Page 27 of How to Survive Your Own Death

“Why me?” she asked, breaking the silence and asking what she most wanted to know.

They were near Walnut Street. She leaned against the brick wall that separated the park from the street. Absolutely no one seemed to notice or care that she was talking to herself. It was weird, like their eyes just slid over her.

Or maybe their eyes slid over Bazel. Fear of confronting their own mortality perhaps or some sort of reaper hocus-pocus.

“You have been close to the veil your entire life,” he said.

She turned that over in her mind and decided it was bunk. “Yeah, that sounds ominous but that doesn’t mean anything. If humans are mayflies like you said, we’re all close to the veil. Now, please stop insulting me and tell me why me, specifically.”

His shoulders tensed and then sagged, as if admitting that there was no point in evading the question or fudging the truth. “When you were a child, you broke your arm.”

“I remember.” She had been riding her bike in the neighborhood, wearing her helmet and knee pads. A truck turned the corner and clipped her bike. Whether the truck saw Geri was unknown. It didn’t stop. A neighbor saw the whole thing and called her parents. Meanwhile, Geri bled profusely from a fracture that poked through the skin on her right arm.

“If you had not worn a helmet, you would have died from a brain bleed,” he said.

“Were you there? Do you just lurk, hoping an accident will happen? Have you been stalking me since I was a kid?” The idea that Bazel had been there, observing her for years, unsettled her. Her sense of privacy vanished and that was mortifying. She had done plenty of awkward and embarrassing things, not to mention the naked adult things. To imagine that she had an audience… Her mortification levels were off the chart.

“I was not present. That was another reaper.”

The mortification levels dropped back to a tolerable level. “Still weird that reapers hang around just waiting for accidents to happen.”

Bazel didn’t try to deny it. In fact, he said nothing.

“So I almost died once,” she said. “That’s it? That’s your reason? That explains jack shit.”

The hood turned slowly to face her. Shadows covered his skeletal face, his eyes were nothing but black pits, and yet they burned. Geri gasped. Those eyes were inescapable.

“You have always been close to the veil,” he said, his voice taking on that echoing quality he employed when he wanted to drive home a point. “I am a being of another dimension. You are the closest a living mortal can be to that dimension without dying. I spared your life at great personal expense to act as my agent in this world.”

That seemed like half an answer. Why go through the trouble of resurrecting her if it came at such a high cost for himself?

Geri turned over his words, looking not for the reason why she was chosen but why he bothered.

“Where’s your sickle?” she asked.

“I do not have a sickle.”

“Grim reapers have sickles.” She mimed swinging a blade in a semicircular motion like she was cutting grass.

“A scythe,” he said, sounding annoyed. “A sickle is shorter. I have a scythe.”

“Yeah, that. Where is it?”

A long moment passed before he answered. “Elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere,” she repeated. “You need that to tear the veil. That’s what the handbook says. Seems sloppy not to have it handy. You know what I think?”

“I’m sure you will tell me.”

“I think you need me. Not because you drained yourself to save me. I think you needed me before that. Something went wrong and you went looking for someone near the veil because you can’t get across on your own anymore.” She paused to gauge his reaction to her wild speculation.

The bottom hem of his robe fluttered in a gentle breeze, but he remained otherwise motionless.

Considering how her world turned upside down since the prank, Geri had remained remarkably anger free. She nearly died. Temporarily died. She wasn’t dead dead. The hallucinations she believed were proof of a brain injury were painfully real. There was an entire afterlife with rules, regulations, and handbooks.

The boundaries of reality kept shifting and she adjusted. She owed Bazel a debt. He sacrificed part of himself, for reasons unknown, to save her. The terms and conditions of that debt weren’t great, but it was better than being dead dead.

Now she felt angry because the entire situation was messed up. The least he could do was be honest about it.