Inhuman - Reaped

This is a bit more in-depth Author's Note than I usually do, but I think this one needs it. All reaper speech is done between ~~ because nobody but a moira can hear them. I needed a way to make their speech different that didn't involve a RTF.

Because somebody's bound to ask, here are the reaper eye colors. I think I explained it pretty well in the story (though there are some colors Becca hasn't figured out yet), and I know nobody's going to want to scroll back for this, but just in case.

Green = amusement/humor

Red = anger

Blue = fear

Yellow = embarassment

Lavender/Purple = arousal

Gold = confusion

White/silver = irritation

Orange = shock/surprise

Pink = curiosity

Glittering = playful

This is still in my Inhuman universe. Some characters here have been mentioned elsewhere, and the whole lot will be like that with odd little mentions and cameos. In case anybody's wondering, "the bowl" is where the reapers go to get their next reaping assignment. In my head it's like one of those concrete birdbaths, a couple feet across, with a shallow pool of something in it. The reaper looks in and goes off and does their job.

As always, thank you for reading. Please vote, and leave a comment at the end if you feel so inclined.

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I scrambled along the sidewalk, one hand on the camera around my neck. I needed to get to the scene in time to see them. For some reason, these two only ever turned up at crime scenes. But there were only two that ever showed up to the violent crimes. If I wanted a picture of a reaper, I needed to get close to the scene.

A broad uniformed chest stepped out in front of me before I could get too close. "Ma'am," I tried looking around the officer. "You're going to need to go back the way you came."

I pulled out my little media badge with its picture of me and my name, "Rebecca White with The Enquirer." There was a sputtering, then the voice registered and I smiled, "Come on, Jake. Let me in."

"Dammit, Becca," he muttered, but glanced around. "If I get caught letting the media on crime scenes, I'll lose my job and I'm trying to get promoted."

"Have I ever told anybody who lets me in?" I looked up at him, and he frowned, then looked at the ground. I had won. No good reporter ratted out the one letting them into everything.

"Leave your camera, please? I can't be the one that lets pictures get out."

I took the camera from around my neck and handed it to him. "I'm not after body shots. Don't touch anything on it."

He raised the tape a few inches to let me go through and I was off. This was the third hostage situation that ended in the shooting of one of the terrorists, and the first where they had killed a hostage. I might work for a tabloid, but it was not my job to get the scandalous pictures of the bodies and I would do my best to make sure I did not get them in my shots. But this was the only way to see a reaper.

Yes, a reaper. Like the grim reaper, but a singular part of a group. I knew for a fact there was more than one which made sense considering how many people died in a given minute around the world. I wasn't sure how many people could see these reapers. The people who were dying did not seem to react oddly right before they died, so I did not think they saw them ahead of time. I had been following these hostage cases, and I had seen two distinct beings in black cloaks that arrived, pulled the soul from the body, and disappeared. Unless there were more and they were all the same size I was betting there were only the two reaping violent deaths. I had a theory, and I was working on figuring out how to prove it. That meant getting pictures of these beings and trying to suss out any identifiers.

I made it to a spot where I could see the body of the dead terrorist. Someone had thrown a jacket over the hostage, but nobody gave the same respect to the shooter and while I did not blame them I wish they had covered him. Someone would get a picture of him and it would only add to his infamy when all he deserved was to dissolve into endless oblivion where no one remembered his name or what he had done. I reached into the thigh pocket on the pants I was wearing and pulled out a little point and shoot camera and double checked the flash was off. Jake should have known I would have a back up, but I was not complaining. I framed the shot and waited.

It did not take long. Nothing changed, nobody looked up or stopped what they were doing, but the reaper appeared by the body of the hostage and the sleeve moved toward the body. A bright silver-blue light rose from the body then disappeared and the reaper moved over to the shooter. I held the button down in short bursts to get as many shots as I could. The light that came out of the shooter was duller than the one that had risen from the hostage. Was that how they told the difference between the souls? Was it happenstance or indivuality like hair color? I had no idea. Though I had seen the souls before, I never got one on camera. I doubted this would be any different, but I took the shots anyway.

I looked over the top of the camera and something flew up from the ground and hit my forehead, making me flail back and fall on my ass. The reaper's hood moved in my direction and I saw a flash of swirling green and orange before it disappeared. Wiping my face and the top of my head, I found a june bug and tossed it aside before running back through the shadows to where I had left Jake guarding his little strip of tape.

"Get what you needed?" He asked, holding my camera out toward me.

"Hope so. Won't know til I get home and hear back from my editor." I loop the camera around my neck and head away from him. I pull my phone from my back pocket, glad to see it was not cracked from my little bug induced trip to the concrete earlier, and book an Uber ride from about two blocks further down the road. Traffic is piling up around the roadblocks, but I'm far enough away and getting farther when I get into the little sedan and head back to my place.

My place is nothing special. It is an awkward apartment above a tech development office that was built in a warehouse. The owner had lived here for a while before the business took off and he moved, but the warehouse still worked as their headquarters. Several months down the line when they could not rent it out to anyone because nobody wanted a constant rotation of people through the building - including the people who worked there - the apartment had come up on my alerts for dirt cheap and I jumped on it. I did not care who the neighbors were as long as they were not coming into the place. It was the nicest place I could hope to get into and it was well beneath my budget.

It was also hell and gone out by the docks, but they had put up a security fence and I even had my own code so they knew when it was me coming and going. The lot was mostly empty, but when I went through the side door into the little hallway that led to the stairs to my place, I could hear keys clacking and a near constant low hum of curses coming from the programmers in the other room. None of them looked up at me, and I did not bother them.

The apartment itself was not bad, but it was obvious that it had once been offices for whatever the warehouse used to be. The space was long and narrow, but the windows that had once faced into the warehouse had been covered. A galley kitchen stretched along one wall with a small island for some seating and division from the living area, then a door opened into a water closet and a short hall lead to the bedroom. The owner had put a lot of work into the bathroom, though. The hot water never ran out and the shower was way too fancy to exist, but it existed here for me. The bedroom was actually too big for the bed and dresser I had, but I did not need a new one so it stayed with too much space around the full sized bed.

I unplugged my laptop and dragged it off the dresser and set it on the bed with the cameras before stripping and heading for a quick shower. The endless hot water was the best. I sat on the little bench under the spray, smoothing my hair back from my face, and just marvelled for a minute or thirty that I had not had an episode in a few days. I had been off my meds for a solid two weeks, and the episodes of hallucinations had steadily declined. I had barely been able to write an article at the beginning of the month, and now I was chasing an actual story of some sort. I may not know what the story was, but my editor was loving it so I kept going.

I finally got up and finished my shower then toweled off. I pulled panties and a tank top on and then wrapped the towel back around my hair and sat on the bed to load the pictures from my camera onto the laptop. All but two or three were completely unusable, but those two or three were eerie as hell. I put those into another file and cleared the camera then set it and the big DSLR to charge. The towel went into the bathroom and I scrunched some leave-in goop into my hair and brushed it through then returned to the pictures.

The first clear photo was of the cloaked figure as it stopped at the body. I cropped out the body and made sure there were no clear reflections in the glass panes behind them, then did the same thing to the second picture that showed the figure reaching to the body. As I had known would happen, the shots when the soul left the body were blurry beyond use. The last usable picture had to have been when I fell. I must have hit the button because this thing was looking right at the camera with glowing green and orange eyes in the black depths of the hood.

I added the pictures into the article I had already written. The name of the shooter was known, but I focused my attention on the hostages and the one who had been killed and never mentioned the shooter's name. They didn't deserve the rememberance, but the victims did. My fingers flew across the keyboard as fast as they could, but my mind raced ahead. I scanned it for basic mistakes then sent it to my editor, fully expecting it to come back with all sorts of revisions. No matter what I did to edit it myself, the man would rip it to shreds and then work magic with the revisions and suggestions. He was a hard ass, but damn if he wasn't a great editor.

Finished, I set the computer back on my dresser with some music and went out into the kitchen to find something to eat. A shrimp and rice bowl was at the top of the stack in the freezer, so that was the lucky meal for the night. Sticking it in the microwave, I danced around to the music. Something tickled along my neck, but when I waved my hand back it was just my hair. I was sitting at the little island eating when I thought I felt something brush along my hip. I held my breath and waited, breathing out when it didn't happen again. This was not an episode. Nothing was touching me. It was all in my head. It didn't happen again while I ate and I started to relax again.

Trying to sleep was a whole different matter. I tossed and turned in the bed, fooling myself into thinking I felt something touching me. I'd stopped taking my meds because they made this so much worse, but now I was freaking myself out in my own head. Around three in the morning I lay on my back, staring up at the dim outline of the ceiling fan. I don't know what it was, but I turned my head toward the door and saw a person standing there. I calmly looked back at the ceiling and put my hands over my mouth. I'd never seen things before. I'd only ever felt things.

I refused to scream as the figure walked closer to the bed. My breath came in short gasps as it stood by the bed and then moved to touched my arm, and I felt it. I whimpered and moved across the bed so fast I fell off the other side. "Jesus Christ, who are you?"

The person disappeared on the other side of the bed and I heard something hit the wall. ~"You can see me?"~

The voice was deep, but quiet, but it didn't matter because there was someone in my apartment. "Why are you here? How did you get here? Who the fuck are you?"

I peeked over the bed and saw orange eyes looking back at me from the opposite wall, deep inside a hood I'd spent part of the evening looking at on my computer screen. ~"You should not be able to see me."~

"Of course I can fucking see you, asshole. You're in my bedroom! How the fuck did you get in here?"

One of the arms came up, but in the dark I couldn't make out a hand as it reached toward the wall and stood. He was in the same cloak as before, his eyes were still orange, and I'd watched him pull a soul out of a body. And he was focused on the one thing, ~"How can you see me?"~

He seemed as freaked out by that as I was about him being in my bedroom in the middle of the night.

"You're fucking standing in my bedroom right in front of me. Kind of how eyesight works. I'd have to be blind not to see you standing there in a fucking wizard robe." I pulled the blanket off the bed and stood, suddenly very aware I was standing in my underwear and a damn tank top. "Get out of my room!"

He raised his hands and then disappeared. I was out of my mind. I almost went downstairs to ask one of the programmers if they'd seen anyone come up, but I didn't know them well enough to do that without them calling the owner and I'd probably be evicted. I paced the apartment, running my fingers through my hair and shaking. In one night I'd gone from feeling pretty good about myself right back to where I was when I was on the meds. To top it off, I thought I was being visited by the grim reaper. What had been a kind of fun story was freaking me out.

I went back to my room and sent a text to the only person who might have some idea what I was going through. Jake helped me come off the meds, maybe he could help me stop losing my mind. I sat at the island with my head in my hands, staring at my phone when something moved out of the corner of my eye. I whimpered and rocked. I didn't want to look. If I didn't acknowledge its existence, did the hallucination happen?

Fuck my life, it talked, ~"Holy shit, you're really freaked out."~

The voice was softer, more feminine this time and I glanced to the side to see a woman with blood red hair and the same kind of black cloak standing in my living room. "I'm losing my mind."

~"I don't know about all that, but I'm not a figment of your imagination,"~ she stepped to the side, coming more fully into my view. Her hands were free from the sleeves of the robe and held out to her sides.

"How did you get in here?"

~"I can go where I want. Part of the job. You scared the shit out of my partner and he said you were terrified, too. I came to check things out. My name is Moira,"~ she said. ~"Mind if I stand over there so you can see me better and it's easier to talk?"~

I was losing my mind, talking to a grim reaper. "You're a reaper?"

~"One of a few. My partner, Charos, said the bowl sent him to you. He reached for you but you didn't reach back."~ She moved to the other counter and leaned against it, folding her hands in front of her. ~"You really shouldn't be able to see us."~

"How am I supposed to miss you in the Hogwarts get up?"

She laughed. A deep belly laugh with her head thrown back and when she looked back at me her eyes were glowing green, but calmed back to a plain black as her laughter died. ~"I said the exact same thing when I woke up wearing it. Can't change the uniform, though. You're not supposed to be able to see us because you're alive,"~ she waved her hand like that was some sort of magic trick I'd done. ~"Charos reached for you because the bowl sent him here. You didn't reach back."~

"What does that even mean? That guy didn't reach for me, he fucking rubbed my arm and then fell on his ass when I screamed." I had no idea why I was talking about this to a woman I was imagining, but in for a penny in for a pound on the crazy train. My phone hadn't gone off. Jake was probably asleep.

~"If I had any money I'd have paid to see Charos on his ass. Get a picture next time."~ She looked around the kitchen, but didn't move to touch anything. ~"You said I'm a grim reaper. We take souls, honey. If I reach for someone, it's their soul that reaches back. He reached for you, but you didn't reach back. That's a little freaky for us. God, I wish I could eat."~ She'd made it to an open shelf where I kept poptarts and some cereal.

I groaned and pulled my hands from my hair and slapped the top of the island. My hair flew everywhere and I probably looked about as crazy as I felt right then. "Are you real? Am I imagining all of this? You're some part of my subconscious that's going to give me some deep wisdom and I'll wake up with a better grasp of what I should be doing with my life or some shit?"

~"Huh. No,"~ she said. ~"I'm real, so's Charos and all the other reapers. You, missy, have been following us around a lot lately so you've been able to see us for a while. I really hope you got my good side with those pictures that one time."~

I stared at her, mouth hanging open. "Fuck me," I groaned and let my head fall to the island. "I've been following you guys for months and you show up and prove me right, and I flip my shit."

~"I mean, you're cute and all, but no thanks."~ She leaned back against the counter again. ~"You only saw me once, so I think technically you've been following Charos for months. I'd have lost it if some random wizard showed up in my place, too. Now, big question,"~ she put her hand on the island and I looked up at her, ~"if I bring Charos back here will you scream and put him on his ass again, and get a picture of it?"~ Her eyes glittered. I didn't have a better word for it. They stayed black, but sparks of colors flashed in them like glitter. ~"In all seriousness, though, if I go get him and bring him here will you be okay? Not going to scream? I can give you a couple minutes to fix your hair if you need."~

"Why does he have to come here?" I just ran my hands through my hair and called it good enough. "Why can't I just fucking be normal?"

~"Hey,"~ she tapped on the table now. ~"You're a living person that can see and touch a grim reaper. I've had my hands out to you throughout this whole chat and not once have I felt your soul reach back. Who the fuck wants normal? Look, give me a few minutes because he might be on duty and I'll have to snag him at the bowl, but I'll be back."~ She looked back at the shelf with the poptarts, ~"The living have all the luck."~

She disappeared, and I collapsed against the island with a groan. Maybe if I just accepted that I was losing my mind, it wouldn't hurt. Maybe going back on the meds wasn't such a bad idea. Then again, the meds had made this so much worse. Sure, I was having a conversation with a grim reaper, but the meds had made the feeling of being touched when I wasn't so much worse. I hadn't felt that except the little bit earlier.

~"Goddammit, Charos,"~ Moira was standing by the counter again with her hood down, looking to the side at nothing. I wasn't losing my mind, I had already lost it and my hallucinations were now talking to hallucinations of their own. ~"What do you mean you came here twice?"~

~"The bowl showed her to me, and brought me here. I reached for her, touched her, and she did not reach back. I returned to the bowl, and it sent me back to her."~ The voice was the same deep, soft voice from earlier.

"Oh, the hallucinations of my hallucinations are talking. This is great." I moaned and rubbed my eyes.

~"You fucking show yourself to her, asshole!"~ Moira yelled. I didn't know soft voices could yell, but she pulled it off. It was actually kind of soothing.

~"You do not speak to me that way, Moira,"~ and another one showed up in the kitchen, right where she was looking. My hallucinations brought friends to the party and I hadn't even been drinking. I giggled softly to myself.