My memories at that point are mostly flashes, little snippets here and there. The inside of an ambulance, someone muttering something about me being lucky. A hospital room. A tube in my throat. I finally woke up three days later, my chest aching like I’d pissed off a circus strongman and gotten the business end of a cartoon mallet. Or, you know, like I’d been shot. I made to pull the tube from my throat before being stopped by a familiar voice.

  “Ah ah ah, none of that. Let me do it.” That same Finnish accent. I’d written the whole thing off as a dream in my head in my first few moments of consciousness. It was like she’d been waiting at my bedside just to disabuse me of that notion.

  “Mh?”

  “Hold on, hold on.” She released some valve on the tube, relieving some of the pressure I felt in my throat. “Now, take in a big, deep breath for me, okay?” I did as I was told. “Good, good. Now, exhale, and cough as the tube is coming out, alright?”

  With a gentle, practiced hand, the nurse I’d met in the office that night slid the tube from my throat, finally letting me breathe on my own. She wasn’t wearing her hat this time, revealing a close cropped blonde pixie cut. Regular green scrubs, too. She looked to be farm girl fit, strong enough to handle hauling patients from bed to gurney and back if needed.

  “How are you feeling?” She asked, disposing of part of the tube in a biohazard bag as she spoke.

  “Like I got shot? How are you here, was I hallucinating?” I asked, still in disbelief.

  “A lot of things happen in the mind in cases like this,” she said, giving me a ‘shut up about things you shouldn’t talk about’ look.    “Hallucinations, false memories, even dreams. Let’s focus on reality instead, okay?” I nodded, keeping my mouth shut for now. I wasn’t sure if I had a roommate or not with the privacy curtain up, but I had no intention of pissing her off.

  “You were very, very lucky, Mr. Knox. The bullet passed close enough to your heart it looked to be touch and go for a while. Your lung is healing nicely, considering what you were shot with, though it may take some time for full function to return. Nothing strenuous for the next month, understand? No exercise, no working, not even stairs if you can manage it. I don’t want you back in here because you decided to go rock climbing and gave yourself a pneumothorax via stupidity.”

  “I, ah. Wasn’t. Planning on it?” I said, blinking at the sudden curtness. “I just wanna go home.”

  “And you will, don’t worry. Thank your lucky stars for that, you got to us in time to save your life. Is it true you decided to play hero for someone during that shooting at that arcade?” she asked, one skeptical eyebrow raised.

  “It seemed like the right thing to do? I mean…” I lied. I had no idea why I did what I did, I just acted. I still don’t, actually. “That’s what you do, right? Do the right thing?”

  “Helping an old woman cross the street with her groceries is the right thing to do. Jumping in front of a bullet is playing hero. There’s a big difference, Mr. Knox. No matter, though. What matters is you’re here now, and I can tell the people in the hallway that you’ve finally woken up,” she said, finally smiling. It was a wry smile, but it beat getting glared at. Getting a lecture from her is equal parts your mom and your teacher being mad at you. Or, worse, not mad, just disappointed.

  “People in the hallway?” I asked. I hadn’t really considered it, but the idea was heartening, somehow. People cared enough to come visit me after I got shot.

  “Several. I’ll keep the news media away for as long as possible, they’re trespassing at this point. All of them hovering around like ghouls, wanting pictures of you with a breathing tube in.” she said, open disgust in her voice.

  “Yyyyeah, keep them away if you can, please?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. If I don’t, my friend will.” The grin on her face was anything but motherly as she spoke. Her voice carried as she exited, barked orders battering anyone in the hallway that dared to remain. “Älä vetää! Korppikotkat! Kusipääd! Out, all of you, this is a place of rest and healing, not your godforsaken Pulitzer! Yes, you too, miss just-want-an-interview, you know who the press liaison is, and this isn’t her office! Out, shoo!”

  Bill and, of all people, birthday boy Bobby slipped in past the Finnish whirlwind, both somehow looking equally worried.

  “Hey.” Bill’s voice was soft, for a change. His voice could carry like a stage actor’s, a fact he used to his advantage to communicate at work without having to leave the confines of the kitchen. He helped run the kitchen, and still does, come to think of it. He deserves a raise. For a restaurant that prided itself on making everything fresh, they certainly liked to understaff the kitchen, though on nights Bill was working you certainly wouldn’t know it.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Outside of the gunshot wound, and the collapsed lung, and the cracked ribs? Fuck, man, I’m alive, I’ll take it,” I said, making the mistake of laughing. “Ow, ow, fucking damn it, why did I laugh,” I said, the situation somehow only making me laugh more.

  “Easy, easy,” Bill said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t go dying now, you’re probably almost out of here.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “From what the doctor was telling your sister? You’re the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth. The bullet managed to miss your ribs going in, miss your heart, and caught the ribs in the back so it didn’t blow a hole the size of my fist all over Bobby’s front.” Bobby went pale, realizing just what he’d managed to avoid. “It didn’t completely mangle the lung, either. You’re gonna have trouble breathing, but you’re gonna heal. Somehow.”

  Yeah. Somehow. At that moment, my brain decided to do what it always does in situations I don’t want to think about. Focus on a detail that’s of absolutely no importance to anyone but me, because it’s a detail that will make everyone focus on something that isn’t the subject at hand, hopefully resulting in the conversation being derailed enough everybody just forgets what started the conversation in the first place! Try it, it works. Really. Please don’t actually do this, it’s a terrible habit and I’m trying to quit. Do as I say, not as I do.

  “How are you doing, Bobby? He didn’t come after you after I got hit, right?” I asked. Subject successfully dodged!

  “No way, man. Him and Marlena saved my ass just like you did, put his ass down for the count. Fucker’s in a coma, it’s touch and go.” He sounded less than pleased at the outcome, despite Mikey having tried to kill him with what I will, to this day, describe as a moose removal cannon. “I still don’t know what the hell he was thinking, man, he’s not like that normally.”

  “I’d guess not, or you wouldn’t have invited him to your birthday thing, right?”

  “He’s been my best friend since, like. Fifth grade, dude. He doesn’t -do- violence.”

  “Then how, exactly, did he manage to manhandle that weapon in to nearly killing Eddy? That was a solid shot for somebody that ‘doesn’t do violence.’” Bill asked, his papa bear protective nature kicking in. We were His Kids, us at the arcade. He was an old army veteran, circa the first gulf war. Tougher than he had any right to be, kind to a fault until you gave him a reason not to be, low bullshit tolerance or not.

  “I wish I knew! Dude went fucking psycho, man! That look in his eye, that wasn’t him. That wasn’t Mikey, not the one I know. He was out for blood.”

  “Yeah, that…” I paled, remembering the look in his eye. The lack of a look, more precisely. He had been nice the whole night, had a spark behind his eyes. He even managed to make conversation with me once or twice during slower periods. His eyes when he pulled the trigger were lifeless. Dead. Like looking a shark in the eye right before it bites you in half or something. “Something broke inside him.”

  “Easy. It’s over now,” Bill said, cutting the conversation off at the pass. “Look, you’re here now, okay? Look at me. You’re here now. You’re safe. Nothing’s gonna hurt you here. Nobody’s coming after you.”

  “Is everything okay?” The nurse’s familiar voice cut in as she entered the room, making everyone jump. She moved like a ghost, body or otherwise. Her name was Maria, according to the whiteboard on the wall. Nurse Maria S. “He should be resting, especially with the extent of the damage that bullet did.”

  “It’s fine, really, I—”

  “No, no. They can come back in a bit, unless you want them to see your bare butt when the doctor’s examining the wounds?” Maria said, barely suppressing a smirk as she did. She was good, I’ll give her that much.

  “We’ll be outside, just yell for us, okay?” Bill said, ignoring the nurse to speak to me directly.

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks for stopping by?”

  “No problem, kiddo.”

  “Get better, alright?” Bobby said, before following Bill out in to the hallway.

  As they left, an older man in a white doctor’s coat entered, grabbing up my chart from its spot on the wall as he did. “You may be the world’s luckiest gunshot victim,” the doctor said, shutting the door as he spoke. “Getting help as quickly as you did certainly didn’t hurt, but that bullet scooting past your heart like it wasn’t even there, that was something else. I’d call it a miracle.” He examined my chart, flipping through and scanning as he spoke.

  “So I’ve been told, Dr…?”

  “Hensley. Just call me Neil, we’re going to be working together. Hopefully not frequently, but considering your propensity for heroism, I think we’re gonna get to know each other pretty well,” he said, smiling and looking up from my chart as he did.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Working together? Wait, are you like her, or did I get fired and you’re hiring me?” Painkillers make me stupid, okay?

  “Both, technically, though I don’t think it’s legal to fire someone for getting shot.” Neil offered his hand to shake. “Welcome to the Reapers, kid.” I shook his hand, marking the second time I took somebody’s hand that I probably shouldn’t have. Handshakes have this way of making things official, and that handshake meant I’d just said yes to something I didn’t yet understand in the slightest. “Did she brief you?”

  “We didn’t have time, things were happening too quickly, even with the relativity switch to consider. It was a clusterfuck. I was only there to take her because I was on my way home from work and felt the pull. We both got lucky.”

  “No kidding. …Wait, her?” He asked, looking confused.

  “She’s a soul mismatch. Seems like a nice girl, at least.”

  “HEY.” I started coughing the moment I yelled, finding out raising my voice with a damaged lung was a mistake. “Ow, ow, fuck, ow.”

  “Easy, easy, take a second to breathe. Slow as you can. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. Keep going,” Neil said, voice calm and reassuring. Reaper or not, Dr. Hensley’s actually good at his job. My breathing did manage to get back to as normal as a lung with a hole in it will allow, slowly but surely.

  “You guys are talking about me like I’m not even here,” I said, keeping my voice low and breath steady. Talking hurt, much moreso now than it had before. “What do you mean, ‘soul mismatch.’ And what’s a Reaper?” I took another moment to breathe, just long enough to catch my breath. “What did I get signed up for?”

  “You didn’t even tell her? Seriously, Maria?” Dr. Hensley seemed incredulous, smooth about it as he was.

  “Like I said, we didn’t have time. Things moved too fast for me to be able to do it properly. Too many witnesses, and help was too close. Travel time is a factor, remember?” She said, exasperated at being questioned, before turning to me. “I promised you an explanation, and you’ll have one. What should I call you, first?”

  The question caught me off guard. In truth, I’d thought about what name I’d like if I magically woke up as a girl since I was ten, maybe eleven years old. I’d more or less stopped, resigned to not actually liking what I saw when I looked in the mirror all that much, no matter what I told myself. Every time I thought about it, I felt a little pang of disappointment when I woke up the next morning, looked down, and saw the only thing that had changed was that I’d kicked my blankets off in my sleep again. Names swirled in my head, choice after choice falling away until one remained. My first exposure to death had been my grandmother. I’d been in the room when she passed, having been the last person to hug her and tell her I loved her before she breathed her last. She had been my rock, growing up, and losing her cut a hole in my heart that took ages to heal.

  “Anna. Anna Knox. I like that name.” I said, actually smiling for once. A real smile, not the retail rictus I’d perfected over years of slinging coffee, soda, beer, and books. It felt nice.

  “Anna. I like that name.” Maria smiled down at me, and I could’ve sworn the room lit up just a little bit brighter. Something about that smile told me everything was gonna be okay. That I was gonna be okay.

  It was lying, but neither of us knew that at the time.

  “So. Anna. A Reaper is a psychopomp. That’s what you’ll be doing.”

  “A psychowhat?” I asked, confused. The word sounded vaguely familiar, like I’d heard it on a TV show or something at some point.

  “A guide for the dead. A psychopomp. We guide newly deceased people to their place of final rest. More specifically, we drive them. That’s why your car’s getting repaired as we speak, you’ll need it to ferry the dead to outprocessing so they can move on to whatever awaits them.”

  “I have to haul around corpses in my car?!” My voice squeaked, and I started coughing again, doubling over from the pain. I started the breathing exercise before the doctor could speak, breathing in slowly, counting to five. It hurt, like fire in my chest, but it worked.

  “No! Goodness no, no, not at all. Their souls, not their bodies. We’re not coroners, we’re guides. I don’t even handle corpses at work unless I have to, jumalauta.” She shuddered slightly at the thought. Kind of a strange relief, knowing I wasn’t the only one that felt weird about the idea of hauling a body around in my back seat.

  “It gets a little more complicated than that, considering there’s competition for the soul on occasion, but that’s the gist of it, yeah,” Dr. Hensley said, getting a small wince of acknowledgement from Maria.

  “It’s not common, but the human soul is kind of a hot commodity. We have to know how to defend ourselves to do our jobs. You’ll be trained in that as well, don’t worry. Whatever suits you best, we have someone who can train you in it,” she said, aiming for reassuring and smacking the target stand hard enough to leave a dent.

  “So we’re dead people Uber, but people try to kill us?” I asked, genuinely starting to wonder if I’d made the right decision.

  “Not always?” She said, trying to smile.

  “Not always trying to kill us, or not always people.”

  “Both?” Her smile faltered. Yep. Bad decision. This clinched it. I sighed, the weight of the situation pressing down harder by the moment. “So, how long am I in for, here? Is this a period of time thing, or is it a number of souls, or what?”

  “That depends. How long do you want to live?” Dr. Hensley chimed in, confirming he did, and coincidentally still does, have the bedside manner of a turkey vulture.

  “Wait, if I stop, I die?!” I’d made a deal with a blonde devil in a nurse’s cap, I was sure of it. I was so mad, so scared, so ready to chew my own leg off just to escape, that it all coalesced in to a strange calm. Almost zen, really. I call it the Fun Zone. Fun for me, not for others. I’d had just about enough of Nurse Maria, enough of Dr. Hensley. Enough of being told I didn’t have a choice in the matter concerning how my life went. All of that backlog I’d built up of rage, and hate, and anger, and sadness, all that stuff I’d learned to quash really nice and neat when I was younger and I didn’t want to get in trouble for fighting or yelling at people for being jerks, all of it welled up, and it changed. Turned in to something different, something altogether more useful.

  It became fuel for me to burn.

  I’d gone very still, and I could see the doctor and nurse both talking, asking me if I was okay. My hearing was gone, it felt like, all the noise of the world replaced with this calming quiet. The burning in my chest was new, it wasn’t the pain of the hole in my lung or my cracked ribs. It felt like actual heat, and it was increasing. Feeling my ribs knit back together felt a lot like what I imagine legos feel like when they snap together inside you, or those little plastic rods and cogs you could build stuff with, K’nex or something. My body was fire without flame. Old work injuries knit together, the cartilage in my ankle managed to heal properly, even my hands hurt in a different way for once. Steam rose up from the sweat that started to pour from my face.

  I’d decided I’d had enough, like I said.

  I kicked my blankets off and swung my legs over to one side, standing as Maria made to stop me. I batted her hand away, and right about then is why I found out why so many people who claim to be sensitive to the paranormal hate hospitals. The world went grayscale, then took on the look of a vaseline-covered camera lens. I saw the tubes fall from my arm and chest, the wounds rapidly closing behind them. I got some gnarly scars from that one.

  I saw the two of them panic, rushing over to where I’d been, pawing at the air as though they could magically pull me back from wherever I’d gone. They could’ve, they just didn’t know where I was, which made the grabbing difficult.

  I mentioned seeing why people sensitive to the paranormal hate hospitals, nursing homes, places like that. I looked out in the hallway, and for the first time in my life, regretted standing up for myself so much I actually wished I could take it back. It turned to look at me, all eight and a half feet of emaciated body, overlong limbs, and stretched proportions freezing in place when our eyes locked. It tilted its head, the almost featureless mask it wore for a face hanging just lopsided enough to reveal the void behind it. It raised a single, bony arm, and with a too-many-jointed finger, pointed at me, then made the ‘come here’ motion.

  “D o n ‘ t—” I didn’t give it a chance to finish speaking. I had this glowing pistol on one hip, it looked like a grey-white version of Marlena’s gun. I drew, I fired, and, thankfully, missed all of the two dozen shots that ripped from the barrel in the few seconds I held the trigger down. The recoil scared me, sue me.

  “—b e a f r a i d.” It sounded disappointed, almost, right before closing the twenty feet of distance between us in a flash, seemingly not moving at all. “R e a p e r.” I could feel it smiling down at me, and for a whole second and a half, I felt a strange peace wash over me. Then I started screaming like a horror movie victim in the shower, the world refocused, and the two of us phased back in to the world of the living.