A Grim Reaper's Guide to Cheating Death

Statistically speaking, you're more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. Unfortunately for Nora Bird, her parents beat the odds and died on her birthday instead. Eighteen years later and that gray mid-November air still weighed heavy as she shut the day behind her with the swing of a pigeon-graffitied glass door and began the daily trek up the stairs to her office.

It was just after seven a.m., and the corporate-beige halls of S.C.Y.T.H.E.-Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences-were still holding their breath between shifts. Nora liked this part of the day best, when the world was empty and belonged to no one in particular. She tucked herself into her office on the top floor of the building. It was a room with no windows, which had served its previous occupants just fine since they were mostly mops, brooms, and the odd bucket. It served Nora just as well. No natural light meant no sun exposure, and no sun exposure meant less risk of skin cancer, something the fluorescent bulbs that buzzed from their rectangular homes on the ceiling never threatened.

In the middle of Nora's desk sat a cupcake frosted with bright blue icing. She cocked her head at it. Ran a finger through the icing and examined it with narrowed eyes. The food dye Blue No. 2 had been found to contribute to brain tumors in rats. She wiped the icing on the rim of the garbage can under her desk, wrapped the cupcake in tissues, and threw it away too, making a mental note to thank Larry, janitor extraordinaire, for the gesture.

Then she got to work.

It always felt fitting for Nora to work on her birthday. It had long been a day marked by death, and after all, that was the nature of her business. Beside the now vacant spot where the deadly cupcake had just sat rested a pile of manila folders that reached to Nora's chin. The day's cases were patiently waiting to be sorted into their designated department-Natural Causes, Murder, Accidental Deaths-and assigned to specific agents. It was an easy job for Nora, almost mindless at times. Each file needed to be matched with the most appropriate person to collect the soul and bring it to the next stage on its journey. And Nora had studied the agents' files thoroughly enough to matchmake with the prowess of her bubbie.

Moira from Accidental Deaths had studied proctology before coming to S.C.Y.T.H.E., which made her disconcertingly comfortable with nudity, so Moira got the shower falls and toilet mishaps. Ricky from Murder went to school with the kids in most of the major mob families in town, so he got the mob hits and a chance for a quick class reunion to boot. It was easy. Routine. Almost formulaic. Sometimes all Nora had to do was glimpse a single word in a file-"peanut" meant she was dealing with anaphylaxis, which would go to Jorge, who had an unexplained vendetta against legumes and would be the most likely to empathize with anyone who fell victim to one.

Nora skimmed the file of an essence who would definitely be handled by Heart Attack Harpreet in Natural Causes and let her mind drift beyond the four walls of the former broom closet. Nora had been working as an administrative coordinator at S.C.Y.T.H.E. for nearly two and a half years and was finally content with her life. Not happy, exactly. That felt too high stakes. But her dream of pursuing architecture was fading nicely, and the loneliness that came from losing her parents at eight and the grandmother who raised her a few years back didn't sting as sharply as it once had. Her apartment was fine-nice, even, now that she had some art on the walls and a few plants that hadn't yet died despite their best efforts.

She hadn't texted Charlie yet. That was something she should do, probably. Maybe. Unfortunately. It was his birthday too. Though he hadn't texted either, and it didn't seem fair that she had to be the one to send the first text every year.

She opened her phone to Charlie's contact profile. The dumb picture of him with a Fruit Roll-Up hanging out of his mouth like an endless tongue. Their last text exchange, one year ago to the day.

Nora: Happy birthday!

Charlie: HBD butthead

Then silence. She scrolled up to find a similar exchange from the year before that, and the one before that, and several prior, and nothing in between. She closed her phone and returned to her files. Charlie had always been a mystery to Nora, which in and of itself was a mystery to her. Twins were supposed to have something in common, weren't they? And yet, despite sharing a womb and half of their genomes, they couldn't have been less alike. Nora liked facts and statistics and a world that made sense, while Charlie . . . Charlie Bird . . . Charles Ezra Bird was . . . written on the file in Nora's hands.

Nora stopped her daydreaming and sank back into reality, hard. She stopped skimming the page and read it properly, certain she must have mentally inserted her brother's name since he was on her mind. And yet, no matter how many times she reread the name at the top of the file, it never morphed into something different and unconnected to her. The ink was stark and confident.

Case # 73588

Charles Ezra Bird

Age: 26

Cause of Death: Struck by Vehicle

Time to Collect: 11:15 a.m.

Location: Calton Avenue

The walls of the dark, windowless office marched towards one another, trapping Nora inside. She could almost hear them stepping forward to suffocate her, which wouldn't do much good since she'd stopped breathing all by herself.

Statistically speaking, you're more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. But Nora couldn't let that happen. Not again.

Without thinking, without breathing, Nora stuffed Charlie's file under her arm and fled the broom closet.

2

Case # 36658

Mary-Beth Duke

Age: 83

Cause of Death: Struck by Vehicle

It was the third case Nora had sorted after joining S.C.Y.T.H.E., and she'd thought Mary-Beth's death an easy enough one to avoid. The octogenarian had been on her way home from a farmers' market when one of her freshly acquired peaches tumbled from the top of her bag and onto the road. Mary-Beth chased after it, and within seconds both were asphalt cobbler. Nora was still under a probationary period, with her supervisor, the ever-disinterested Janice, sitting beside her at the already cramped desk. It wasn't until Nora sorted the file into the "Natural Causes" pile that Janice perked up enough to tut at the new hire. Mary-Beth's case, she explained, belonged in "Accidental Deaths." But to Nora, there was nothing accidental about it. You cross the road without looking both ways and then both ways again, well, you experience the natural consequences. Everyone knew that. Someone would have to be pretty careless to ignore the cause and effect in a situation like this. Someone like Charlie.


“You need to get in the car. Right now.”

By 8:20 a.m. Nora had crossed town at a safe but rapid pace, trudged through the heaps of rusting, tetanus-encrusted car parts on the lawn, and summoned Charlie to the peeling front door of the little clapboard house he shared with four roommates who seemed less than pleased to be woken up before noon. Charlie, for his part, wore a crooked smile beneath a layer of grogginess. His yellow-blond hair, brassy from years of bleach and various dyes, leapt from his head in no less than six different directions. He ran a hand through his red-tinged goatee, currently accompanied by specks of morning stubble on his cheeks. His white T-shirt was stretched out of shape, and his flannel pajama pants had holes in unfortunate places. He smelled of weed and pepperoni pizza. And he was all Nora had left.

"Uh?" Charlie mustered at last.

"You. Car. Now," Nora tried again, her relief at seeing him alive wrestling with her annoyance at his general existence. It wasn't just his death she needed to protect him from; by going against company protocol, she would very shortly need to protect him from an inevitable pursuit by S.C.Y.T.H.E. as well.

"So weird to actually see you here. Is this, like, a birthday thing?"

"No, Charlie," Nora said. "This is not like a birthday thing. This is like a life-or-death thing. This is like a 'you're going to get hit by a car at eleven fifteen a.m. and die' thing. Just. Please. I don't have time to explain it right now, I just need you to trust me."

Charlie let out a laugh that would have been a snort from anyone else. "This morning, huh? Nor, you need to cool it with the 'everyone's going to die all the time' schtick, man. Or at least wait until the birds are up."

He turned to shut the door, then added, "Oh, right. Happy birthday, butthead," before he disappeared behind chipped sea-foam paint.

Nora stood on the porch for a moment, hands balled so tightly into fists that her fingernails left little half-moons in her palms. She could feel two and a half decades' worth of sibling rage crawling through her like those little green army men Charlie used to play with at Bubbie's, the ones he'd throw at her while she was drawing to get her attention. Their plastic faces were always poised for battle. But so were her crayons.

Nora unclenched and dug a package of vitamin lozenges from the purse on her shoulder. She loosened one and hurled it at Charlie's window to the left of the front door, at the top of the house, the blinds shut. She threw another and another, their taps growing louder with her increasing force. Finally the blinds separated and Charlie poked an eye out. Nora threw another lozenge for good measure. Charlie reappeared at the door a moment later.

"Dude."

"Charlie." Nora forced her frustration down, just like she always did with Charlie, and went for a different tactic. It was tricky. S.C.Y.T.H.E. policy meant she couldn't share the nature of her job with anyone. But then, S.C.Y.T.H.E. policy also strictly forbade employees from taking any documents off the premises, much less preventing an upcoming death, so one more breach wouldn't make a difference at this point. Besides, she was running out of time. The day shift started at nine a.m., and when none of the Collections Agents had cases on their desks, someone would visit her office and alert her boss, who would inevitably cross-reference the files on her desk with the master spreadsheet, only to find the pile one case short. From there it was only a matter of time until S.C.Y.T.H.E. would track her down. She was breaking not only the most critical company rules but the very laws of life and death. It wouldn't be easy to get away with. Her head spun at the gravity of the situation.

"Charlie, I need you to listen to me. My job . . . I . . ." I work for a company of modern-day grim reapers and according to Death itself, you're slated to die today, was what Nora wanted to say. Instead she said, "Yes, actually, this is a birthday thing. Happy birthday. We're going away for a while. Starting right now."

Charlie examined his sister for a long moment. They hadn't seen each other in roughly six months, spoke rarely and had even less to say. Nora braced for a very warranted refusal, or at least some mild scrutiny, but instead Charlie's inspection face softened into an oversized smile.

"Cool."

"Wait, what?"

"Like a road trip or something?"

"Uh, sure," said Nora, still catching up to the situation. "Yeah, like that. So let's go."

Charlie shrugged. "Sweet, let me just pack a few things. And there's room for Jessica too, right?"

"Jessica?"

"Yeah, you'll love her, she's hilarious."

Before Nora could reply, Charlie had shut the door again.

"Charlie," Nora called through the door, banging a fist against it despite the risk of infectious slivers. This was ridiculous. They needed to be on the road right now to avoid both S.C.Y.T.H.E. and whatever car was going to hit Charlie, and now he was not only taking his time packing for a road trip but also apparently planning to bring his fling of the day along. She knocked again. "Charlie! Charlie! Charl-"

The door opened again and Charlie emerged, still in his pajamas, an unzipped, half-full duffel bag over one shoulder, a cage containing a large gray parrot in his hands.

Nora blanched. "What the hell is that?"

"This is Jessica," Charlie said, with a look that said "duh."

"You can't bring a-" Nora caught herself. "Right. Great. Can we go please?"

"You're not even going to say hi to her?"

"Charlie, we don't have time for this."

"Nor, it's, like, dawn, what could you possibly be in such a rush for? Come on, you're an aunt now, won't you at least-"

"Hi," Nora said tightly, bending down to the cage from a safe distance. "Hi, Jessica. Nice to meet you." Then back to Charlie, "Let's go now, please."

Charlie closed his eyes contemplatively and held a finger up to Nora-whether to tell her to wait or shut up she couldn't tell.

"Fucking hell, Char-"

Charlie shoved his held-up finger directly into Nora's face. Nora had to swallow down the urge to bite it.

After a beat, a high-pitched squawk emerged from the cage. "Hi. Hi. Fucking hell."

Charlie burst out into his snort-laugh.

"It talks," Nora blinked at the bird. "Perfect. Okay, can we go now?"

Charlie shrugged, but before he could open his mouth, Nora had hooked an arm under his and was hauling him and Jessica towards the car, the open road, and safety.

"So why the kidnapping?" Charlie turned in the passenger seat to face his sister as they crossed through town towards the highway.

Nora kept her eyes on the road. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how the last time we celebrated a birthday together we had an Elmo cake and you cried because I ate the piece with the balloons on it. So what's up? Like, actually up."

Nora let her eyes slip momentarily to her brother. Then to the clock on her dashboard. It was just after nine; only two hours before Charlie Bird was meant to die.

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"Charlie."

"Nora. C'mon. What, you on the run from the law or something?"

A swarm of black-clad S.C.Y.T.H.E. operatives filled Nora's mind's eye, their glistening onyx SUVs practically materializing in the rearview mirror. She blinked hard to chase them away. Because S.C.Y.T.H.E. operated outside the laws of society, the company had its own enforcement team ready to crack down on anyone in the organization who played too fast and loose with the laws of mortality. They were rarely used, but there were rumors of some kind of soul-abduction scheme that got dismantled at a S.C.Y.T.H.E. office in a different state last year. And if those rumors were anything to go by, Nora dreaded being their next target.