Everyone's born with one. A reaper.
When you're born, your reaper is far away. From that moment, it starts to move closer. You never touch it til the day you die.
Not it. He.
My reaper is a he, and he disappeared three weeks ago.
Everyone's born with one. A reaper. People say nobody's reaper looks the same, like everyone's terrifying personal snowflake of death. No one knows for certain, though, because you can only see your own reaper.
Very little is actually known about them. It's hard to study something you can never touch.
The car door slammed shut more loudly than I'd intended. Now that the engine was off, the only other sounds were the wind softly trickling through the brown grass and the soles of my sneakers on the pavement.
For miles around me, there was only grassland, flat, empty. I turned, round and round, searching.
And saw nothing.
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When you're born, your reaper is far away. From that moment, it starts to move closer. Sometimes it's slow, not even an inch over years. Sometimes you look up, and it's standing face to face with you.
The things you do can affect how quickly it moves. My grandfather confessed that his reaper started moving faster the day he first smoked a cigarette. Drunks report getting behind the wheel of their cars only to see their reaper sitting beside them.
They say you never touch your reaper until the day you die.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened. It isn't close enough to always be in the same room with me, and it isn't like I'm constantly checking to see how close it is.
But I usually do catch glimpses of it in the hallways of my office, lingering near the doorway while I wait in line at the coffee shop, watching as I get in my car in the morning. And one day, I just...didn't.
It. When did I start calling it "It?" Not it, him. He. My reaper's not an it. He.
Was it my parents or a teacher 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 is not a person. Your reaper does not have a gender. Your reaper does not have a name.
