He wondered how long he’d been dead. An odd thing to think, but it was the only explanation for this white void that went on forever. He adjusted his pants, a bit loose, and straightened his shirt. He wasn’t sure if the Grim Reaper was really concerned with appearance, but he thought it’d be rude if he didn’t put forth at least a little effort.

            “Salutations, son,” came a mostly southern voice. The young man turned to examine the entity suddenly appearing out of thin air and almost scoffed. He was small, round, and dressed in a white suit that looked as clean as it did absolutely dorky. It was a little alarming to consider this man had no eyes, but he couldn’t remember any stories in which the Grim Reaper was explicitly given eyes. Pictures, either.

            “Hm. I like the nonthreatening appearance,” mused the young man, crossing his arms. “The black cloak and scythe were a little edgy.” The little man laughed and shook his head, holding his hat as he spoke.

            “I’m no reaper, son. Though I’m glad I don’t spark any fear in you. I’ll actually be acting quite the contrary to the reaper’s job.”

            “You’re here to bring me back to life?”

            “I’m the god of lost and found. I appear to those who have lost something precious and invaluable to them and employ them into my services until I find it.” The young man shifted his stance. Meeting a god was similar to meeting the Grim Reaper, but it made him a little more nervous.

            “Ah. So you’re like an angelic employment officer.”

            “Not exactly. Though I am here to offer you a job.”

            “So… yes.”

            “I’m hardly an angel,”

            “No, you’re right. You don’t have a halo or anything.”

            “That’s because I’m a god, not an angel.”

            “So you admit to it.”

            The god with unseen eyes sighed and shook his head. This conversation was devolving quickly. This wasn’t how things usually went.

            “Son, I can’t help but feel as if we’ve gotten off subject.”

            “You’re absolutely right. Carry on.”

            “As said before, I’m here because you’ve lost something precious to you. Something that, in this case, you literally can’t live without.”

            “I was never much for material objects. Are you sure it’s something I can’t live without?”

            “Your head.”

            The headless man stood silent. He slowly reached up to feel where his head would be, and instead was met with a kind of thick blue vapor emitting from the hole between his shoulders.

            “That’s… odd…” mumbled the body, slowly lowering his hands.

            “What’s odd?”

            “Well…” The man hesitated, quietly wondering how he was speaking. “I was never fond of my head. It was always getting in my way.”

            The god stood there for a moment, dumbfounded by how this headless man was acting as if this was a casual conversation.

            “You’re an awfully strange man, you know,” said the god.

            “I’d say a headless man has the right to be a little strange,” said the body.

            “I’m glad you’re taking this all in stride.”

            “Well without humor I’m just another corpse.”

            It’d been two days since they met.

            The nameless young man rummaged through a large room full of clothes and other assorted doo-dads and goodies. The place he stayed was like a large office building with rooms three times the size as one would guess by looking at how close each door was to each other. No doubt some kind of godly magic on behalf of the deity. He finally fished out a jacket that looked rather warm, but a little faded. It was in good condition for a hand-me-down, even if it was a size too big.

            “What are you doing here?”

            The young man spun around to see a lithe character framed in the doorway. Her voice was strong and confident and once she walked from the hall, he was introduced to a woman with striking orange hair and a large spear on her back.

            “Me?” The boy adjusted his jacket. “Well, dead people are cold so I thought I’d grab a jacket.”

            “Are you cold now?” she asked, not thrilled with his humor.

            “No…”

            “Why do you think that is?”

            “Um…” The boy paused. “Northface makes fantastic jackets?”

            “No.”

            “You’re right. This is just as warm as any other jacket.”

            “Not what I was getting at.”

            “Kind of cheap material too, now that I’m looking at it.”

            “Are you done?” she growled, growing impatient.

            “Only if I have to be.”

            “Look,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Let’s start from the top. My name, my hunter name, is Coyote.”

            “Edgy.”

            “Do you really want to start that again?”

            “Sorry, bad habit. Continue.”

            The woman went on to explain to him that she was sent here by the god. The first thing she revealed was the god’s name: Nakutama, the god of lost and found. She had been a hunter for a long time and had worked for Nakutama several years. She explained the job; hunting down rogue spirits and ghosts and anything else that would wish the citizens Earth any kind of harm. He gathered she was the no-nonsense kind of gal, so he tried keeping his humorous comments in check. After explaining to him that he would be joining her on his first mission, the man was asked his name.

            “I’m not sure.” He responded, pulling the hood of the large jacket over the fog coming from his head. Oddly enough, it stayed up as if his head was there.

            “You don’t have to have a hunter name yet. Just your regular name will do fine.”

            “That’s the thing. Not sure I can remember it,” he said, following Coyote’s motions to walk with her down the hall.

            “You’re joking.”

            “I wanna say Tim.”

            “Do you remember anything?”

            “Nothing interesting. Just general knowledge. I was a boy, I’m pretty sure. Am? Do corpses have genders?”

            “Well, training won’t be hard then. We won’t have to work against superstitions and desensitize you to the horrors this place has.”

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            “Lucky me,” scoffed the man, rolling his shoulders. “Here I thought death would be boring.”

            “You’re not dead, kid.”

            “That’s what the god said.”

            “What else did he tell you?”

            “He told me I’m ‘between death’ or something. He said ‘your powers are untested and unprecedented given your unique situation.’ Or something else equally dramatic.”

            “Well he’s right. I’ve never met someone between death. You’ll be an untested force. Hopefully your skillset will keep you and that smart mouth alive long enough to find your head.”

            “Wait. You aren’t dead, are you?”

            “I’m alive. I have been for years now.”

            “So why do you work for the god, then? What’d you lose?”

            “I don’t know you well enough to get into that.”

            The nameless hunter-to-be didn’t know her all that well for a long time. Even getting her to open up about her spear was hard work. Supposedly it was far more than just steel and wood. A naginata, she called it. A weeb, he called her.

            “So what’s being a hunter like?” asked the young man, poking the dead body of a vampire. Coyote was scrawling quietly in her journal, writing out that he had stalked the beast mostly on his own with minimal supervision. An astounding feat for someone who’d only been at it for what felt like a few weeks.

            “It’s a job,” she retorted, quickly. Sharply.

            “I kinda like it.”

            “You shouldn’t.”

            “Why not? We’re doing good, aren’t we?”

            “It’s not supposed to be enjoyable.”

            “What if I enjoy helping people?”

            “This isn’t the way to do it.” They both stayed silent for a moment.

            “I do remember some stuff, you know,” he started, poking the corpse of the monster. “I wasn’t much. I had a family that loved me and I think I went to school. I couldn’t do what I wanted to, though. Not that I remember.”

            “Not smart enough to be a doctor, huh?”

            “Everyone’s a doctor. Everyone’s a benevolent millionaire. Everyone’s a soldier. Don’t you think it’s amazing that we can do something here that no one else can do?”

            “Not particularly.”

            “I do.”

            She didn’t understand him. At this juncture she might never. Honestly he was beginning to agitate her.

            “Do you have no sense of self-preservation?” she asked, raising her voice.

            “Preservations are for strawberries.”

            “That doesn’t make sense.”

            “Does it have to?”

            “I’d like it to. Since it doesn’t answer my question.”

            The hunter hesitated, remaining crouched for several seconds before standing up. Though he was headless, Coyote could swear he turned his non-existent head to face her.

            “Well, what are you asking me?”

            “You aren’t scared of these things! Vampires, ghosts, goblins, banshees! None of these things elicit a fear response from you.”

            “I guess I wasn’t taught to be scared of them. All these things are normal for me.” She couldn’t argue with his logic, but she was still frustrated.

            “You don’t sleep either.”

            “I don’t have eyes to close.” His voice was somber now. “I don’t tire, either. I’m the perfect soldier now. Not like before.”

            Like before?

            “Wait, what do you mean?” The senior hunter crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. He said he didn’t remember anything but she was beginning to think he’d been lying.

            “I remember what I need to remember.”

            “And what would that be?”

            “That I was weak.”

            She stayed silent, unsure of what to say to him. The boy took this opportunity to keep talking, unsure of why he was opening up to her but needing to talk to somebody about this.

            “I was weak and unsure of myself. I wanted to be strong, like… but I couldn’t.”

            “So… you killed yourself… by decapitation…?”

            “I lost the thing most precious to me.”

            “Your head?”

            “I lost myself.”

            She wasn’t sure what to say to that. That wasn’t why he was a hunter, the god had told her that. He lost his head. What was this about losing himself? Did he do this… on purpose? That was impossible. He couldn’t know about hunters, could he?

            “How-“

            “I came up with my hunter name, by the by.”

            She forgot he still didn’t have a name. She was so used to calling him ‘boy’.

            “Really?”

            “Yeah. Ready?” He put his hands into the air as if he were displaying his name in the sky. “Scritch.”

            She was dumbfounded.

            “Scritch?”

            “Scritch.”

            “What the hell is Scritch?”

            “Like scritch scratch.”

            “A record?”

            “Like the sound effect. A spooky name for a spooky guy.”

            “God that’s awful.”

            “And Coyote is better?” he scoffed.

            “Wanna see why I chose that?” she remarked, drawing her weapon. Scritch swatted the idea out of the air.

            “Aw c’mon. Ya don’t think one lost limb is enough?”

            “I was going for two.”

            “Was that a joke?” he asked, his faceless void having the air of a smile.

            “I don’t joke.”

            “Alright, Coyote.”

            “That’s it.” she stepped towards him as Scritch laughed and hopped away.

            “No no! Not the face!”

            Coyote began working alongside Scritch more and more often when she could, trying her best to get comfortable with him. Somewhere along the line she had genuinely befriended him, but looking back she could never pinpoint it.

            “Wait, you found it? Like, for real?” Scritch’s jaw would have dropped if he had one, but the little roly-poly god just smiled and handed him several sheets of paper.

            “Yessir! Everything is here and accounted for!” Nakutama cleared his throat as Scritch took the papers in hand. They were incredibly detailed to say the least. Latitude, longitude, sea level, aisle number, shelf height. It was more than he could have hoped for.

            “A warehouse. Really? Or is this some kind of fucked up museum?”

            “No, I assure you it is indeed a warehouse. It seems that your head was preserved and then put up in the hopes of selling the pieces on the black market. Something shady like that. I don’t know the details of how it got there, just that it is there.”

            Scritch stood silent for a moment, thinking about what this meant. His old life, his friends, who he was before he was Scritch. Everything he’d ever wanted was in that warehouse.

            “I’ll be sad to see you go, you know,” said the god, still smiling but with a more melancholy sense. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. If you ever lose anything again, I won’t hesitate to come find you.” Scritch laughed at his boss’s joke, his shoulders bobbing up and down in place of a shaking head or a smile.

            “I’ll miss you too, bossman. Even if I won’t remember you.”

            “That’s how we keep the business safe. Makes it easier to say goodbye.”

            “Makes it harder, if you ask me.”

            Scritch thanked the god for everything he’d done and left the office. Coyote stood across from him, crossing her arms as usual.

            “Aren’t you going to take me with you?”

            The partners arrived at the designated area. It was a solemn walk full of memories and tales of their conquests. He spoke of the time they fought that dullahan, a headless ghost, and how she comforted him in saying he was nothing like the ghost. She spoke of the time he acted as bait for a werewolf and was torn to pieces several times before the beast became worn out and they managed to return it to the forest without harming it at all. Scritch brought up their fight with the manananggal. Coyote politely, but urgently, told him to change the subject. Their stories carried them to the front doors where she refused to go in.

            “This is where we part ways, Scritch.”

            “Yeah, I figured.” He put his hand on the door and pushed against it before hearing a scoff behind him.

            “Nothing smart to say this time?”

            “It’s my goodbye present.” He paused. “Are you going to wait for me?”

            “There’s no reason to, since you wouldn’t be able to see me, but yeah. I’ve always wondered what your face looked like.”

            “Yeah…” he trailed off, walking through the door. “Me too.”

            Coyote watched her friend move through the doors. There was no turning back for him now and she’d never see him quite the same again. Her partner was now replaced with a human host and someone she could never speak to. She’d always keep an eye on him though. He always seemed to attract trouble, even when he was just on his down time. Maybe she’d-

            The sound of shattering glass broke her out of her thoughts. She paused, frozen in time for her own private eternity. Then, shaking away the fear and dread, she moved towards the door. Scritch beat her to it.

            “It wasn’t in there.”

            “What do you mean? Nakutama’s information is never-“

            “It wasn’t in there. C’mon. We gotta break the news to the boss.”

            Coyote watched him go. She followed after him, silently. A hundred questions, but none she wanted to know the answer to.