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——C——
Being a reaper was a lonely job. Silently coming and going, shepherding humans from one life into the next, over and over, day after day, for years and years and years.
You didn’t make friends on the job. The humans rarely had anything to say, and you couldn’t blame them. You were taking what they held onto so dearly, what they loved so much. Sometimes they would thank you, and somehow that was worse than the ones who cursed you and fought you.
But she was different. She was loud and bright and she would talk to you and she was the one person out there that you could truly call a friend.
It had been so long since you had last seen her.
You missed her.
——K——
It had been two centuries since you died.
Immortality was something you’d gotten used to millenia ago. You accepted your lifespan, and it no longer haunted you like it had during your first few centuries alive. For the longest time, death was just a blip in your life, a passing moment no more important than a drop of water in a lake.
Until the day she came to take your life.
She was stunning. You had grown a habit of striking up conversation with your reapers, if only to fill the eerie silence that seemed to follow them around. But on your first meeting, you could hardly get a word out.
She came back, though, and you weren’t going to throw away your second chance.
At first, she wasn’t very talkative, answering you with a grunt here or there. But over time, after some twenty deaths, you were finally able to get a conversation, albeit a small one, out of her.
Ten more and you got her name. Calliope. How fitting, for a girl like her. Hers was the most beautiful voice you had ever heard. You spent each lifetime daydreaming of the next time you would be able to hear that voice, however little she actually spoke.
Your life had no constants besides her.
But you hadn’t seen her in two hundred years.
——C——
You lost track of time easily. When your lifespan was so long, and your days so empty and monotonous, you didn’t bother to pay attention.
You paid attention to her, though.
Once she had entered your life, you became vividly aware of the passage of time. She put your life into slow motion. Each year that went by without seeing her flowed past like molasses. You didn’t want her to die . . . you just wanted to see her. Or maybe you did want her to die. Maybe you were the type of horrible creature who wishes for the deaths of others.
You didn’t deserve her.
She was bright and happy and good and all the things that you knew you could never be. That was the nature of who you were, after all. No one likes a reaper.
Except she did. She liked you. She must have liked you, right? She would always talk to you, even back all those millenia ago, when you wouldn’t even spare her a second glance. That must have meant something. But as the years dragged by without her, you found yourself doubting whether that was true. Maybe she had never liked you at all. Maybe she was just bored.
That . . . or you had driven her away.
——K——
You didn’t want to die.
Dying was never a pleasant feeling, and it wasn’t one that you would get used to over the years. It wasn’t something you looked forward to. It simply happened one day, and you would sigh, but then keep moving forward with your unending life. It was a nuisance, more than anything.
But she was there, and she made everything better. You longed to see her again. Her face was starting to fade from your memory, and you were scared. Scared that you wouldn’t die and you would never see her again.
You didn’t want to die, but if that was the only way to see her, then it was all you longed for.
——C——
Every time you were sent down to carry out a new job, you anticipated the bright head of hair, the glowing magenta eyes that you swear you could see yourself in. You waited to be greeted by an exclamation of your name, a tight embrace that bordered on knocking you over.
It was never her.
Your scythe grew heavier and heavier with each passing year. Your walk slowed to a crawl, your scythe scraping against the ground, yourself too weak to lift it high. The only thing pushing you forward was the hope that someday you would be able to see her again.
She had never stayed alive for this long before. She’d long overstayed her welcome on the Earth. Why couldn’t she just hurry up and die already!
You fell back. Where had that come from? You lov—you cared for her.
After all these years without her, you were starting to lose some of yourself.
——C——
Before you took her life the first time, you were barely more than a husk. You could hardly distinguish yourself from the cloak on your back.
Each soul you reaped took something of yourself. Something of your humanity. Although some would argue you had never been human at all. Well, it can’t be helped.
You tried not to think of the days before her. You were so empty, fueled solely by your need to keep on working. Being a workaholic was a boon for a reaper. One day, most of you, overcome with the weight of taking lives year after year, would simply just stop. You were unable to do that, though. Unable to stop moving, to stop working, to stop doing.
Your heart was not in it. You thought perhaps you had lost it centuries ago. Could anyone who spent their lives killing truly have a heart?
You stopped asking yourself once you met her. She made you feel as though you had a heart, no matter how false of a thought that was. She made you want to have a heart, for the first time in your life.
One time, you asked her if she thought you had a heart.
“Of course you do! Doesn’t everyone?” She placed her hand over your heart. “It’s beating,” she said, “don’t you feel it?”
“I didn’t mean literally ,” you said, picking up her hand and dropping it almost immediately at the blush rising on your cheeks.
She smirked and reached her other hand up to poke your rapidly reddening cheek. “Well, that looks a lot like a heart to me,” she said, turning on her heel and walking away from you.
That was the last time you had ever seen her.
——K——
The world had changed so much since you had last seen her. You had changed so much. Would she even recognize you when you died? If you died . . . .
You moved to the coast, in a quaint cottage by the sea. It smelled constantly of salt, and the crashing of the waves soothed you to sleep each night. When you woke up, you watched the sunrise over the water, casting its blood red light over the waves.
The water was alluring. She was waiting at the bottom of the sea. Waiting for you.
Everyday that passed where you didn’t die, everyday where you weren’t able to see her, drew you closer and closer to the shoreline. You knew you shouldn’t take your life in your own hands. You knew that you were going to die someday, naturally. Such was the way of things.
But surely there was nothing wrong with speeding up the process. You were only bringing on the inevitable.
You stepped forward.
——C——
You had a new job, one on the coast. Your scythe traced a line in the sand behind you. The waves crashed against the shoreline.
The cold water wrapped around your ankles as you walked into the sea. There wasn’t a body on the surface of the sea, but there usually wasn’t one. You’d been at this long enough to know better than to expect one.
Down, down you went, into the deep sea.
It really was beautiful down here. Quiet. Peaceful. It made you understand why humans were so drawn to it.
Finally, you glimpsed a figure in front of you. They were turned away from you, sitting down on the seafloor. They looked relaxed. Almost like they were waiting for someone.
As if on cue, they turned around and locked eyes with you. Her eyes. Within seconds you were wrapped in a tight embrace. She felt just the same as she had all those centuries ago, and yet she was nothing the same. This world had changed, and so had she. You hadn’t been able to watch her change, to watch her grow. But now she was here, in your arms, and though you would have to let her go soon, she was yours in this moment.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered into your neck.
You heard the shake in her voice and held her even more tightly. “I missed you, too.”
“It’s been so long . . . and I just wasn’t dying.” She paused, a heavy silence falling into place. She looked up to meet your gaze. “I had to take matters into my own hands.”
It took you a moment to process what she had said. You jerked away from her, leaving her standing alone, swaying slightly. “You don’t—you don’t mean you . . .” you trailed off, looking at her desperately, hoping she would say that wasn’t what happened, that you were completely wrong.
“All I wanted was to see you again,” she said, her voice impossibly soft.
“Tell me you got swept away by a current. Tell me you got pulled in by a tide. Tell me you got dragged under a wave. Tell me you didn’t kill yourself!” Your breaths were quick and shallow.
She inched towards you. “It hurt. I didn’t know it was going to hurt so much. I—” she started crying, unable to get another word out.
You rushed forward to wrap her up in your arms. “It’s okay, you’re okay now, I’m right here, all right? Everything is going to be okay,” you said, moving your hand in small circles on her back.
After a few minutes spent comforting her, she was able to speak again. “I thought I wasn’t going to die and then I wouldn’t be able to see you again and then—and then I—” another bout of tears overwhelmed her.
“And so you drowned yourself?”
You feel her nod against your chest.
“Don’t do that again.”
“But what if I stop dying?”
“You won’t stay alive forever. Surely you’ve been alive long enough to know that.” You meant the words as a jest, but you felt her body tense in your arms.
“I’m not an idiot,” she snaps at you. “But can you blame me for worrying after two hundred years? God, it’s like you don’t even care that I did all of this for you!”
“I never asked you to kill yourself!”
A dead silence permeates the water around you. She pushes herself out of your embrace, her gaze locked to the seafloor. You watch her breathe slowly, in and out.
“It’s my life and I can live it however I choose to do so. And maybe I want to see you more than once every other century. I guess you just don’t care like I do.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Remember when you asked me if you had a heart?”
You nodded.
“You were right.”
——K——
The silence pressed against you while you watched her face contort at your words. You knew they were cruel. Unnecessarily so. You knew they weren’t true, but you couldn’t help it. You had gone out of your way to see her, and all she wanted to do was attack you. You loved her so much that you would die for her and she couldn’t even understand.
She lifted up her scythe and swung it through you.
——K——
You didn’t try to die anymore.
There was no use in it. She didn’t want to see you.
You loved her but she didn’t love you.
——C——
Time slipped away from you. It reminded you of the time before you knew her. Maybe you didn’t know her anymore. Maybe that’s what she wanted.
And maybe she was right in that. How could someone want to be around you? You were cold and cruel and you spent your life killing others. You killed her time and time again. How could anyone care for that?
How could anyone love that?