Thus with a Kiss

Chapter eight

Lawrence

It’s late and I’m thinking about Paige again- although again seems a little bit of a lie since she’s all I’ve been thinking of since I left her alone in that empty, hollow room of hers.

I get out of my work clothes, putting on a tatty black t-shirt and joggers. As I hang my trousers up, I hear an almost indiscernible crinkle- Paige’s phone number! I almost forgot about it, what with my thoughts constantly being dragged back to that beautifully sad face of hers. But here’s the universe working it’s magic again, pulling the threads of our lives even closer together with the soft crunch of paper in a forgotten pocket of my jeans.

I lie on my bed, hand twitching in a way unfamiliar to me as I type Paige’s phone number into the contacts list. Although I have a phone and know how it works, all my previous cases as a reaper have required distance from my charges. I’m there to take, never to give, meaning that Paige’s number is the first and only saved number now in my phone.

I don’t know why my stomach dips a little at that thought, but it does.

And I’m being utterly ridiculous and irresponsible because of it. But Paige is my charge, and checking that she is okay is just another one of responsibilities, isn’t it? At least that’s what I tell myself when I hit send, hurtling my text into the veritable universe of the digital age.

I sit waiting, watching as my message goes from delivered to read without a response. Bubbles appear on the screen to indicate that Paige is typing back, or at least I think that’s what it means. But after 5 minutes of bubbles and no response, I start to think that maybe she’s never going to reply. And that thought stirs a sinking feeling in my gut that I’d rather not examine too closely.

Just when I think all hope is lost, my phone vibrates indicating that I have received a message.

‘Hey, I’d almost forgotten that I’d given you my number’, the text message reads. I can’t tell if she’s being serious or saying it jokingly; I suppose that is the crux with texting though, you never really know how something is meant to come across.

Before I even know what I’m sending, I text back ‘Surely I’m not that forgettable…’. And I don’t know if it’s Paige or the fact that it’s late, but I’m suddenly very curious to see where this conversation will go. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m kind of hoping for the possibility of staying up late talking to her, the way I’ve seen some humans do over the years.

And I wait in pitted anxiety for the delivered sign and the bubble of a possible text back.

‘Whoever said you’re forgettable, clearly needed to get their eyes checked’. And I know I’m new to this human-social-interaction game, but I’m pretty sure she’s flirting with me. The sick thing is, I want her to be. I want her to want me because despite all odds I find myself wanting her.

Fuck.

Maybe Anchor was right, and I’m not the person who should be on the case. I’m barely 2 seconds into this and I’ve already made such a colossal mess of things, it would probably be easier to just terminate my connection and hand it over to one of the other reapers.

I turn my phone off and toss it aside. I don’t want to give up Paige’s case, but at the same time, what if I’m not the best person to carry this out?

Frustrated and knowing that reapers never sleep anyway, I head out into the common room to try and distract my churning thoughts.

Before I’ve even been out of my room for 5 seconds, Elodie bounds my way, mouth moving at a hundred miles an hour.

‘So Law, it’s Wednesday and you know what that means…’ The thing about Elodie is that she always tries to remain upbeat, despite the odds being heavily stacked against her. I could count on my hand all the reasons why Elodie’s sunny disposition is an interminable horror to the universal laws that govern us:

1. We are Reapers- we take life, we do not part take in it, nor are we allowed to enjoy it
2. We’re veritable silos of the cosmos; we exist as an extension of death, never allowed to form attachments, always on the outside, never quite existing
3. The last case Elodie was assigned was an actual disaster, as in world-wide collateral damage. In this particular instance, there were too many souls for Elodie to reap by herself, that 75 years later and Elodie is still searching for the few (hundred) that escaped her grasp
4. So, like I said, it’s all pretty bleak

But somehow Elodie never seems to fall into the reaper equivalent of despair- she just gets on with it.

‘Wednesday means case catch up day’, I smile back. Essentially, me and Elodie will sit down and discuss our latest cases, offering each other advice on how best to go about dealing with each individual.

And I’ll be honest, this weekly thing with Elodie is an indulgence I should know better than to allow. This indulgence is probably the very thing that has allowed Paige to seep under my skin and crawl into my bones in the few meagre interactions that we have had.

I did try and stop it once, I told Elodie that reapers shouldn’t interact; it was not our way of life. But in Elodie’s typical fashion, she laughed me off and told me someone had to keep my miserable face busy in the odd evenings where we weren’t expected bring death with every step we take.

So every Wednesday evening, me and Elodie meet up and discuss cases and other random human phenomenon that we perchance to see, and it’s been this way for the last few decades. A momentary reprieve in our otherwise chaotic cycle of death; it’s only now that I think about it that Paige too feels like a reprieve, one I know is not long to last.

‘Same place as usual?’, Elodie asks, already fading away into the darkness of the universe.

‘Race you there’. And just like that I’m floating away too, wondering how much longer I can keep up this death-dance, when I’m starting to question it all.