The Harvesters

Letifer the Harvester leaned against a tree on the edge of the clearing at what was going to be known as The Battle of Chickamauga and listened to the battle rage. He and his brother, Mortem, had been hard at work for eons, but the human mortals still haven't learned to coexist. Not that mortals in general thought much about the Harvesters or the Beyond anyway. Letifer marveled at how consequential the human mortals thought their lives were. He and his brother had been around since the universe began, and humans, who only lived for 50 years at a time, thought of nothing but conflict and progress, leaving Letifer and Mortem to harvest the souls that were ripe.

Being a Harvester was all Letifer had ever known, and it took until Mortal Year 1863 for him to finally become bored, truly bored. There had been a few humans he had been excited to bring to the Beyond, but the souls gradually became one in the same to him.

Well, that's not true, Galileo Galilei stood out. He hadn't feared Letifer when they locked eyes like so many mortals before him did. There was a glint in his gaze that said he knew what a Harvester was, though Letifer didn't have the time to ask him how. Galileo Galilei did hit the nail on the head with the whole the-earth-is-round-and-revolves-around-the-sun thing, so it seemed reasonable that he knew other secrets yet to be revealed. Letifer chuckled at the memory of Mortem and the Sowers placing bets on when the human mortals would figure out that their planet was not flat. He paid his debt the next decade and was off by two centuries.

Behind him, he heard rustling branches and clumsy footsteps struggling to move away from the battle. An unscathed body wearing blue with a soul by the name of Jim Blake fell in a ditch beside Letifer's tree and lay sobbing, staring up at the sky. Letifer saw many humans respond to their own horror in this way and felt no pity for the unscathed Jim Blake. He chalked it up to a moment of mortal panic.

"I killed him, God," Jim Blake said to the sky, "I killed my own brother."

Letifer sighed in exasperation at the memory of harvesting Cain not too long ago.

"I didn't know it was him," Jim Blake sobbed. "I didn't know..."

The canopy of the trees swayed in the breeze making shadows dance across the mortal's body. Letifer thought it would have been a peaceful moment if not for the battle storming a few yards away.

Mortem stepped through an exploding tree trunk across the ditch and nodded in greeting.

"I KILLED HIM!" Jim screamed, a little more dramatic than Letifer would have preferred. Mortem would have raised his eyebrows and rubbed his ears at the human's screech, if he had them.

"What's his problem?" Mortem asked as he walked toward Letifer, "Isn't killing what they do best?"

"He killed his brother by accident," Letifer explained.

Mortem shook his head in disgust, stepped over the writhing Jim Blake and walked toward Letifer’s tree, "He's not even hurt. Why is he acting like he is dying?"

Letifer shrugged, "No clue. I can't begin to understand them."

"Jacob," Jim whispered over another canon blast, "Jacob, my twin."

The Harvesters shared an incredulous look.

"Shall I ask him the Question?" Mortem asked his brother in jest. Souls weren't harvested until they were ripe, and this soul was still very much green. Its soul mate would plump it up with lessons of love, and eventually there would be a richness of color added when it was introduced to fatherhood then again when it became a grandfather. Despite knowing this, Mortem covered his eyes and bent over the human mortal's face to scream the Question.

"ARE YOU READY FOR THE BEYOND, JIM BLAKE?"

"Yes," the Jim Blake responded, "If my brother will be there to forgive me."

The Harvesters froze. They were always invisible and mute to the mortals before the moment of harvesting. Their only job was to look into ripe souls' eyes to send them to the Beyond.

"Will Jacob be there?" The human mortal asked what he thought was simply the sky, "This place isn't worth horse shit without him."

As if to prove a point, a cannon ball blasted through Letifer and his tree. Jim Blake didn’t even flinch at the explosion and the giant oak (which landed in a thud next to him) missed the human mortal by two yards. Letifer silently stepped away from the smoking stump and stood next to his brother. Jim Blake was still staring up at the sky through the canopy of the forest.

"You're not ripe," Mortem explained, "You cannot be with Jacob yet."

Jim screamed up to the sky, "How do I tell Mama I killed my brother? How do I go home?"

The Harvesters looked upon the human mortal, stunned by the earnestness of such a small question. Jim Blake had so much more growing to do and he would learn to forgive himself, they both saw it. They saw that his last words would be heard by his soul mate, that Jim Blake would find happiness eventually, and that the happiness was worth living for. Jim Blake was going to grow and learn enough to be sent to the Beyond full of color and flavors he earned. Mortem would gaze in his eyes and carry him. Letifer saw how heavy, plump, and red the soul would be when Mortem harvested it, “No seeds,” his brother would say. Jim Blake was going to achieve the ultimate peace, why would any mortal worry about such a trivial thing as going home in life when he could be at peace forever?

"What is the purpose of all this, huh?! Why don't you come down here and shed some light on this mess?! Almighty my ass!" Jim Blake pointed a finger to the sky, laying all his rage on God. "Yesterday we were playing in hay fields! We were catching frogs and setting them loose in church! And I shoved a bayonet into Jacob's belly before I saw who he was!"

A new sob choked Jim Blake's throat and Letifer felt a fist of dread clench his heart as the mortal whispered, "I love Jacob's blue eyes."

The Harvesters shared another glance, this one filled with wonder. They smelled Jim's soul grow older in an instant. The pure greenness of it now boasted a large splotch of pink.

"We haven't seen each other since he joined the Pinkertons," he managed. "I didn't know he was going to be here today. Never sent word for me to look for him."

Jim Blake took a buck knife from his belt and the trio watched as sunlight glinted off the blade between the leaves of the canopy above them. The human mortal's eyes widened, and the Harvesters knew he saw their reflections.

"You ugly sons of bitches came to drag me to hell, huh? Serves me right." He lifted the knife and held it to his throat, but Letifer stayed the mortal's hand.

"Your soul is not ready," Mortem tried to explain.

"Ready or not," he answered as the blade slid into his throat. The Harvesters did not take the soul of Jim Blake to the Beyond that day. It still had growing to do.

***

The soul of Jim Blake stood over his writhing body and thought about how truly hard it was to kill someone – how hard it was to kill someone without a bullet, that is. He thought about Jacob's skin, the initial pop of it, then how his bayonet slid through Jacob's insides like butter, how his hot blood splattered on his hands, on his uniform, much like his own blood was doing now. He thought about how he didn't recognize Jacob until he saw the shot of pain in his blue eyes, and he immediately thought back to the time Jacob busted his leg riding their bull just twenty miles from where they were now, and the similar look in his eyes then.

He wouldn't miss living, Jim decided. He wouldn't miss the violence… and death was better than telling Mama that he had killed Jacob.

A cannon ball shook him from his reverie as it flew through him, and through his apathy, he was mildly surprised to find that he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything. He looked down at his new, naked form, which was identical to his human body but without the scars he had earned. He brought his hands to his abdomen where a dark brown mark from one of the Blake rams was supposed to be. He should have been stunned to find that he couldn't feel the contact. His fingers didn't register that they were touching anything, his abdomen none the wiser that any fingers were tracing empty skin at all.

"After how many millennia, you decided to ask the Question to a sapling now?!"

He spun to face two winged skeletons clad in medieval armor and recognized them for the creatures reflected in his knife. The pair towered two feet over him and were armed with shields on their backs and swords at their sides. Their leathery grey wings were flexed, the one on the right ready to flee, and the one on the left ready to attack his counterpart. The only way to differentiate the two was that one wore a hooded white cape while the other wore full chainmail with a helmet. He noted that what should have been heart-gripping fear was just a small little twinge in his chest.

“I wasn’t looking at him! I shouldn’t have been able to harvest him at all without staring at the roots of the soul.”

It unnerved Jim to watch the creature’s jaw move without lips, skin or muscles. He was reminded of the puppet shows at the circus and how the marionettes moved their mouths with soulless ease.

"Vita never would have written this, you know that Let." The hooded skeleton continued, his hands up in surrender.

Jim took a step back, then another as the creatures argued – trying not to alert them that he was there in case they weren’t friendly. This had to be hell, after all – and demons were not on the list of acquaintances he wanted to make.

CRACK!

He had stepped on a twig behind him, which of course he didn’t feel so he couldn’t prevent it.

The demons snapped both of their sculls in his direction and straightened. The hooded one’s jaw dropped while the one in the helmet crouched and grabbed the sword in its sheath, ready for battle.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Jim held up his hands in surrender.

The demons didn’t move for a moment, their lack of facial expression making them both terrifying and comical all at once. The hooded one straightened and cleared his throat.

"Hello, Jim Blake. I am Mortem the Harvester," He gestured to the other winged creature, "This ray of sunshine here is my brother, Letifer the Harvester. You can call him Let."

"He absolutely cannot," Letifer retorted, "He shouldn't be calling us anything. No souls have ever stayed behind after they’ve been harvested."

"Stayed behind?" Jim asked, trying to understand what the creature meant.

"What my brother is trying to say is..." Mortem sighed, "Something is very wrong with your soul. Don't panic, we'll get it sorted out. But when we harvest souls, they don’t stick around. They're supposed to go to wherever souls go next when I put them in my bag."

Jim stared blankly at the pair before him, not comprehending a word but feeling a bit offended, or was it worried, by the thought of something being wrong with his soul.

"We'll have to take him to the Sowers." Letifer said, "I can smell his soul aging by the second here in the mortal realm.”

"But can we take him?" Mortem asked, "We've never taken a soul to Purgatory before."

"We'll find out," was all Letifer replied. Before Jim could ask another question, Letifer and Mortem appeared on either side of him, their bony hands on his shoulders, and shoved him backwards. Jim braced himself for the impact of the ground, but felt nothing.