In the great card game of life, life dealt me a pretty fucked up hand.
Well, it's more like the hand that death dealt me.
I had a pretty good life, while it lasted. I had a family, I had a job, I had general happiness. Then somehow, after I died, I was given a job. I like to call it a job, though it really isn't. I don't get paid, there's no union, no benefits. It's really more of a cosmic favor done for society. I'm a Reaper. I take souls.
But it is like a job in the sense that I have co-workers. They're like the little cogs, and I'm a supervisor.
First, there's Daisy. She's a fallen starlet, shortly after my time, not really that well known (at least for anything she did herself). She died just before her big break in the film Gone with the Wind (perhaps you've heard of it). She tends to scheme and conjure up ways to gain more for herself, and she brings in a lot of stragglers who object to her taking their things. Right now she's on this Catholic fling, which, to no surprise on my part, began with a cross that she stole from one of her Reaps. As much as she seems to enjoy being involved in it, I sometimes wish she'd cease. And oftentimes I find myself wishing that she'd return to her stories of all the stars she's fucked instead of her rants about the Commandments and all of our patron saints. I tolerate her because she keeps Mason busy.
Which brings me to the resident fuck-up himself. Everyone has to have one, and in our case, it's the scraggly callow Englishman we know as Mason. He died in 1966, by drilling a hole in his skull as part of his search for the ultimate drug-induced euphoria. Sometimes I think that when he drilled that hole in his head, something important fell out. Or, when you really consider how he died, perhaps it wasn't there in the first place. He's always there to drag in a straggler, or lose his Post-It, or blurt out that he's a Reaper just to get laid, or show up on my doorstep with exploded drugs up his hind end. Either way, he's always causing me more trouble than I need. I don't know what basis they choose Reapers on, and with Mason on my staff, I might never figure it out.
Then there's young Toilet Seat. George was really a bright young woman with a lot of prospects, at least until she dropped out of college and was incinerated by a flaming toilet seat that had dislodged from the space station (hence her nickname). But there were certain things about her life that made her so angry at the world, and the odd thing is that most of them were rooted in decisions that she made. She was alienated from her family, but that was her own doing; she dropped out of college, which was her own doing; she's still questioning why she died, and if any of the decisions she made would've postponed her tragically early death. I know that eventually she'll grow to be like the rest of us Reapers and know to not question. But for now she's learning, and that's part of what I'm here for. She isn't always faithful to her Post-It, and while she makes her statements against my authority and doesn't take either of her jobs seriously (Happy Time or the more important one), she'll fall into our little system someday.
But then there's Roxy. Roxy's hard-working, sharp, never gives me trouble of any kind, and always makes her Reap on time. She's the one I can rely on to get her Post-It done and at times I can even count on her to chide the other three when I'm not feeling up to it. Like young Georgia, she's angry at the world in her ways too. But it's nothing that she did, really. She almost made millions off the idea for leg warmers, until she was strangled by her own creation and her opportunity for a trouble-free, comfortable life was lost forever. And now she supports herself by serving on the Seattle police force, and before that she was a meter maid. She tries to keep her distance from us other Reapers by being nasty and snappish, but I know that underneath that cold and bitter shell is a vulnerable and insecure being; because after all, we Reapers all started out as souls, and she's hiding hers, under all that bile.
Rube walked into Der Waffel Haus, as was the norm for him. He was always sure to get up early and get there at least an hour before the other Reapers because he could get a leg up on breakfast and claim his usual spot in the corner.
But this morning was different, for he looked across the restaurant at his normal table, to find Roxy in his usual spot, her head leaning against the adjacent wall as she gazed off into space. She was the only other person the room, unless you counted Kiffany and Angus. Normally Rube would clear his throat impetuously until his spot was clearedóbut, again, today was different.
He made no mention of it, and just slid into the seat beside her. He grunted in salutation, and she just responded with a half-hearted "uh-huh" noise from her throat. Rube slid off his jacket, folding it and placing it on the floor beside his feet, and turned to his daily crossword puzzle. Roxy didn't move an eyelash as he did this. He licked the tip of his pencil and was inches away from touching it to the page when he heard Roxy's voice, low and broken, from his left side.
"Rube," she said, her voice a little less firm than it usually was. She swallowed uneasily. "Do you know what today is?"
He nodded. It was the 20th anniversary of Roxy's death. "I do," he said, folding down the corner of his page and setting it down on the table. He looked at her and an understanding smile pulled at the corners of his lips. "Would you like the day off?" She lifted her hat off her head and set it down on the table, sighing.
"I thought you had a policy against days off." Rube shrugged.
"This is different."
"I don't know, Rube. I mean, I think it'd be more, you know, cathartic to just do my Reaping and deal with people's shit about their crappy parking jobs than to sit and just think about it"
"Roxy, it's the best thing to do. If you don't make an attempt to forget your past life, it'll just come back to haunt you." She nodded. "I think it'd be best if you just took the day to dwell on your past but focus your energies on your unlife, you'll be better off, and happier in the long run."
Roxy turned her face from him, looking at the wall absently.
He leaned forward, trying to catch eye contact with her again. "Rox?" She turned back to him, her eyes pink and puffy, and a reluctant tear ran down her cheek. He put his arm across her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze as tears fell into her lap. "There, there." She looked back to the wall.
"I'm sorry, Rube," she sniffled. "You know how they say 'life is beautiful'?" Rube nodded quietly. She continued, her voice breaking. "What about unlife? What about us?" She looked up to the window, shaking her head. "I mean, I just can't get over the fact that I died over a fuckin' pair of broken socks."
"I know," Rube said. "That part's hard. In time, you'll find your own answers. No one else can give them to you; you'll just have more days like this, to dwell in your thoughts. And someday it'll hit you." She nodded. He added, with a light chuckle, "I'm still waiting for it to hit me." At this she cracked a little smile, the first smile Rube had seen from her in a long time. "Now how about taking the day off?"
"But," she began, lifting her head. "My Post-It"
"I'll take it for you. You need your own time today."
She smiled weakly. "Thank you."
Just then, the bell on the doorjamb rang, and George walked in, leading a hung over and stumbling Mason by the cuff of his jacket. She pushed him into the booth before her, and plopped down across from Rube.
"Morning, all," she said, not looking either of them in the eye.
"Hello, Peanut. And how's our strapping young English friend?" he said, glancing over at Mason. Mason didn't respond to this, but let some drool slide off his lip as his eyes slipped in and out of focus.
George turned her eyes to him, looking him up and down as if she wasn't sure what planet he was from. "He's... just fine." George's eyes scanned across the other side of the table, falling on Roxy. "Shit, what happened to your eyes? You look almost as bad as Mason."
"Allergies. Nothing some Visene can't fix." she said simply and evenly. George turned to Rube,
"Reapers get allergies?!" Rube didn't look up at her as he scrawled onto a Post-It.
"Don't ask so many questions, Peanut. Here," he said, slapping the Post-It in front of Roxy. She looked down at it curiously; it was folded in half. "You'd better go." Roxy looked skeptically at him, but he slid out of the booth, expectantly standing to the side. She picked up her hat and slid out, heading towards the door.
"Later, everyone." George nodded, and Rube waved, while Mason sort of batted at the air with his fingers. She stepped outside into the crisp autumn air, and opened her fist, to her folded Post-It. She opened it up, to find a folded up ten dollar bill was stuck to the adhesive, with an arrow pointing to it that had sprouted from the word 'lunch' in parentheses. She then looked down at the writing; it said:
She looked to the window, at Rube as he slid into his usual spot and gave George and Mason their assignments. A small grin broke the corners of her mouth. "Maybe so, Rube," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Maybe so."
For all that she is, sometimes I think I could grow to love Roxy.
I could. But I won't.