The Untold Story of a Grim Reaper: Chapter 17: Nests

“Where were you all morning?” I turned around, Aaron looked like he hadn’t slept.

“Aaron, I’m fine if that’s what you’re asking.” I kept walking without caring much about his reply, my first solo paid more of a tole on me than I was willing to admit. He begged, “Noa, please, talk to me.”

In his plead, I acknowledged that Aaron needed me more than I needed to sulk over what I could never change.

I replied, “Everything’s fine. Are you?”

He rubbed his eyes as he thought of his reply, “I thought I was fine, I just… I just kept worrying about Jonah. We have to confront him about this.”

“Is Jonah here today?”

“Yes, and he’s acting like nothing even happened.”

“I’ll talk to him next period.” I remembered the first reapers rule. 

I can’t interfere with suicidal decisions. 

I corrected, “But you, Camilla, and Jessie should be the ones to confront him. I barely know Jonah. I don’t think I’m in the right position to intrude on his… personal issues. You understand, right?”

He calmly replied but I sensed his frustration, “I guess but Jonah really likes you. I’m sure he’d value your concern.” He stammered, “I mean… Noa, I really like you too. Please, don’t run away just because you’re scared.” He pleaded, “I’m scared too.”

I said the only truth I knew, “You barely know me, Aaron.”

The bell rang, ending the conversation. I was relieved though. The sting of Aaron’s stare was too much for me. Especially after the morning I had.  

We had a substitute in second period so we were left with twenty minutes free towards the end of class. Jonah didn’t leave me any time to talk with him though. He made it a point to talk with all his other friends in the class. Laughing and joking as if his world was unthreatened by the happenings of the night before. 

A part of me didn’t want to intrude on his attempt at being strong. But was he being strong or submissive? Hiding behind the facade of a happy boy while his body cried otherwise. 

One of the boys from the night before sat in the back corner. I remembered he was the one Tori had called Kurt. Kurt had his head lying on his desk with his hands on the back of his head. He was wearing the same clothes he wore the night before. It was hard to tell from his dark brown hair but there were clumps of dirt. Even though his head was down he wasn’t pretending to sleep, his eyes were wide open and twitching. I got up from my seat and slyly sat a desk away from him.

I whispered, “Kurt.”

He adjusted his head to better face me but he didn’t sit up, “What?”

“Are you okay?”

Defensively, “What do you care?”

Honestly, what did I care for? The person I was at the end of my life and beginning of being a reaper would have thrived on his suffering. But, this time, something in me made me feel sorry for Kurt, something in me wanted to sooth him.

I looked back down at Kurt, I could only see one eye though. The other was darkened by the shadow of his arm. The shadow looked too perfect though. It masked his right eye in a way a shadow could never naturally do. 

I stared into the one eye I could see, “Kurt, listen closely,” Kurt’s single eye widened into complete darkness, “Sit up straight.” Kurt went limp before the command settled into his subconscious. He sat up and I kept going, “Now look at me.” He turned his head completely to meet my stare. It wasn’t a shadow it was a black eye. “You’re going to tell me the truth, how did you get that black eye?”

His jaw was trying to make words but I could tell something in him was trying to resist the truth of its cause, “My father found out about last night and beat me. He made me sleep outside.”

“Is this a regular thing for your father?”

“Yes.”

I kept pressing for answers, “Why do you help Tori hurt people?”

His jaw moved rigidly, “So he won’t turn it around on me. To avoid being the one that’s beat… to have the upper hand.”

Despite what he had done to my friends and I, he was a victim. And I’m sure his father was the victim of someone else’s hand and his father before him. And it can become so difficult, as you age, to understand such actions of hate are not nature, but rather nurture. We’re constantly making others pay for what other before us had done.

Divorce is a civil war fought on a battleground of empty promises with a battlecry asking, “why don’t you love me anymore?” My parents divorce was such. And I thought if my parents could forget how to love each other, what was to stop me from forgetting how to love them?

So the divorce ended in three splits and no one was better for it. My dad moved to the city and my mom and I remained in the home I grew up in. Over the years I saw less and less of my father, eventually only seeing him on the last Thursday of every month. My mother worked two jobs. One as a realtor and the other as a single mother trying to mend a broken bond with her daughter. I was cruel and cold toward her and now I regret every time I didn’t tell her I loved her. 

Their split made a ripple effect in my life and that’s when I split from my friendship with Vincent. I suppose that’s why he let the rumors spread we had slept together, I suppose he was angry and getting back at me. I turned Vincent and other friends into victims after that. 

To my parents and everyone involved my life at the time, we were victims of each other’s neglect. We burned each other’s olive branches and accused one another of lighting the match. 

I realized in my flashback of thoughts that Kurt was still trapped in my trance. I let go of my hold on him. 

“Noa,” he muttered in a dizzy haze, “what do you want?”

His face hardened and he shook his head as if trying to shake off a bad feeling. Before I responded he threw up on his desk and the entire class had their attention on us.

Kurt tried standing up but his legs gave out from underneath him and he passed out. The substitute was freaking out. She shot up from the desk and walked as if the ground were lava, “Of all the days… someone please get the nurse.”

I volunteered and ran to the front office. A woman in scrubs and a frizzy ponytail was at the desk when I busted in, “Someone in room 2056 just threw up and passed out.”

She gave a look of urgency as she ran to a closet full of wheelchairs. The nurse ran out of the room with it and called another nurse in. The second nurse walked out of the mailroom, which was next door to the nurses office, and asked for my name as she wrote me a pass back to class. Kurt rolled in on the wheelchair, his head dangled over his shoulders and the nurse asked me to leave. I didn’t object and slowly walked back to class.

The bell rang on my walk back to class and saw Jonah briskly walk toward the cafeteria. I didn’t want to cause a scene trying to run and catch up so I attached myself to his shadow and followed him to the café. Slyly, I rose from the depths of it and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh my god!” I startled him pretty badly, “God, Noa, have you been behind me this whole time?”

“I was just trying to catch up with you.”

“Well, I’m caught, what’s up?”

His attitude was hard to communicate to, “Jonah, please, listen to me you shouldn’t avoi-.” 

I suddenly felt an icy shock go up my arm. It settled down with a pins and needles feeling; I looked down to see Senoi was holding my hand. Jonah looked at the two of us and gave a face, “Well, look at you two. Getting friendly, okay, you don’t need to prove anything to me.” 

I wanted to speak but my jaw was locked. Senoi spoke, “Sorry, Jonah, I didn’t mean to make this awkward.”

He laughed nervously, “Well, you did.” 

The lunch line was moving forward and we were becoming a nuisance. Senoi said, “I just need to have a word with Noa.”

“She’s all yours.” Jonah continued down the line and the other students walked around us. My eyes strained to understand what Senoi was doing. 

“Let’s go, Noa,” Senoi’s words echoed in my head. 

I tried to resist but my body was locked and rigid. Senoi lifted me slightly as the one leg I had feeling in supported my limping. 

Senoi took me to the hall and stopped in front of the double-doors to the school theatre. “I’m going to let go of your hand but you can’t be mad. Nod that you won’t be upset.” 

I rigidly nodded but I didn’t intend on keeping my promise. He released me and I trembled as I regained control of my muscles. In no time I controlled my balance and slapped Senoi across the face. 

Senoi looked back at me and spoke calmly, “I’m sorry, I was trying to help you. You were about to cross a fine line on what you can and cannot do.” His tone was soft, “I’m sorry, Noa, but you cannot assist in preventing suicides. You know that.”

Frustrated, I said, “I can’t even comfort or give advice?”

He placed his hand on my shoulder, “I’m sorry, you can’t. You gave that up.”

“I know what I did, Senoi, I haven’t forgotten so quit talking to me like I have.” He seemed like he has something else to say, “Is there any other reason why you dragged me here?”

“We’re waiting for Samel.”

“What for?”

“You have more errands in purgatory than just the one defining your role as a reaper.”

I mumbled, “And yet no one cares to tell me things prior to them happening.”

Suddenly, from the shadows, a pair of hands lunged at me and sucked me into the darkness. 

I screamed and frantically jabbed at the hands, who turned out to belong to Lilli. 

She let go and groaned, “Be calm, little lamb.”

I fussed, “Why does everyone keep thinking they can just drag me places?!”

Everyone gave me a calm glare that asked me why I was being so dramatic. Samel, Senoi, Senson, and Lilli stood clumped together and gradually turned to walk farther into the House of Oblivion. I followed, annoyed that they made me feel the same way I felt when I was alive and would have an outburst. 

That look friends and strangers give you when they don’t understand your presence and attitude. But that kind of glare is not given out of confusion or concern, it’s given to display a sense of control and power. You take control of a situation when you ignore someones question, when you ignore someone you are trying to regain power over the disturbance they made in their exclamation… to make the other feel weak and small.

They were speaking to each other on some matter but once I approached they settled into silence.

I questioned, “What do you need me for?”

Samel responded, “You are very important, Noa. Very special. We see that you have much potential as a reaper and find that you are the most capable to assist us.”

“In what?”

“In this language we call them Nests.”

Senoi explained, “Nests are portals of supernatural energy, negative, neutral, and positive, but they spill energy into this world and if not tended to it can manifest itself and-”

“Destroy the precious fabric of space and time in this world,” finished Lilli, “Ghosts, miracles, aliens, demon sightings, all of these are mirages created by these portals.”

“Why do they exist?”

Senson, “So that way we can exist. These Nests keep the middle world, after worlds, mortal world all connected. But again, if not cared for can rip everything apart.”

Samel addressed my role in all of this, “Your sack of rocks, the Ebenezer, is a Nest. It’s controlled but it is a portal. Only you and Lilli can retrieve the stones from your pouches, and we need you to use them to fill the Nests.”

Lilli, “It’s difficult closing a Nest on your own but having you nearby means we don’t have to barrow reapers from other districts.”

I asked, “Why doesn’t God just have a better self-sustaining portal to connect the worlds? Why do we have to go through all of this trouble if God has the power to correct it?”

All four burst out laughing and never answered my question. I just heard Samel whisper to Senson, “She still thinks like a mortal.”

I spoke directly to Senoi, “At least someone tell me where we are going?”

Senoi, “We are meeting with a Taunt. They can sense and uncover a Nest before they manifest to open.”

“We’re going to be a team,” Lilli interjected, “You and I are going to be getting to know each other pretty well soon.”

The way Lilli twisted her hair and spun in a walking circle confused me to the intention and type of person Lilli was. Sometimes she seemed older and strong and others she seemed childish and innocent. Her ability to, not just switch personalities, but also change the energy she exuded was startling and jarring. But even when she acted silly, childish… it felt like she was plotting… or… trying to pull a reaction out of you. 

“We’re here,” Samel said as he stopped walking. The brothers lined up shoulder to shoulder and stuck out their left arm. Although there was nothing in front of them, all three reached for the same spot. The way the space reacted was intense, it was as if they were grabbing at a transparent sheet. The atmosphere crumpled like cloth in their grip, they ripped away at the darkness all at once and tore a hole in the world. 

Senoi commanded, “You two wait here.”

“Yes, sir,” mocked Lilli.

The brothers walked through the hazy rip and left Lilli and I to the House of Oblivion. Lilli swayed side to side slowly while making soft steps around me, her right hand holding her sharp chip, “You like Senoi don’t you.”

Her intentions wore thick on her breath, she didn’t want to get close to me… she wanted to get under my skin, “Why would you say that?”

“I was just like you, every daemon falls in love within the first few weeks. Whether to another daemon or… fatally with the living. You feel like you want to find one last ounce of hope and excitement to help you feel alive again… but trust me, Noa, no one loves the dead and love never brings the dead back to life.”

I tried to not seem fazed, “Jaded, are we?”

“Cute,” she stood still and dropped her hand from her chin, so to point at me, “Love doesn’t bring the dead back… but I know what can.”

I twitch of fear lighted my eyes and she saw it, and she relished in it. The triplets returned from the rip followed by a girl dressed in a cloak that was a cloudy champagne color. Her hood was up but I could see her face just fine, no eyebrows, thin lips, and her eyes were solid grey. 

Samel introduced us, “Phoebe, this is Noa and Lilli. You three are going to be this districts Flock.”

Phoebe didn’t seem impressed, “Nice to meet you both. A nest is set to manifest tonight in the woods of Palmetto, Georgia. But a gathering of humans is also taking place in the same area, a play of some sort. So we have to be careful.”

I cut in, “Wait! Is it in Serenity Woods?”

Phoebe, “Yes.”

“I had season passes to their plays.” The entire group looked at me confused and uninterested in my connection, “They’re putting on an outdoor performance of Peter Pan…” they still didn’t understand, “Why don’t we make an evening of it? We all go out to see this play together… and then close the Nest.”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of nights off,” Senson replied.

“Wait, wait,” Lilli said, “I think she’s right, we should. We could all use a night out, it would be a nice break from the same routines that are all business and never any pleasure.”

Senoi, “You’re just trying to get out of your trial.”

My eyes widened but I resisted looking at Lilli. Lilli seemed annoyed… yet entertained, “Oh boo, well that doesn’t mean the rest of you can’t enjoy a night together.”

Phoebe seemed to be leaning into the plan, “The trial and the play will end around the same sequence of time, I’m not opposed. I haven’t been in the mortal world in quite some time… it would be nice to have this excuse.”

Samel made the final decision, “The plan was to reunite this Flock after the trial anyhow, I can handle taking Lilli to the Tombs alone. Senoi and Senson, I encourage you to take sometime for yourselves, since in this work we rarely find moments like this. We will reconvene when the trial and play are finished.”

Senoi and Senson nodded but didn’t appear pleased about this, Samel gave the impression to be their leader though. Phoebe, though her eyes never moved, acted excited, “I will summon myself to your mortal home, Noa.”

“Okay,” I figured that meant she knew where I created my fake home.

Phoebe turned back towards the rip and bid us all a farewell. The triplets turned and walked toward the direction from whence we came. Lilli fell back with me and took my hand, she squeezed tightly, “Thank you for coming up with that, it makes me trial that much easier.”

She hissed a subtle laugh that soaked in me like a bloodstain: Permanent and haunting.