A Tale Of Two Reapers

by Jack Wallen

  From behind, Amnesia wailed her displeasure at witnessing a suicide. I wanted to comfort the girl, but telling her the man would soon arrive at a way-station for those who flip their own switch, sans soul, would be no certain assuagement to an unnerved twenty-something. I’d have to rely on X to handle that task. There was, of course, something else. As she cried out against the act, she hinted at something ghostly, something otherworldly. It was all too easy to riddle out that enigma. Somehow Amnesia got a peek behind the veil. I’d hoped Amnesia wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary—a.k.a. the reaping. Ammy was now more than a couple of therapy sessions away from fine.

  X pulled out a cell phone and began tapping a number I was fairly certain I knew.

  “What are you doing, X?”

  She stopped, mid-dial, and glanced my way. “Calling the police. We can’t simply ignore this. If someone happened to have spotted us here, we’d be called in for questioning. I don’t know about you, but I’m not really into jail cells and no, orange is not the new black.”

  X finished dialing the last digit of 911 and put the cell to her ear. Amnesia looked to me with her weeping anime eyes and begged for a hug. Much to my surprise, I capitulated and brought her in for a prolonged moment of temporary peace.

  We waited, agreeing when the authorities arrived X would do all the talking. I still wasn’t terribly keen on seeing uniforms after I’d only just reaped a man. The only consolation was that I hadn’t taken the man’s wallet. There were lines drawn, lines I never dared cross. When a reap involved suicide, I did my best to refrain from petty theft to help them retain as much dignity in death as possible.

  A man in blue arrived on a horse. There was something romantic about seeing a mounted officer again. The image brought back memories from a time long since past, when the skies weren’t thick with the pollution from autos, but the streets were with a steady supply of horse dung. The officer immediately approached and hit us with the requisite twenty questions. We answered. Our story checked out. After a very prolonged period, we were released back into the wild. I did my best to hide my relief—a feeling I knew wasn’t necessary, but when you deal in death as I do…paranoia is a default state.

  X led us back to her place with expediency. None of us had any desire to be out in the open at this point. You hear gunfire in New York, and it momentarily changes your perspective. Even though both X and I are, for the most part, immune to death’s cold grip, Ammy wasn’t so lucky. With her in tow, caution had to be exercised at every corner…without her knowing. The last thing we needed was a frightened young woman, asking all the wrong questions, along for the ride.

  “Have I died and gone to some heaven I’ve never even believed in?” Amnesia whirled in place, taking in every possible angle of X’s abode. “This is beyond glorious. I bet my entire apartment would fit inside your bedroom. What happened to the old studio we used to party in?”

  X shrugged. “You mean my little girl cave Mommy and Daddy didn’t know about? I got rid of that after they died.”

  Ammy raced off, in search of said bedroom, leaving X and I alone. X looked to me and mouthed sorry.

  I whispered in reply, “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s your home, she’s your friend…I’m just a guest.”

  X shook her head. “You’re much more than just a guest. Remember…we’re partners in crime now.” She drew in close. “By the way…you were saying?”

  “About what?” I dared ask.

  “That you’d made a deal with Fate. You said you’d tell me all about it.”

  My mouth ran dry and my palms grew moist. I started to make the grand confession when Amnesia returned and clouded my mind. She flopped onto the couch.

  “Oh, my goth, X. Your house is a freakin’ palace. Can I please stay the night with you? Please, please, please? I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

  X nodded. “Of course. There’s plenty of room.”

  Amnesia bicycled her feet in the air with a squeal of delight. X escorted her into a bedroom, and a beautiful hush fell over the room. With Ammy safely tucked away, X padded back over to me, grabbed my hand, and led me into her bedroom. Once inside the sanctity of her boudoir, X began to slowly undress.

  I desperately wanted to enjoy the show. There was only one problem.

  The lightning crashed down from above and wrapped itself around my wrist.

  “Goddamn it!” I shouted. My voice bounced about in the NetherRealm. “You sure as hell have the worst timing.”

  “Time is a man-made construct,” Fate rumbled.

  “I don’t give a shit who invented the tick and tock of daily measure. What I do care about is me being minutes away from getting my seven minutes in heaven and your interruption…”

  “Silence!” Fate roared.

  I shot my hands into the air as a sign of surrender. “Before you say anything, let me explain.”

  “Yes. I was hoping you would, so I’d know the precise reason for Nulling you.”

  “What I did was only temporary…and deserved. You know that,” I argued.

  Fate released a heavy sigh. “It is not your place to cast judgment, Grim. You have but one task and one task alone. When you venture beyond that task—which you have done repeatedly of late—you run the risk of being discovered or stopped…either way would render the universe tragically unbalanced. If you cannot abide by the rules, I’m certain your little intern would.”

  Fate fell silent…which was never a good sign. When it finally did speak, its words chilled me to the bone. “Because of your little stunt in the bar, it has been decided that X must know everything.”

  Fate stole my breath and my heartbeat.

  “You can’t do that. You wouldn’t do that,” I snapped.

  “I can. And I will,” X retorted.

  An echoey boom of thunder rolled across the NetherRealm and brought with it a brilliant flash of white light. When the flash subsided, X stood next to me, clad in a black silk nightie and nothing more. She immediately wrapped her arms around as much of her front as possible. This was the first time I’d spied her wearing so little. I had to confess, the sight was most pleasant. I stared. I couldn’t help myself.

  We stood, metaphorically—and almost literally—naked before judge and jury to reaper-kind, ready to be punished for our sins.

  My sins.

  X was innocent.

  “Fate,” I shouted. “Stop.”

  Before I could say another word, the NetherRealm vanished. In its place was X’s home…with no X in sight.

  “Oh, no,” I mumbled to myself. “She’s still there.”

  Fate was telling X everything. Hell would be too little a price for me to pay when she returned from this little excursion. I briefly debated bolting from the scene. I’d not had anything to fear in a very long time. That had changed the moment I reaped the wrong woman and wound up with a sidekick.

  “Hell hath no fury like a reaper scorned,” I whispered.

  I decided not to take the coward’s way out and to wait for X; be ready for any and all possible outcomes. The bedroom was cold, empty. It was my turn to feel naked, stripped of all security and privacy. I shivered, yet remained locked in place. I stood in the center of the room, staring down at the bed that should have been my own personal pleasuredome.

  The distant rolling thunder warned me X was about to arrive. My body stiffened, anticipating the onslaught of blows the second she appeared.

  Lightning crashed. The woman flashed into being before me…in complete silence, her arms crossed and tears streaking the porcelain skin of her cheeks. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t form the necessary words to shatter the ice dome that had formed around X.

  “This didn’t have to happen.” X finally broke the frigid spell; her words were choked behind a wall of anger and confusion. “You had time to reverse the effects so I wouldn’t have to spend fucking eternity sucking souls.” X’s hands clenched tight. “Why did you do this to me?!” she shouted.

  Fate knew.
Fate had to know. I’d been doing its bidding long enough, there couldn’t have been any denying why I did what I did. Was it selfish? Of course. Could it have been avoided? Clearly.

  I had to speak…confess to X the pathetic justification I used to force her into my world. My heart clenched up as the all-too-familiar dark cloud of angst returned over me—that despicable thing that had temporarily vanished as a side effect of having Christine in my orbit. Everything was about to instantly crash down.

  She was ready to unleash another round of vitriol when I stopped her short.

  “I wanted to be with you,” I confessed. “It’s crazy, I know; but subconsciously I’d been searching for someone who understood there was some semblance of beauty to be found in the end of life. I wanted—needed—to put an end to the profound and numbing loneliness that came along with being a reaper. I cannot even begin to describe to you the depth of my longing for a connection deeper than inhaling the last vestiges of humanity. I’m death, X. I’ve wandered the firmament for centuries, ending the stories of countless people, and I’d had enough.”

  X sobbed. “But it wasn’t your choice to make in my case. It wasn’t—”

  “Your time. I know. And you’re right, I knew I could reverse the reap…I knew I should. But after our brief conversation in that bar—a time in which I still could have given you back your soul—I couldn’t do it. Or, rather, I decided I wouldn’t do it. I realized you were the one I’d been looking for. I hadn’t even known I needed someone. I’d been going about my business assuming I was content existing in complete and utter isolation from anything truly meaningful. Until you came along.” I took in a deep breath, held it for too long, and finally sighed. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

  To my shock and dismay, X started laughing; the snot of sorrow bubbled from her nostrils and a string of saliva jettisoned from her lips.

  Confusion kicked in me square in the ass. “Care to tell me what’s going on?” I asked timidly, afraid the next metaphorical kick would aim for my softer bits.

  “You’re a fucking romantic,” X covered her mouth to prevent the spittle from launching across the room. “Grim the goddamn reaper is a walking incarnation of a romcom. I think I’m going to hurl.”

  “Piss off,” I said, half-teasing. “I’m as far from a romantic as they come. I’m pure pragmatist.” Confusion rekindled in my gut. “Wait, why aren’t you still wailing on me?”

  “Honestly?”

  I hesitated with my nod.

  “When Fate ratted you out, I was fucking pissed. I had every intention of coming back here and kicking your ass to the curb.”

  X fell silent.

  “But…” I gently prodded.

  “I believe you.” X tossed her hands in the air. “Color me crazy, but I’ve spent most of my life alone as well…so I get it. Girls were always afraid of me and boys never had any interest in me, outside of a good danger fuck.” X sat on the bed, her legs dangling off the edge. “Before you came into my life, the last time I had any meaningful interaction with another human being was…” A fresh round of tears sprang from X’s dark eyes. “Jesus, this is pathetic,” she said, wiping away the after-effects of weeping. “I can’t remember. I was going to say it’d been a year, but that was—” she stopped herself short.

  “Dark?”

  X nodded.

  I sat on the bed, unsure of how close was safe at the moment. The curiosity was quelled when X fell into my embrace and melted. When next she spoke, her voice carried with it an innocence I’d assumed she’d lost. “What now?”

  The question t-boned me square in the face. Before I could answer, I had to gain a bit of clarity. “Is that a trick—”

  X slapped my chest. “No, dickweed. I wasn’t asking what we do right now—like bumping uglies. Way to ruin a moment.”

  “But I—”

  Before I could cram the second foot into my mouth, X shook her head and continued. “What I mean is Fate probably assumed it was sending me back to place a permanent wedge between us. It has to know the plan failed. Won’t that piss Fate off? And, if so, how do we avoid the accompanying wrath?”

  I rolled onto my back and stretched out across the bed. “We don’t. Fate has this way of getting what it wants.”

  “Son of a bitch,” X sighed as she dropped her head into a memory foam pillow.

  “However…”

  The single word brought X rolling to her side facing me. “I’m listening.”

  “The one thing you must remember is that Fate needs us. We serve a very specific purpose in the grand scheme of things. So long as we’re focused on Fate’s master plan, it won’t bother us.”

  “So you’re saying we play nice, do our jobs, and Fate will—”

  “Leave us the fuck alone,” I finished the thought.

  X laughed. “You’ve been gaming Fate for a very long time, Grim.”

  A smile crept across my lips. I raised an eyebrow and winked. “It’s reap or be reaped out there.”

  The joy melted from X’s face. “What are we going to do about Amnesia?”

  If there ever was a moment for a name to be fitting, it would be now. Ammy had watched me reap, something unseeable by the average eye and psyche. Our only saving grace was the suicide. “Please don’t hate me for thinking or saying this…but…hopefully the trauma of that man offing himself will have prevented her from comprehending what she saw. Usually, the living don’t have the mental and emotional acumen for taking in a reap.”

  X shook her head. “I don’t follow.”

  I reached across and tucked a strand of ebony hair over X’s ear. “Were you ever absolutely certain you saw a cat walk by? Yet when you sought out the cat, there was none to be found? Or have you ever experienced something you couldn’t even remotely explain?”

  “All the time,” X confessed.

  “Same thing. Most often, when one of the living spies me reaping, their brains shuffle reality around and interpret the images in the wrong way. Their eyes see a man vanish inside someone and their brain says There must be another explanation for that! Maybe cloud coverage, or a stye. When that happens, it gets shrugged off. My guess is we’ll wake up in the morning to find Amnesia in serious denial of what she saw.”

  “We can only hope,” X said as she rolled onto her back. “If not, I’ll let you deal with it.”

  “But she’s your—”

  “Don’t push your luck, Grim. I can recall that anger in seconds.”

  And, like that, I fell into a fear-induced torpor.

  “Goodnight, Grim.”

  To my surprise, X pressed her lips against mine. Before I could reply to the gesture, she’d pulled away and switched off the light. Darkness enveloped the room.

  “Goodnight, X.”

  A comforting peace drifted down over me, accompanied by X’s soft breathing. For whatever reason, I counted each inhalation and exhalation. Music to my heart. I could get used to this, I thought as the sweet weight of sleep pressed warmly against my chest.

  Chapter 11

  X lay prone and motionless on an altar made of human remains. Limbs and viscera jutted out from every side as if the structure had been hastily slapped together. We were in the NetherRealm, surrounded by an all-encompassing blackness. Alone…until Fate appeared, awash in a halo of angelic light, its form coalescing as it approached the altar from behind.

  A vocal rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony rang out, sung by the disembodied mouths trapped within the altar. Fate conducted the bastard choir, tempo perfect and tonally sound. At each change in movement, Fate reached down to X, grabbed a handful of her flesh, tore it from her body, and tossed it into the air on a Grand Guignol down-beat. By the time the piece came to its glorious close, the floor of the NetherRealm was coated with the raw meat of what had been my greatest mistake.

  A life, a soul…lost to Fate’s discretion, to my transgression.

  Out of sheer desperation, I scrambled to retrieve every wet piece of X, hoping I could play the
role of Victor Frankenstein and reassemble her, give life back to her formless and soulless body.

  Fate raised its arms once again to conduct another masterpiece. This time, however, the altar of flesh sang out, in a painfully dissonant chord, my name.

  “Grim!” The chorus belted.

  I pressed my hands against my ears to block the hateful sound.

  “Grim!” The non-harmonic tones rose in pitch and volume.

  I shook my head and backed away.

  “Grim!” The chorus shouted.

  My eyes snapped open to see X above me, a soft smile decorating her lips.

  “You okay, Grim? You were writhing on the bed like a coven of gorgeous vampires were lapping at your body.”

  I felt the remnants of tears streaking down both sides of my head to fall to the sheets. I wiped at the salty liquid and nodded. “I’m good.”

  X sat up. “I’m feeling today might be the day, Grim.”

  “For what?”

  “My first successful reap. What do you think?”

  I slipped out of the bed and into my pants. With a nod I replied, “I think you’re ready. A quick breakfast, and we’ll be out the door.” My racing pulse slowed to a workable tempo.

  “What about Ammy?” X added.

  “What about her?”

  X wrapped a plush robe around her nearly-naked body. “Her sleep schedule is permanently adjusted to nightlife. She’ll disco nap most of the day, but at some point she will wake.”

  I wasn’t sure where X was going with the narrative.

  “If we’re not here, she’ll wonder. Or worse…she’ll wander.”

  “I’m still not following, X. Amnesia is an adult, right? She can legally enter bars and clubs. That, at least, tells me she has some grasp on how life works.”

  X’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know how to say this without—”

  “Then just say it,” I interrupted.

  “Amnesia isn’t her real name.”