Reap

Death welcomed me. Cold. Expressionless. Dark.

Then light overtook the darkness bursting forth around me like a freshly struck match. It was not warm, but blinding and painful. I struggled against it, some part of my mind fought for the darkness, the only tether to the world I had known. That tether snapped and I was pulled into the light and out again.

“Noel?” A deep voice pierced through the fog of my brain as I blinked against the fading sun.

Sun? The thought raced through my mind as I turned my face up towards the light. This time it wasn’t oppressive and painful. Instead, it was warm, pleasant, almost familiar, but I knew. I knew from the moment that the darkness clung to me like ink on a freshly bleached shirt that I was dying. That I had died.

“Noel?” The voice was there again, behind me, closer this time.

I finally turned away from the warmth of the sun towards the voice. A middle-aged man stood a few feet away, his eyes like pools of still honey. Eyes like mine. I knew I had never met this man, but he felt familiar. I chastised my memory. How could I forget this man with perfectly groomed hair and beard? This man whose kindness emanated from him like rays of sun.

“Do I know you?” I asked, racking my brain to figure out where I had seen him.

“I decided I wanted to grow up. When you last saw me I was a lot younger, missing a couple of teeth, and annoying your friends at sleepovers.”

“Shaun?” I stammered, my breath hitched.

He nodded and held open his arms to me. I launched into his open arms, laughing that I had to stand on my tiptoes to hug him now.

***

Ice clung to the eaves of our house, hiding among the leftover holiday lights that my dad had left outside. I stared up at them, my tongue out and waiting for the droplets the same way Shaun and I had waited for snowflakes months before. This time I was alone. Technically Shaun was still there but he was upstairs this time. I could see him from the corner of my eye peeking out of his window, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It had been the same every day for three months. I would rush home from school, my backpack full of my homework and the papers Shaun’s teachers sent home every day. He never did them, partially because I never gave them to him, and partially because the one time I did they ended up lining the trashcan that stayed next to his bed.

A fit of coughing from upstairs pulled my attention away from the icicle. Shaun was always coughing. It had started when he fell face-first into a pile of snow. He had stood up sputtering and spitting out mouthfuls of dirt crusted snow and rocks. Immediately after he began to cough. My mother and dad thought it was a cold, but after a week without granny’s chicken noodle soup helping at all they took him back to the doctor. The doctor said it was cancer in Shaun’s lungs that had begun to show symptoms because it spread to his brain, but I thought it was from the snow. Maybe a rock had gone up to his nose and lodged itself in Shaun’s lungs. After all, a rock and a tumor are the same things. They’re hard, not easily removed, and if not seen in time can cause a lot of damage.

Shaun fell a lot now. It made me sad because before we would climb the big pine tree in the backyard and play in the treehouse until it was time for dinner. Now, Shaun doesn’t come outside and he couldn’t climb the tree even if he wanted to. Instead, I would go to him in his room. Mother would put a mask on my face and I had to wear gloves, but I would still play with Shaun for as long as I could. He couldn’t play a lot because the medicine the doctors gave him made him tired. Sometimes he would just lie on his bed and watch me play with the toys, or listen to me read a story from one of his books.

While I was away at school Shaun was at the doctor's. I thought he was lucky that he didn’t have to go to school, but Shaun would tell me he was ready to go back to school. I didn’t understand that at the time. One day Shaun was able to go back to school with me, but it was only for one day. My parents had won a big trip to an amusement park and we were leaving over the weekend. The day Shaun came to school everyone was surprised he didn’t have any hair. It confused me because I knew that Shaun’s hair had gone a long time ago. The adults all seemed sad, I guessed it was because they wanted to go on the trip too. We had cupcakes that day. I had two! Mine and then Shaun’s because the frosting made him sick.

On the trip, we got to go on every ride first and never waited in line. Shaun got to take pictures with all the comic book characters he liked and we ate so much food. I got to eat anything that I wanted and for the first time in a long time, I got to play with my little brother as I used too. But when we got home a lot of things changed…

Shaun got a new bed. The race car one with flaming stripes down the side went into the attic and instead, a bed like the one in hospitals was brought in. A nurse visited us every day and stayed until after dinner. Shaun didn’t come downstairs anymore, but every day after school I would still come home to see him staring out his bedroom window when I arrived. Mother didn’t let me play in his room anymore, so I played outside just in view of his window. The nurse would prop Shaun up on the bed where he could see me outside. I put on plays, and great adventures while Shaun watched. On occasion, I would even see Shaun laughing or trying to sit up and make his way to the window like he used to.

One day when I came home from school Shaun’s window was closed. It had been closed once before when he was away at the doctor’s office. Like the last time, I entered the house to find Sheryl, our neighbor waiting for me. She fixed me a sandwich and helped me with my homework just like the last time. Hours passed as I played outside, waiting for my parents to return with my brother. Shades of orange began to tint the sky and the streetlights began to flicker on when the headlights of the family car finally made their way down the street. I sprinted up the steps to sit just outside of Shaun’s room, hoping that I would get just a moment to smile at him as dad carried him into his room. I listened to the sound of the front door opening and my parent’s footsteps heavy against the floor. Whispers that I couldn’t decipher met my ears and moments later my parents up the stairs. My dad’s arms were empty and my mother’s eyes were dull with unshed tears. I didn’t move even as my dad knelt to my level. I didn’t move after he said that Shaun was gone. I didn’t move…

***

Yet here he was, older and hairier, but I knew it was him. His eyes still shone with childlike joy as he spun me around before setting me on my feet. For the first time, I took in my surroundings. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was still alive. People wandered along the streets, smiles on their faces as they talked amongst themselves. I was in the middle of the city center where food trucks and booths lined the sidewalks. At each booth were little figurines of the grim reaper and a white-robed figure I didn’t recognize. Everyone seemed so happy, or at least content. Children darted about their mouths smudged with cotton candy. Adults, I use the word because none of them wore masks of fear while they anxiously watched the children weaving in and out of the stalls like parents. As we made our way further into the sea of people the din of voices, instruments, and chanting filled my ears, drowning me in a mix of nonsense as dozens of songs merged. However, the subject of the songs was all the same...the reaper.