
But for every soul that refuses to be convinced, Delilah’s resolve to become human strengthens.