V. H. King's Ink

“When were you going to tell me you were a reaper?”

Rekita doesn’t sit on the couch; she appears on its arm with a sound like a bubble popping.  Her red sundress glitters momentarily as she crinkles open a bag of sour cream and onion chips.  The black shorts she’s wearing underneath her dress are patterned with shiny gold stars.  I wonder if her wings are gold to match.

“Has it always been this way?” Abina asks it from my other side, before I have a chance to blurt anything about Rekita’s outfit. “Were you born like this?”

My tongue sticks somewhere between the sorbet and the spoon scraping the roof of my mouth.  Abina’s questions trick my ears into hearing the rest of Rekita’s.  You’re a reaper?!  Or maybe it’s Abina’s expression that says it.  Serious, focused—and understandably confused.

I mean, it shouldn’t be too hard for Abina to imagine, considering his and Rekita’s own skills.  Then again, teleportation and telepathy are one thing.  Souls, on the other hand…?

“Are reapers even born?” Rekita adds, her elbow on my shoulder as she crunches through a handful of chips. “Or are they…spawned?  Fully formed with powers they strengthen over time?”

Trying to take a breath just gives me a nose full of Rekita’s perfume.  It’s calming—waterfall mist with a hint of mint.  These two should know better than to expect I’d be able to answer their badgering.

“How many people have you stolen from?”

Abina’s questions singes like hot chocolate on the tongue.  I swallow my panic before it numbs the rest of my mouth, but it still burns on the way down.  When I echo the word, it comes out slippery sounding. Like the hard little ball in my stomach that won’t stay still. It rolls to a back corner of my intestines and shrinks.

“Stealing?”

“You kill people, don’t you?”

Abina’s flat voice mimics suspicion.  Somewhere between I should have known it all along and At least you could have told me, there is something else. 

Tell me your view of things. 

“Taking away opportunities to say goodbye or send their love or see their hopes and dreams come true—” Rekita keeps crunching. “Is it worse for the dead or the living, do you think? In your ‘professional opinion’ and all that?”

My teeth click on metal that’s gone warm in my mouth.  I curl my tongue at the taste.

“Blech.”

The spoon bounces off the couch and onto the carpet. Grey enough to hide foot traffic, but still susceptible to popsicle puddles. Ask me how I know.

“Awww, does baby need a bib?” Rekita sing-songs, jostling my shoulder.

I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. What I want is a good stretch. My body is suddenly feeling too cramped, pretzeled up on the couch like this. Except lying down just gives the aches room to roam free through my body. I tuck my lips between my teeth and breathe slowly through my nose.  I think of waterfalls and mint leaves, and dust Rekita’s crumbs off my sleeve.

All too easily, this could turn into a test where I try to prove I’m not guilty of being human. I hate when I do that. Trust isn’t just an unwavering monument weathered and reshaped by time. It’s a flag, rippling and fluttering, raised and lowered.

Abina studies me with that little wrinkle at the corner of her mouth. Weighing her curiosity and how (un)comfortable all this could make me. Despite how serious she looks, her gaze is disarming. Just like Rekita’s sunflower-and-starburst painted nails scratching across my shoulders, it’s a reassuring reminder that these two care about me.

I don’t need to explain anything, really.  They can handle whatever secrets I don’t know how to speak.  They’ll be by my side, even when I’m feeling unsteady about my state of being.  And they just wanted to make sure they told me that—in their own unique fashion.