Reaping the Whirlwind (Boom Boom Ba Remix) (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Dead Like Me); Pt. 1/14
Title: Reaping the Whirlwind (The Boom Boom Boom Ba Remix); Part 1/14
Author: liz_marcs
Summary: What does the addition of supernatural-related reaps to the reaping workload, Roxy’s promotion, the addition of a new grim reaper with supernatural experience, a new sort-of boyfriend who may or may not be a pirate, and an approaching apocalypse all have in common? New grim reaper boss George doesn’t know, but she’s willing to bet that in the middle of it all the universe will kick her ass. Again.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Dead Like Me crossover
Characters: Dead Like Me (order of appearance) - George, Mason, Daisy, Roxy, Kiffany, Delores, Penny, OCs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (order of appearance) - Dawn, Buffy, Willow (appearance only), Giles (appearance only), Xander, OCs.
Pairing: George/Xander (nothing explicit)
Rating: R for language, cartoon violence and death, sexual situations
Warning: Spoilers for all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show only), Dead Like Me, and Dead Like Me: Life After Death.
Original drabbles: Six Drabbles About Dawn and Death by nothorse
Reaping the Whirlwind (Boom Boom Ba Remix)
My name is George Lass, and I’ve been dead - or rather undead - for 6 years, 3 weeks, and 2 days. Not that anyone’s counting or anything.
My job: grim reaper. Well, that’s mostly my job. These days I also supervise other grim reapers. I’ve been The Boss for 5 months, 4 days.
Before anyone gets this idea that being The Boss is all glamour and bling with my feet up on the desk while I snap fingers and order my adoring minions to pick up my dry cleaning or wash my car or buy me shit, I think you need to meet my crew.
No, really. You need to meet my crew. That’s when you’ll realize that it’s been a long 5 months and 4 days. A very, very long 5 months and 4 days.
Still, being a reaper boss does have its small perks. I get my own place. Rent free.
Hell, if Rube told me that way back when I first sat my ass down at Der Waffle Haus that a free apartment came with a promotion, I would’ve…
I dunno…
Maybe put a little effort into taking-souls-for-an-unliving.
Okay, maybe not.
But I might’ve put some effort into it if I had known and that’s the whole point. I think.
As for the whole undead issue, it happens to be true that I am one of the undead. Sure, people think “undead” and they think vampire. Zombie. All of that children-of-the- night-of-the-night horseshit. I’m not anything like that, but now I’ve got to live with the bad rep because guess who’s been going nuts and giving all of us undead bad PR?
Go on. Guess.
None of us in the hinterlands we call “the field” ever knew that there were any undead except us reapers. At least we didn’t know before 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days ago. Needless to say, my job as The Boss crossed over into the double-suck right about the time we all found out that vampires, zombies, and other children of the night or whatever they call themselves are real. And not just real. We’re talking Real Assholes.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. The perks of being The Boss of Other Reapers.
The free apartment, which I mentioned. All other blessings flow from that very simple fact.
That means bye-bye roommates. Bye-bye Daisy with her 2-hour iron-woman beauty regimen, which she always starts right when I need to get ready for another day at Happy Time. Bye-bye Mason with his bogarting the couch, and the TV, and all my food. Bye-bye to doing all the housework for 3 people because Daisy has a morbid fear of dishpan hands and Mason breaks out in hives if he sees a vacuum cleaner.
Bye-bye to all of that, and hello to sweet, sweet solitude. I get to sit on my couch and watch whatever I want on my TV and eat all of my food and not have to worry about Daisy throwing a fit because I put Nair in her shampoo out of revenge for that day she made me a half-hour late for work.
Best of all, when you have your own place you can set your own schedule. Then your schedule becomes your routine.
I like routines. They’re comforting.
A routine means that there aren’t any big surprises and no drama from roommates throwing your day into a tailspin before it even starts. No whining, no banging on the bathroom door, and no need to threaten Daisy with another visit from the Nair Fairy if she insists she needs 5 more minutes to remove whatever that is she puts on her face. Best of all: no discovering that Mason ate that leftover Chinese while you were asleep leaving you without that lunch you were so looking forward to because that was some really good moo goo gai pan.
Now it’s all: get up at 6:30 a.m., collect the reap information for the day, scan the reports, head off to the Stacked Pancake, and hand out the assignments. The key part of this is I can sometimes grab the earliest and easiest reap for myself if I haven’t been pre-assigned one. I mean, what the fuck, right? I’m The Boss. I deserve a little something for putting up with Daisy, Mason, and to a way lesser extent, Roxy.
Once the soon-to-be-dead-person walking has been reaped and shown their lights, it’s off to another day in corporate-ish America where I get to keep my Happy Time paycheck all to myself, instead using that money for stupid shit. Like rent.
After a day in the coal mines, it’s home to a blessedly roommate-free apartment where I catch some tube until my eyes bleed. Then it’s another night tossing and turning in bed while wishing that I could sleep for more than 3 damn hours. Come 6:30 a.m. it’s up and at ’em following the same pattern. Sure, it sounds boring, but it works for me. If I were still alive, I’d call it the circle of life as a comfy blanket. Since I’m not, it’s the circle of death as…unh…a comfy blanket.
The only creepy part is the fact that I get the reap information for the day slid under my door from God knows Whatever before I even get up for my morning bathroom routine.
But I can live with creepy. Or…unlive with it. Or whatever.
Fuck it. You know what I mean.
#####
“Good morning Seattle! Look, up in the sky! It’s yellow! It’s round! Why, it’s the sun! That’s right, kids. No need to panic. The long, dark days of rain, rain, and more rain is about to-”
With a groan, George slapped her hand down on her clock radio and shut it off. As per her usual, she also knocked it to the floor.
“Blessed silence,” she groaned as she rolled out of bed.
She shuffled past the kitchenette of what her landlord laughingly called a studio apartment - More like an over-priced one-room efficiency with space carved out for a couple of appliances and a teeny bathroom, but it’s not like anyone let me pick out my own apartment - and into the bathroom.
On this morning, like every other morning since she moved in, she grumbled about the cold tiles under her feet and made faces at herself in the mirror while she began usual her oral hygiene regimen: gargle, floss, brush.
Then it was back into the main room to pick up whatever El Creepo, as she had come to think of the Whatever that left behind the reap assignments, had slipped under her door. She was already bending down when she realized that the familiar manila interoffice envelope simply wasn’t.
“Fuck. Me,” George complained as she stood upright.
Just my luck. The gravelings probably decided to take the day off. On the upside, guaranteed no messy reaps today. On the downside, we’ve probably got a shitload of paperwork just waiting for us and only 24 hours to do it.
“I can’t handle this right now,” George complained. “I don’t even know what to do.”
She glowered at the door as if it had the definitive answer.
“Well, someone better be dropping off some instructions, or at least a treasure map where I can find everything I need or someone’s records are going to be fucked,” she informed the door.
The door remained door-like and provided no answers at all.
George turned on her heel and headed back to the bathroom and a nice, long shower. She got no more than three paces when she heard the sound of something at the door. She spun around and saw the familiar manila interoffice envelope waiting for her in its customary place. Today the usual was paired with a dark red envelope of the same size.
“Guess someone’s running late today,” George grumbled as she stomped over to the door. “And, oh, look! Something extra. This better not mean more work for me.”
As she bent down to pick up the envelopes, she noticed the hint of a shadow through crack under the door. She froze and swallowed. El Creepo appeared to be waiting for something. George took a deep breath as she reached for the envelopes and called out, “In a sec.”
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get the envelopes out of the way. Okay, actually it was that. I was a little afraid of what I’d find on the other side of that door. It’s not that I wasn’t planning on opening it, because I most definitely was. However, this struck me as a need-to-leave-fast-just-in-case situation. Leaving loose envelopes underfoot when I might have to back up at a run while slamming the door shut was probably a really bad idea.
I think I’m starting to get why Rube was a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kinda guy, because that shadow seemed like a Real Shadow. It was a shadow with extra shadow on the side. Or more like shadow-plus.
George straightened up and, keeping one nervous eye on the door to make sure that El Creepo didn’t go anywhere, opened up the dark red envelope. She peered inside and saw two packages held together with a paperclip. One had several pages with what appeared to be a picture of a young woman attached. The other was a single sheet of paper with a picture of…
Why would there be a picture of…
George pulled the single sheet with its attached picture out of the envelope and stared at it, letting all the other paperwork fall to the floor.
Stamped crosswise across the paper was a red rubber-stamped “APPROVED” in all capital letters.
“No! Wait! No!” George hollered.
As George dove for the door, El Creepo’s shadow took a powder.
George burst into the hallway just in time to catch something dark moving really fast around a corner.
“Get back here you son of a bitch! You get back here right now!” George hollered as she chased after the Whatever. “You can’t do this to me! You can’t!”
George skid around the corner and saw the elevator door was already closing on that hint of shadow she couldn’t quite see. She put in an extra burst of speed in the vain hope that she could stop it.
“No you don’t! No you don’t!” George yelled as she slammed into the elevator door. She tried pulling it open with her hands even as the dial above her head showed that the elevator was already descending out of her reach. She began to pound on it. “Come back and say this to my face, you miserable bastard!”
I am George, hear me roar. Well, that sure told It, didn’t it? What am I going to do?
George stepped back and spit, “Motherfucker.”
She spun around, ready to stomp back to her apartment only to find that she had drawn a crowd. Just about every door on her floor was open and framed an irate person glaring right at her.
She held up her single sheet of paper with photo attached and explained in a weak voice, “Unh…I got a jury summons.”
#####
I had always wondered what Rube knew and when he knew it about me and the day I died. I even asked him once. Okay, more like yelled the questions at him while pointing out that I was only 18 when I died and that it wasn’t fair.
Which it wasn’t and it still isn’t, but then again death is never fair. It just is. Reapers have two choices: accept it and move on, or don’t accept it and get disappeared.
Now I know what Rube knew and when he knew it. I wish I didn’t, but now I know.
And I still don’t think it’s fair.
You know, I never did find out the name of the guy I replaced. All I got out of Rube was that he was a pain in the ass, but then again Rube thought everyone was a pain in his ass. He took pains in his ass personally even when it wasn’t personal.
The thing is, no one ever talked about the guy who reaped me, got his lights, and left me holding the bag. No one. Not Rube, pain-in-the-ass comment aside. Not Roxy. Not Mason. And not Betty. It was like: here was this guy we worked with for years, maybe even decades. Then one day he’s gone and it’s like he was never there at all.
Come to think of it, we don’t even talk about Betty and that’s despite the fact she took the fast exit out of being a reaper instead of waiting her turn and probably got obliterated in the process.
Is this who we are? Is this really who we are? Are we so used to the idea that one day you’re there and the next day you’re not that we even apply it to one of us?
If I have to go by everything that’s never been said, I think the answer is “yes”.
#####
The anger over the unfairness of the situation was still busily gnawing away in the pit of George’s stomach when she pushed open the door of the Pancake Stack. However, all of that anger was now drowning in a sense of the loss that was coming.
Her merry band of reapers - a band that George would somewhat grudgingly admit were her fucked-up undead family - were already in full bicker.
Roxy was cackling over her coffee as George approached their usual booth. She stopped just short of finishing the trek and watched them.
I couldn’t believe this was going to change. I didn’t want it to change. I liked things just the way they were.
“It’s not bloody funny,” Mason grumped. “And I want to file a police report.”
“Let me get this straight,” Roxy was seconds away from howling with laughter and pounding on the table, “you want to file a police report because some lowlife grabbed your backpack and took your drugs? Seriously?”
The few working synapses in Mason’s brain finally seemed to get just how fucked-up that idea really was. Typical Mason, though, he wasn’t about to let it drop. “He took my wallet, too. And I’ll have you know that those drugs were legal prescription medications.”
“Yeah, none of which are in your name,” Roxy pointed out. “So, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? I file a report, they catch the creep, and they find all these bottles on him. How long do you think it’ll take for them to find out all those names belong to dead people?”
“We could leave out the part about the drugs, right?” Mason asked.
“What I don’t understand,” Daisy interrupted as she checked her make-up in mirror compact, “is why you didn’t chase down the mugger and get back your things.”
“Daisy, I explained this,” Mason said with the air of a man who had repeated this point several times, “he had a gun.”
“So?” Roxy archly asked. “You’re already dead. It isn’t like he can kill your scrawny ass again.”
“Well put, Roxy,” Daisy primly said as she snapped the compact mirror shut.
“Getting shot bloody well hurts,” Mason said with a wounded air.
This is the part where I’ve got to interrupt.
The beauty-obsessed blonde with the good skin is Daisy. According to her, she not only knew every leading man in Hollywood back in the stone ages, she blew all of them, too. What? I’m only quoting Daisy. Anyway, Daisy was an actress. Is an actress. Kind of. She’s still hoping to get discovered by a famous producer and make it big in Hollywood, despite the fact she’s dead and reaping in Seattle. Still, if you squint you’ll find that Daisy does have a heart buried in there somewhere. Blink and you’ll miss it.
The grubby-looking British guy who looks like he never quite got out of the drug haze of the ’60s is Mason. What to say about Mason, except: Mason, Mason, Mason.
The black woman in the police uniform is Roxy. She will Kick. Your. Ass.
“Well, I remember this one date I had with Tyrone Power,” Daisy began.
“Oh, God,” Mason groaned.
“Yup, it’s going to be one of those fucking days. I can just feel it,” Roxy grumbled as she sipped from her coffee cup.
Roxy, you have no idea.
“And this blackguard jumped out of the shadows with a gun and insisted that I hand over all my jewelry,” Daisy continued. “Well, of course I just couldn’t since Tyrone had gotten them on loan from Tiffany’s. He was letting me wear them for this date and-”
“Roxy? Please shoot me,” Mason begged.
“I’m thinking I should shoot Daisy instead,” Roxy said.
“Are you going to let me finish this story or not?” Daisy huffed.
“I vote not,” George said as she finally slid into the booth’s sole empty slot next to Roxy.
“Weeeellll, look who decided to finally grace us with her presence,” Roxy sarcastically commented.
“Look at that,” Mason flashed the very new, very expensive Omega watch on his wrist, “our little Georgie is near a half-hour late. And I say, ‘Good for her.’ She’s been getting a little too Miss Goody Two-Shoes lately. High time she bucked the trend and got back to her rebel girl roots.”
George blinked at him. “I know that’s not your watch.”
“My reap from last night,” Mason proudly answered.
“Speaking of filing a police report for thievery,” Roxy grumbled.
“What? He said I could have it.” Mason brought down his wrist. “Not like he’s going to need it. Not where he’s gone.”
“That’s just so tacky,” Daisy delicately shuddered.
“Right. Because you’ve never enhanced your income by letting your fingers do a little walking where they shouldn’t,” Mason said.
“I was talking about the watch,” Daisy sniffed.
“Guys!” George snapped. “Enough!”
Three pairs of eyes turned on George.
After a beat of silence, Daisy turned on her megawatt smile and said, “Well, aren’t we a little ball of sunshine today.”
Before George was able to say something cutting, a shadow fell across their table.
“Are you ready to order?”
George’s eyes snapped up. “Oh, hey Kiffany. I’d like a round of Banana Bonanzas. My treat.”
“Wrong restaurant,” Kiffany reminded her as she tapped her pen against her pad.
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” George winced. “Make that a round of Best Banana Busters. Unh, still my treat.”
The synapses in Mason’s brain were really on fire today, because it finally registered that George was actually paying for breakfast. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” George wearily answered.
Kiffany finished her scribbling. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, coffee for me and put whatever they’re having on my bill,” George said.
Three pairs of eyes, this time widened in shock, once more stared at George.
“Got it,” Kiffany nodded as she finished scribbling. Before she turned away to deliver the order, she paused and touched George on the shoulder. “Sometimes I miss the old Waffle Haus, too.”
“Yeah,” George glumly agreed.
The group waited until Kiffany moved off.
“I knew it. I knew it was going to be one of those fucked-up days,” Roxy said.
“Why do you say that?” George tried to sound defensive, but instead sounded sulky. Sulky was so not what she should be going for right now.
“Well, Georgia, you have to admit that you buying us breakfast is unprecedented,” Daisy pointed out.
“That’s not true. I’ve bought you breakfast,” George argued.
“Yeah, right before you told us you were now our boss,” Roxy said as she sipped from her coffee.
“So you’ll have to excuse us if we think that maybe you’ve got a little bad news tucked away in your Day Planner,” Mason added. “What is it today? A bus full of little old nuns? A tragic accident involving an interstate pile-up caused by a herd of rabid goats?”
“Mason,” George sighed.
Roxy snapped her fingers. “It’s another fucking vampire attack on a nightclub, isn’t it? God, I hate those things.”
“Better that than the zombie-related reap I had last week.” Daisy wrinkled her nose. “I’m still seeing that thing bite into my guy’s brain every time I close my eyes.”
“You know, I was trying to be optimistic,” Mason complained. “Now you’ve completely put me off breakfast.”
“You have to admit that adding supernatural-related reaps to our workload is just ridiculous,” Daisy griped.
“I’m telling you, Someone upstairs fucked up big time,” Roxy agreed. “Who wants to bet that They screwed up on staffing for the supernatural deaths? Figures that we’re the ones who are paying for that. And you can bet They’re not going to add more help now that They’ve got us doing it for free.”
“Roxy, we don’t get paid, remember?” George said. “We’re doing this for free anyway.”
“Yeah, well, that’s bureaucracy for you, isn’t it?” Mason asked without acknowledging George’s point. “This is why we need a union.”
“Look at you being all Norma Rae and shit,” Roxy said.
“Guys, it’s nothing like that,” Geroge interrupted. “Really. No vampires. No zombies. No freaky creatures from Planet X. No monsters. And especially no giant squids with tentacles that suck off your face.”
Daisy reached across the table and placed her hands over George’s. “It’s okay, Georgia. I completely understand why you’re still traumatized by that. But I think you really need to see someone about your PTSD.”
“Daisy,” George said through clenched teeth as she yanked her hands off the table, “I’m just saying that this isn’t about a reap.”
This resulted in a few moments of blessed silence as the other three reapers considered this.
“At least, it sort of isn’t about a reap,” George amended in a mutter.
The other three reapers exchanged worried glances.
“Georgia, you’re not making a lot of sense,” Daisy said.
Unsure of what to say or how to say it, George silently opened her Day Planner and pulled out a single folded sheet of paper. She held it out to Roxy.
Roxy eyed the paper like it was a bomb that would go off the second she touched it. “Oh, no. I’m not taking that unless I know what it’s about.”
“It isn’t going to bite. Besides, neither one of us really has a choice, do we?” George mumbled.
Roxy gingerly took the paper and unfolded it.
As Roxy’s eyes scanned the page with the red rubber-stamped APPROVED, Mason and Daisy fidgeted.
Roxy was probably just as upset as I was, and that’s why it was taking her so long to say anything. There’s also probably a little shock involved, but she was definitely upset. I could tell.
“Rox?” Mason tentatively asked. “What is it?”
Roxy threw up her hands and let out of whoop of triumph.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t that upset.
“Read it and weep, motherfucker,” Roxy laughed as she waved the page in front of Mason. “This girl is moving on up, up, up and out of here.”
“The hell you say!” Mason exclaimed as he snatched the paper out of Roxy’s hand.
“Let me see!” Daisy demanded as she snatched the paper from Mason’s hand before he had a chance to see what was on it.
Roxy, meanwhile, was doing some kind of break-dancing move with her upper body.
“I don’t believe this.” Daisy slammed the page down on the table top.
Mason snatched the paper and finally got a chance to read it.
“Ah-hah! Believe it, girlfriend. Read. It. And. Weep.” Roxy began doing a one-person wave.
Daisy leaned forward and pointed a threatening finger at the celebrating Roxy. “I’ve been dead far longer than you, Roxanne Harvey. Decades longer in fact. If anyone should be getting their lights, it should be me.”
“Oh, this is bullshit,” Mason said as he waved the paper at George. “This is completely bullshit, this is. Roxy’s been dead for, what? She hasn’t been dead for even 30 years.”
“Twenty-seven years, in fact,” Roxy said. She began bouncing in her seat and singing under her breath, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah…”
George put her head in her hands.
“Well, what about me?” Daisy piteously asked.
“What about you?” Roxy cheerfully asked.
“I’ve been dead for 71 years. Seven. One,” Daisy said. “I’ve earned those lights. I deserve those lights.”
“That’s right. I shuffled off the mortal coil 43 years ago, and I’ve yet to even get a sniff of freedom,” Mason said. “Should be me or Daisy gettin’ our lights. Not some Roxy-come-lately.”
“Too bad, so sad,” Roxy sing-songed.
“Are we finished?” George snapped.
“Alright settle down, settle down,” Roxy said with a grin. “Let the boss lady have her say.”
George resisted the urge to tell Roxy to go fuck herself.
“I want an explanation for this bullshit, that’s what I want,” Mason complained.
“As would I,” Daisy daintily agreed. “Georgia?”
“Well, I…unh…I don’t actually have one,” George mumbled.
“Bullshit,” Mason declared. “You know something, Georgie. So spit it out.”
“I don’t,” George protested. “I don’t know why Roxy and not you two. It’s not like they asked me or anything. All I know is that Roxy’s getting promoted and some information about the new reaper and that’s it.”
“Whoa! This is where I have to get off,” Roxy said.
“What? Why?” George asked. “I mean, what the fuck do you care? You’re up, up, up and out of here, remember?”
“The less I know about my replacement, the better,” Roxy said. “I don’t want to spend my last day feeling all guilty and shit.”
In a fucked-up way, Roxy kind of had a point.
“Notice she’s not feeling guilty about leaving us behind,” Mason said as he nudged Daisy.
“Hell no I’m not,” Roxy readily admitted.
“Four Best Banana Busters,” Kiffany announced as she materialized at their table with four plates.
“I gotta take mine to go,” Roxy said. “I’m late for work.”
Kiffany swiped up one of the plates. “You got it. Meet you by the register.”
As Kiffany sailed away to the kitchen to pack up Roxy’s breakfast, Roxy held out her hand.
“What?” George demanded.
“My post-it. Remember? Can’t reap without it,” Roxy reminded her.
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” George pulled Roxy’s post-it from her Day Planner and handed it to her.
Roxy scanned the yellow square and made a face. “Two-thirty-five in the morning? You’re fucking with me, right?”
“That’s the time,” George said.
“Shit. So much for sneaking out of work early,” Roxy said as she made a shooing motion with her hand to indicate that George needed to get her ass out of the way.
“You’re going to work?” Mason asked. “What are you? High?”
“Me? No. I’m pretty sure you are, though,” Roxy said as she hauled herself out of the booth. “I’ve got responsibilities. I can’t just not show up for my shift.”
“And yet, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing tomorrow,” George said.
“Smart ass,” Roxy shot back as she headed off to meet Kiffany.
As George slid back into the booth, Daisy pounced.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?” George asked.
“Our new reaper,” Mason said. “C’mon, give us the dirt.”
“It’d be nice to have someone with breeding join us,” Daisy sighed. “We need more gentility in our ranks.”
“If it’s a man, I hope he’s a real bloke. And if it’s a bird, I hope she’s a stunner,” Mason said as he dug into his breakfast.
And just like that, Mason and Daisy moved on. It was like watching someone flip a switch. I didn’t get it. There should be a little period of mourning, or at least a moment of silence. There should be something to mark the occasion; something more than me buying breakfast for everyone.
“First off, it’s a she. As for whether or not she’s hot, I can’t judge one of those things,” George said.
Daisy pouted. Mason looked hopeful.
“As for gentility, she has a PhD in linguistics. I guess that qualifies,” George added.
Mason remained stubbornly hopeful. “Maybe she’s got a sexy library thing going for her.”
“You have to do better than that, Georgia, because honestly this tells me nothing,” Daisy said.
I knew it was kind of mean of me, but I really wanted to make them sorry. Sorry about Roxy leaving. Sorry about getting a new reaper with no warning. Sorry about everything. So I probably shouldn’t have broken the news to them like I did, but at this point I just didn’t care.
“Also, she’s an expert in the supernatural,” George added in an off-handed manner.
Daisy’s eyes widened as her mouth dropped open. Mason’s fork froze halfway between the plate and his mouth as he stared at George in horror.
“That’s right. It looks like we’re not going to stop reaping supernatural deaths any time soon.” George fake-smiled at them as she lifted her coffee cup in a salute. “Cheers!”
#####
The hardest part about death is moving on, and we’re not just talking about the living moving on either. As it turns out, it’s the hardest part about life after death, too.
Roxy and me had our problems, sure. Roxy was always a hardass reaper, and me not so much. When Rube was around, she was the second in command. She made sure that Mason, Roxy, and, yeah, even me, toed the line and did our reaps the right way and according to the rules.
The problem was that after Rube disappeared the day Der Waffle Haus burned to the ground, Roxy temporarily stopped following the rules. It was like she had forgotten everything Rube was about when that asshole Cameron took over and insisted that the only rule was that there were no rules. God knows what got into Roxy. Maybe she got sick of being the responsible one. Maybe she got sick of being good. Maybe she just needed someone to give her permission to be bad.
Turned out that it was exactly the wrong time for her to stop following the rules.
While Daisy, Mason, and even Roxy started running around doing whatever the hell they wanted, I suddenly became a stickler for the rules and insisted on following them to a T.
Turned out that it was exactly the wrong time for me to start following the rules.
Sometimes I wonder if Cameron was a test, because when it was all over I got showered in post-it notes and Roxy got shut out of being the new Rube.
Yet, for all that, Roxy’s getting her lights and I’m still here. I could see where Mason and Daisy were coming from. If you go by strict seniority, Daisy should be the first to go. If you go by who’s been a good reaper versus a bad reaper…
Okay, maybe I still wouldn’t be top of the list, but I bet I’d outrank Daisy and Mason at least.
But if becoming The Boss wasn’t a reward then what was it? A punishment?
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