by Jack Wallen
“You disappear a lot,” X proclaimed.
“What?”
“My point exactly. You’re like JD from Scrubs. Do you have a never-ending monologue running through your mind that whisks you off at crucial moments throughout the day?”
Mmmmm front butt, the holy…
Insert sound of scratching record.
“You don’t know me,” I snapped.
“Anyway,” X started. “If I’m going to be a reaper, I have to learn the reaper ways, right?”
I nodded.
“And as far as I can tell, you’re the only one capable of teaching me how to do this. Either that, or I have to get an audience with Fate and hope she—”
“It,” I corrected.
“Misogynist,” X spat.
Had I a pulse worthy of mortality, my blood pressure would have skyrocketed.
“Are you going to teach me or not?”
“Fine!” Based on X’s duck and cover reaction, I’d raised my voice well beyond the USRDA of scolding. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…I’m not very good at this, am I?”
X shook her head to affirm my personal doubt.
“Let me try this again, okay?”
X nodded as she cautiously drew back to my side. Before I could begin lesson the first, the homeless man exited—or rather was forcibly removed from—a McDonald’s. I noted and savored the irony in the moment. “There he is.” I pointed. “I’ll walk you through the process now.”
I fell into pace behind the man…the stench of cheap booze soiling the air in his wake. Christine was beside me, stride for stride.
“The crux of the issue is to penetrate the target, fully inhabiting their body, while inhaling their aura into your lungs. It requires the exertion of incredible lung control. Not only do you have to be able to draw in the entire aura—you cannot leave a single molecule behind—you have to hold it in until the man or woman expires. That is why timing is so important. Reap a target too soon, and you’ll find yourself in a rather uncomfortable situation.”
“That’s all there’s to it?” X asked with honest intent.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so funny, Grim?”
“You’ll understand the first time you inhale a soul. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…but imagine living an entire existence in about ten seconds. It’s jarring at best, horrific at worst. I remember the first soul I sucked was a raving madman. He was being put to death by the Church for what was, at the time, considered demonic possession. The chosen method of execution was beheading. Seconds before the blade fell, I dove on the man…thinking I was saving his life. My body passed into him and I gasped. That instinctual inhalation drew the man’s soul into my lungs, and every second of his life blinked into my consciousness with lightning speed and clarity. I felt all of his pain and confusion…at once. The act nearly snapped what little sanity I had remaining. I hit the ground, still holding the man’s aura in my lungs, and watched as the blade freed head from body. It took hours before I could even consider moving. Years later, I still felt the profound suffering I’d stolen from that man.”
X stared, wide-eyed and mouth agape. “You’re not doing a very good job of selling this gig to me.”
“That’s the point, X!” I barked. “Reaping isn’t a damn romantic comedy. It sucks and then you don’t die!”
Tears flowed freely down X’s pristine cheeks as she dropped to the curb and sat, pouting like a scolded child. The verdict was in…I sucked at this. Before I realized it, my arm was wrapped around the girl and pulling her in tight. “It gets better. Trust me. At this point, the worst thing about reaping is that the smell and taste often match the target.” I pointed out a young blonde in a perfectly tailored skirt suit and sex-on-a-stick heels. “That woman, for instance. She’d probably taste like passion and yoga.”
X giggled. “What about the guy in the kilt?”
“Haggis and pride.”
“And that busker rockin’ the bari sax?”
“Nice one,” I nodded. “I’m guessing he’d taste of hope and ramen.”
Another laugh from X. She leaned her head on my shoulder and lowered her make-shift parasol. “Thank you, Grim.”
“You’re welcome. I suppose it’s time to take care of this guy before his clock stops ticking.” I inadvertently kissed X on the top of the head and stood. The act brought a slight bit of warmth rushing to my cheeks.
“Can I ask another question?” X’s voice returned to some semblance of normalcy.
“Of course.” I answered simply.
“Do the living see you, or are you invisible? If they can see you, how do you manage to slip inside another person without being spotted? That’s…not normal.”
I could feel the smile creep across my lips at the question. There are so many things I’ve taken for granted over the years. Having someone new at this game helped to remind me how far I’d come in this maddening craft. “It’s reflexive. Under normal circumstances, when you’re going about your normal day, the living can see you. But when a reap is eminent, some instinctual switch is flipped and you fade out of existence, as if you were never there. You don’t even have to think about it. Being reapers, there’s no concern with looking suspicious. Creepy? Maybe. Suspect? No. The living can see us…sort of. We exist, but blend in perfectly with the masses around us; which is why New York is such an ideal location to reap. So long as there are people around us, we’re ghosts.”
X nodded, her eyes caught in a pensive, but knowing stare.
Back to the task at hand.
With the homeless, I always reaped with care. Their lives were already bad enough…the last thing they needed was to go out with me crashing into them without regard. I drew in behind the man and tossed a glance over to X to make sure she was watching. I gestured toward the homeless gent, nodded, and then carefully moved forward to inhabit his body.
The aura was sour. An amalgam of urine, stale booze, and infected teeth. I’d tasted this same flavorful mixture time and again. The vile experience never failed to make me question my sense of taste and smell.
Two steps back and I was free from the man’s body. I quickly made my way back to X and waited for the moment of truth.
The homeless man stumbled, reaching out for purchase on the trashcan in front of him. His grip slipped and he crashed down to the sidewalk below. A single violent shudder later, the man expired. I gladly exhaled and watched the black vapor rise above me, instantly shifting to pale gray and then to purest white.
“Wow,” X whispered as she followed the contrail of soul. “That was poetry.”
Her words struck me at an awkward angle. I’d never even considered the esoterica of the reap—the possibility that there was something beyond the obvious. To me, it had always just been a natural progression, an evolutionary tick of Fate’s pocket-watch. That there was a poetry to the moment was a revelation. I squatted back on the sidewalk next to X and shared a common silence. We watched life go by, knowing not twenty feet away someone who once may have lived a fruitful life lay dead. Pedestrians stepped over the body, assuming he was passed out from drink, drugs, or that the very act of living had knocked him down one last time.
“Does it ever get to you?” X asked softly.
“What? Reaping?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to say yes, that the act of extracting the very thing that makes us human reduces me to a puddle of heart-crushed goo. I’d love to be able to confess that every day I fall into my bed a sobbing wreck. The truth is, I’m mostly numb. In fact, it’s a rare occasion that I feel anything profoundly moving. It takes something—or someone—truly special to get my feels going.”
Once again, X leaned her head on my shoulder. Her body melted into mine like she was about to reap me. “What did you feel?”
Don’t answer that, I thought. My brain was dead on. I didn’t dare share my feelings with this woman. Feelings. The very idea of succumbing to such frivolous nonsense made me want to p
unch myself. Instead of going full-on romcom, I patted X on the hand and said, “No rest for the wicked, my dear. We have souls to reap.”
I stood…saved by my own awkwardness. X finally drew herself up, put her parasol in place, locked her arm in mine, and nodded. “My turn to reap?”
“No way in hell. You’re still just my faithful sidekick—the Robin to my Batman.”
“The Harley to your Joker?”
I gave X the once over. “I’m thinking Death to my Sandman might be a bit more apropos.”
X glared at me, dumbfounded. “I don’t follow.”
“I assumed, due to your Harley Quinn-Joker reference, you were a comic nerd and you’d get the Sandman reference.”
X shook her head in silence.
I rolled my eyes. “Poseur.”
The next thing I knew, X’s parasol came crashing down on my head.
“Never call me a poseur. Among the many things I am, fake is not one.”
I shot my hands up in surrender, making a mental note to never piss the woman off again.
“Lesson learned, dear one.”
X smiled sweetly, her cheeks nearly forcing her eyes closed. “I like it when you call me that.”
I had to be careful…this woman would be the life of me.
Chapter 7
After a long day of reaping, instructing Christine along the way, I was unfathomably exhausted. Somehow X managed to convince me to let her stay in my place. I did my best to warn her she’d regret her choice.
“This place is disgusting.” X gagged. “It smells like the underside of a gas station toilet bowl rim.”
“I take offense to that,” I said as the apartment door creaked shut behind me.
“You live here. How can you take offense to anything surrounded by this all night?” X shouldered her umbrella. “We’re staying at my place.”
Before she reached the door, I dropped onto the floor-bound mattress. “Too late. Once my body hits this glorious bed, I’m done.”
“Glorious? Seriously?” X snapped. “Have you ever seen the second Hellraiser film?”
“Hellbound? Of course, it’s a classic.”
X crossed her arms and huffed. “I’d rather sleep on the bloody mattress Doctor Channard brings home.”
“Now you offend me,” I fell back, my head landing squarely on a stale-smelling pillow.
“Grim, I’m not sleeping where the roaches know one another by name!”
I sat back up. “You’re not budging on this, are you?”
X pursed her lips and stood rigid.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “Fine. Have it your way. But breakfast is on you.”
Christine grinned angelically. “I make a mean omelet.”
“Cliché. I want bagels and a quality schmere. You can’t have a bagel without schmere.”
A quick taxi ride to the East Village, and we stood outside an apartment building so far beyond my means I assumed someone would call the cops, taking me for a derelict, vagrant, rapist, or worse.
“This place must cost you a fortune.” My voice was as awestricken as my sense of thrift.
X gestured for me to follow. “I was orphaned by two very wealthy parents.” She led me to the entryway, one that was guarded by a watchman. The uniformed gent nodded and keyed X into the building without a single exchange of pleasantries. Inside, the pristine hall smelled of citrus and pine, of money and dinner at the Hamptons, of cashmere sweaters and the sweat from a long polo match.
We stopped at an elevator. “You hide your affluence well.”
“Flaunting wealth in a city this size is a dangerous game I’m not willing to play. So I keep the secret buried in the heart of my lair.” The elevator door opened. X stepped in and turned back to me. “And, oh, what a lair it is.”
X inserted a key, gave it a twist, and punched the button for the thirteenth floor…which struck me as odd, or maybe a bit too ironic to even mention. Either way, when the door opened, I was dumbfounded to find out it opened directly into her…
“Holy mother of God.” I stepped out of the elevator car and took it all in. “No seriously, does God live here? And does he have the whole damn floor to himself?”
The decor wasn’t what I’d expected. Instead of Victorian funeral parlor chic, X’s home was appointed with every possible modern convenience available. LED lights had every nook and cranny lit up as if the sun had come to visit. The kitchen was wall-to-wall brushed steel. Every piece of furniture offered a completely unpretentious nod to the color white and modern art. It was elegantly spartan and smacked of better taste than anything I’d seen since…well…ever.
“I want to have sex on every surface.” It took me a complete turn of the second hand to realize I’d actually said that out loud. Luckily, X opted to ignore the faux pas.
“I’m going to draw a bath. If you’re hungry, the kitchen is fully stocked. If you’re bored, the television has every channel known to man.”
Before I could make up my mind which indulgence I’d like to take in first, X approached and turned her back to me. “Would you mind?”
“Mind? What?”
“Unzip my dress. It’s been so long since I’d had a man in my home…there’s no reason not to take advantage of the situation.”
I raised a nervous hand to the lace neckline of the dress. With all of my posturing and bragging, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this near a woman I wasn’t about to reap. My hand shook as I pinched the delicate metal tab between my fingers and slowly lowered it. When the zipper crossed the midpoint of its journey, the strap of X’s bra peeked out at me. As expected…black lace. I’d always had a thing for bras.
“Magical things, they,” I thought aloud.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bras,” I said almost teasingly. “They have such an honorable job.”
“Holding up breasts, you mean?”
“I do…mean that very thing.”
X stepped away. “You sure have a way with creep, Grim. Does that come with the job description?”
“But I…I thought…” my finger drew an invisible line around X. “The whole…”
Christine winked. “I never said it was a bad thing.”
And with that, X turned and padded off toward what I assumed to be the bathroom.
“Wow,” I whispered, “that was unexpected.”
Or was it?
Left to my own devices, I opted for television. What I needed most, at the moment, was something to take my mind of bras. And breasts. An eighty-inch LED flat screen blinked on as I drew near. I hadn’t touched a remote, couldn’t even find one, for that matter.
“X? Did you…” my voice faded when I realized there was no way she could have switched on the television. I waved my hand in front of the screen. “Hello? NSA? You watching me?” As my hand moved side to side, the channel changed. “The hell?”
It finally dawned on me that, by some form of magic or trickery, the television was controlled by motion. I could change the channel by moving my arm left or right and raise or lower the volume by sliding my hand up or down. I was so fascinated by the evolution of technology, I failed to miss X pass by, a towel clinging to her body like long-lost lover.
“Drink?” X broke the tech-induced spell.
With much effort, I averted my gaze from Tea Leoni’s face in ultra high def. “What cha got?”
“I think the more appropriate question would be: What do I not have?”
“Dealer’s choice,” I answered.
X returned to me, beer in hand.
“Beer? I assumed you’d arrive with champagne and caviar.”
“I’m not one-percent rich,” X snarked, and handed over the drink. “IPA good?”
“As long as it has booze in it, I’m fine.”
We clinked bottles and drank deep from God’s mana. The brew was slightly sweet—not my usual choice, but damn good. X led me over to the couch and took a seat. The second I plopped down, she draped her legs over m
y thighs and grinned up at me.
“You mind?” She wiggled her feet.
“What?”
Eyes were rolled.
Hard.
“Are you kidding me? I was on my feet all day…in knee-high platform boots, no less. Dig in, baby!” Another wiggle of the feet. “They’re clean.”
It was either the alcohol or being in the company of an actual woman—one willing to acknowledge my existence without fear of having her life taken.
That came out wrong.
“You really suck at being a guy.” X lifted her legs and dropped them back down on me. “How long has it been since you’ve been with a woman?”
The question locked me up. Judging from the look on X’s face—raised eyebrows and puckered lips—I couldn’t be sure of the implication. Instead of fighting against the stream of possibility, I opened my mouth. “Do you mean been been or just been?”
X unleashed a musical laugh that threatened to melt whatever heart remained within my chest. That was the single most frightening feeling I’d had in such a long time. Beyond reaping babies and facing fate, looking into X’s eyes and seeing her smile promised me a world of confusion and probable expulsion to the land of Suicide.
And yet…
Christine shook her head with a smile. “How long has it been since you’ve enjoyed any extended time with a woman?”
“Oh, that. Yeah. Decades. I believe it was 1984. I was leaving a Quiet Riot concert, and this chick with the most majestically big hair stumbled into me. She was drunk and couldn’t find her car. I took the gentlemanly route and offered her a ride home. We sat on her porch until sunrise. There was no sex, not even a single kiss. What we shared that night…I’ll never forget.”
X covered her heart with both hands. “Aww, that’s so…barf!” She snatched up a pillow and tossed it at my head. “I bet you wore your hair in a ponytail. Oh, please tell me you were a sensitive ponytail guy. I’ll forever be your bestie.”