*****
As the night progressed, the man’s condition remained the same. He slept while the hospital moved around him, hours slipping by, unnoticed. Voss was checking on another patient at the other end of the ward, the nurses were doing their rounds and taking care of the clerical duties, and the man who came in screaming was beginning to stir as the propofol began to wear off. His eyelids began to flutter as he fought to regain consciousness. He tried to move his leg, but all he could manage to do was twitch his foot. In his semi-conscious state, he knew something was wrong. He felt strange, and not because of the sedative they gave him. His chest felt tight and his arms were numb. He tried to call out to someone, but he couldn’t find his voice. And the only doctor he could see was walking in the other direction.
As the man began to panic, another man stepped forward and stood silently at the foot of the bed. No one reacted to his presence, because no one could see him, not even the one he had come for. He had dark-chocolate skin and was dressed in a suit; black pants and jacket, no tie, and a white collar shirt, the top two buttons left undone. His hair was short and was so black, it almost seemed to emanate the darkness. His expression as he looked upon the man in the bed was a somber one, as though he was attending the funeral of an acquaintance.
As the man on the bed continued to twitch, the man in the suit looked at his watch, but there were no hands or numbers there. It appeared to simply be a blank face, but as the man stared at it, he passed his other hand slowly over the watch face. When he lowered his hand, the watch face was glowing a luminous white, reflecting in the man’s eyes as he stared down at it. Seven hands had appeared on the watch, all but one of them pointing at where the 12 should have been. The seventh was moving like the second hand would on a regular watch, but counterclockwise, slowly ticking down to meet the other hands. The hand that appeared to be counting the seconds was the only one that was glowing white. The others, the ones stationary on the 12 location, were completely black. The man watched the second hand as he waited, counting down silently with each soundless tick.
3… 2… 1…
When the hand reached the 12 location on the watch, it faded to black, like the other hands, and stopped moving. And so did the man in the bed.
The man with the watch waited a few moments. The ER continued as though nothing had happened. Voss was nowhere in sight, the nurses were continuing their rounds and no one noticed that one of the patients had just died. No one had thought to have his vitals monitored.
A few moments later, something began to stir, drawing the eyes of the man with the watch. Something was rising out of the corpse on the bed, shining bright, burning blue like the hottest part of a flame. It was almost like a mist, but moved through the air like water. It was coming out of his chest, as though he had sprung several leaks, and was twisting and coiling through the air as it made its way up above the body. The ends of each coil met and began to blend together, forming a slowly spinning orb of light and mist. Suddenly, the orb burst forth a blinding flash of blue and white light, although no one in the ward reacted to it. When the light faded, the orb was gone and the young man was gently floating down to the floor, his eyes closed, facing the man with the watch, but his body still lying on the bed behind him. He stood there, motionless, his eyes closed, as though he was asleep.
The man with the watch took a step closer and spoke a single word to the apparition.
“Jeremy.”
The man named Jeremy responded as though he’d been shocked. His eyes snapped wide open and he looked around the ward as though he was surrounded by vicious animals.
“What happened?” he cried. “Where am I?” Then he turned around and looked at the bed. The bed where his body was still lying.
He gaped at his body, his mouth opening and closing and his eyes bulging. He spluttered as he couldn’t find the way to comprehend what he was seeing, sounding as though each attempt to speak caused him to choke.
“What? But… What? I-I-I-I, no, no-no-no-no-no, no! NO!”
“Jeremy, please try to stay calm,” the other man said.
“Calm?!” Jeremy shrieked. “You want me to be calm? I’m here, but I’m also there!” He gestured wildly towards the bed. “What happened? What’s going on? Who the hell are you?”
“If you calm yourself, I’ll explain,” the man said.
Jeremy struggled for a moment to compose himself, but he stopped shouting and waited for an answer, although his eyes were still bulging. The man with the watch, once satisfied that Jeremy was calm enough, told him what he had told countless others before.
“My name is Darius,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m afraid you… are dead.”
Jeremy just stared at Darius, as though he was waiting for the punch-line of a really bad joke. He began to shake his head from side to side, not believing Darius, not wanting to believe. Darius was familiar with this response. People rarely had the capacity to believe they were dead, or else were in denial, but they would always quickly come around. The severity of their new reality is something that not even the most stubborn person could ignore for long. Besides, Darius knew how to convince people.
Darius stepped closer to Jeremy, who looked at him with worry and apprehension. The two remained motionless for a moment as Darius let the seriousness of the situation dawn on Jeremy.
“If you were still alive,” Darius said quietly, “could I do this?”
And with one movement so fast that Jeremy didn’t even react, Darius reached out and thrust his fist through Jeremy’s chest. His hand passed straight through Jeremy, coming out his back, between his shoulders. Jeremy looked down at the arm sticking into his chest and opened his mouth in a silent scream as he saw the area of his chest around Darius’ arm rippling like the surface of a lake after a stone had been thrown into it. Darius removed his arm and stepped back, allowing Jeremy to process what he had just experienced. Jeremy frantically felt his chest, finding it to be completely intact.
“Dude…” Jeremy murmured. He started to double over and reached out a hand to lean on the rail at the end of the bed, but as his hand touched the metal, it passed through and he almost fell, managing to regain his balance at the last second. He raised his hand to his face and stared at it, as though it was some foreign object that was a complete mystery to him. Looking as though he might panic again, he ran his hand over his shaved head and turned away from Darius.
“I need a drink, man.”
Darius shook his head, sympathetically. “I’m afraid you don’t drink anymore. You don’t need to. Or eat. Or sleep. All that’s left for you is to let go, and move on.”
Jeremy slowly turned and looked at Darius with sudden suspicion. “Who are you, man? How do you know all this stuff? Are you dead, too?”
“No, Jeremy. Not exactly, anyway. As I said, my name is Darius. I’m here to help you.”
“Help me how?”
“I’m a Reaper, Jeremy. I’m here to help you move on.”
Jeremy reacted as though Darius had just pulled a gun on him. He staggered backwards, nearly falling in his haste, suddenly terrified by the sight of Darius.
“You’re the Grim Reaper?” Jeremy cried. “You killed me?”
“No, you misunderstand. I’m not the Grim Reaper, I’m just one of many Reapers. We help people, we don’t kill them. Your soul needs guidance to the other side. I can send you there. I can show you the way.”
“No!” Jeremy shouted. “No! This isn’t right, I’m not supposed to be dead! I’m not ready!”
“People never are,” Darius said sadly.
“But I was murdered!” Jeremy shouted. “It’s not my time, I was murdered!”
“Murdered?” Darius repeated, sounding confused. “I was to understand you died from heart failure due to a bad combination of the sedative the hospital gave you and the drugs already in your system.”
“No, man!” Jeremy yelled at him. “Open your ears! I’m only here because of a m
onster killing my friends and trying to kill me!”
“A monster?” Darius frowned. “What kind of monster?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I dunno, but it turned my buddy to ashes.”
“Ashes?” Darius repeated, suddenly feeling uneasy. “Just by touching him?”
Jeremy hesitated. “Yeah. How did you know that?”
Darius was very serious now. He stepped closer and spoke with great urgency. “This creature, what did it look like? Tell me, this is very important.”
“I-I dunno, man, I didn’t see its face. It was wearing a big black hood.”
Darius reeled as though Jeremy had slapped him. He turned away and took a few steps, as though uncertain of what to do next. He rubbed his chin and surveyed the room, as though an answer might present itself.
“Hey!” Jeremy snapped. “Dude, over here! Remember me? I’m dead, here! You gotta help me!”
“There is nothing I can do for you, Jeremy,” Darius said absently. “Your time has passed, and I am charged with guiding you out of this world and into the next. But…” He paused as he thought. “Yes, Charon. Charon will help.”
“Charon?” Jeremy scoffed. “Can he bring me back to life?”
“You will have to ask him. And I have some questions for him, too. He will know what to do about this ‘monster’ you saw.”
“CODE BLUE!”
Darius and Jeremy turned toward the shouting to see a young nurse standing over Jeremy’s body, her fingers on his neck, having just felt for a pulse and not found one. Darius and Jeremy had been so distracted they never saw her approach.
Now that he looked at her, Darius instinctively knew her name was Peyton Paradisa. He knew everything about her in an instant from a glance. Where she was born, her parents’ names, mother still alive, her father died years earlier, and the names of every boyfriend she’d ever had. He got all this and more in a flash, seeing it all in his mind’s eye, but even though he was in a hurry to get Jeremy to Charon, he paused as he looked upon the nurse named Peyton, who was now starting chest compressions on Jeremy’s lifeless vessel. With all of the information he knew about her, there was one piece of crucial information that was missing. It should have been the first thing he knew when he looked at her, but it never came.
The day of her death.
Where he was supposed to see her ultimate fate etched into her destiny, Darius saw nothing. It was blank. This fact was an impossibility that he had never heard of. Everyone lived and everyone died, that was the way order was kept, and to discover someone who had no visible fate…
Darius stared at Peyton Paradisa as she tried to revive Jeremy. This new revelation, the fact that this girl seemingly had no destiny or would live forever, only made things worse. And to top it all, Darius felt certain he had seen this girl before, though he couldn’t remember where. His familiarity with her only made him more uneasy.
“Will she be able to save me?” Jeremy quietly asked Darius as they watched Peyton perform CPR and the doctors come running.
Darius shook his head. “No. Come, we have to go. Charon is the only hope for any of us now.”
“Wait, wait!” Jeremy said, holding up his hands. “What’s going to happen to me?”
Darius sighed. “I don’t often accompany souls after Reaping them. Normally a Reaper will send a soul to the other side alone. But I’ll lead you straight to Charon. What happens then is up to him. But I can promise you this; as long as you do exactly what he says, no harm will come to you.”
And with that, Darius waved his hand and the air beside them appeared to open up, like the universe had been cut open to reveal a dark hole in reality, but with a bright light shining somewhere deep inside, glimmering and beautiful. Jeremy looked into the void with uncertainty, worry and mistrust etched across his face. Darius placed a hand on his shoulder and, with one last glance at Peyton Paradisa, who was still trying desperately to save her long-gone patient, he stepped into the light with Jeremy.