Eternity's Echo

by H. C. Southwark

  Monday of the third week, her mother fell asleep because Cookie had been up all night crying. And then Cookie had taken forty-three aspirin and slit her wrists in the bathtub.

  I was trying to pay God back, she said, I thought, ‘a life for a life.’ Except I didn’t think I would succeed, not really. I thought if I attempted it, then that would count. I could be forgiven. It was stupid, I knew it was stupid, I knew I was playing with fire.

  But I never thought I would get burnt.

  “Yeah,” Ellie had said, when Cookie told her story, “I didn’t want to know all that.”

  “What’s yours?” Cookie had asked. The only reason Ellie had not cussed her was because she had not figured out the timeline back then. She saw Cookie as a kid because that was when she had died. But Cookie had died five decades ago.

  By the time Ellie learned the truth, Cookie knew enough to not ask again.

  Now, in the driver’s seat of Keith Smithson’s Prius, Cookie Williams straightened, wiped at the sides of her mouth with her thumb. The underside of her gloves glistened ruby. She settled back into the seat and sighed. She said, “Please don’t say that.”

  Ellie said, “Say what?” She thought back to her words. “Not your fault?”

  “Yes,” said Cookie. “I know it’s one of your rare nice moments, so I don’t want to discourage you, but for now I don’t want to be told that. Just for my own sake. So I’m being a little selfish here when I say please don’t say that, understand.”

  Ellie scoffed at her. Nice moments, indeed.

  “Because I’m learning that it is my fault,” Cookie added. “No matter the situation, we all have a choice of some kind. That’s one I’ve been needing to learn for a while and I’m finally coming around to realizing and understanding it. So maybe in a few months or years, then I can start encouraging you to be nice again.” She resumed grinning.

  More of your theories, Ellie thought. We always have choices?—what nonsense.

  Cookie always had weird thoughts and theories. She had once spent a four hour layover describing how she thought that everything on Earth had an attached reaper species. The theory solved one of Ellie’s questions: what about animals?

  Cookie theorized that animals had their own reapers. There were reaper cats for cats. Reaper dogs for dogs. Flies that reaped other flies and elephants that reaped elephants. The reason human reapers could not see their counterparts was because they were invisible to each other, so the parallel reapers could not see them either.

  “Kind of like how we’re here, but still invisible to living people,” she had finished.

  “Or maybe cats and dogs don’t have souls,” Ellie had countered. Cookie disagreed.

  In retrospect, Ellie regretted that conversation a lot. She was pretty sure that was when Cookie had decided they were going to be friends. Three years later, here they were.

  “So,” said Cookie, placing hands on the steering wheel. Ellie saw disappointment flash over her, knew Cookie was regretting never having driven a car. But Ellie also knew she was not missing much. “So...” repeated Cookie, sing-song. “What you wanna do?”

  Ellie turned her head and stared out the window. “Don’t you have a little old lady?”

  “Yeah,” said Cookie. “But she spotted me and called me a ‘colored girl.’ Then she started crying and apologizing. She’s same age as my mum. Bad vibes.”

  “I see,” said Ellie. She watched the wind stir the bushes by the café door. The bruises on her neck smarted, and she realized her hand was tugging on her scarf. “Coffee?”

  “Coffee,” Cookie confirmed, and popped the driver’s door open. Ellie followed.

  Stella’s Café had planets and comets painted over the walls. A placard in the entryway declared that the murals were the work of a local artist. Ellie thought they looked ugly. She and Cookie marched up to the front where the barista was putting several cups on the counter. The living, in line waiting for drinks, parted way for them.

  “Let’s see,” said Cookie, examining the four cups. Only labeled with names, so they were playing coffee roulette. “I’m calling Alice. Do you want Chuck, Leo, or Stan?”

  Ellie eyed the men in line and tried to gage what each would drink. She preferred mochas. But none of them looked like chocolate lovers or had nametags, so all random anyway. The living waited for her choice, as if perfectly willing to give up their coffees.

  “Chuck,” Ellie said. Chuck was probably the fat guy. Sounded like a fat guy name.

  “He got a big one,” said Cookie, and she grabbed both cups and followed Ellie to an empty table. The café was full, but there was a young man in glasses staring at an Apple computer with a table all to himself, so Ellie and Cookie pulled up chairs with him.

  “So,” said Cookie. “What’s the latest?”

  Ellie sipped her cup, shrugged, watched the barista behind the counter start re-making the two stolen coffees and the two customers, the woman and fat man, waiting patiently for their delayed orders. “Nothing much. Just had an environmentalist guy.”

  “Yikes,” Cookie said. “Did he get chopped in half with a chainsaw or something?”

  “No,” said Ellie, and she stared at Cookie. “Why would you think that?”

  “Maybe he was in a protest,” said Cookie. “Like, a treehugger who chained himself to a pine to stop logging or something like that. They still do that, right?”

  “I guess,” said Ellie. “But why a chainsaw?”

  “Well, you are on the accident squad,” said Cookie. “I imagine you see interesting stuff.”

  “Not really,” Ellie said, sipping again. “Mostly car accidents. Kitchen disasters. Construction gone wrong. Really stupid and boring ways to die. Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Yeah,” said Cookie, leaning back. She swirled her coffee cup, sighed. “I’m not gonna complain. I like old people. I like when they see me and talk about their lives. A week ago some old guy told me he saw a UFO during the Cold War. Cool stuff. But... it does get sad sometimes. Like, the old lady today, she didn’t recognize her grandkids.”

  “Yeah,” said Ellie, watching Cookie swiveling her cup, hypnotically.

  “And,” Cookie leaned forward, whispered. “I keep thinking about my mom. It’s about that time, you know? She’d be eighty now. If she’s not gone, then she will be soon. And I just keep thinking—I wasn’t thinking about this before, when she still had time—what if I end up reaping her? Like, I go on assignment and there she is, and she sees me.”

  “Reapers don’t reap relatives,” Ellie said, repeating what her mentor, Niles Hepburn, had told her. The relief hearing that had spread over her body like warm sunlight.

  “I know,” said Cookie. “I know, okay? It’s just a fear I have. It’s stupid.” She leaned back again, sighed, smiled. “At least upstairs doesn’t make mistakes.”

  Does it? The words were almost on Ellie’s tongue. Maybe upstairs just did. I reaped a guy who only died because he saw me across the street. At this very café. Figure that one out, Cookie. Make me a theory. She watched Cookie take a first sip.

  “Oh,” said Cookie. “Some kind of soy milk in mine.” And her grin faltered, just a bit.

  Sighing, Ellie handed over her cup to swap. Cookie had been lactose intolerant and allergic to peanut butter in her lifetime. Now that she was dead, those things were no longer off limits. Turns out she had a taste for milk and Baby Ruths.

  Ellie would never have done something like this when alive. Not even with her parents or brother. She had once watched a man on television use his wife’s toothbrush and felt sick afterwards. But now that she was dead, germs were dead to her, too.

  Cookie took another sip. “Ew, hazelnut!”

  “No take backs,” Ellie said, and took a big gulp. Alice had gone extra on soy.

  Cookie opened her mouth, probably to complain or tease, but then froze. Frowned. This look was unusual on ever-grinning Cookie, so Ellie paused too.

 
; Cookie said, “Asshole. Look at that.”

  Ellie glanced out the window and saw, through the patio folded umbrellas and plastic chairs, a face that she knew. Fellow reaper Shawn Vasquez. Smirking, strolling along in his devil-may-care way, brown hair windswept into his eyes like a member of a boy band. Following a woman, who walked oddly, jerkily, weaving back and forth.

  As Ellie watched, the woman turned around and started yelling at Shawn.

  Some of the people in the café heard the noise, turned to look. They frowned, shrugged, went back to their electronics and companions. But they had seen her.

  Ellie glanced over to Cookie, who was seething. Her hand had squeezed hard enough to crumple the fat man’s cup a little. Her grin was like a grimace, now.

  “Hey,” said Ellie. “Not our business.”

  Outside, the woman screamed. Shrill.

  Cookie exploded—and so did her coffee, as she flung the cup. The lid popped and the hazelnut was a long arc, splashing over their neighbor, his computer, and the coat sleeve of a woman a table over. The remains of the cup clattered on the floor.

  “Damn,” their neighbor said as his screen went blank, then toggled the on switch. After a moment the computer recovered and rebooted. The woman sitting at the other table pulled some napkins from the dispenser and began dabbing at her coat, not once breaking her conversation. A passing customer slipped in the mess but did not fall.

  Ellie had leaned back just in time. Cookie slammed her hands on the tabletop, a sound like a gunshot. Around them not a single eyelid flickered, but Ellie jerked in her chair.

  Then Cookie was up and running to the patio door before Ellie could try to stop her.

  “Cookie, just let it go,” Ellie tried, but it was a lost cause. She abandoned her drink and followed, stepping onto the patio where she had watched Keith Smithson with his coffee earlier. Cookie was finagling with the gate to the metal fence, and then she was running across the street. A passing car slowed for her, unlike for Keith Smithson.

  “Stop it!” the woman by Shawn could be heard screaming. “Leave me alone!”

  “Aw, what’s wrong?” said Shawn, like he was talking to a small animal. “You scared?”

  Ellie saw a burst of speed from Cookie, how her hands went up with nails forward like claws. She’s not stopping, Ellie realized, and I’m a step back. I can’t catch her in time...

  She did the only thing she could, and called: “Look out!”

  Shawn looked away from the woman just in time to spot Cookie coming. A flicker of fear that he quickly masked. He raised his shoulders, shifted his weight. Like a football player before the game begins—except this was ruined by the fact that Shawn was thin like a pine tree, all vertical with no horizontal. No match for Cookie.

  But the woman interfered. She turned to Cookie and pointed at Shawn, eyes wide and begging, “Can you see him? Nobody else can see him—he said I’m going to die—”

  Only the fact that the woman was between Cookie and Shawn saved him. The woman ended her plea in a gesture toward Cookie, which had the effect of a clown distracting a rodeo bull. Just enough hesitation for Ellie to be within reach.

  Ellie grabbed Cookie’s arm, threw her weight back to stop momentum. Overcompensated. They sprawled on the sidewalk.

  Pressed together, Ellie could feel Cookie’s sides heaving, half exercise, half rage.

  Shawn started laughing. “You two look like fish outta water.”

  And, as Ellie and Cookie both froze in disbelief that even Shawn would be foolish enough to poke the attacking bear, he turned and said to the woman, “This is how it’ll be, you know; you can feel your last breath before it happens. Scared yet?”

  The woman clapped her hands on her ears and wailed, “You’re not real, you’re not real, this isn’t happening! Go away, leave me alone! Oh, God—oh, God—”

  Cookie lunged. Ellie could not hold her—could hardly have imagined that Cookie was capable of going from on the ground to upright that fast, but she was. Shawn went down as she plowed into him, a loud crack as his skull impacted concrete.

  “Bastard!” Cookie howled. She grabbed Shawn’s head and used it like a brick, beating it straight down onto the sidewalk. “I’m reporting you! Bastard, bastard, you’ll feel this one for a month, bastard!” She kept yelling as the woman turned and ran.

  You’ll report him? Ellie thought, Just wait until he reports you!

  Reapers were not allowed to fight. They could duel, if necessary, but fighting was off limits. The two of them would probably spend weeks in solitary for this.

  If Cookie did not completely bash out Shawn’s brains first.

  Ellie dug in her coat for her pocket-watch, flickered through dials until the setting was mostly correct, clicked the knob: Emergency. Help please. Someone higher on the reaper totem pole would need to come—and since Ellie made the call, that would likely be Niles. He would probably stop this and let them off easy.

  “Get her off me,” Shawn shrieked, but Ellie was not getting between Cookie and Shawn any more than a hungry wolf and prey. Yet Shawn threw up his hands and grappled with Cookie enough to yell, “Ellie, you bitch, get her off me! You’re a witness!”

  Technically that was true. Witnesses were supposed to stop fights. Ellie considered a week in solitary, again, and decided that getting clawed by Cookie was not a good alternative. But she might be let off the hook by pretending to try to intervene.

  “Hey!” Ellie found it hard to yell loud enough to be heard over Cookie’s raving. “Hey, cut it out! You’re getting me in trouble, too! He’s not worth it, Cookie!”

  Cookie was alternatively battering Shawn’s face and belly, whichever he was shielding least at the moment, and shouting, “This is not how we treat them, asshole!” At the sound of Ellie’s call she turned to clawing and looked up to yell back, “Screw him, Ellie! He deserves it—all the time—he hurts them—you should help me!”

  “I’m not going to solitary,” Ellie told her. “You stop now, maybe Niles’ll let you off.”

  That made Cookie pause. Her fist in midair, Cookie on top of Shawn, both panting like they had run several city blocks. Abruptly, Ellie realized she was standing in the same spot she had scowled at Keith Smithson earlier. She tried to clear her thoughts.

  “You have a little old lady,” she reminded Cookie. If Cookie got into trouble and was dragged upstairs, someone else would have to pick up her assignment. A reaper who was close by. Possibly Ellie, since she had a six hour wait. Or—alternatively—it might be Shawn. Who knew what Shawn could do to an old woman with memory problems.

  She watched Cookie’s face as she ran through these options, but could not decipher the grim look that Cookie ended with. A look that was focused on Ellie, not Shawn.

  “Ain’t nobody reap my little old lady but me,” she said.

  Cookie bashed Shawn one last time—in the nose. Shawn let out a wet cry and flung hands up to his face, but fortunately for his ribs Cookie was already getting off him. She stood and stared down at Shawn writhing on the concrete like he was a bug.

  Ellie could see that Cookie’s gloves were raw with blood, but could not tell whether it was from Shawn, the reopening of Cookie’s wounds, or both.

  Shawn was now whimpering, snorting to breathe, curled into fetal position. Clearly he expected Cookie to resume at any moment. Ellie snorted, “That’s gonna hurt for months, moron. And two weeks in solitary. Feels good being bad?”

  “At least I don’t have to reap old shits,” Shawn said, nasally, through his hands. He was typically assigned to one of the sudden death squads, because he had been reported too many times and upstairs considered it safer if he had less time with each soul.

  Ellie did not know Shawn’s story as well as Cookie’s, but she knew it involved a murder-suicide with his ex-girlfriend. Somehow, Shawn was still qualified to be a reaper. Another reason for Ellie to wonder what the point of the big “Divine Plan” was.

  At Shaw
n’s flippant remark, Cookie kicked him in the side. He yelped, turned over. Ellie withheld a laugh and said, “I won’t tell them about that kick if you won’t.”

  Normally, Cookie would have laughed, shrugged, something. But now she was avoiding looking at Ellie, instead studying Shawn like he was fascinating. Ellie frowned.

  “What?” she said. “I called Niles, you know he’s better. Would you prefer Josephina?” That was Shawn’s mentor, who would have had both of them in solitary for six months.

  Cookie did not reply, but she still did not look at Ellie.

  On the concrete, still rolling, Shawn laughed. “Ellie. You don’t get it, do you, bitch?”

  “Quiet,” said Cookie. But Shawn was focused like a dog on a squirrel.

  “She didn’t stop because she’s afraid of solitary, she stopped for her old lady.”

  Ellie raised an eyebrow and said, “I know.”

  “I said quit it,” said Cookie, but she did not inflict more violence.

  “She’s not worried about me reaping her assignment,” said Shawn. “I’m done for, Niles will hang me out to dry. Naw, she’s worried it would be you.”

  “Quit,” Cookie said, and kicked at him again.

  Ellie stared as Shawn fell into a fit of wet, sucking giggles. In her breast pocket, the pocket-watch thrummed, letting her know that someone was on his way.

  “Is he right?” said Ellie.

  Cookie shrugged. “They’re my assignments, is all.”

  “He is right,” Ellie said. This time not a question.

  Cookie finally looked up from Shawn, but her face when studying Ellie was hardly any better. She opened her mouth, shut, opened again, “Yeah. He’s right.”

  “Because I don’t put up with their crap?” said Ellie.

  “No, cause you take out your personal hangups on them, like psycho-boy here,” said Cookie, nudging Shawn with her heel. “Difference is your hangups aren’t crazy as his.”