Grim Love - A Novella (2 page)

“Come on.” Evangeline looked between the man
and the car, wishing her death sense would do something, but it
didn’t tell her whether he'd been meant to be dead or alive.

“To hell with it.” She made a decision.
Without stopping to think of her own safety, after all she'd
already met her own death, she dragged the man out of the road, not
sure how she managed it until he fell on top of her. A horn blasted
at the two of them, but the driver, lucky for her, didn’t stop. Her
heroic efforts saved the drunk. He hadn’t seen the car when he
stepped into the road and now she found herself stuck underneath
him, unable to move. “Okay, up you go.” She knew he wouldn’t hear
her, but thought it'd be worth a try as she attempted to lift his
whiskey-laden, sozzled body off of her.

“
I don’t
think I can, without help, love. Give me a shove to get me going.”
Evangeline gave him a slight shove, before realizing he’d heard
her.
Did he
hear me?
As he stood,
she tried to do the same, wanting to get out of there as fast as
possible. Fighting to stand, she found herself wrapped in his arms.
“Thank you for helping me.”

“You’re welcome.” Her voice shaky, Evangeline
continued, “I’m sorry, but I need to…”

“My life's been a mess since my wife died. I
fell off the wagon, you know? Now, I can't get through a day
without a drink in my hand.” He stepped back, looking like he might
fall, before tipping the last of the drink he had down the sewer
drain. “Well, from this day forward, I'm going to live my life the
way my wife would have wanted me to. I promise.” Evangeline tried
to walk away, but he grabbed hold of her wrist. “Thank you,
guardian angel, for saving me. I’m sure that car would have run me
over.”

Guardian angel? I'm
a reaper, not an angel.
How could he look at me and see
anything else?
As she
stood there, trapped by his grasp and drunken ramblings, Evangeline
tried to find her reflection in his eyes, wanting to know what he
saw when he looked at her. What she found surprised her. Her
reflection showed the girl she'd been before she died.

Evangeline had been certain that her
appearance had changed and didn't dare look in a mirror. To find
herself staring at the person she'd been in life, shocked her. As
much as she always took great pride in her appearance, it troubled
her that she hadn't changed. She couldn't put her finger on why
being allowed to spend eternity looking like she remembered
bothered her. A part of her wanted to look different her entire
life. While most girls spent good money to have alabaster skin and
long, curly hair, she always knew that her outward appearance
didn't reflect her inward struggles.

Living life on the edge of reason had been a
calculated maneuver meant to irritate her uptight, elitist parents.
She relished in wreaking havoc on their lives for wrongs that, now
in hindsight, were tactics meant to keep her safe from harm. When
her behavior didn't elicit the response she'd hoped to receive,
she'd up the ante and do the unthinkable. Her final act proved just
how far she'd been willing to take things in order to solidify the
bad girl image she'd tried to create her entire life.

Wanting to be alone, she tried to pull
herself free, worried he might fall on her again if she pulled too
hard. “I need to go.” She tried to smile at him, but it came out
more like a grimace. “Can you please let go of me?”

“Sorry, love.” He smiled in return, letting
go of her wrist. “It’s just been such a long time since someone
cared about me and I’m so grateful to you. I want to be able to
give you something when I get back on my feet. You know, to say a
proper thank you…”

“It’s fine.” She took several steps
backwards, not wanting to take her eyes off him until she'd moved
far enough away so that he couldn’t grab hold of her again. “Your
appreciation's more than enough.”

Evangeline turned and ran. It'd been a long
time since she’d run anywhere, but somehow being dead had done good
things to her stamina. She kept going until she felt like she'd
moved miles away from him. The only reason she stopped had been her
death sense slamming into her and telling her he'd been meant to
die.

Leaving
him to die wasn’t something she felt comfortable doing, not when
she could help him. She liked that she’d helped him. Helping him
meant that she’d screwed up, though. Lucius would be angry with her
if he found out and she didn’t know what a reaper did if their
helpers screwed up.
Would Lucius kill him? Is that how things worked? If I
screw up, he dies? Could that be the way things were meant to
be?
With her back to the
wall, she let herself cry, knowing she needed to let the unfamiliar
emotions she felt out, otherwise next time she saw Lucius, he'd
know.

No matter what, she didn’t regret the
decision she’d made. It'd been the right one. She couldn’t let
anyone be killed while she stood there doing nothing to prevent it.
Since she didn’t regret it, she shouldn’t be letting it affect her
the way it had, but she knew it wasn’t what she'd been charged to
do. Evangeline had a role - reaper. She took souls to the afterlife
and that should have been the only time they were meant to be able
to see her. How could he see her?

She
figured helping him made that possible and she'd have to remember
that.
Did
that create some sort of connection between the two of us? Would he
have been able to see me before the car hit him?
More questions without answers and she
knew she couldn’t ask Lucius for answers because that would mean
admitting she did something wrong and she'd had her fair share of
that already. Debating right from wrong with the Grim Reaper wasn't
something Evangeline wanted to do.

Walking had been one of her stress relievers
in life. Figuring it'd be harmless in death, Evangeline readied
herself to walk and clear her head. The tears had stopped, but she
didn’t think the confusion she felt would ever fade. It didn’t help
that no one else could see her - well, at least she thought they
couldn't. Maybe they could and just didn’t think to say anything
because she looked like every other girl on the street. Maybe they
could only see her if they were near their hour of death, and when
they weren't, they couldn't see her. She shook her head. She
decided she'd get the answers to all of her questions even if it
meant spending months badgering Lucius.

Chapter 2

Marie paced from one side of the living room
to the other as Evangeline watched. Soon she'd be dead and
Evangeline would reap her soul. Another simple job. There would be
no problem taking this one, although it might have been nicer to
see Marie rot in jail where she belonged. Sighing, Evangeline
waited with as much patience as she could, that being her least
favorite part of the job. Lucius liked his reapers to be in
position early, just in case.

Determined to follow orders after the mistake
she’d already made, she stood in Marie’s apartment, listening to
her panic about her scheme being discovered, certain that she’d be
arrested. It hadn’t crossed her mind that panicking might lead to
something much worse. This time, Evangeline knew Marie couldn't see
her after a few minutes of testing her theory, figuring the drunk
man must have been a fluke.

After what felt like hours, Evangeline
decided to join Marie, pacing back and forth, but did her best not
to think about the same things she'd been thinking about earlier.
Going over it wasn’t helping. She didn’t have enough experience yet
to understand why Lucius had chosen her and pushing all of her
unanswerable questions aside would be the logical thing to do.

When he’d asked her, she knew it wasn’t going
to be an easy job. Doubt, being another reason she’d wanted to turn
it down and after everything that happened, she wished she had. In
hindsight, she wouldn’t be in such a difficult position if she'd
followed her instincts. Even though she didn't think that he had
any way of knowing about the drunk, the way he'd looked at her
earlier made her wonder if he did. Lucius studied her, making her
uncomfortable. Doing her best to push that thought away, she
focused on Marie.

Evangeline was tempted to tell Marie to sit
down. She kept pacing, kept muttering to herself about what she
should do next because she'd stolen from a charity and no one would
like her in prison. Maybe she could run away. That would make more
sense than letting herself get arrested when she knew everyone
would want to teach her a lesson. Evangeline watched and listened,
disturbed by Marie's lack of remorse for those she'd betrayed.

Pilfering their money had been a terrible
thing to do. Marie knew that, but she needed the money more than
the charity did, she thought. Anyone who bothered to research them
knew most of the money they raised went toward paying the CEO and
very little of it went toward helping the people who needed it -
like her. Nodding to herself, Marie went into the bedroom. When she
tried to take the suitcase off the top of her armoire, it
happened.

Evangeline breathed a sigh of relief as she
stepped into the other room, watching as Marie died. There might
have been a time when doing that would have made her uncomfortable,
but, because of the choices Marie had made, Evangeline wouldn’t
have tried to save her even if she could. Death wasn’t the easy way
out for her. Marie would have to account for her actions in the
afterlife. When her spirit stepped out of her body, she looked at
Evangeline, confused. Evangeline grabbed hold of her arm, not
wanting her to disappear. She'd been told that some of the spirits
could disappear in an attempt to escape their fate. They were the
ones who became poltergeists, roaming the Earth, preying on
innocent people.

“Who are you?”

“The question you should be asking is what,
not who.” Evangeline shrugged. “Your problem, though, not
mine.”

Evangeline took a step. That's all she
needed. In that one step, she went from the world of the living to
the world of the dead, taking Marie with her, and Lucius stood
there waiting to take Marie to her final judgment. “Thank you,
Evangeline. You have the rest of today off, so do with it what you
will, and I'll see you in the morning.”

Nodding, Evangeline left Marie with Lucius,
already certain of what she wanted to do with her time, even though
it wasn’t something she had permission to do. Knowing that she
could do the job she'd been chosen to do made everything simpler,
so she felt it'd be safe to break some of the rules again. Breaking
the rules had always been a part of who she'd been. Lucius had to
know that. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if that's
part of the reason he'd chosen her.

Lucius could see the confidence in
Evangeline's eyes. He knew what it meant, but he wasn’t worried.
The drunk she'd saved - the drunk who should have died - started to
get sober and it had been an interesting transformation to watch.
Close encounters with death always changed people. Death itself
changed people.

He glanced at Marie as he led her to where
she'd be judged by a court of spirits, who would know whether or
not she could redeem herself, glad that Evangeline hadn’t gone
through that process. It would have changed her into something he
never wanted her to be because she remained, as he believed from
the beginning, a compassionate person and having a compassionate
reaper meant that things were changing.

Lucius liked change. He lived for change
because otherwise his afterlife would be quite boring. Evangeline,
he knew, wasn’t going to have the rest of the day off, but it
wasn’t a job he’d sent her to, so her reaction would be different
and one he'd keep an eye on.

Professional reapings were different from the
ones a reaper stumbled across in a normal day. It would always be
possible for the reaper to change the fate of the person who might
have died. That's why she'd been able to save the drunk. Of course,
spirits could do that as well, if they were strong enough, but they
were a rare occurrence. Lucius found himself hoping, even though he
shouldn’t, that the spirit she came across would be strong enough
to hold on to his life.

Evangeline's life had been lost in the sea.
She remembered that. There had been some time between that and when
Lucius found her because she’d wandered off. She didn't remember
the wandering, although there were flashes of other memories, most
from when she'd been watching the family she’d left behind grieve
her death.

In the weeks following her death, Evangeline
spent whole days wishing she hadn’t died. Many newly dead did
depending on the circumstances and those that were left to live
their lives without them. Seeing how much pain her death had
caused, regret and remorse became a constant. She hadn’t gone back
to the place she'd died. A part of her knew not enough time had
passed to revisit the day she found herself staring down at her own
lifeless body.

The day she died, Lucius found himself caught
between deaths and wasn't able to guide her soul in the initial
aftermath. Stunned by her sudden demise, Evangeline wandered,
desperate to turn back the clock, wishing it away. Lucius, seeing
her desperation, had to break the news to her and, based on his
experience, mincing words wasn't an option.

He told her that wandering souls could become
poltergeists. She'd seen enough horror movies to know she didn't
want that, so she went with him. Like all living beings, she had no
point of reference as to what the afterlife would entail. She could
conjure up images, but that did nothing to quell her fears.
Following a cloaked figure to places unknown had never been
something she'd considered. While she'd followed plenty of
questionable characters to strange places over the years,
considering her circumstances, this ominous presence wouldn't have
been one she would've felt confident trusting.