PART 4: THE COLLECTORS
925 Words
Martha did not see the man again for several weeks.
When she did, it was in a place designed to erase distinction.
The grocery store.
He stood in the produce aisle, studying apples with an intensity that bordered on reverence. He picked one up, weighed it in his hand, then returned it to the pile with unnecessary care. His clothes were different this time, casual, forgettable but his stillness betrayed him.
Martha slowed down her cart.
She did not intend to confront him. The decision happened without conscious permission, rising from a place beneath thought. She stopped beside him, reached for an apple at random, and held it up.
“Do you know which ones are sweet?” she asked.
He hesitated.
Just long enough.
“The smaller ones,” he said finally. “Usually.”
She smiled politely. “Thank you.”
For a moment, they stood there, two strangers suspended in the quiet hum of refrigeration and distant checkout beeps. Then he spoke again.
“You’re not supposed to see us,” he said softly.
Martha placed the apple in her cart. “I’m not supposed to be alive.”
That earned her a sharp look now, assessing.
They moved together without planning it, carts rolling side by side as if drawn by gravity. They passed through the aisles, invisible in their ordinariness.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I’m not,” she replied. “I’m on time. You’re just impatient.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “We usually don’t get… resistance.”
“I’m not resisting,” Martha said. “I’m curious.”
He considered this. “Curiosity is dangerous.”
“So is ignorance.”
They stopped near the dairy section. The man glanced around, then leaned closer, his voice dropping.
“You shouldn’t talk to us,” he said. “We’re not allowed to explain.”
“And yet you are,” she pointed out.
“Because you’re marked,” he replied. “And because… I’ve never understood why some accounts feel heavier than others.”
Martha studied him properly now. He looked no older than forty, though age seemed irrelevant to him. His eyes carried something like fatigue, layered deep beneath composure.
“What are you?” she asked.
He hesitated again. “Collectors.”
“Of souls?”
He shook his head. “Time.”
The word settled between them.
“We enforce balances,” he continued. “We don’t create them. We don’t question them.”
“But you want to,” Martha said.
His silence was answer enough.
They parted without ceremony. He turned down an aisle and vanished into the blur of shoppers. Martha finished her errands with hands that shook just slightly.
That night, the dreams sharpened.
She saw the system more clearly now not as a room of ledgers, but as a vast, interconnected network. Lives as accounts. Years as currency. The collectors moved through it like clerks, executing transactions without ever touching the source of authority.
In one dream, she followed the man from the store. She watched as his ledger changed, lines flickering and rewriting themselves faster than she could read.
One name remained constant.
Silas.
She woke before dawn and wrote it down.
Over the following months, Martha began to notice them everywhere. Not often. Not obvious enough.. But enough to confirm her suspicion: collectors were assigned geographically, circulating through populations like maintenance workers tending to unseen infrastructure.
Most people never noticed them.
Some, like Martha, did.
She tested the boundaries carefully. Small acts of defiance. Standing too close. Holding eye contact a moment longer than polite. The collectors always withdrew, unsettled but restrained.
They were not hunters.
They were employees.
The realization changed everything.
If they were bound by rules, then rules could be studied.
If they were afraid of explanation, then explanation mattered.
Martha returned to her notebook with renewed purpose. She mapped patterns. Tracked appearances. Compared dates. She counted her remaining years again and again, as if repetition might reveal a hidden clause.
It was Silas who approached her next.
Not in a dream.
In a diner, late at night, rain was tapping insistently against the windows.
He sat across from her without asking permission.
Silas never sat quite comfortably.
Martha noticed it over time the way he chose seats with clear exits, the way his gaze lingered on clocks and doorways rather than faces. He listened carefully but reacted slowly, as though translating emotion into something usable.
“You don’t age,” she said once.
“No,” he replied.
“Do you miss it?”
Silas considered the question longer than necessary. “Age implies ownership,” he said finally. “We don’t own ourselves.”
That answer stayed with her.
If collectors did not own themselves, then someone—or something—did.
And ownership, Martha knew, was never passive.
“You’re getting close,” he said.
“Close to what?” she asked.
He studied her the way one studies a problem they are not meant to solve.
“The end,” he said. “And to something else.”
Martha wrapped her hands around her coffee mug, letting the warmth steady her.
“Then you’d better tell me everything,” she said. “Before the balance tips.”
Silas looked toward the door, then back at her.
“Once I start,” he said quietly, “there’s no undoing it.”
Martha met his gaze without flinching.
“Good,” she said. “I’m tired of borrowed silence.”
- Writer
