Her Immortal Problem

Lisa stood on the precipice of the skyscraper, her boot-clad feet teetering right on the edge. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and jumped. The wind whooshed past her as she shot towards the asphalt below like a bullet, her hair flying all over. A smile spread over her face as she picked up speed, intensifying into a full-blown grin the closer she got to the ground. She opened her eyes and let out a scream of joy, her rapid descent reflected in the glass walls of the skyscraper. She felt alive, like an eagle looking imperiously at the flightless creatures below her.

The ground got closer and closer but the falling young woman only screamed louder, the sound drowned by the rush of the air against her ears. She reoriented herself so that she faced straight down like she was about to take a dive into the tarred road below. With only a few meters between her and the ground, Lisa unfurled her majestic black wings and made a sharp curve so that her fall turned into a speedy flight, parallel to the ground. She shot past the cars in the parking lot so fast that her wind stream triggered their alarms. She gained altitude until the city was below her, the bustling humans and cars looked like ants.

Lisa loved flying; the feeling of the wind on her face and everything below her exhilarated her. She felt alive as she soared through the skies, her beautiful wings carrying her to heights humans could never reach without technology. Her job could be depressing sometimes but being able to fly more than balanced the scales for her. She closed her eyes and spread her wings, gliding on the gentle wind with no sense of direction. The midday sun felt heavenly against her skin, like a warm caress. She could do this for hours, drifting in the sky without care like a speck of dust.

“Reaper Lissariel,” a voice sounded in her mind.

Archangel, she thought back.

“There is an impending prerogative at the Lister building,” the mental voice went on.

I am aware, I am flying there right now, Lisa responded.

“Good, keep it up like this and you will make Archangel in less than a century. Don't forget your weekly report.”

Thank you Archangel, Lisa beamed at the praise.

Zadkiel was stern and cold on his happiest day so getting praise from him was something big. It made Lisa feel good because it meant that her efforts were not going to waste.

Lisa was a grim reaper or angel of death or a shinigami, every culture had a different name for beings like her. She was responsible for guiding discorporate souls, helping them accept death so they could move on to the other side. Whenever someone died in her district she would get an assignment or a prerogative as it was called in the business. Zadkiel was an archangel and her boss; he oversaw her work and that of 25 other reapers that worked in his province.

Lisa had been a reaper for 7 years; she had no memory of her life before she had woken up in the sanctuary with a thousand other reapers. Physically she appeared to be around 23 years old and she looked human except for the wings protruding out of her back. She could have been human once, or maybe she had been created fully grown, or maybe she had been hatched, she didn’t know and she didn’t really care. Her job completed her; she loved being a reaper so she never dwelt on questions she could never find answers to.

She flapped her wings and flew quickly, gradually descending as she got close to the Lister building. It was a massive skyscraper made of black metal and glass and it dwarfed all the other buildings around it. Lisa vaguely remembered that some rich billionaire owned the building and several other properties around it. She didn’t care much for mortal affairs beyond what her job required her to know.

Lisa circled over the building and landed gently on the roof. She wasn’t worried about anyone seeing her; mortals couldn’t see reapers unless the reaper wanted to be seen. There was a glass dome in the center of the roof, made from green, transparent glass. One side of the dome had a giant hole in it, as though something heavy had been thrown through it. Lisa approached the hole and jumped in, tucking her wings to avoid the jagged edges.

She landed in a brightly lit office, complete with expensive-looking artwork on the walls and a futuristic computer on a large desk. She didn’t dwell too much on the decorations, those details had no bearing on her prerogative so her eyes slid over them as she searched for the human that was about to die.

One of a reaper’s abilities was being able to sense death before it happened; it was like an itch in the back of her brain that intensified the closer she got to the person. It wasn’t always accurate, which is why her Archangel officially gave her assignments but Lisa’s senses were better than most. She could feel the human was just in front of her, obscured by a massive bookshelf. A trail of blood and glass shards confirmed her perceptions.

She walked slowly towards the bookshelf, mentally preparing herself for the task coming her way. A man who looked to be in his mid-twenties lay on the ground, his head propped against the bookshelf. He was shirtless so Lisa could clearly see the deep vertical slashes that ran from his throat to his abdomen. An ornate hilted dagger protruded from his chest, the blade sunk so deep that it had to be piercing his heart. Blood flowed freely from his wounds and welled up into a pool around him around, some of it soaking into the grey sweatpants he wore.

The man’s eyes were closed, his face twisted into a grimace. What a shame, Lisa thought, noticing that the man was quite handsome. She stood over him, waiting for the inevitable. Soon his body would give up and a confused soul would emerge for her to guide. She sighed, waiting for them to die was always boring, some could even take hours to cross over.

Suddenly the man’s eyes opened and he took a labored breath, his eyes darting all over and then settling on the dagger in his chest. He reached for it with his left hand and pulled it out with a groan, the clatter of the weapon on the tiled floor immediately followed by a rush of blood.

Idiot, Lisa thought dispassionately, removing the knife would only serve to make him die faster but it made her job a lot easier so she wasn’t complaining. The man started moving, attempting to pull himself up by using the bookshelf as support. The motion only made more rivulets of blood gush from his gaping wounds, feeding into the crimson lake on the floor.

Any minute now, Lisa thought, it was actually a wonder that he was still breathing considering how much he had bled. As she watched, something unnatural started happening that made her jaw go slack and her eyes bug open. The flood of blood from the man’s wounds slowed to a trickle until it stopped completely. The edges of the wounds started pulsating then they slithered toward each other until the flesh knit together over the exposed tissue. Steam poured off the regenerating wounds in waves that smelt of sulfur and brimstone. She watched in confusion as the fatal wounds disappeared from his body, and with them, the sense in her head that he was about to die. The man pulled himself up with a groan, looking as though he had just stepped out of the shower, not someone who had been knocking at death’s door just a moment ago. He picked up the dagger and casually walked out of the office, drops of blood from his sweatpants staining the floor in his wake.

Lisa watched the door close behind the man, her eyes wider than saucers. She could not believe what she had just witnessed.

“What the f*ck!” She shouted to the empty room.

I am coming.

That’s what her boss had told her after she had informed him that there was a problem with the prerogative. Since reapers could communicate telepathically, they seldom ever met face to face. In all her 7 years on the job, Lisa had only ever seen Zadkiel twice and that had been for less than a minute in both instances. Now he was coming, the thought made her shudder with trepidation.

It was rare for there to be any problems with prerogatives, and even in the event that there were, reapers were equipped to deal with them on their own. In the rare cases that problems occurred; it was usually just some soul refusing to move on and deciding to haunt the living. Those cases were called Spector protocols and more often than not, the reapers would just let the soul become ghosts.

There was no protocol for what Lisa had just seen. She had never heard of anything like that happening in all her time as a reaper. Humans were born, they lived and they died