Phantasm Pile Up

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: A Lazy Grim Reaper's Awakening

Although all the street lamps were lit, the path that leads to Clay's home seems like no light passes by the area. Why? Because death emerges from here.

Clay is a Grim Reaper, a demon, or sometimes mortals refer to him as death. He's not the only one who's like this, he has co-workers, subordinates, superiors, and of course clients. Life is like a bank. Well, more like a loan from a bank, and supernatural creatures are the staff, and souls are the poor people that borrow life, and then the bank owner takes it back with interest.

This is Clay's life, every day he goes out and harvests the souls of the dead to send them to the afterlife. Or at least that's what he should be doing, but instead, he slacks off 24/7.

Well, creatures like him don't have any needs like humans do. They can enjoy eating and sleeping but nothing bad will happen to them if they don't. Even if he doesn't do his work, all the other reapers can do it for him, most reapers naturally don't like seeing lost souls wandering everywhere so they clean them up willingly. Clay doesn't like lost souls too, but his laziness is overpowering his neat freak trait.

To compensate for the reapers' job, the higher-ups pay for all of their "necessities" to help them blend in with the mortals. These necessities are the house they stay in, the food they eat, and other hobbies, like cleaning their house. Yes, cleaning is a hobby.

Clay also doesn't like seeing uncleanliness. How does he deal with this dilemma? Simple, he just sleeps all day, instead of cleaning after his food or empty cleaning detergent containers, he would rather act like a corpse.

He sure looks like a corpse, so there's no issue here. His skin is pale, like the other grim reapers, because they have no blood, they usually work at night, and God sent them on Earth looking like bleached paper. Perhaps, he forgot to give them melanin. His hair is a perfect midnight black color, that's because most humans have this "natural-looking color" and this will help them blend in with society well. It didn't work, of course, because they accidentally spilled too much ink on their hair, so now the blackest black is on the top of their head. It made their pale paperwhite lifeless skin look more prominent because of the contrast. They look like glow-in-the-dark corpses.

It's 5 am, it's almost morning but Clay showed no signs of moving, almost like a non-decaying corpse. He's been sleeping for 5 days straight, how can one do that when he doesn't even need it?

*Knock knock knock*

"Grim Reaper Clay! I am here with a message from the boss"

There was a loud knocking on his door followed by a loud voice of a woman. But even this loudness cannot wake Clay up from his slumber.

*Knock knock knock*

"Grim Reaper Clay! If you do not answer the door for me, I will be forced to tear it down to get there!"

The loud voice from the woman is once again heard from the other side of the door. You see, just like ghosts and lost souls, reapers can walk through walls but it seems like this woman wants to annoy Clay by breaking his door. It's either that or she isn't a reaper.

What is she then? Surely not a mortal, not an angel or a demon as well, those creatures are forbidden to roam the overworld. Just like Clay, she is a reaper as well. The reason for threatening to break his door is because she chose violence.

"Grim Reaper Clay! If you do not answer within 3 seconds, I will kick your door!

1

2

3"

But there was no answer.

*Thud*

*BOGSH*

Dust went everywhere because of the door falling. The woman stood there and waited until the fog of dust cleared up and called Clay's name again. She walked inside and noticed the unkempt apartment where Clay stays at.

It was only a small apartment, as soon as you walk in, you could see the bed that Clay currently sleeps in. Apart from that, there was another door to the right that looks like leads to the bathroom. The place is practically empty.

It seems like what the woman did was effective because now Clay is waking up from the noise. A groan is heard from him but he still kept laying down and didn't even open his eyes. This made the woman choose violence once again.

She walked over to him and kicked him hard on the chest.

*Cough cough*

Clay started coughing because of how hard the woman's kick is. She just stood there without an ounce of worry or guilt.

"ARGH!! What is your problem? Have you got no manners?!" Clay said with an annoyed voice. His voice even cracked because he just woke up seconds ago and now he needs to shout to express his anger

However, this short-tempered woman is angrier than he is.

"GRIM REAPER CLAY!! I'VE COME WITH A MESSAGE FROM THE BOSS!"

This caught Clay's attention and he finally noticed everything that happened just a few moments ago. He noticed his broken door, his dusty apartment, and the unknown woman in front of him.

"Are you finally listening, Grim Reaper Clay? The boss noticed that you weren't doing your job well so he sent me to relay a message" She said with a monotonous voice and a neutral facial expression. This reaper is a very formal one.

Clay just stared at her in confusion but also showed that he will be listening to whatever she wanted to say to him.

She took out a scroll, rolled it up, and started reading "ehem,

We noticed that Grim Reaper Clay hasn't been harvesting souls for more than a year and is not doing his job. To add to that, he also was disrespectful to his superiors, was spending large amounts of money from the company, was breaking private property, violated several protocols such as telling mortals about his identity, stealing from mortals by using his power, etc. These are only some violations that Grim Reaper Clay committed. As a consequence, he is given a quota of 100 harvested souls per month for 1 year. If he fails to meet the deadline, he will be punished accordingly and become a mortal permanently"

His mind can't process this much information especially since he just woke up-

"I DIDN'T DO THA- Actually I did"

-but he understood very well.