Ch. 5


Keve stared at the motionless, unconscious body of the girl for a moment and an awful feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. Seventeen? Usually the people he killed had actually had a chance to live their lives. He had never heard of the death of someone under thirty-five being dictated by fate. He was sure it had happened before, but it was rare enough that it had never happened to him in all his centuries of...well...existence.

The poor girl was still lying on the wooden floor, face-down, with no evidence of being about to wake any time soon. This was really awkward. If Keve was to kill her, then he didn't think he'd be capable of functioning for weeks at least, but if he were to spare her...

No, he couldn't spare her. He'd never spared anyone before, because of the complications that came with it. If a person was spared, then they were allowed to survive after finding out about a whole part of their world that they didn't – and maybe weren't supposed to – understand. No. He couldn't complicate her life and his by keeping her alive when he was already trying to keep most other humans alive. The old man, Jim, he would have been able to do because that man had obviously had enough life experience to understand that what was not understood should stay not understood, but this girl...

She did not have a chance.

He would hate himself for it, but he had to do what he had to do.

He raised the Skull, about to burst into tears where he stood at this point, and readied himself to take her life, when she spoke.

“What exactly is it you think you are doing, Keve?”

Keve froze. She knew his name? On top of that, her voice suddenly sounded very familiar.

“You not going to help me up? And here I've been thinking so highly of you. That promotion I would have given you if I was alive has gone down the drain, I see,” the girl stood. But she wasn't the same girl. She held herself with more confidence, her back was slightly arched, and as she turned to face him, he realized that her face was contorted into a humorless grin, and her eyes had a spark of...of...

Keve dropped the Skull completely and it clattered behind him. “Graye?”

The grin widened to the point of being almost creepy. “Hello, Keve. You're doing well, I presume?”

“But...but you're...you...” he trailed off while his mouth kept opening and closing like a fish.

“Dead? A girl of High School age?” the grin faltered for a second, then returned with a vengeance. “Yes, well, this is the first person in your vicinity who I have been capable of channeling myself through. I've tried to reach you before now but apparently it takes a specific type of mind to channel a spirit.”

Keve fell to his knees and tears began to leak from his eyes. “I-I've been trying to do what you have told us to do, even though Grene-”

The grin slid off and was replaced by a look of disgust. “Yes. Grene. I was quite surprised by that betrayal, and I was also quite surprised that you were the only Reaper who found a problem with his actions. I thought I'd raised you all better than that. Thanks for that impassioned speech to that old man earlier, by the way. Stroked my ego quite nicely.”

“W-well it was true. You always did what was best for us and for the people out here, and I respect that about you.”

“Stop it; you're making this girl blush,” she said emotionlessly. “Now to cut to the chase. I'm here to make your life easier for you. I don't know how well that will work, but by god I can try.”

“Um...okay?”

“This girl will be my means of communicating with you. Keep her with you and keep her safe, okay?”

“What?”

“You heard me; don't pretend you didn't. I want you to keep this girl with you and to keep her safe,” her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Got it?”

Keve retrieved the Skull and used it to stand back up, to give himself time to think. “What am I supposed to tell her? I was trying to kill her and she ran away, but then I was told to turn around and say that that was all a joke and I'd love for her to tag along because she has my dead boss stuck in her head?”

“Sounds like as good an explanation as any, since it's the truth,” she grinned again. “Who knows, maybe a friendship will arise from this? Though know that she is much too young for you to fall in love with her. Got it?”

Before Keve had a chance for an angry retort, the traces of Graye disappeared from the girl's body and the girl once again fell to the floor.

“Well,” he said. “This will be interesting.”

He retracted the Skull and moved the girl to her living room couch. He had a lot to wrap his mind around before she woke up.



Ch. 6


When Cinch came to, she was lying on her long green couch.

“Water?” a voice asked, and a glass appeared before her nose. She realized about then that she was extremely thirsty.

Without stopping to think, she grabbed the glass and drank the whole thing. The water was ice cold and refreshing going down her throat.

She sluggishly stood up and rubbed her aching head. “What happened?” she asked the person kneeling beside her. Then she faced him and remembered who he was.

The man from before smiled and said, “you panicked when I said I was going to kill you and blacked out.”

All the memories of what had just happened flooded back. At about the same time, a feeling of exhaustion hit her like a brick and she fell right back down onto the couch again. Cinch tried to work up the energy to be scared of the man, but felt too tired. She told him this.

He nodded. “Yeah...that'd be the sleeping pills I put in the water so you wouldn't freak out before I could properly explain things to you,” he looked genuinely proud of himself. “Looks like it was a smart way to do this.”

She jerked at the mention of sleeping pills, but it took too much energy to do more than that. “You drugged me?”

“Ye...es. And poured some salt in your mouth so that you wouldn't turn down the water the pills were in. It worked pretty well.”

“I'm not going to lie. That's really creepy,” an inkling of suspicion found it way through the exhaustion. “You aren't some serial killer or something, are you?”

He looked puzzled for a moment, and stood. “No. Well...not exactly. I do kill people, but I don't discriminate when it comes to who I kill. And I'm not...a murderer or a killer. See, I'm...a Reaper.”

She gave sort of a half of a snort of disbelief. “A reaper. Like the Grim Reaper or something?”

He clapped his gloved hands once. “Yes! Well...not exactly. I'm a Grim Reaper. Not the only one. Though at this point I guess you could say that I am the only one...”

Cinch mustered a small amount of firmness to her voice. “Stop. Obviously you're going to tell me all about yourself and I can't exactly move from here, so just start from the beginning.”

The man looked at her concernedly. “Are you okay? I didn't put too much of that stuff in the water, did I? I'm not all that accustomed to human medicines.”

Cinch rolled her eyes. “You probably put way too much in the water. But I am too tired to care. Just talk already. That's why you put it in the water in the first place, right?”

“What? Oh. Right,” the man looked at her again. “Are you sure you'll be-”

“Talk.”

He jumped nervously. “Okay. I was trying to kill you and you ran away, but now I need you to come with me because you have my dead boss in your head,” he looked at her face for signs of recognition and probably found none. “No, wait, that won't work...”

“You think?”

“Oh shut up. Let me try again,” he closed his eyes and murmured to himself for a moment. “Okay...”

“This had better be a better explanation than the last one.”

“You're too tired to be scared of Death but not too tired to be sarcastic towards him?”

“Point taken,” Cinch shut up.

“Okay. Explanation. I am a Reaper. It means that I deal death to people on the days that they are supposed to go as dictated by fate. It doesn't mean that they won't go before that; it just means that that's the day that Reapers are supposed to kill them. With me so far?”

Cinch moved two fingers. “Yeah, sure. Keep going.”

“Well, I'm not the only Reaper out there. There's a whole corporation of us who live on our own plane of existence called the death plane. Got it?”


“Your believability factor's gotten a little shaky, but I'll stick with you for a bit.”

“A few months ago, there was a bit of a problem. Well...a lot more than a bit, actually. This one Reaper, named Grene, he killed our boss, Graye, with a weed wacker. Still with me?”

“I'm not an imbecile. Just tell the damn story.”

“Okay, fine,” he rolled his eyes and began to speak more quickly. “This Grene guy took over the company and started telling Reapers to kill as many people as they could, but only ones who weren't supposed to go yet. I thought that was wrong, so I stole the Skull and Crossbones and the Crystal Skull and escaped to this world, where I've been hiding under a bridge, fighting my old coworkers when I find them and killing as many of the people who are supposed to go each day as I am capable.”

“Stop,” Cinch said. The man stopped. “Two questions. What are those things you stole and do you have a name?”

The man looked sheepish for a moment. “Oh, right. My name's Keve.”

“Hello, Keve. I'm Cynthia Shannon. My family calls me Cynthia, but my friend calls me Cinch.”

“Um...the Skull is this,” his right glove glowed for a moment and then the silver scythe from before appeared in it, “while the Crossbones is this,” his left glove glowed and a wooden crossbow with bones carved into the top appeared over his left arm. “They're the weapons to be held by the president of our company, and I just didn't feel like Grene deserved them. I wasn't going to use them, but then I broke my axe while escaping, so I've kinda had to.”

“And the other thing?”

“The Crystal Skull? It's just the thing that tells Reapers who's supposed to die each day. It also beeps when there's a lot of Reapers together, so that helps me protect people.”

Cinch summarized what she just heard. “Okay, so you're going around killing some people and protecting others because your boss was killed. And that has to do with me how?”

“Well...you registered on the Crystal Skull as being fated to die today, so I followed it and was very surprised when I saw how young you were. Then, when you blacked out, my old boss showed up and told me that she's kinda...” he fumbled for the right word, “living in your head. So I need you to come with me so that my boss can help me get things sorted out.”

Cinch stared at him oddly for a moment, then arched an eyebrow. “You know what? I was willing to believe your story right up until there. I can believe that there are grim reapers and that you fought them, and that you have magical weapons and skulls and whatever else, but I can promise you that I'm the only one in my head.”

Is that so? a voice came from the back of her mind. Do not be so presumptuous as to think that you know everything about you just because you are yourself. Things don't always work that way.

“No way...” Cinch whispered. Keve looked at her for a moment, concerned again. “I'm...I don't...you...my...but...”

Oh shut up. the voice surfaced again. You sound like a blithering idiot. Look, I need you to help this poor pitiful example of a Reaper because if you don't, no one will and then you and your race will go extinct. Cinch felt her own eyebrows furrow menacingly at...herself... and we don't want that, do we?

Keve smiled awkwardly. “You okay?”

Cinch smiled weakly back. “I think so...I just need...to...rest...”

She blacked out for the second time that day.