The Grim Reaper

I cannot tell you how serious I am in all of this. I cannot reveal my identity for fear of being punished by my superiors. But I feel that I have to get this out, spread the word about him. All I can say is that I am a member of the US Special Forces in JSOC. I can't say which branch. Hell, if I did, it would give it a worse image than it already has.

It all began at night in the last few days of our involvement in a foreign country, you'll already know it by now.

We were sent to get a high valued target that was being protected by a large group of insurgents from many different clans and tribes. We were inserted without a hitch. But once we got on the ground, things were different. At every corner, we were being ambushed. They knew our route, they even were behind us after the Chinook lifted off.

I can remember every little detail: the crisp air in the black night., the desert grassy hills around us mixed with the mountains. Mortars were fired at us as well as machine guns. We were pinned down and fired back as best as we could. Our first casualties were two of our guys, Rico and Dick. They were bunched up when a mortar round hit right between them, blowing them apart. They died without a scream. Rico's heads rolled down to my position. His gray eyes looked up blank and dead, mouth wide open in an eternally unfinished sentence.

"We have to get out of here!" Chief yelled. I nodded, silently. The area was illuminated in emerald green in NVGs. We looked for a way out of the valley. Doc looked up over a dune.

"Hey! The path ahead's clear!" He called out. I went over there after firing a few rounds from my 416 at a few insurgents about fifty meters to my right. I looked and stared. A few minutes ago, there had been three insurgents. Now, they were gone. We didn't know if they were currently flanking us, dead, or gone home.

"Allahu Achbar!" An insurgent yelled. Moments later, there was a scream. More followed. It wasn't from us. We looked at each other. We looked around. The insurgents were gone, just like that.

"What the hell?" Sinbad asked.

"Don't know, don't care. Let's get on with it," I said, deciding not to be concerned, though I felt that something wasn't right. However, I didn't hear them in the slightest. I did however smell blood, charred meat, and smoke. The screams stopped. Perhaps, a mountain lion or several got them. Thank you, Jesus. And I do mean that.

We made our way through the valley and over a hill. In the distance, we could see dozens of figures running towards us on the infrared.

"Shit, we woke up the whole damn neighborhood!" Sinbad said.

"Let's keep moving. We have to finish this," I said, dismissively. We would face them later, I decided. We had to do what we were supposed to do. We moved as quick as we could towards the compound. Once we went over the hill, we could see the compound at the bottom of the hill. Then, Sinbad was hit in the leg.

"SNIPER!" I yelled. We all went prone. There was no other sound. I looked up, waiting for the sniper to fire again. There was nothing. I don't know where the sniper was, but I knew that Sinbad was hurt. Doc tended to him.

"Go, we'll keep a rearguard." I told Chief. Sinbad, our SAW Gunner, set up on a rock. Doc was nearby to us, Meds was with the rest of the team. They went down to the compound. Strangely, it was silent.

The compound was walled, about fifteen feet high with a gate. There were three buildings, one was the tallest, the rest had a story's difference. There was only darkness. I was sure that we had woken up the whole area with all the shooting and explosions. I heard the team enter.

"Wolf-Six, this is Wolf Five." He paused.

"We have a bunch of bodies in the courtyard. A lot of them.." He whispered on the COM.

"Talk to me, 5. Over." I encouraged as a whole lot of insurgents came running, yelling their primal and religious war cries. Sinbad opened fire to suppress them, as did I and Doc.

"There are bodies of them… all around. Got to be at least fifty here!" Chief said. Fifty?

"Five, Six, Confirm elimination of Tangoes and location of Hotel-Victor-Tango? Over."

"Six, Five… No need sir. He's right up there… top of the pile. Over."

Top of the pile?

"Six, Five: What pile? Over."

"Five, Six: There's a pile of bodies. They look like almost all of them got skinned. HVT is confirmed eliminated, taking a pic now. His face is the only one that isn't gone. Over." He said. I shivered. Someone did a number on them.

"Copy that, Five. You search the area for intel, Over." I told them.

"Hey... these guys are dropping like flies!" Sinbad said. I looked at him and then looked outwards. He was right. I saw insurgents hiding behind the rocks after running... but then never reappear. Then, you'd see a running insurgent coming at us, only to fall and never rise again. One by one, the insurgents began to disappear or fall. The firing stopped, slowly. Noone ran, at least none that we saw. We looked at eachother.

"What the hell? Are they playing around?" I asked. I heard someone yell.

"ALLAHU A-" And then a slashing sound. We all spun around with our guns as something fell on me. It fell off of me and rolled down the hill. I looked at it and saw that it was a head. I looked at what was before me. There was a headless body with a hand around a detonator. He was going to kill us in a suicide bomb.

"Holy shit... what the hell is that?" Sinbad whispered. I looked at him, curiously. Then, I looked around for what he was looking at. I saw a very dark figure in my night vision goggles. It was hard to see in the NVGs, which was impossible as everything is supposed to be illuminated it. I threw up my goggles and looked hard. There was someone standing there behind the body. I looked up as I traced the outline. I finally rested on the head. It looked like a skull with silver paint. I could see it in this black night. It stared right at us. Its eyesockets were as black as night. I couldn't see the eyes. It stood there for a minute or two. I noticed that there were two curved hand scythes, like the ones used by Japanese farmers back in Feudal Japan, but different. The scythes looked like they melted into his hands and he reached up to his face. He didn't go to the chin or the top of the head. He went right to the middle of the mask and pulled it apart, as though it were cloth. I put my goggles on to see. I saw a face peering out. It was a face that had no skin at all. I shit you not: The meat was glistening and the eyes looked right at me. He then screamed an ear-piercing scream and then closed the mask. He disappeared into the night. We never chased after him. We looked at eachother as Chief came up with the rest of the team, pale-faced.

As we walked, we saw bodies without heads or limbs, throats slit, or just blood. We radioed for exfil and got the remains of Rico and Dick. After we went back to base, I told the intelligence officer that conducted the debriefing. All of the team could corroborate and even had photographic evidence. I found out that the computers were bundled up like a gift with a note written in English

Take what you want. They didn't delete anything.

There was an inquiry, but no court-martial. Some people thought we were insane, until four months later, that same intel officer came to me with a team leader from a different branch. He was a short and stocky guy. He told me how about five years ago, the team had a rookie from Indiana by the name of Josh. On their first deployment, Josh disappeared as he volunteered to be the rearguard. They never found him during exfil and thought that he was dead or gone AWOL. In the following weeks, pictures and videos were posted on the internet of Josh being tortured. I saw several of them myself, they were... gruesome. I saw how parts of his body were burned until the skin was black. Then, how they would beat him while he was tied up and hanging upside down. They would cut his muscles, hit his weak spot, but nothing fatal.

After about three months of searching, the team went in to find him. They did, but not in one piece. When they found him, he was strapped to an examination table screaming. He was found without his skin. In fact, his skin was found five days later, decorating a known cleric's wall. That cleric would later be found dead two weeks later with his own skin off and hung from a street lamp.

He was brought back home to be grafted. It was a miracle he was alive. They wanted him medically discharged, but he refused, telling the doctors and appealing to even JSOC's Commanding Officer, General McNeil. On the ninth week that he was in the hospital ward, recovering, there was a blackout. When it was over, he was gone. Nobody found him. Later on, and since then, there were stories of known terrorists, war lords, rapists, and others being found dead. They would be found nailed to a wall of a courthouse or in some cases, a building overlooking a mosque, or a church. They were found in various and combined ways: decapitated, without limbs, private parts, skin, and/or throats slit. There would be bible verses written in their blood next to the wall. Witnesses who told the story would report seeing a man in black with a skull mask, armed with two hand scythes. They nicknamed him 'the Grim Reaper' after the team. But that's not the end of this story.

A few weeks later, back home at our base, my men were out at the club. I was alone that night with Chief. All of a sudden, there were knocks on the wall.
I swore as I rubbed my temples. Who was doing renovations or fighting at this time of the night?! I sighed and went outside to tell the engineers or fighters, whoever, to get off. I looked outside. The area was lit by a streetlamp. I looked at the wall. I froze as I saw several skinned bodies that were nailed to the wall of the barracks. Blood flowed down from the wounds. The faces were in horror and paused in a depiction of their agony. There was a quote from the Bible around them. This exactly fit the profile of the Grim Reaper, Josh. What had he been doing here, nailing these guys to the wall of our barracks? Hell, how did he get back into the US without being caught? The last I ever heard of him was that he was still abroad and had eluded all attempts by anyone, and I mean anyone for him to come back home. The next morning, I found out that the victim had been the intelligence officer that had debriefed me... and several colleagues of his from other branches, as well as two DHS and DOD officials. They had been working for organizations supporting the insurgents. The FBI and NSA had long suspected them and kept watch until they disappeared in their homes while they had been watched by surveillance teams. What they found inside their homes were their skins, files that had been grouped together, along with computers. A note on each group of intel on them was written in the victims' blood: Take whatever you want. I'm not through yet - Josh the Grim Reaper

To this day, the whole intelligence community and SpecOps forces report sightings of the Reaper... watching them and I quote 'stealing their kills'. I know, because I've seen him after the incident and so have others. He's always watching us on-site with his bloody scythes and blank look. And then he disappears for his 'next op'.