Chapter 2

The two girls stood in the doorway. Daria had stopped and looked down at the floor.

"What do you mean dead? How can I be dead? I'd remember it; I'd have felt it." She spoke slowly; her voice distorted with disbelief.

"And here I thought the fact you were able to dematerialise would have convinced you." Georgia muttered the annoyance was evident in her voice. "Look, you didn't feel anything because your soul was taken before you died, and believe me, you died; I saw it, it wasn't pretty."

"Wait, did you kill me?"

"No, look I can take you back inside and you can see for yourself though I guarantee it won't do any good."

Daria stood firm and looked at Georgia. Georgia sighed and walked back into the building, to the doors of the auditorium and slipped in with Daria in tow. The mood inside had reached a chaotic level; many of the students sat in shock or scrambled to get a better view. Daria filtered down through the crowd to where she had been seated.

The first thing she saw was Jane hunched in a seat, closest to the aisle. Her cheeks were red, burnt by tears. She sat in a fetal position with her arms hugged to her legs while she stared over to where they had originally been seated. Daria followed Jane's gaze to the source of the action; her own limp body. It was next to the seat and the offending bobby pins removed and laying nearby. She watched the vain attempts of the school nurse to use CPR in an effort to resuscitate her.

"I knew the fashion industry would kill me one way or another," She mused, as the irony of being impaled by a pair of oversized novelty hair pins struck her. She turned away and glanced back at Jane once more; Quinn had found her, the pair held each other and sobbed. Daria bit her tongue, hard, in a bid to abate the tears that began to well in her eyes. She turned and walked back to Georgia. The two girls exited the school and drove away in George's red convertible Ford Mustang.

Daria sat in silence as they drove. She listened to Georgia's introductions and explanation of her new life and duties. She would become a Reaper, collecting people's souls and aiding their transition into the afterlife. She described the other Reapers in their group, including their leader, Rube, a middle aged man that gave out the assignments and handled the bureaucracy with upper management.

"Like God?" Daria asked. George looked at her with a bemused smile and shrugged.

Georgia went on to describe Roxy, a hard assed meter maid turned cop who didn't take shit from anyone, and sixties wild child Mason, an English drug-addled screw-up that 'meant well'. They pulled up at a modest white weatherboard house and entered. Georgia informed her that she once she met the rest of the gang they would set off to her autopsy and funeral.

Daria was unnerved by the casual tone the girl took as she discussed Daria's passing; as though it were an insignificant trivial event. Her normal stoic misdemeanour had begun to slip, as the pent up mixture of emotions boiled to the surface.

"It's not fair, how could I have died? This isn't the way things were suppose to be. I'm doomed to spend the rest of my days in Lawndale, providing the janitorial services and cleaning up souls after their earthly body's demise. This has to be a dream; an effort of my subconscious telling me to stop alienating myself and using my sarcastic wit to keep people at arm's length. Just a dream brought on by one of dad's 'Maddog curry combinations' that's all. Any minute now the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future will appear and teach me my lessons...." Daria groaned and looked around the still, dark room. There were no apparitions, no blinding lights, no waking up in the safety of her padded cell in a sweat drenched frenzy to curse her father's culinary disaster. This was the real deal.

Daria paced around the unfamiliar house as her mind drifted back to her family and more important best and only friend Jane.

***

Trent pulled his car up to the police station and jogged quickly toward the entrance. For someone that spent most of his time idle, he could move fast. He had received a call from one of the junior officers about Janey and expected the worst.

"Can I help you sir?" the petite blonde seated behind the desk asked.

"Uhh, I'm here for Janey...Jane Lane. I was told she was being questioned." Trent looked around nervously; the last time he had been in the police station wasn't because he had been the only available guardian for a younger sibling.

"Of course, the high school tragedy. She'll be out soon." the woman replied and motioned toward the hard plastic waiting chairs.

Trent turned and reluctantly sat down; a million scenarios passed through his mind -- high school tragedy? What the hell happened?

Trent was on the verge of a stress-induced panic attack when Jane finally appeared, wrapped in a coarse grey blanket. She shuffled out slowly behind a detective. Her face was pale and void of any discernable emotion. Trent observed a faint mist of dried blood on her left cheek. He stood and enveloped her in his arms he was thankful that she seemed physically unscathed, he felt her slim frame shudder as she spoke into his chest.

Although muffled there was no denying what she had said. "Daria's dead."

***

Georgia led Daria into the Waffle House and motioned her toward a booth seat while she proceeded to the counter. Daria stood a few feet away from the table that was occupied by, whom Daria assumed, were her new colleagues and fellow Reapers. The three seemed not to have noticed her.

The elder of the three, the dark haired, middle aged man that Georgia had described earlier as Rube, sat in the corner doing a crossword. Roxy, a short, dark-skinned woman, slowly sipped her coffee as she perused a thick file. Mason, a tall, scruffy man in his mid twenties who sat opposite of Roxy eyed the discarded breakfast in the middle of the table.

"Roxy darlin' you finished with that?" He asked in a thick English accent before reaching over to grab a strip of bacon without waiting for a reply.

Without missing a beat, Roxy grabbed her fork and stabbed at his outstretched hand. The prongs plunged through the back of his palm and into the table top. Daria flinched and her eyes grew wide as she stared at them.

Mason cried out in pain. "Oh sweet Jesus Christ Roxy! What the fuck was that for? That bloody hurt." he whined as he pulled the cutlery item out of his hand and wiped the blood off. He held his hand up and turned it as he inspected the wound. Daria watched in amazement as the lesion knitted itself back together before her eyes. By the time Georgia returned with a takeout coffee, the only evidence of the encounter was a small streak of blood on the table. The older man seemed to have not noticed the ordeal at all.

Roxy said, "Mason, I'm not in the damn mood; I've had a fucked up night dealing with a bullshit investigation over at the high school. The principal is suing a major cosmetics company over the death of a student and it doesn't help that the girl's mother is a hard assed lawyer that's suing them both." She sighed and gave a small chuckle. "It was a pretty bloody death; you would have enjoyed it."

"Excuse me?" Daria spoke for the first time since she had entered. All four Reapers looked at her with varying levels of interest.

Rube closed his paper, looked up at Daria and smiled warmly. "Ahh Daria, how you holding up, kiddo?"

Daria's stomach twisted at the use of her father's pet name, but was determined not to let it show.

"So this is her? The one that's replacing Daisy?" Mason asked with a mournful tone.

Rube formally introduced himself and the others before he turned to George. "You and the screw-up take her to the funeral parlour, watch the autopsy and stick around for the funeral. Don't fuck up."