"So... seen any interesting deaths lately?" Mason chuckled; it was a commonplace conversation starter for Reapers--either that or 'How about them Lakers?'

"Why yes; just last year I saw a young girl get absolutely creamed by a flaming toilet seat."

George rolled her eyes. "I never will live that down, will I?"

"You're dead, how can you live something down?"

"Well, I can't die it down, can I?"

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."

She glanced sideways at him. "Have you been drinking again?"

He had. "No," he said, shaking his head convulsively. "Of course not."

As they reached the corner of the city block, George turned down the alley as Mason crossed the street. "Where are you going, love?"

She walked backwards and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb, "I've got two Post-Its."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Rube just said it was a two Post-It day," she called over her shoulder as she ran off. "I'm running behind, see you." Mason watched as she disappeared around a corner, and stood at the corner for a while. He folded his arms across his chest, feeling the all too familiar lump in his breast pocket. He tapped it, making a tinny hollow sound, but a little bit of whiskey sloshed around inside. He looked up the hill to the cemetery, which sat in the middle of the town, nestled in a crown of greenery. He tapped his whiskey flask again and started walking resolutely up the sloped avenue.

He strode a ways into the green, and leaned against a gravestone, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his small tin flask.

"'It's what the Lord wants, Mason,'" he said, mocking Daisy as he took his first nip. Then he deepened his voice and grunted, "'It'll do you good, kid,'" imitating Rube. He chuckled to himself as he took another sip. There were a number of things he had liked about being sober--but not as many as the things he liked about being drunk.

A great deal of the headstones he had seen were bare and rather lonesome-looking, like they were totally forgotten by all the world. Sadly, Mason knew all to well what that felt like. At the thought, he took another nip. He half-gasped, half-grunted, "Back to the old drawing board." He looked back up, and saw one short, plain gravestone in the middle of all the old decaying ones. As opposed to brownish-yellow grass going growing unkempt around the stone, the grass on this one was fresh, and green. Recently buried. And above that, there were flowers laid across, and a small photo frame, though he couldn't tell what was in it from where he was. He wondered if anybody laid flowers on his grave; he seriously doubted it.

He unsteadily rose and hobbled over to it, looking down at the flowers, and then reading the inscription.

GEORGIA L. LASS

Then he bent down to look at the picture. It was a photo of Georgia and her younger sister, standing by a lake, both smiling. He remembered the picture from when all the Reapers visited George's grave, and she swiped it. This was obviously meant to replace the old one, because it was a different frame and there was no message from her sister written on it. Her sister must have negatives, who's to say that she'll miss this one? He picked it up, looking at it closer. George looked so happy; it was so unlike her. It seemed almost unnatural.

He looked around, as if crossing a street, to make sure there were no mourners, George's and otherwise. There was no one in sight, other than a Graveling that was sharpening its claws on a headstone. It reminded Mason of a cat scratching up the arm of a couch, only less endearing. Mason shrugged and slid the photo into his jacket pocket. He looked back to the Graveling, who was smirking oddly at him; Mason thought it as what would be a cynical and questioning smirk if the graveling didn't have the logic of a 5 year-old.

"Don't tell anyone," Mason said, nodding pointedly at it.

It looked suddenly shocked that it was being addressed directly, and it scampered away, weaving in and out between headstones before disappearing in a black whirl of dust.


Mason tentatively opened his front door, being mindful of the rusted hinge and the squeaky floorboards on the porch. He looked around, keeping his ear out for his roommate; she wasn't around. He swung the door open the rest of the way, and it groaned and squealed in protest. "Thank God for 'two Post-It days'."

Mason bounded up the stairs and into his room, looking at his unadorned bureau, with just his alarm clock and his bottle of Jack Daniels staring back at him. He placed the picture on his barren bedside table, deciding it belonged there. Nodding to himself, he threw on his jacket and headed back downstairs, and then outside.


"Hello," he said, standing at the foot of the table and looking down at Rube. Rube looked up at him, surprised.

"You're early," he said, looking around for his planner.

"I am?"

"The rest of the gang isn't due here for another hour. What brings you here so unusually on time? Is it that you're sober?"

"I don't know. Can I have my Post-It?" Rube peeled two Post-Its off the top of his neatly stacked pile. "It's a two Post-It day?" Mason said teasingly, remembering what George had said.

"They're easy ones," Rube said simply. "And they're not for another three hours," he said, holding the stack of two for him to see. When Mason reached for them, Rube tugged them away, like they were a steak and Mason was a dog. "Won't you stay, and enjoy a waffle?" Mason clawed at the Post-Its again, unsuccessfully.

"No thanks, I'm good—" he grunted as he pushed himself out of his chair with his other arm, still swinging at Rube's hand. Rube held them up above his head, unfazed.

"Sure you're not thirsty?" Mason shook his head, sitting down.

"I just had a drink." And he had, too. Rube nodded, holding the Post-Its within Mason's reach. He plucked them snappishly from Rube's fingers, glanced down at them, and slid them into this shirt pocket. "May I go now?"

Rube kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper, and said in his usual dry tone, "Yes, Fuck-Up. Go out into the cold, unforgiving world."

Mason replied just as dryly as he slid out of his seat, "Alright then, I will."


He looked down at his Post-Its. M. Lewis, food court, Towne Centre, 5:23. And the other: E. Denny, same address.

He scanned the premises; it was the early dinner crowd, and the evening movie crowd, and he didn't know how he was supposed to weed out two people out of the hundreds in his field of vision. Someone will die alone today. It wasn't T. Nguyen, so it's just karmic destiny for these poor saps.

A large group of children was advancing towards his general direction. They were all young teenage boys, except for one girl, who seemed to be holding her ground as a level for all the male egos and the testosterone running around her. They were talking and laughing, very loudly at that. Groups like them made Mason wish he had had better friends in his childhood. But that was the 40s. This was now.

He almost paid no mind to them, but as they passed him, he heard one boy say to the girl in a mocking tone. "Margaret Catherine Lewis, don't expect me to believe that bullshit for a minute." The girl laughed,

"Jesus Christ, Marco--you sound like my mother." Mason looked down at his Post-It again. M. Lewis.

We have a winner, Mason thought. His hand brushed her shoulder as she passed, and he watched the familiar rush of white light pulsated down her arm. She looked up at him, kind of disoriented, but she seemed okay that he had only touched her shoulder. Mason folded up the Post-It, sliding it into his pocket. One down.

He smiled to himself at his dumb luck, but his pride and accomplishment only lasted about a second when one young boy ran into him, his hands tucked into his thick ski jacket. He looked kind of greasy and dangerous, but at times so did Mason. "Watch where you're going!" the kid shouted, glaring up at Mason from under his brow.

"I wasn't 'going' anywhere!" The boy seemed a little hesitant, but muttered in a low tone,

"No one messes with Eric Denny."

"Oh, fuck off, punk," Mason said, pushing his shoulder a little, extracting his soul. Instead of a swirling white light, this kid's light looked black and gritty, like the trails of gravelings as they disappear. In all his years of holding this job, Mason had never seen anything quite like it.

The kid walked down towards the theater, gaining speed before breaking into a light jog, then a run, and then a limping sprint as he opened his thick jacket and pulled out two handguns, one for each hand, that obviously weren't his, as they made his hands look weak and clumsy over the shining but scuffed metal.

He held them in the air above his head, firing two warning shots. Mason could only look on as he fired at the mass of people, who ducked and ran, screaming, away from him. And he watched as E. Denny shot a retreating M. Lewis in the back, and she fell sideways to the concrete. Mason sighed. He felt like crying, or yelling out, or something, but after nearly forty years of watching people die, it didn't impact him anymore. He had become numb to it.

E. Denny tried to stick his guns back in his jacket so no one could knock them out of his hands, but a graveling jumped inside his coat; he ended up firing three bullets into his stomach, and he fell down in his tracks.

Everyone had fled the area, completely emptying it, and all that was left was Mason and the two dead. He looked to his left side to find M. Lewis standing beside him. He watched as security officers rushed to her body. Looking down the way to E. Denny's body, he saw E. Denny's soul, crouching beside what was left of him, and looking disappointed. Mason would've said something, but M. Lewis beat him to it.

"You bastard!" she shouted, tears filling her eyes. E. Denny looked up. "I had just started high school, you motherfucking redneck! I had so much ahead of me! And now I'm DEAD!" E. Denny stood up, slowly, still unable to believe what he thought of as failure. M. Lewis sniffled and heaved her chest, and then before Mason could stop her she ran at E. Denny, accompanied by a combination of screaming and crying. Before she could reach him, a hole opened up under E. Denny's feet, and he was sucked into his own personal hell. He clawed for the rim as he fell in, but to no avail. M. Lewis stopped at the edge of this hole, and before it closed she spit down into it, crying. It closed up, silencing the screams they both heard from within. "Son of a bitch," she whimpered, staring down at the place where hell used to be. People came out of hiding and rushed to their bodies, sometimes running right through her, and M. Lewis looked on as her friends nudged everyone out of the way and knelt down beside her. She could only watch as her friends' machismos fell to pieces over her remains, and they broke down crying.

She stood there watching them for what seemed like a long time, before finally looking up at Mason. Her eyes were swollen and puffy, but she had a sense of composure about her now.

"Alright," she said, her voice still broken with tears. She wiped her eyes with her arm and turned her back to the commotion. "What next?"

Mason looked around, hoping her lights would show up out of someplace nearby, but it was still just a plain food court. Usually it showed up right away. She was a straggler.

"You're coming to meet my boss," he said, walking towards her slowly. Her eyes widened a little.

"I'm meeting Jesus?"

"Not really, no." She didn't seem convinced.

"Where is he?" Mason rolled his eyes inwardly, at the thought.

"Der Waffel Haus."

She looked confused. "What?"

"I'll explain it to you on the walk. Come on."


Mason pushed the door open, to find the rest of the Reapers sitting around their usual table. Mason leaned over the partition, looking down at Rube.

"I've got a straggler, Rube." Rube looked up, to see her sitting at the counter, her eyes still pink, and her chest still heaving a little. Rube sighed disapprovingly.

"M. Lewis, I take it?"

"She goes by Molly." Rube leaned back, groaning.

"Mason, not again."

"Please, Rube. She's taking her death really hard. It was sudden and untimely and--I mean, just look at her."

Rube looked up as she buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth.

George looked over her shoulder. "She's that upset about dying young?"

"She'd just started high school. She had her whole life ahead of her." Rube looked up at him.

"Did she refuse to go into her lights, or did they just not show up all together?"

"They weren't any--"

"What the fuck...?" Roxy suddenly said, interrupting them. They all looked to her, alarmed; she was looking in M. Lewis' direction. "Is Kiffany talking to her?!"

They all turned in their seats. Kiffany was leaning against the counter, comforting her, and offering her a Kleenex; M. Lewis looked sort of startled that someone could see her, and she glanced back at Mason.

"Oh my God," Daisy said. Rube looked back up to Mason skeptically.

"Are you sure she's dead?"

"Of course I'm sure! I took her soul and watched her get shot in the back, and then she just appeared by my side. Typical soul things, you know?"

Rube nodded; then he tapped Roxy's shoulder, and she wordlessly slid out, allowing him to stand up and walk towards the counter. Before he said anything, Kiffany gestured towards M. Lewis with her coffee pot. "Is she with you?" Rube nodded to himself; his suspicions were confirmed.

"She is. Come with me, Molly." She hopped obediently off the barstool, following after Rube. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Thank you, Kiffany," evenly and politely. Kiffany nodded, smiling, and turned back to the register.

"Everyone, this is Molly," Rube said, standing her at the foot of the table. "I suspect that she's undead." They all nodded and muttered incoherent salutations. "She's going to be an animal Reaper I'm guessing, and she's mostly Mason's responsibility," he said, nodding pointedly to Mason. "But I want you all to help her get her footholds, alright?" They nodded again, feeling sort of sorry for her, but not knowing what to do if they said no anyway.

Rube looked back to Mason. "You think you can handle something this big and important, Fuck-Up?"

Mason waved his hand dismissively. "Pssht, of course I can." Rube nodded.

"Okay." He then pointed a finger at him. "But remember, I call you Fuck-Up for a reason."

"I know."


Author's Note: Should I develop Molly? Review, let me know.