[crow]

The reaper knew that reapers didn't actually have guts, but something in her abdomen dropped when the boy pushed off from his window and down the wall. She made a squeak and covered her eyes, wincing as she listened to him yell as he plunged down. He was crazy! This just confirmed everything she'd suspected; he had a death wish and she shouldn't have followed him around, and he was going to die and she was going to have to collect his body and... and... Was he... laughing?

Somewhere along the way, his yelling had turned into a raucous laugh. She paused for a moment to make sure she was hearing correctly, but yes, he really was laughing. Slowly, reluctantly, she parted her fingers so she could peek through them down at him.

[crow]

Well, he wasn't dead, that was for sure. He didn't even look scared. His feet were braced against the wall of the building, the bundle of ropes clutched firmly in his hands. His head was thrown back, his throat exposed as he let out a whoop of ecstasy. “Whoo! I'm the king of the world!” he yelled, swinging one arm out broadly. The reaper winced again, but nothing happened. The boy leaned back, twisting around and putting one hand up as if to shield his eyes from the sun despite the fact that it was night. Looking out at the city, he smiled to himself. “Wow, would you look at that. I should've done this sooner.”

The reaper waited for a moment, still half expecting something to happen, but when nothing did, she sighed. She supposed he wasn't really going to die after all, or her Tome would have had something to say about it.

[crow]

With that, she drifted down to where he was and hovered beside him. Looking out at the same cityscape, she was struck suddenly by the scope of it. The entire city was marked out in lights, bridges full of plain orange street lamps and skyscrapers lit up with the colors of a strange man-made rainbow. Behind every bright window, there was someone--- maybe several someones, a whole family--- and here she was watching them all. Here they were, anyway.

She glanced at him. The boy had fallen silent, his smile fading, the corners of his mouth coming slowly down as he stared out across the great brilliant sprawl. She wondered what he was thinking, if maybe some of his thoughts were the same as her own.

He sighed. At rest, there was something strangely sad about his features. She had seen it before too, in a quiet moment earlier that day at the zoo. Softly, he said to himself, “Let's stop... Let's just stop it, all of this.”

[crow]

Before he could say anything else though, a voice called out shrilly from above. “Young master! What are you doing?!” The boy and the reaper looked up in unison, and he grinned at the sight of the woman from the kitchen, even going so far as to give her a jaunty little wave. She clutched her chest as he did, her doughy face pale with distress. “Y-Young master, hold on, I'm getting Mr Jones,” she said breathlessly. “Don't move!”

“That's alright, Mrs Lee! I can get down by myself, thanks.” He grinned cheekily at her, then mimed a look of surprise as he teetered theatrically backwards, flailing his free arm for balance. “Whoa! Whooaa!”

“Young master!” shrieked the woman, just as the boy placed both slippered feet back on the wall and laughed.

[crow]

“Just kidding, Mrs Lee! Really, I'm fine,” he said. The woman breathed a sigh of relief, but the boy hummed, thoughtful now. “You'll keep this a secret between us, won't you?”

“I-I have to fetch Mr Jones immediately!” said the flustered housekeeper, mopping at her brow with a handkerchief.

The boy frowned in disappointment. “I really wouldn't do that, Mrs Lee. Mr Jones and I aren't getting along so well today, and if you brought him, I might... Ohhhh, oh! My hands are slipping!” he said, loosing his grip on the rope and letting himself drop for just a moment before he held back on. He swung precariously in place for a moment, his shoulders curved, leaning into the rope as he clung on for what was apparently dear life.

“Young master!” said the woman.

[crow]

He adopted a sober expression as he said, “Berta--- can I call you Berta? I feel like we've gotten to that point in our relationship, right? Anyway, I feel like we really have something special, don't we? I'd hate for it to all end like this. What do you say, hmm?” He smiled winsomely, batting his eyelashes.

The reaper rolled her eyes. “Ugh.”

The housekeeper seemed on the verge of tears, or maybe a fainting spell. “W-Whatever you say, young master! Just d-don't do that again!” she stammered. The boy's grin widened.

“I knew I could count on you! What do I always say? 'Mrs Lee is the only one for me. She gets me.'” The reaper made a face. Did he always lay it on this thick? She hoped the woman was paid well. She had no idea how much money it took to get someone to put up with this.

[crow]

A glimmer at the edge of her vision caught her eye, and she glanced up only to realize her Tome was glowing. Her eyebrows arched up as she pulled it out, wondering at the timing of it. They shot up even further as her eyes widened. Staring out at her from the pages was the grinning face of the boy right beside her.

Oh, no.

She looked up and knew, immediately, when she saw it. One of the joints in the bedsheet ladder was coming apart. She searched the boy's face, then that of his housekeeper, but they were too busy speaking with one another to notice. He was grinning at her, just opening his mouth to begin something glib and infuriating, when the old swing made a lurch that had nothing to do with his grasp on the rope at all.

He froze, eyes wide, as the rope held for one more precarious moment.

Then the knot came loose, and he fell.

[crow]

The sun beat down on a wide grass field. Beyond it, the ocean glimmered, and birds flew overhead, dark specks against the brilliant blue expanse of the sky. A breeze blew in from the beach, ruffling his hair. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the laughter of children.

Someone was calling him. The voice was warm and familiar, like the old children's blanket he used to hide under at night, and something in his chest seized up at the sound of it. He turned and found his mother smiling down at him, sitting on a blanket underneath a tree. His father stood over a grill, brows furrowed in concentration, though he looked up as Tanner turned his gaze toward him. He smiled too, held up his hand and beckoned.

He walked up the hill toward them, grass sighing against his ankles. With every step the distance between them seemed to grow even wider. He quickened his pace, but to no avail; soon they were dwindling down to dark specks on the horizon. He was running, and his breath came short, and the tightness in his chest grew to a keen and horrible ache.

An eagle flew overhead, taunting him with its cries, but when he looked up, the expression he read in its eyes was one of pity. “How long are you going to stay like this?” it said, in the high clear voice of a girl.

The world spun around him. His eyes fluttered open. A dream, he thought. Only a dream.

[crow]

Everything around him was white. For a moment, he was disoriented; the walls of his own bedroom were painted a dark color, styled to match the black marble of the floor. The pain in his chest didn't go away, and he found with growing dismay that it was spreading, down along his back and through his limbs. What had happened to him?

No, he remembered. The rope had unravelled, and he fell. This must have been a hospital. He lifted one hand and saw something move in the periphery of his vision: a cord, the end of it attached to him. “Damn,” he said, and fought the urge to laugh. He was pretty sure he had cracked his ribs, and knew from experience how awful it would feel if he did.

“That's all you have to say?” said the eagle from his dream. Wait, no, that wasn't right. What was an eagle doing in a hospital room? He wasn't still dreaming, was he? He turned his head to look, which proved to be more difficult than he anticipated, both due to the oxygen mask he was wearing and because the movement sparked the beginnings of a headache. There, standing beside his bed, was... well, not an eagle, that was for sure.

[crow]

It--- she--- was a girl. That was a relief. Even if it had been part of a dream, hearing that voice come out of the bird had been disconcerting. This body suited her much better. Of course, the fact that she wasn't a bird didn't necessarily mean this wasn't a dream. She was visiting him, for one, which was pretty outlandish if you asked him. Did he know her? Maybe it was just the concussion, but he didn't think he did.

Her eyes widened as soon as they met his. She waved a hand in front of him incredulously. His expression must have changed somehow; she gasped sharply, covering her mouth with  both hands. “Wait. Wait, you can see me?”

He tried to say yes, though what came out sounded more like a groan. The inside of his mouth tasted coppery and awful. “Do I know you?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “we're not... not exactly acquainted." She fidgetted slightly, and he noticed for the first time that she was carrying a heavy-looking book in her hands. It looked like a prop from some sort of old fantasy movie, bound in leather with pages edged in gold. There was no title or anything, just a design etched over the cover, which ominously began to resemble a stylized skull the more he squinted at it.

[crow]

“Okay, girl-who-doesn't-know-me. Why are you here?” He propped himself up on his elbows and turned to stare at her.

Her mouth tightened into a frown at that. “Don't call me whatever you want,” she said sharply.

“Then what do I call you? You haven't exactly introduced yourself,” he shot back, though it occurred to him that he probably should have asked for her name first. Well, he was asking now, anyway. Trouble was, she wasn't answering. He watched her expectantly, but for some reason she wouldn't meet his gaze, instead looking all around the room as if searching for something.

“Um,” she said. He frowned, cupping one hand to his ear.

“Um?” he said. “Your name is Um?”

She huffed indignantly, her hands tightening on the sides of the book. “Of course not! It's just---”

“Oh good!” The two of them turned around in unison at the sound of another voice. A man in a nurse uniform walked in, setting his clipboard aside as he checked the IV drip beside the bed. “You're up. How are you feeling?”

[crow]

"Terrible," Tanner said. "Who let this visitor into my room? She's causing a disturbance." He motioned to the girl, but the nurse only frowned, looking confused.

"What do you mean? There's no one here. Visiting hours are over," he said. Tanner blinked at him, unsure of what to say for a moment. He chanced a glance back at where the girl had been, and sure enough, she was still there, though now she looked positively nervous. "Sir," said the nurse slowly, "are you... sure you're alright?"

There was a pause as Tanner processed all this, turning the situation over in his mind. Then, he broke into a grin. "Just kidding," he said. The smile came easily to him, even with everything that had happened. "This thing's pretty nice," he said, toying idly with the bedside remote, pushing the front half of the bed upward so he could sit up. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back on the pillows. "That TV up there doesn't work, does it?" He could see the relief break across the nurse's face as he spoke.

"Yes it does. You can control it like this," the man said, pressing another button on Tanner's remote. The TV flickered on, filling the room with the soft drone of two politicians debating over some hot issue concerning the rise of youth crime. Tanner grimaced and immediately changed the channel.

[crow]

Eventually the nurse left after checking his IV and warning him not to try and move around too much. He had a whole litany of fractures and sprains, but the nurse didn't mention anything particularly worrisome; in all likelihood, he would recover within a few weeks and be back on his feet. As soon as the man left, Tanner turned his attention back to the girl---

--- only to find that she wasn't there.

He blinked. When had she...? He had been facing the door the entire time while talking to the nurse, so there was no way she could have gone out the door without him seeing her. Did she...? She couldn't have gone out the window, right? He started to get up to try and see for himself, but the pain that shot through his back at the sudden movement made him stop, grimacing as he settled himself back down onto the bed.

He remembered how the nurse had looked at him when he asked about the girl. Maybe it had something to do with that. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made: a girl he didn't know, that nobody else could see, who vanished as soon as he turned his back on her for a few minutes?

[crow]

He froze. A sudden, unpleasant thought occurred to him, and he looked around at the hospital room with newfound horror. It all seemed clean and modern, but that didn't mean anything. A quick search on his phone confirmed his fears: it had been remodelled several years before.

Haunted. The hospital was haunted. He was being tormented by the ghost of a girl who died here in this room.

"H-Hey!" he called out, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "I know you're in here, ghost! I'm not scared of you!" His words echoed in the empty room, too loud against the silence. There was no response, but the air felt colder than before. He had thought it a pretty good deal when he first woke up--- being injured was no fun and hospital food sucked, but this way he'd get out of the house for a few weeks, and he'd have a good reason to be skipping out on school. There were worse things than pestering nurses and watching TV all day. He hadn't counted on the prospect of sharing his room with a ghost though. Now he was beginning to wish he hadn't done it.

"You're not an evil spirit, are you?" he said. "You'd better come out! You can't hide forever, you evil ghost!" No one answered his calls. After a while, he sank uneasily back against the bed, palming the remote and turning the TV back on. On-screen, a ghost ducked its way into the body of a girl, and Tanner immediately changed the channel, shuddering.

Girl ghosts wouldn't possess guys, would they?

[crow]

He'd seen her. The reaper tucked herself against the shadow of the building, wincing at the recollection of what had happened. He'd seen her! What should she do?

... No, that shouldn't have been possible. Normal humans didn't just wake up one day and start seeing reapers. It was abundantly clear that he hadn't seen her before--- she had been right next to him when he decided to ride down the side of his building on that makeshift swing, and he definitely hadn't seen her then. So why did he notice her in the hospital?

Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. That was a possibility. Was there ever a case of a reaper hallucinating from overwork? ... But what did that mean, then? Had she wanted him to notice her?

"Well, it'd be nice if he listened once in a while," she muttered. Still, she didn't like the idea that she might be thinking so much about him that she'd hallucinate something like this. It was his fault to begin with for showing up in her Tome so many times, but reapers were supposed to be professional. The living were the living and the dead were the dead.