[ WP ] Everyone has a reaper . The further away it is , the longer you have left to live . Every day it inches a little bit closer , but it is always there . Except yours , which disappeared three weeks ago

`` Not that I do n't believe you,'' Jodie said, `` but how in the hell can you even keep track of which one's yours?'' 
 
 I leaned on the windowsill and looked down at the reapers drifting through the streets, groups of them moving at highway speeds with their robes flapping behind them, dotting the sky like flocks of suspended birds in a distributed haze around the skyscrapers. There were people there, too, but from our apartment window the reapers were easier to see. `` You do n't keep track of yours?'' 
 
 `` Come off it, Sandra,'' she snorted, and I heard her flop down on the sofa. `` If I was in the middle of nowhere, sure, with no one else around me and just an empty flat plain for hundreds of feet around, sure, I'd be able to find my reaper.'' I pushed away from the window and turned to see her flicking through a magazine. `` I'd just lose track of it again once I got back to civilization.'' 
 
 `` Mm,'' I said, and drifted to the kitchen. There was a reaper there, halfway through the refrigerator, just like the one I'd lost. Its glossy, smoky skull, soft and hollow like a newborn's. All the cracks still in it. I drifted a hand across its cheek. It did n't seem like it was moving away anytime soon. I opened the refrigerator door and studied the milk and lettuce and cherry tomatoes and leftover pizza all tangled up in its black robes. I snagged a cherry tomato and ran it through the smoke and popped it in my mouth and tried to see if I could taste it. Nothing, as usual. `` Where's your friend?'' I whispered to it. I looked into its baby face. `` Where's mine?'' 
 
 `` You ai n't dying, Sandra,'' Jodie's voice rang out. `` I'd know if you were. I ai n't seen any reapers tagging along five feet behind you. That's the only way anyone's keeping track of a single reaper following them in a city of millions.'' 
 
 `` So you do n't believe me,'' I said. 
 
 She padded barefoot in the kitchen. `` I believe you believe it,'' she said, and then grimaced at the reaper in the fridge. `` Aw, hell,'' she said. `` Of all the - not a good way to build an appetite.'' She shut the door and looked me in the eye. `` It ai n't healthy either way. You know when you're dying. You know when it's close enough to see, close enough to tell. No point in keeping track of it before that.'' 
 
 `` Sure,'' I said. The reaper was drifting, very slowly drifting. Its owner would move before it did. Tugged along like a balloon on a string. A pet. A dust bunny. I stifled a smile. 
 
 `` You're not dying,'' Jodie repeated. 
 
 `` Yeah,'' I said, and walked back to the windowsill and yanked the window all the way open, sticking my head out into the air. `` Were n't you listening? My reaper's gone. I'm going to live forever.'' 
 
 `` Sandra,'' she said, and put a hand on my elbow. Her face hovered just out of my sight. All the reapers there, all the little deaths. All the dust bunnies, all the shadows, all the blackened thought bubbles, all the lost cocoons waiting to burst into metamorphosis. None of them mine. None of them mine. `` Talk to me,'' she said. `` Keep talking. How'd you know which one was yours? What made it special?'' 
 
 I thought of riding the subway, the perpetual atmosphere of motion, of standing on the edge of the platform and looking down at the slate-gray lines of the tracks and thinking, just a little tilt forward and let gravity do the rest. Of lying awake in bed at night and staring up at the ceiling and thinking of the day ahead of me and the day after that and the day after that and the weeks and the months and years all stretching ahead into oblivion. And seeing it, with a pure and utter clarity, my reaper, creeping in the shadows, tucked into the corners, reassuring me. I am always here. Just close enough to reach. And every day getting a little bit closer. 
 
 And then three weeks ago choking on the pills, my stomach clenching and gagging them back up involuntarily, just standing on the brink of a vast and eternal pit and recoiling with terror, not even brave enough to take the coward's way out. Running water, washing away all the evidence of it before Jodie could see. The bright white porcelain sink. The gleaming taps. Not a shadow in sight. 
 
 I looked down. The pavement far below me was a flat canvas, a cubic rendering. Just the hollow flat surface of my life. I could plunge, break the surface, and have my reaper come hurtling back around me in that one rush of momentum, the last thing I saw before I hit the ground. A birdcall. Lassie come home. 
 
 And then Jodie's grip tightened around my arm and she was guiding me back, away from the edge, down onto the couch and I looked down at my hands and saw the knuckles were white and the fingers were trembling. 
 
 `` I'm going to live forever,'' I said, and studied the length of my fingers. `` Inch by inch. Each goddamn inch at a time.'' 
 
 `` Okay,'' said Jodie, keeping one hand on my shoulder as she stood up and fumbled for the phone. `` Okay. That's a start.''
