"Sheil," Mr. Bo said his name after a lengthy silence, massaging his temples in small, tight circles. A short, plump man with enough wrinkles to count his problems, he sat in his leather office chair, his shining black shoes hanging just above the floor on the opposite side of his desk.

Sheil waited in eager anticipation, wiping a stream of blood as it dribbled down the side of his cheek. The fan drummed overhead, pushing cool air through his sweaty, black hair and the thin punjabi garb that stuck to his dark body like wet paper.

"It's just not right," Sheil whispered, lifting his hands to Mr. Bo's desk, knuckles paling as he gripped the edge of it and shook his head. A drop of blood landed on the desk and Mr. Bo withdrew his coffee, lifting the steaming mug onto a large stack of papers piling up in his paper tray.

He clicked a red button on an intercom on his desk.

"Karen," he grumbled. "Get in here and bring me a towel, will you?"

"It's not," Sheil pushed. "Bo, it's not right."

"It's not about right or wrong," Mr. Bo said. "We don't make that call."

Plit.

Another drop of blood landed on the desk, and an exasperated Mr. Bo grumbled uncomfortably, smoothing out his suit with his soft, pink hands. Puckering out his lips, his head retreated into the collar of his shirt, hiding his chin as he shouted. "Karen!"

"Coming, C-Coming Sir!" the door burst open and Karen stumbled in wearing a tight orange dress and polka dotted heels. "Whoa!" she shouted, nearly falling into the desk as she walked in. She looked down at her hands and feet, a cloth in one of them. "Holy moly," she said. "Where did this skin come from?" she looked at Mr. Bo and laughed. Pointing, she said, "Look at all those wrinkles!"

Mr. Bo nodded toward Sheil, and Karen turned, her black curls bobbing over her shoulders, bright red lips parting with a knowing "O" as she clutched the cloth in between her hands. "Sheil," she sighed.

Sheil didn't move, watching Mr. Bo desperately as Karen came forward and started patting the gash on his head.

"Oh, oh, Sheil," Karen said. "They told me you were coming in today."

Sheil shot up from his chair, landing on two firm feet with tears in his eyes, and shouted at full volume. "It's not right!"

Karen stumbled back with a brief cry, looking between Mr. Bo and Sheil.

Mr. Bo shook his head as he eased off his chair. The metal complained with a loud screech. "Director of Human Resources," Mr. Bo grumbled. "It's a glorified job, they said. An honor to off-board people. Chuck in Animal Resources is laughing at me right now. You know, Sheil," he got to his feet, head poking up as he walked around his enormous desk.

"When animals die and come back from their assignments on earth, they never ask why. Good Souls that come back from being people—now those! They always have the hardest time until they give up their humanity, and then they understand it all again like they're supposed to. We pick a form, we go to earth, do good things, die, come back, pick another form and go again. That's what's right. That's what's fair."

He stopped right before Simeon. "You'll understand as soon as you give up your humanity. It's just like ripping off a band-aid. Now do it, so we aren't stuck looking like this!" Mr. Bo demanded, gesturing between himself and Karen. "Why you picture us this way, I'll never have a clue!"

"No," Sheil said, stepping back behind the chair. "I died too soon."

Mr. Bo winced as he saw blood dribble down on the carpet, staining it. Sheil knew Mr. Bo wasn't fond of blood—thought it an awful mess how living things dripped the way they did. It was the mess and the mess alone that bothered him though, Sheil was well aware.

So accustomed to death, Good Souls weren't disturbed by gore. When Sheil had been a soldier in WWII a life or so ago, he'd acted appalled by it to build a stronger bond with his fellow troops. As a Samurai in Feudal Japan, he'd frequently acted un-phased by the violence around him as to inspire his comrades. Those had been enriching assignments. He'd learned many things, but those lives had been brief. At his first pop assignment in Bangladesh, he'd been able to grow older. He'd had an arranged marriage, in time falling in love with the woman he'd married. He'd watched his young children learn and change through the years, dreaming for the first time of dying as an old man.

He'd served so well, better than he ever had. Never had he felt so good to his core, but then this death happened. 

"Look, I know it's hard," Mr. Bo continued. "The Spider just gets us sometimes. It always has. There's no real stopping it."

"It killed me in such a—such a way," Sheil rubbed his face, his thumbs pressed against his eyelids like the beginning of some sequence where the scene would replay again. "I fell. I fell and hit my head. I've died like a hero before, and I was proud to do it, but to die like this, of all ways, in all of my lives! I had a family!" He remembered the moment vividly, walking down the streets of Dhaka, grocery bags in each hand for that night's dinner. He'd planned on making chicken and rice with special, sweet treats for his two little girls. He'd bought fresh langcha, a sweet, fried dough for his wife, and was imagining her delight until he'd lost his footing, falling onto a pile of debris from a construction site. He hadn't known what he'd hit his head on, but it had been sharp or hard enough to kill him right then and there.

Incidents like these were always the work of The Spider—sudden, inexplicable instances of dark chance. Most people on earth called them accidents.

There was no such thing.

It was The Spider.

"Sheil." Mr. Bo circled the chair, grabbing the cloth from Karen before setting it over Sheil's shoulder and placing his hand there to guide Sheil back to his seat. "Life is full of these things, you know. That's why we Good Souls exist. We exist to help people through these things. It's our purpose. You did what you could for the family."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"My family," Sheil stressed.

"Yes, your family," Mr. Bo said, glancing quickly over at Karen. Lowering his voice, he moved the cloth onto Sheil's hand and then placed his hand on top of it, not wanting to touch the blood. "We all know these mom and pop assignments are the hardest. Don't you remember? We talked about this. You're one of our best, Sheil. You've been the kindest, most generous animals. You remember Babi, the dog? What did he do?"

"He saved little Jimmy Doyle from the pond behind his house. Jimmy's a pilot now, a successful one," Sheila chimed in eagerly, earning a scolding glance from Mr. Bo who seemed to prompt the answer from Sheil.

"Oh," she piped. "Sorry."

Mr. Bo continued, "and you were a war hero in WWII. Jumped right on a grenade. We all remember. You did good."

"Yeah," Sheil whispered passively.

"I remember you sitting in this very office as soon as you got back and saying—determined, 'I want a mom and pop assignment'. You did an excellent job."

Sheil shook his head. "I'm not done."

"You're done," Mr. Bo pushed back.

Sheil sat in silence for a long moment. The fan still drummed above. He didn't feel done. Any time he'd been involved in a war or battle, trying to protect people—dying to protect people, it felt like he was indeed done. His death had been a part of the mission. By dying, he'd let others go on. This was different.

His family would suffer without him. His family could starve without him. His death didn't have any purpose.

Sheil gripped the edges of his chair, trembling. He'd been in the top one thousand out of millions of Good Souls, and now his career felt meaningless. The other times The Spider had gotten him, he'd been on a mission of his own to help whoever crossed his path—the basic mission of the Good Soul, but no one had completely depended on him in past lives.

In all of his lifetimes, he'd saved plenty of lives, done countless good deeds, even cured a few diseases, but for some reason, right now, he was struggling to make it matter.

He knew, in part, it was his humanity. Just as Mr. Bo said, all he had to do was let go of it, return to his ethereal form, and none of this would hit him with the same intensity. He couldn't make himself do it. Not this time.

He shook his head, battling within himself. He just couldn't let go. Not this time.

"Sheil," Mr. Bo said in warning, as if sensing the direction of Sheil's thoughts. "You've never given me any trouble. Don't start now."

Sheil rose from his chair. "I don't know what to do," he said, "but I can't just let go. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready."

Mr. Bo leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms. His thinning gray hair, slicked back across his head, reflected the bright lights overhead. They all sat there in silence for a moment, Mr. Bo beckoning for the cloth from Karen before he wiped off the desk behind him.

Karen nodded once to them both and eased out of the office, Sheil watching as she shut the door with the lightest click of the handle. His eyes lingered on the brass handle and then drifted to the frosted glass of the door with Mr. Bo inscribed in stark, black letters.

Sheil wondered how in the world he could fix this. He resented The Spider, resented its hold on the world and how after so many years of being preyed upon, Good Souls did nothing to retaliate. They could only try to avoid it, claiming that it was just the way the world was.

Sheil rubbed his temple. His heart hurt, but not from any physical pain. There was none of that here. It hurt because of the stirring slop of conflict and grief. For a moment, he resented the complacency of the Good Souls, but then steered himself from that direction.

Good Souls were good. They weren't to be resented.

He should direct all of his anger at The Spider. If only he could. Feelings of helplessness soared into a mix of panic and rage. He started bobbing his knees.

He took one more glance around the room and got the sense that Mr. Bo was about to speak. Before the old man uttered another word, Simeon went for the door. Throwing it open, he marched into the carpeted hallways of headquarters.

He had to find something, some kind of idea or resolution. He couldn't let go. Not yet.

Mr. Bo called after him, and each time the man repeated his name it just made him walk faster. Before long, with no real rhyme or reason, he was sprinting through the halls, busting through door after door, drumming down staircases until he was out in the parking lot.

He looked up at the blue sky and the fields that extended endlessly in all directions. Shouting, he started running along the pavement, past empty, parked cars.

He gritted his teeth, pumping his arms and legs against pavement and then a gravel driveway that extended past the far horizon. He ran until he couldn't run any longer, heaving and panting as he walked now in circles.

He was barely a few hundred yards from headquarters, the building a perfect cement cube with even windows in the middle of an endless plane. The Middle Plane, they called it, and no matter how hard or far he ran, Simeon knew he'd look back and see that perfectly square building with its flat parking lot in the middle of mowed, flat fields. That's how he imagined it, at least. Physical shape was irrelevant here, leaving everything to his human imagination.

Exhaustion was irrelevant too, but he still felt it.

He propped his hands over his knees, lungs heaving. One thing he missed about being a soldier was physical fitness.

He felt himself starting to cry again, and before long heard a faint crinkling beside him. He turned his head, sweat burning his eye as he looked over at a large construction worker with a candy bar in his hand. His great, hairy belly poked out from under a neon construction vest and he watched Sheil casually.

He hadn't been there before, nor had the massive chain-link fence behind him.

"Hey Luis," Sheil greeted in exasperation, looking down at his feet again.

"Humph," Luis grunted, taking another loud bite of the candy bar and then chewing it louder. "You back from your pop assignment?"

"Yeah."

"So soon?"

"I died," Sheil croaked, and then rubbed the sweat from his face. He groaned. "What if they starve without me? What are they going to do?"

"Spider gotcha?"

"Yeah."

"Humph," Luis grunted again and kept chewing.

Sheil straightened, placing his hands on his upper hips as he leaned back. Eyes closed, he breathed in, out and in again.

"Why are you here?" Sheil asked after Luis took another loud bite of his candy bar.

"Humph," Luis grunted again. "There's no here. That's human talk."

"Yeah," Sheil said. Of course. His imagination had brought Luis here. Why would he have done that?

Sheil looked over, eyes moving past Luis to the chain-link fence he was assigned to guard.

Oh. The idea dawned on Sheil just as quickly as the intensity of the taboo associated with it. He looked around quickly, as if other's could somehow see his thoughts.

"Hey, Luis," he said, approaching the man as Luis scratched his stomach, causing a set of keys to jingle on his belt. "How...are the—uh, seances today?" He peeked past the fence to see holes opening and closing up again in the grass. It went on for miles, all within the lining of the fence.

Luis snorted in distaste. "Almost had another Good Soul fall right into one on his way back from assignment. Teenagers again. A bunch of girls in Nebraska trying to talk to the dead in their grandad's basement."

"Oh, yeah?" Sheil crept closer to the fence, cracked open behind Luis. He saw another hole open up in the grass. One quick leap and he'd end up in the middle of a seance. Not alive, but he'd be back on earth, maybe to finish some unfinished business. But what would that even look like?

He couldn't rejoin his family. His life—at least that one was The Spider's.

"Sheil!" he heard from the headquarters building and saw Mr. Bo trotting along over the pavement with Karen stumbling behind him in heels.

He looked forward as Luis finished his candy bar and started licking the chocolate off his fingers. He saw that same hole in the grass, opened wide. It could close any second.

"Sheil! Come back here!" he heard Mr. Bo shout again.

A bit of chaos, a slip by the fence and swift jump forward and Sheil was spiraling into a dark pit. The voices of his colleagues called after him, echoes growing more faint as he tumbled back toward earth.