I’ve ridden as Death in this world for so long, I can’t remember anything else. Occasionally I sense an earlier existence: some fleeting image, some voice on the wind calling me home. But there is no home. Not now.

In that hazy past, I’m sure the ghosts were more friendly. Now they just stare resentfully after me, as if I were the cause of their misfortune. I’m just the administrator, that poor call-centre voice at the end of the line who gets all the complaints. Take it up with the management – don’t blame me.

It’s true that I enjoy my work now. I tried to keep detached and dispassionate but when you’re surfing a wave of famine or pestilence, it’s hard not to feel exhilarated. And frankly the world deserves what it gets (all that bickering hypocrisy).

But a strange thing happened yesterday. I was dragging a hurricane in from the south, tearing apart some second-rate fishing town, when this kid comes up and throws a stone at me, raging about how unfair it is. I was about to strike him down but was sure I recognized him from somewhere.

I turned and rode away – he’d be stupid to follow.