Death is a Girl

Chapter 33 - On the Road

Morrigan sat with one foot on the dashboard, looking out over a mountainous landscape as the sunset. It was a nice scenic turnoff on the roadside and she considered sleeping right there tonight. The passenger side floor of the truck was littered with discarded wrappers, empty bottles, and fast-food bags.

It had been a full two days now since she left Death’s cabin, and to her surprise, nobody had come looking for her. She hadn’t originally planned on not going back. She just started driving, and kept driving. She stopped to sleep, curling up across the small bench seat, woke up the next morning, and drove some more.

What had she expected? To pull into a gas station one of these times to see Death standing there, tapping his foot impatiently. Or, Noir’s voice to suddenly emerge from the darkness and question just what the hell she was thinking?

There are souls to reap, Morrigan! There is no time for this nonsense!

She exhaled, because that thought led her to what worried her the most now.

There actually were no souls to reap. She had kept her list with her this entire time and kept checking it for new names. But the magical parchment stayed completely blank. If she was no longer being given names, did that mean she was going to get fired from being a reaper?

Maybe when Death, or another reaper altogether, caught up with her, they would go ahead and reap her as though she were a wandering spirit and send her to limbo. Her weeklong existence as a walking magical corpse who kills people would come to a sudden end. She had no idea what to expect, and that scared her.

She reached down, feeling for her bag on the floor and eventually got her hand inside it. She pulled out the diary, deciding to distract herself with some light (Okay, maybe not so light. Extremely fucking heavy, actually) reading.

Morrigan flipped through the pages, her eyes absorbing the words of this past reaper. She didn’t even know her name, yet the emotions and struggles leaped across centuries to resonate with her.

The girl’s words were raw, filled with anger, confusion, and a deep-seated pain. She wrote about the injustice she saw in the world, her inability to accept the indifference of fate, and her struggles with her new identity as a reaper.

March 12th, 1694

Ever since the day I died, I’ve avoided outwardly acknowledging, or even thinking, of what had happened to me. Death, in all his calm infinite wisdom, told me that it is not something I should just bottle up and put to the side. He says it is not forgotten simply because I do not acknowledge it, and it will fester and drive me mad if I don’t process and make peace with it.

My passing was far from peaceful, yet the moment my heart stopped was almost a relief. Because, after I had finally died I at least knew there was nothing left for them to take from me.

It started out as small things, which seemed the world to me at the time, but looking back I can see how small it was. They took my books, my jewelry, my clothes… just about everything that I could look at and think, “This is mine,” they took until I had nothing left. Or, at least that is how it felt. I still had a roof over my head, my family was still with me, but, those were the big things they would eventually take.

I didn’t lose my home right away, it was first my reputation, my ability to go into public and feel not only safe, but welcomed. I had friends, once, but I suppose they were no true friends as they abandoned me, believing the damn gossip and that I was dangerous. How ironic, if I had just kept quiet about my dream those same people who I saved would have instead died and never turned against me.

Morrigan paused and looked up, wondering what exactly that meant. It didn’t help that the writer didn’t always explain things. Of course, she wasn’t a novelist writing a story for an audience, she was only getting out her own feelings. So she was under no obligation to clarify.

There is further irony, in that they called me a witch then, but I was just a scared girl. I had no magic. Now, because in part of what they did to me, I do have magic. I’d almost love to go back there and show them what magic actually looks like.

Anyway, those friends were not so big a loss. After all, if they couldn’t stand beside me when the world was against me they were never true friends.

The truly big loss was my family. One by one, they turned away, unable or unwilling to stand against the tide of rumors and lies. It was a slow, painful process, watching the people I loved most become distant, cold strangers. I thought my mother, father and little brother would at least stand up for me. But no, the day my mother sat me down and explained that I needed to leave—that was the greatest betrayal of all.

She said she had my little brother to think about, and I’d be better off if I just got away. She hugged me, and cried, but even now I can’t help but think she meant none of her loving words. She was crying, but I don’t think she was crying for me. She just wanted me gone.

The diary entry abruptly ended there, and Morrigan flipped to the next but it was just another detailing an average day of a reaper. No continuation of the story the previous entry began, nor did it give any resolution to her argument with Death. It was just an apathetic catalog of events: who she killed and how they died. Morrigan skimmed through the next few entries and found it was much the same. There was a notable lack of the writer’s ruminations over her feelings or beliefs of the world.

Morrigan flipped to the end, wondering at least how far it went, and found the last entries were september of the same year. Though, every page was indeed used, so its possible there was a second diary somewhere. She set it down on the passenger seat then got out of the truck to stretch her legs for a few minutes. She walked over to the guardrail and took in the view of the mountains, the sun now bathing everything in soft orange.

Then, her gaze wandered down as something caught her eye. There was a glow, oval shaped, and as it moved she realized it was in the shape of a person.

Is it a hollow? Or just a wandering spirit?

“Hey!” Morrigan called. It stopped and looked up at her. It seemed more sentient than the hollow she had witnessed Death reap. “Um… You okay down there?”

“Y-you can see me!?” he called back.

“Yeah. Are you like… normal?” she asked. She figured if he was a sentient hollow she should be careful. Could hollows even be sentient? She had no idea.

“Please!” he called up. “Can you help me?”

Morrigan looked around. It was already getting dark and it didn’t look like an easy climb down, and an even more impossible climb back up, at that. He must have been a wandering spirit, though. He certainly sounded like a normal person.

“I could,” she called back down. “But I can’t get to you.” She looked to the bed of the pickup truck. “Wait a second, I have an idea.”

There were a bunch of old rusty tools piled up in the bed of Death’s truck, but she was hoping to find something that could help in the metal lockback sealed to the far end. She climbed in and walked over the tools to open it. Inside, she found what she was looking for: rope.

“Okay, I don’t know if this will work,” she called as she jumped down from the truck and started unraveling the cord of rope, letting the end stray further and further down the cliff. When it was fully unraveled, she could see the spirit reaching up but not quite able to grab hold.

“A little lower! Please!”

“I don’t think I can,” she called back. She wondered if he really couldn’t reach, or if his ethereal hand was just going through the physical rope. “You’ll have to climb a little.”

She watched as he climbed rocks, hugging the cliff face and searching for footing. It was now dark enough, espeacilly lower down the canyon, that if he was a normal person he would be impossible to see. Since he was a spirit, however, he gave off just slight enough of a glow that made him stand out.

He reached for the rope, but his hand swung through mid-air and the rope moved not at all, as though he hadn’t even gotten a finger on it. “No!” he wailed, and hugged the cliff face. “No! No! No! Why is this happening to me!” he whined and she heard his sobs echoing through the canyon.

“Hey! Hey! It’s alright!” Morrigan called down. “Don’t cry, I’m not going anywhere okay? I’m going to help you!” Though, as she said that, she had no idea how. She wasn’t going to climb down after him, no chance of that happening, but she thought there must be some way to help.

He continued sobbing as Morrigan looked around, trying to think of something. Then, an idea hit her, and she gripped the rope tight in her hands. “Hang on, I’m going to try something. Just don’t give up hope, alright?”

She took a deep breath as she closed her eyes and focused. She searched for that tingling sensation. She focused hard until she thought she found it, but wasn’t sure if she was just tricking herself. It started in her palms and as the sensation traveled through her arms she was sure it was actually there.

I don’t need it in my chest or my shoulders… just my hands, she thought, thinking how when she let it go over her whole body she killed the grass at her feet. As she focused on it, the sensation left her arms and intensified in her hands. She realized, tingle wasn’t quite the right word. Now that it was prevelent enough to really feel it, it was kind of like hot and cold at the same time. Like hot fudge on icecreme, or cold milk after a hot shower.

She tried to will it down the rope, and the sensation got even stranger because she could still feel it, but not on her hands or anywhere else on her own body. She opened her eyes, seeing a very slight glow traveling down the rope, and she realized that’s where she was feeling it. Hot and cold sensation like its in the pit of her stomach, except actually outside of herself and crawling down the cliff.

She doubted she would be able to explain that to anyone in a way that actually made sense, and to be fair, the way she was rationalizing it in her own mind didn’t quite acurately portray the sensation either.

She called down to the man who was still sobbing. “Try again! I think it’ll work!” When he didn’t react she tried encouraging him. “Come on! Just do it! It’s worth a shot, right?”

Finally, he snapped out of it and reached for the rope, and Morrigan’s heart jumped as she felt a slight tug.

“I can grab it!” he yelled. “Oh! Thank you! Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet!” she answered, feeding the rope through the underside of the guardrail. She tied it off and tested the knot with a quick tug. “Okay! Get climbing!” She had to sit on the ground, knees high at her sides and hands reaching down between her legs so she could keep her magic flowing through the rope. She tried hard to stay focused on that long, external sensation, worried that if she lost her sense of it the poor soul would take a quick trip to the bottom of the canyon.

She felt his presence slowly making its way up the rope until finally, she saw ghostly white fingers grip the edge of the cliff under the guardrail. She let go of the rope, got up, and reached over the rail to take his hand and pull him up the rest of the way.

He was a young man, probably in his twenties, with a look of utter disbelief on his face.

“Th-thank you,” the stammered. “I... I didn’t think anyone would help me.”

Morrigan offered a small smile. “Well, I couldn’t just leave you there, could I? What happened to you, anyway?”

He looked down, his form flickering slightly. “I’m not sure… I was driving on this road, it was snowing, and… I think there was an accident and I was thrown from my car, but I’m not sure.”

“Snow?” she raised an eyebrow. “How long were you down there?”

He tilted his head. “Um… well, what's the date now?”

“Uh… May, 12th.”

He seemed shocked, bringing a hand to his mouth as if to stifle a cry that never came. “Three months,” he whispered. “It’s been three months…”

Morrigan watched the man as he grappled with the reality of his situation. Three months was a long time for a spirit to be lost and alone.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said gently, trying to provide some comfort. “You’re not alone anymore. I’m here, and I can help you find your way.”

The man looked up at her, his eyes filled with a mixture of gratitude and sorrow. “Find my way… what do you mean?”

“Well… I’m a… uh…” She sighed. “I’ll just show you.”

She stepped back and reached to the side, finding the scythe and pulling it into existence. The man jumped so suddenly Morrigan almost thought he was accidentally going to go right off the cliff again. “W-what are you?”

She took a deep breath, holding the scythe with both hands and giving him a gentle smile. “I’m what’s called a reaper, and I’m here to help you.”