Inhuman - Reaped Pt. 01

~"If you broke her, I'm telling the Fates,"~ she said. Then she slid her hand across the island, ~"Touch my hand, sweetie. I'm real. You've taken my picture and probably put it up on some blog or something somewhere and people thought it was a pretty good fake or Halloween costume or something else equally insulting. I'm talking to you, not part of your imagination. I haven't been dead that long and I know the world knows about inhumans, just think of us as something like that. Just, sort of life adjacent."~ I stared at her, and she turned to the other one who had his hood up and hands covered, ~"See, fucker? I'm reaching for her, too. She's not reaching back so quit freaking out."~

~"This is not possible, Moira,"~ his eyes under the hood were a deep, burning orange before they faded again. I wondered if I turned on the light, would I be able to see beneath the cloak? Did I want to?

I reached out and touched just a fingertip to the sleeve of her cloak, not touching her skin in case it was some kind of glamor covering a skeleton or something. I giggled. Everybody's skin covered a skeleton. The cloak was amazingly soft, but not at all heavy when I pinched it and lifted. "That's like pajamas."

~"Kinda, but I can't change it or take a shower. Believe me, I felt disgusting the first little bit until I realized it didn't matter. I'm also completely naked under this thing and you know what? I miss underwear. Not bras, obviously, but just tight clothes. I feel like Judge Judy, but less classy."~ She flicked her fingers as she talked and touched my wrist and we both grimaced. ~"That wasn't pleasant at all. I don't mind you fingering my uniform, but let's try to avoid skin contact. I thought you said you touched her, Charos?"~

"He did," I whispered. I pulled my hand back and rubbed where her fingers had touched me. It hadn't felt terrible, but I didn't want to do it again if it could be avoided. "If he's really been here twice, then he's touched my neck, my side, and my arm and it didn't feel like that."

Her black eyes flashed orange and got wide in her face, almost comically large, and she looked between me and the other one who hadn't moved. ~"Oh, my God. She's a moira. Did it feel good when he touched you?"~ She waved her hand to dismiss that before I could even answer. ~"I don't mean like sexual good, but not icky like it just did between us? It felt like a normal hand? When you can't see us, you won't feel the cloth of the robes, just us touching you. General us, not me and him us. That explains so much."~

"My name is Rebecca, not Moira," I said.

~"I have never met a moira,"~ the man said, his voice little more than a whisper.

~"I have,"~ Moira said. Then she turned back to me with a shocked expression and those orange eyes, ~"Rebecca, a moira is a type of inhuman that can see and touch the reapers. Usually only one or two reapers have any reaction to a moira. They can't see all of us, and touching the wrong ones is just not right. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this isn't the most family friendly existence and it gets lonely fast. The moira exist to give us a tether to the living world that we can't hurt. Kind of keeps us sane."~

"I thought I was the one with the sanity issues," I said. She moved, but my eyes weren't tracking. I just sat there and thought. "How does a reaper go insane?"

~"Uhm,"~ Moira looked over at Charos then back to me. ~"Ever heard of Pompeii? Bunch of people dying where they stood? Yeah... when we go off the deep end the entire world feels it. I think we did Atlantis, too, but I can't prove that so don't quote me. The Roanoke Colony was definitely one of us. When we reach for someone, their soul reaches back. So imagine spending a little chunk of eternity never being able to reach for anyone else and your coworkers are too busy in their own little corner of hell to notice. It's why we're allowed to cycle through the world of the living every few centuries so we don't break. We go out, we die, we come back. The moira are an inhuman race able to interact with us without the whole death thing, but there's a catch. It takes one big motherfucker to reap you when Atropos decides it's your time."~

"And your name?"

She shrugged, ~"I'd say coincidence, but since it's always been my name. I think I might have pissed someone off so they made it so Moira would need a moira. That's a mouthful. I also have to talk to the Fates, also known as the Moirai. Yeah."~

The other reaper, Charos, finally moved. Taking a couple steps, he stood by Moira and slid his sleeve over the countertop. I couldn't see his hand at all and I wondered if maybe he was going to turn out to be a skeleton. ~"I apologize if I frightened you. May I touch you?"~

~"Dude,"~ Moira groaned. She looked at me, ~"He doesn't remember manners."~

At this point, I didn't think I had anything left to lose so I pushed my hand across the space until there were only a couple inches between my fingertips and the end of his sleeve. Moira's sleeves flopped all over the place when she moved her arms, but his stayed. The sleeve covered my hand and then he touched me and it was just a warm, work-roughened hand.

He fell to his knees with a grunt, but his hand didn't move from mine. His eyes inside the hood were swirling orange and gold and yellow before the hood turned to face Moira and his voice held awe when he said, ~"This has never happened before."~

~"I know, old man,"~ she patted him on the shoulder with a soft smile. ~"It's about time you got your turn with a moira."~

I tugged gently on my hand until he released me, and it felt like part of me slipped away with his hand. I rubbed my palm on the sleep pants I'd pulled on at some point and grimaced. "Why does not touching him feel like touching you?"

~"Because you're his moira, not mine."~ She said it like that answered everything. ~"One or two reapers per moira. If it's two, they're usually the personality types to share. Think about what kind of deaths you've seen us at while you tried to get your pictures and tell me if someone who reaps those souls is likely to play well with others."~

I looked between the two of them as Charos slowly rose to his feet again. He seemed shaky, but she hadn't made a joke about getting a picture of him while he was on the floor. She had softened a bit even if she had called him an old man. "It's all been the hostage situations around the city."

~"I don't know about hostages. We don't talk to the souls and they don't talk to us. We reap the souls of the victims of violent death, Rebecca. Of the reaper types, we're generally not considered the friendliest at the company barbecue,"~ she raised her eyebrows. ~"We also cycle through the land of the living a lot more frequently than the others, though we actually rarely have a moira that attracts us. I've only ever had one, and Charos here just popped his cherry tonight."~

Charos disappeared, and I looked around, but Moira seemed unfazed. The clock on the microwave said more than an hour had passed since this little trip to the looney bin had started, but I was oddly more at ease now. Thinking of this in terms of human and inhuman made it easier. There had been recent studies showing that a lot of the mental illnesses were actually inhuman tendencies presenting in the only way they could. If I could be okay chasing reapers across the city to prove they existed, I should be able to wrap my head around two of them being in my kitchen. I couldn't, but I was damned sure going to try.

The thing that hit it home for me was that she said I could see and touch reapers when not many others could. If there were multiple reapers for a single moira, that had to mean there weren't many moira. The sensory hallucinations I had been having had all been around fresh deaths. Before going on meds, I'd worked in a hospice center where patients died on a regular basis.

"Are there reapers who take souls from hospice patients?" I licked my lips and stared at my hands on the counter, picking at my nails.

~"You're thinking about something. I can see it on your face,"~ she said, and leaned down on her elbows so she could see my eyes. ~"There are different reapers that do different jobs. Me and Charos cover violent deaths. There's a whole group for natural deaths and deaths that occur in a crisis situation. Still others for war and famine and some for widespread illness. There was an entire legion of reapers for the Black Plague alone, but they've been reassigned since that died down. I don't really know a better way to explain it, or if I'm even supposed to."~

"Who am I going to tell?" I gave a soft laugh, but at least it wasn't the hysterical giggling. "I worked in a hospice before I had my first breakdown. Anytime I was on duty and a patient passed away, I would feel touches and hear whispers. I never saw anything, but it drove me to the point my boss found me cowering in her office just telling everybody to stop touching me. The thing was nobody had touched me all day. They even had security footage of it. I've gotten pretty good at avoiding even casual, accidental contact with people. After that, I went to the shrink and got put on meds for the hallucinations."

~"Let me guess,"~ she hummed, ~"the medications made it so much worse."~

Charos came back then, still fully covered by his cloak, but I continued, "Yeah. At first it was just little bits, then when it didn't seem to be helping they adjusted the dosage. As the dosage rose, the episodes got more often and lasted longer. I lost all my licensing and could barely hold down a job at McDonald's. I've only been off the meds a couple weeks now, so seeing you two hasn't been the most pleasant trip down memory lane."

Moira looked around and pointed at the apartment, ~"I'd say you'll be okay. This is a pretty nice place."~

"I'm only working because my boss owes a favor to a cop I know and promised to give me time to come off the psych meds. It helps I got an Associates in English before getting accepted into nursing school so writing for a tabloid isn't too big a leap from writing a bullshit essay."

~"I feel famous. Did I make it in the papers when you got my picture?"~

I smiled, "None of yours came out clear enough. Kinda bigfoot blurry."

~"Shit. I'll pose next time. Too bad we don't actually get scythes. I could ride it like a broomstick,"~ she mimed riding a stick and I laughed. ~"That's better. Now that it's going to get out that Charos has his first moira, the others shouldn't touch you. I know it's not any consolation, but it would have felt as freaky to them as it did when you and I touched. The reason you never saw the others isn't because they were being deliberately cruel. They would have felt the presence of a moira even if they didn't know who it was and would have been drawn to touch them. But the moira can only see the group of reapers they're tied to. You seem to be tied to violent deaths, not natural ones, and that's our bailiwick."~ She flicked a thumb between the two of them. ~"Given what you just said that's probably a good thing. We're the smallest group with only the two of us. Some of them have thousands assigned to handle the work. Now, I know we aren't going to be all touchy feely friendly, but at some point you're going to need to an ear to bitch into about him. Just say my name and I'll be happy to lend an ear over Netflix."~

I nodded that I understood, and she smiled gently then disappeared and left me with Charos. "How does this work? Do you follow me around like a shadow now?"

The hood shifted back and forth and I realized he was shaking his head. ~"We can only interact when you are in a private place, like this. Nobody else can see or hear me, so you cannot walk and talk with me. I will also have to leave anytime my duties require it."~

He sounded stiff and uncomfortable, like he was used to letting Moira do all the talking. Or like he just didn't talk. "Okay. What if I see you at work?"

He huffed, ~"You have seen me at work several times, I think. Did it bother you to watch me take a soul?"~

I thought about it, but no, it hadn't bothered me. I hadn't seen the people die, but every time I was sure they had been dead a little bit before the reaper showed up. "No. The people were already dead when you took the souls. Why did she have her hood down, but you keep yours up?"

~"I do not like putting it down,"~ he replied.

I yawned and covered my mouth. It was after five in the morning and I hadn't even slept yet. "I need to go to bed. Provided this isn't all some fucked up dream I'm about to wake up from, how do I let you know it's okay to come into my apartment? It probably wouldn't be good for you to pop in while I'm, I don't know, asleep in just panties and a tank top."

~"You can say my name, and I will come to you. May I touch you again, before you sleep?"~

I held my hand out to him, palm up, and the sleeve of his robe hid it from view as his fingers slid over mine and made me shiver. Whatever Moira said had been wrong. It didn't feel normal or right to touch him, though that was definitely there. It felt good to touch him. His shoulders relaxed at the contact, like he'd been tense. I felt my own muscles relaxing like the touch triggered the after effects of a really good deep tissue massage.

When I pulled my hand back slowly, he let his fall to his side then disappeared. The loss of his touch and then his presence was horrible. Whatever had come up with this little metaphysical clusterfuck in this dream was a sadistic monster. I slid off the barstool and trudged to my bed, not bothering to take off the sleep pants even though I knew I'd wake up sweaty later. I was exhausted, and fell alseep as soon as I hit the pillow.

===

The tech company must have hired someone to do some work on the place because they were banging on something outside my apartment. They were also yelling about something. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but the banging continued. That was too close to be outside the warehouse. It sounded like it was at my door. I groaned and got out of bed and that's when I heard what the voices were saying.

"Sir! You can't just go up there! This is a business!"

"She's my friend and I didn't get the text until I woke up. Can you open it? Rebecca!" Fuck, that was Jake. I only vaguely remembered texting him. I glanced at my phone. Shit, I'd only been asleep a couple hours. I rolled out of bed and stumbled toward the front door just as I heard a key in the lock.

The door burst open and Jake came storming in with a terrible look on his face. Like he was expecting something other than me standing there in my pajamas. The owner of the place was behind him just looking worried.

"Ms. White," he said. "Are you well?"

"Uh, yeah," I muttered. I rubbed my face and tried blinking the sleep away. I just wanted to keep them closed and go back to sleep. This was a god awful hour of the morning. "Sorry if I caused anything bad."

"No, ma'am. He said it was a wellness check and then you wouldn't answer the door, so I let him in," he said. The man was very kind for having the reputation of being a brutal businessman. "If you're okay, I'll leave you with him?"

"Yeah, that's fine. Do I need to move now?"

"What? No. Don't worry about that." Then he turned and left and I was confused, which was fast becoming a natural state of being for me.

"Jake?"

"You texted me that you were having an episode and I was asleep. Kinda thought the worst had happened when I got here and you wouldn't answer the gate call. You haven't been off the meds that long." He walked in and herded me to the couch. I curled up in the corner with my back against the arm and rested my head on the back of the couch and went the hell back to sleep. A hand on my arm jerked me awake until I saw Jake leaning over. "How bad was it?"

"Hm? Fuck," I rubbed my face some more as if that would wake me up. "I think my hallucinations had a party last night in my kitchen. I finished cleaning up the pictures I got last night," he glared at me and I waved him off, "and then the grim reapers came over for a chat. She talks a lot, he doesn't."

"I'm going to ignore the picture thing since I know I took your camera," he pinched the bridge of his nose. "What are you talking about grim reapers? As in plural?"

"What do you think I've been at the hostage scenes for? I'm not printing photos of the dead people, Jake," I grumbled. "Do I smell human to you?"

The question seemed to catch him off guard and he stared at me for a blink. "I've never actually paid attention to how you smell since you got off the meds. They always smelled kind of bitter so I just ignored it. Why?"

"Because I had two grim reapers in my home last night and they said I was inhuman, and I'm wondering if it was all just a dream and I need to start thinking about having myself committed somewhere that serves soft foods. Can you, I don't know, sniff me or something?"

"Lean forward," he sighed. I leaned forward and he bent over me, his cheek moving along mine and I could feel the end of his nose tickling the small hairs. His inhale was deep right beside my ear and then he stiffened and leaned in closer, inhaled deeper. "Definitely not human. Did your dreams say what you're supposed to be?"

He leaned back where he had been and I told him the short version of what I wasn't even sure had actually happened early in the morning. "It all sounded very Greek to me."

"Well, the Fates are Greek. The Romans had a different word for them."

"You are such a nerd," I muttered and shut my eyes again.

"Lock me out and go back to sleep, Rebecca," he stood and helped me off the couch. "I'm going to make a couple calls to see if I can't find anything out for you, but no promises. If you feel like you're having an episode again, though, call. I don't care if you have to keep calling until I pick up, just call."

"Call," I muttered, then stopped. "Shit. They said I could call them to me just by saying their names. Her name was Moira. Is that how it works? I just say Moira and --"

She showed up in the kitchen, her hood down and a flash of orange before she put her hands behind her and leaned on them against the counter. ~"Saying the name works, Rebecca. He won't be able to see or hear me, though."~

"What, Rebecca?" Jake said. I looked between them, and he looked over his shoulder then back to me. "Are you seeing something?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. "I said her name and she showed up, but you won't be able to see or hear her."

"She's in the kitchen?" I nodded, and he walked over there. The closer he got, the brighter the orange of her eyes got. He stopped at the island and I saw his shoulders rise as he took a deep breath. "It smells like you, Becca, but also something else. I can't see it or hear it, but I can smell it."

~"Oh, my God. Do I smell bad? I can't get deodorant over here."~

"She asks if she smells bad. Apparently they don't have deodorant or showers or changes of clothes."

"It smells like you, but not. I can't be anymore specific unless I get closer to where the smell is coming from. It's not a bad smell, just different from anything I've smelled before."

~"He cannot come closer. As long as I don't stink, I'm good."~

I pushed my fingers into my hair and hit tangles and grimaced. "Don't go closer. I'm guessing if you can smell her, it means I'm not having another breakdown and hallucinating and there really are two grim reapers I can see."

Moira wiggled against the counter and I looked at her. ~"If you don't need me, I need to go."~ Then she just disappeared.

"The smell is gone," Jake said, and he walked around the island and right through the spot Moira had just vacated. "It's not lingering, it's just gone."

"Moira left. Kind of nice to have some validation, though."