I pulled over to the side of the highway, legs aching from sitting so long. I was in the middle of nowhere, and I’d driven hours to get here.
I steeled myself and turned off the car.
Everyone’s born with one. A reaper. People say nobody’s reaper looks the same, like everyone’s personal terrifying 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.
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.
My reaper disappeared about three weeks ago.
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.
When did I start listening to them? When did I lose 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 it (him) didn’t mean it was gone.
But I didn’t see it (him him him) anywhere. Not in the grocery store parking lot, not in the stairs of my apartment building, not in the long dusty stacks of the library.
So I turned to the internet.
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 reaper was moving faster, people trying to figure out why their reaper was farther away, people arguing over what it meant if their reaper’s appearance changed.
No one claimed their reaper had suddenly just disappeared.
Reapers don’t have names.
She told me over and over until I learned to stop talking about it.
Until I started to doubt what I had heard.
But that didn’t mean I forgot.
There wasn’t anyone I could talk to. How would I even start? 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 have 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 brown grass and broken concrete.
Maybe if I could just see a little bit farther, I thought as I scrambled on top of my car. I perched on top of it uncertainly, scanning the horizon for any sign.
Where are you and Why are you doing this and Please, I can’t take this and I don’t understand, 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 whispered the name I heard him say so many years ago.
After a few minutes I calmed myself, swallowing deep breaths of air. I unfolded my body and went to stand up.
Isa was standing over me.
“Sorry about that,” he said as I recoiled, falling back against the car.
“You’re talking,” I stated dumbly.
“Well, yes. That shouldn’t come as a total surprise. We have spoken before.”
“You said one word to me when I was a kid,” I replied indignantly, fear turning to anger, “And my mom sent me to a child psychologist because I kept insisting you talked. And where have you been? Reapers aren’t just supposed to disappear!”
He shrugged. “There was something I had to take care of, sorry.” He smiled a bit ruefully. That was something else reapers weren’t supposed to do, and it must have shown in my face.
He crouched down beside me, ignoring how I flinched backwards.
“Look, there are some things we need to discuss.” He held out his hand, “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
I stared at his 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,” Isa said, 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, okay?”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t be afraid of you?” I hedged.
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, hand outstretched.
“Ah, what the hell,” I said, and I took Isa’s hand.
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