A Business of Misery

Tip #1 | Don't Fall in Love with a Human

This story is part of a compilation of "Stories that go well with lofi hip-hop," so if you're interested, here is the stream I listened to while writing:

Being a grim reaper is pretty simple work. We watch over the human world, waiting for someone's time to come. Then, when someone's clock finally stops, we swoop down to guide them into the endless abyss of death.

Yes, unfortunately we bring them to neither Heaven nor Hell; we drop them off in an endless void of darkness where their bodies wander aimlessly as they exist in whatever happy reality their minds can create. I think Purgatory is the closest thing humans believe to this. As for us, reapers, we reside in a plane perpendicular to that of Earth and Purgatory; it's our own little world where not a lot happens. We socialize and go to work like humans do, but we certainly don't have the diversity of things in our world.

Our existence is one that revolves around humans, so we don't need to have as much stuff to do. We're constantly running around reaping the souls of those who pass, and the little time we do spend in our world is usually spent at a metaphorical office receiving instructions on our next task. Guiding human souls to the afterlife isn't the only thing reapers do, but it is the main thing. And despite being so interwoven with the human world, we stay surprisingly disconnected.

Our organizational heads handle most of the details of how and when a human dies, so reapers just have to go get the soul when it happens. We try not to interact with humans very much outside of their last moments. Even then, we have to be careful not to make ourselves known to anyone else around. Reapers have a few different ways of interacting with the human world: we can become physical in some sense and actually appear in the human world for all to see, but that's a very uncommon method.

We're able to make ourselves known only to those at death's door, but often still detectable by other humans through a sudden chill or their sixth sense of knowing when someone is around and/or watching them—quite advanced creatures they are, really. Finally, sometimes it's best not to appear to the dying human at all and instead only act as a loose thread which the soul can use to find its own way to Purgatory. All of these are valid techniques, just depending on whatever feels most comforting to the soul.

As for visual appearances, reapers can take on any form they like, really. Most of us choose to appear human; it seems to make the most sense in the minds of the average person and leaves room for any religious belief to think of us as a representation of an angel, a past life, God, whatever. Most of us have a favorite human to look like, probably someone we helped guide in the past, but we could also use a relative of whoever we're guiding, or a close friend. Animals work, too: pets, spiritual beings, you get it.

Reapers do have a set of rules to abide by, of course, though they're quite simple and kind of common sense. "Don't interact with humans," "Leave life and death to the natural order," "Don't do anything to alter human reality," that sort of stuff. We, reapers, don't really have to worry about a lot of it since we don't have many emotions to speak of, at least not in the same sense that humans do, but sometimes the unexpected can occur. I always thought of myself as a pretty ideal example of a reaper, but then I saw...her.

I was in Japan to guide the soul of some poor sap who overdosed on something in an alley somewhere; classic big city stuff. The guy was a mess; wrinkled clothes, a droopy face, a needle still stuck in his arm. That was just his appearance though; reapers can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their face for a while. His suicide was accidental, but the dude didn't seem to care about his life at that point anyway. Something about being kicked out of school, fired from multiple jobs, his parents disowning him; it's a cruel world, this one...sometimes.