A Tale Of Two Reapers Read online

  A Tale Of Two Reapers

  Jack Wallen

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  To Kill A Reaper Book 2 Available Now!

  About the Author

  Also From DevilDog Press

  Thank You!

  Copyright © 2016 by Jack Wallen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  A Tale Of Two Reapers is dedicated to all of those clinging to the idea that they may have been overlooked by Fate. Fear not, daring dreamers, a life of wonder and joy is but a heartbeat away.

  To my lovely wife, Stephanie. I thank Fate everyday that he placed us in the same moment.

  Acknowledgments

  Edited

  Sara Marian

  Proofed

  Karen Dziegiel

  Kimberly Sansone

  Chapter 1

  Alarms suck. Their piercing beeps are nothing more than a hot knife to the heart. No matter how many years you’ve been waking at the same time every damn day, the second that driving klaxon winds you out of bed, you want to punch nuns, kick the elderly, and bully children.

  Or maybe I’m a bit jaded.

  I suppose I should explain.

  Nah. Like that would do you any good. It’s as if you really care about me. Although…you probably should.

  Have I got your attention yet?

  “Go to hell!” I shouted down my alarm. Like that’ll do anything beyond make me seem insane to anyone happening to be listening in on my conversation with an obnoxious timepiece dead set on driving me to an early grave.

  That was a joke.

  Regardless of my terrible sense of humor, the alarm continued to mock me.

  Beep. Beep. Beep, motherfucker.

  Inanimate object: 1. Me: 0.

  My lungs drew in just enough frigid air to bring me back to a semblance of existence. In a slow, steady exhale, the breath expelled in a gauzy, white haze.

  “I hate the cold.” The words sighed from my lips. I’d always intended to move somewhere tropical. Hawaii, Cancun…anywhere but Florida. I’d never get a moment’s rest in death central. So many senior citizens biding their time until the Grim Reaper swooped in to transport them across the River Styx.

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Grim Reaper,” I mumbled aloud.

  Why am I laughing? That’s a damn good question. Instead of cracking open your skull and spooning the answer directly into your gray matter, why don’t you walk a few miles in my shoes…boots, actually. I have a penchant for Doc Martens—you’ll understand soon enough.

  Am I stringing you along? More importantly, are you enjoying my little bout of cryptic-ism?

  “Son of a bitch.” My voice rose as I slipped from under the covers. “This place is so…damn…cold.”

  That’s what happens when you stop paying your electric bill. It never ceases to amaze me that I haven’t been evicted yet. One of the only benefits of renting from a slum lord. As long as the dollah dollah bills greased his crusty palm, he’d let me host a brothel dedicated to necrophilia. No electricity? No problem.

  The routine was the same as it had been for years. Wake up, stretch, pour coffee, remember I hate coffee, toss black water into the sink, shower, dress…leave for the daily grind. That pattern hadn’t changed since before you were born.

  Sounds kind of arrogant of me to assume I have the slightest idea how old you are. Trust me, it doesn’t matter, and the statement holds true. You’ll understand soon enough.

  Or not. What do I care?

  Out the door, my black leather trench coat flapping in my wake like I was from a bad Tarantino film. I always picture this scene in slow motion. Why? Because I can, because it’s my fucking moment.

  Down the ten flights of stairs I went, dodging used condoms, dirty needles, soiled diapers, and the drunken denizens cast off by society. I’d like to call them my friends. Truth be told, they were little more than clients in wait.

  Soon enough, chums. Soon enough.

  The second I crash through the barrier between my fortress of decrepitude and the big nasty called life, the job begins.

  My job…the one I hate.

  We’re getting there. Unbunch your panties.

  No matter how many times I’ve done this, no matter how many lives I’ve touched…people still give me the creeps. It’s not the deeds they do—be they good or evil—nor is it that they’ve infested this planet like a plague; although that latter bit does raise my ire, it does me a world of good to know I’m doing my part to balance that particular scale.

  Why do people cause my flesh to goose? It’s the smell…the stink of life. No matter how hard you try to mask it, the fetid stench permeates the air around you. I could go a year without bathing and still want to retch every time I get wind of the funk of life.

  Did you catch that clue?

  I’m trying to be coy. That’s kind of my shtick.

  There was a stone block in the center of a square ahead of me. I raced to it and hopped on up to get a better look around. I liked to lord above my subjects.

  “I know you’re here,” I called out. “Show yourself.”

  What was I looking for? A color. To be more specific, black. What I seek, however, is not your average black. I’m talking Spinal Tap black…aka “none more black”.

  That was a joke. If you can’t fall in line with my brilliant, snarky sense of humor, you and I are going to have a problem.

  What was I saying? Oh, yeah…colors.

  Every living creature gives off an aura. The more life one has, the brighter the aura. Conversely, the nearer to death, the darker the hue. As the old saying goes, Once you go black, you never go back. You may not believe this, but I coined that gem.

  Standing on my temporary pulpit, I was surrounded by a rainbow of colors, everything from brilliant gold to a fading blue.

  “What the hell?” I spun a jaunty pirouette to take in the whole of the square. “Not one goddamn black aura? One of you bastards has got to be…”

  Before the words escaped my mouth, a man in a perfectly tailored suit approached, talking excitedly into one of the most annoying inventions to have ever been created by man…a bluetooth headset. Each time I caught someone using one it took every ounce of restraint I had to not pull the damn thing out from the opposite ear—straight through the brain.

  I swear I don’t have anger issues.

  The well-appointed soldier of the capitalist army was alternating between shouting into his microphone and sipping his ten dollar latte. Even in the middle of winter, flop sweat raced down his neck to soak his overpriced button down shirt. I did my best to listen in on his conversation. Talk of stocks, meetings, incentivising actionable content. Yawn. Businessmen bored me to death.

  “Good one,” I said to myself.

  Mr. Business had one of the blackest auras I’d beheld in a very, very long time. Usually auras were mostly transparent…like your average fog. The cloud would roll and twist around the living body,
just thick enough to give it that Hollywood trying too hard to make everyone look unnaturally perfect look…only with a dab of color. This one, on the other hand, was Chinese-pollution thick. Joe Bluetooth was surrounded by a roiling tar soup.

  I hopped down from my perch and fell into lockstep behind the prick. I should probably feel guilty about generalizing, but I’ve lived way too long to be wrong about this sort of thing.

  “Tell that fucking bastard to meet me in my office in five minutes or his ass will not only be out of a job, but I’ll make sure he never works in this city again. Hell, I’ll make damn certain his fucking kids never work. I’d love to see that arrogant jackass and his sniveling brood on the street. I’d cradle my own balls and stroke myself, watching it all happen.”

  Guilt abated.

  “Maybe I don’t hate my job so much,” I whispered.

  I gathered my wits, took in a deep breath of that hateful, frigid, New York winter air, and sprinted straight for Business McDouche.

  As my body passed through his, I inhaled the darkening aura until nothing remained. My lungs burned, threatening to exhale the foul fog. I’d never tasted such a bitter aura. If I were so inclined, I’d have tossed his darkness all over his higher-class-than-thou Italian loafers just for sport.

  I turned, lungs locked, and watched as my target stopped, shuddered, and dropped…his hand clutching his left arm. The aura fought against my lungs to escape, but I held it in check. Tears raced down my cheeks and my body seized against the strain until the man finally expired.

  Chaos erupted.

  That’s a lie. This is New York. Most of the passersby ignored the dead man, some going so far as to step over his lifeless body.

  I opened my mouth to release what remained of the man’s energy and watched it dissipate like vapor from some hipster’s e-cig.

  Oh, the irony.

  “It’s going to be a long-ass day,” I mumbled, and walked away from the scene, making sure to casually step over the dead man’s body like a good New Yorker.

  My name is Grim.

  I’m a Reaper.

  That’s not completely true. I’m the Reaper and, coincidentally, my name is Grim. But please, don’t call me Grim Reaper. That’d be like me calling you Joe Accountant, or Jane Lawyer, or Fred Pharmacist. My name is Grim and I have been the Reaper for centuries.

  Do I need to spell it out any further? Thank God. I have a job to do.

  The walkaway was always my favorite part of the gig. It’s not that I relish ending people’s existence…quite the opposite, in fact. When I was taken by Fate to serve as the Reaper, my first death was an accidental tragedy the likes of which even ol’ Willy Shakes couldn’t conjure. It was during the Spanish Inquisition. A young woman was about to be roasted on a spit for witchcraft. I knew she was innocent, but there was nothing I could do. I tossed myself at the mercy of the court…to no avail.

  Or so I thought.

  My pleas were, in fact, heard…only by the wrong ears. That was when Fate decided it’d had enough of watching the realm of mortals sacrifice viable souls to such asinine causes. With a poetic nod, the true master of the universe decided the only living human worthy of the cause was the man whose heart was breaking at the loss of an innocent woman.

  As she burned, I was overcome by the need to pull her from the stake. The flames lapped away my flesh and stripped me from my mortal coil. Yet, because of my mission of innocence, the soul I’d laid claim to refused to depart and wound its way within the fabric of my being. At that moment, the Reaper was born. Since then, I’ve been balancing the scales to ensure a certain level of equality existed between the realms of life and death.

  “Yo, motherfucker.” An antsy thug pushed against me. His aura was bright green…almost neon. No death happening here; the prick had a long, hard life ahead of him. I knew this script all too well. The bastard would puff up, act like he was bigger and badder than the truth would eventually reveal, while a partner would pick my pocket. Little did they know, I had not a damn thing to pick.

  I reaped for love, not for money.

  That’s not altogether true. One of the many skills I’d picked up over the many, many years of my existence was pickpocketing. I’d always called it my paycheck for reaping. The dead had no use for cash or credit. I, on the other hand, did. So as I passed through my targets, I’d nick a wallet or purse…anything of value I could get my hands on. I’d become quite good at the task.

  “Well, that’s a bit insulting,” I said with the snarkiest tone in my repertoire. Sometimes it was beyond challenging to give a shit about the living. I’d seen way too much, knew what was behind the velvet curtain, and had witnessed all the sausage being made.

  “What the hell did you say to me?” The yoot barked as he snaked his hand into his pants. Unfortunately, what was about to go down was all too cliché. Thug Life would pull out his piece, send a slug through my skull, and piss himself when I didn’t drop dead.

  I had no choice but to step…so to steppin’ I did commence. “I believe the insinuation was that you insulted me by claiming I fuck the matriarch of my family. Considering you know neither me nor my mother, exactly how did you come to that rather haughty conclusion?”

  Out comes the pistol…click, click, click.

  “You see what we gots here?” the punk called out to his crew. “This motherfucker is a learned man.” He pressed the barrel of the pistol into the flesh of my forehead. “I think I’m gonna call you Schoolhouse Rock. Why don’t you learn us some shit?”

  Time to play a game.

  Fate would have my balls for this…but these punks lived a bit too large for their britches anyway, so what the hell? I reached out, wrapped my hand around his, and forced his finger to pull the trigger.

  Although guns cannot kill me, the force of a bullet crashing through and through my skull was enough to make me lose my mind.

  Up in heah, up in heah.

  What’s worse is the feeling of a metal slug slicing through gray matter—like pushing your finger through a cup of Jell-O. There’s just enough resistance to make it exciting.

  “Oh, hell no,” Thug Life called out. “The fuck are you, man?”

  “I am not Major Tom, nor am I a space cowboy.” I did my best waa waa sound, which went completely unappreciated. “I have gone beyond the rainbow, and Oz was not nearly as gay-friendly as one might expect. Some have, on occasion, called me Death.” I poked my finger into the bullet hole. “You may call me Grim.”

  I’d noticed one of Thug Life’s posse was sporting a coal-black aura, so I figured I might as well take this crazy train straight to Arkham and enjoy the madness. I positioned myself such that the blackened one was directly behind me, waited for Thug Life to level the pistol my way, and fell back into the soon-to-be dead man.

  His aura tasted of cheap liquor, weed, and anger.

  The blast from the gun sounded and the bullet crash-landed into the dead man’s chest.

  Yo ho ho, motherfucker.

  He dropped without fanfare. The second he expired, I puffed his black aura out in perfectly symmetrical rings. As the punks converged on their pal, I raced off into the crowd to find my next soul. In my hand was a plastic baggie of pot and a cell phone.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “Thank Fate my first victim had the decency to carry a wallet stuffed with cash.”

  I could sell the pot. The cell phone was useless…one of those pay as you go plans where you think you’re getting a good deal, but in the end you wind up with a phone that’s two years out of date and short on storage.

  Besides, having a cell phone only reminded me of the fact that I had but one friend.

  “I’ve gotta fix that,” I mumbled as I handed the phone over to the first homeless man to cross my path.

  “Fuck you,” the man growled. “I can’t eat or drink this.”

  New York. God, I love this town.

  Chapter 2

  Speaking of New York. If you haven’t had the pizza, get outta here.


  You’re probably wondering why the Reaper would need to eat. It’s simple…I’m not a damned ghost. I’m a guy who happens to be over five hundred years old and huffs souls for a living. I still have to eat. And when in Rome…

  “Louis,” I shouted over the din of a thick lunch crowd. “The usual.”

  “Two slices and a brew comin’ up, ya ugly bastard,” the owner replied in the thickest accent this side of the mafia. Louis’ Pizza Shack has been my lunch stop for years. Not only was the pizza the best in town, it was a great place to sit and watch life go by.

  Literally.

  A rainbow of auras would pass the plate glass windows. Almost daily, a shiny black cloud of angst and doom would enter the establishment and order their last glorious meal. I’d give them time to enjoy the world’s most perfect pie and then follow them out to do the dead deed.

  Reaping on a full stomach sucked. The inevitable war between belching up pizza and holding down aura was an art few had perfected. Make that one. Me. Still, every so often, the metaphorical shit would hit the philosophical fan. I had a feeling today would be one such day.

  He entered like a pissed-off bull about to crush nut and gore a cape-wielding fighter. The skin covering his skull was pulled taut and glistened with a sheet of sweat from the effort of carrying around a couple hundred extra pounds or so.

  Johnny. The man was a regular…and a legend. The only human being alive to have eaten the King Louis in one sitting. Thirty-six inches of pizza pie piled with every meat known to man and a cow-full of cheese. I was there when it went down—and stayed down, per the rules. Thanks to Johnny’s gastric virtuosity, he won the right to eat free for life. Every day, at this same time, the door would open and the fattest man to walk the mean streets of Manhattan would squeeze through and demand a whole pie.

  I watched, week by week, as Johnny’s aura grew ever darker. It was only a matter of time before his fog of war would finally fade to black and the gut of steel would be no more. Today was that day.