The car door slammed shut much more loudly than I'd intended. Now that the engine was off, the only other sound was the wind blowing softly through the dead grass and the soles of my sneakers on the pavement. For miles around, there was only grassland; flat, and empty. I turned in a circle searching for something and finding nothing.
When you're born, your reaper is far away, and from that moment on, it starts to move closer. Sometimes it's slow, not even an inch over years. Sometimes you look up, and it's right in front of you; standing face to face with you.
The things you do can affect how quickly it moves. My grandfather confessed to me one day that his reaper started moving faster the day he first smoked a cigarette. Drunks reported getting behind the wheel of their cars only to see their reapers sitting beside them. And they say you never touch your reaper until the day you die. My reaper disappeared about three weeks ago.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened. It wasn't close enough to always be in the same room with me, and it wasn't like I was constantly checking to see how close it was. But usually, I would catch glimpses of him from my office, lingering near the doorway of a shop. While I'm waiting for coffee, it was there watching me as I got into my car, and one day it just wasn't there anymore.
It was gone.
It. When did I start calling him "it"? My reaper was never it; it was always him.
Was it my parents or one of my teachers who first told me to stop calling him a him? Don't personify it. Don't give Death that kind of power in your life. Your reaper isn't a person. Your reaper doesn't have a gender. Your reaper does not have a name. Your reaper does not talk. When did I start listening to them? When did I stop calling him by his name?
I spent the first few days in denial. I just wasn't looking in the right places, I told myself. Just because I didn't see him didn't mean that he wasn't there. But whenever I looked, I never saw him anywhere. Not in the grocery store parking lot, not on the stairs of my apartment building, not in the long dusty stacks of the books in the library.
So I turned towards the internet.
Reaper disappearances,
My reaper is gone,
I can't see my reaper
What does it mean if I can't find my reaper?
I found all sorts of articles and forums on reapers. People freaking out because their reapers were moving faster towards them. People trying to figure out why their reaper was farther away. People argued over what it meant if their reaper's appearance had changed. But no one claimed that their reaper had just suddenly disappeared. I couldn't find anything about reapers disappearing.
Reapers aren't people. My mother was firm.
Reapers don't have names.
She told me over and over until I learned to stop talking about it.
Reapers never talk.
But that never meant I forgot. There wasn't anyone that I could talk to. How would I even start? How do I tell someone that I could talk to my reaper and he talked back to me?
What did this even mean if he was gone? Had I discovered the 'cure' for death? Was I going to live forever? Or was I simply going to walk through life not knowing when death would come for me?
One way or another I had to be certain he was gone.
I got into my car and started driving. I couldn't see anything but dead plants, broken concrete, and the road I was driving on.
Maybe if I could see just a little bit further, I thought as I scrambled on top of my car. I perched on top of it uncertainly scanning the horizon for any sign. That's when I started to scream in frustration.
"Where are you? Why are you doing this? Please, I can't take this anymore. I don't understand, please. Please."
I don't want to live forever.
I don't want to watch everyone die.
I don't want to be alone.
Please, don't let me be alone.
I whimpered the last ones into my knees, curled up on the ground beside my car. Then I whispered the name he had told me so many years ago.
"Cassius, please."
After a few minutes, I calmed myself swallowing deep breaths of air. I unfolded my body and went to sand up. Cassius was standing over me.
"Sorry bout that," he said as I recoiled from him standing there. My back hit my car as I stated "You're talking."
"Well, yes Sky, I am. That shouldn't come as a total surprise. We have spoken many times before."
"You said one word to me when I was a kid," I replied indignantly, fear being replaced by anger in a flash. "And my mom sent me to a child psychologist because I kept insisting that you talked. And where have you been? I thought reapers weren't supposed to just disappear!"
He shrugged, "There was something I had to take care of, apologies." He smiled a bit ruefully. That was something else reapers weren't supposed to do and it must have shown on my face. He crouched down beside me, ignoring how I flinched backward.
"Look, there are some things we need to discuss." He held out his hand, "Let's go somewhere more private so we can talk."
I stared at his outstretched hand, "Look, I know I don't want to live forever and all, but that doesn't mean I want to die right now or anything."
"You're not going to die, Sky," he said exasperatingly, mouth twitching upwards.
"Not for a good while, not if I can help it. Most of what you think you know about us is wrong."
"So you're saying I shouldn't be afraid of you?"
He shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant at all. But you can trust me."
"That's not very comforting," I muttered. He waited patiently with his hand still stretched out.
"Ah, what the hell," I took Cassius's outstretched hand.
