A Very Reaper Romance

Chapter Seven – 335 Days Left

Mrs Bailey walked straight through him, developing a violent case of hiccups as she did so. The sensation was wrong in a way Jack didn’t have a word for – it was like being dropped into icy water, or like his insides had been scooped out and hastily put back. Jack staggered, breath catching and felt terrible watching Mrs Bailey drop her bag as she fought to claim her breath back, but he knew the fact she had passed right through him meant he was near the dead person. He took a deep breath then took off running again in the direction of the confectioners.

When Jack arrived, he saw the shop was alive with activity; someone was on the floor with Mr Castle performing CPR, while a distraught woman was fumbling with her phone trying to phone for an ambulance. Jack walked forward tentatively, worried that he would become visible again at any moment.

The air inside the shop felt thick, heavy with panic and sugar and something metallic underneath it all. Time seemed warped, stretched thin and trembling, and Jack had the strangest sense that the room was holding its breath. He hadn’t felt this at his first reaping and wondered what was so different here.

He looked down at Mr Castle. His skin was pallid and his usually neatly combed hair was completely askew. Jack felt a sadness lodge in his ribs. Mr Castle had served him and his friends their after-school sweets for years, and Jack had many happy memories of being given an extra sweet or two with a wink and a groan-worthy joke.

It felt cruel, seeing him reduced to this – a man who had spent decades doling out small joys to local kids, now lying motionless on the cold flagstone floor. Jack swallowed hard, unsure how he was meant to bridge the gap between memory and moment.

“’Ey up, lad.”

Jack spun on his heel with a jump. Were the dead always going to materialise behind him?

“Hi Mr Castle,” Jack said sadly.

“Jack? But you died…” Mr Castle looked utterly confused.

“I did, just in time to become this year’s reaper. Lucky me.”

Mr Castle chuckled. “Well lad, I reckon you’ll be doing a fine job.”

The easy faith in his voice nearly undid him. Jack felt something warm bloom in his chest. It was the same feeling he used to get when an adult told him he’d done well, back when he was still trying to figure out who he was supposed to be.

“I’m dead then?” Mr Castle asked, a resigned look on his face.

“I’m afraid so, Mr Castle.”

He waited for anger. Bargaining. Fear. Instead, Mr Castle just nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the shop around them.

“Well,” he said quietly, “at least I went somewhere familiar.”

Jack let the silence hang between them; Mr Castle was still too young for this to be fair. Jack knew he had been too young as well, but something about the kindly Mr Castle passing felt cruel. Jack waited, rocking back and forth on his heels, not wanting to hurry the man, but also not wanting to hang around such a sad scene. If all deaths were going to be this chaotic and traumatic he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage through the rest of the year. Jack blew out his cheeks, something in his mind told him he needed to move it along, but he didn’t know how to tell Mr Castle, “Time’s up mate.”

He tried to remember what Mr Carruthers had been like. The calm certainty, a gentle authority – but all he could summon was the urge to apologise.

At that moment, the paramedics rushed through the door and straight through Jack, resulting in a case of hiccups for both of them. Jack recognised the younger female paramedic from the other night, and he felt for her, having to attend so many tragic situations. He had never really thought about how paramedics see people at the worst moment of their lives and found himself harbouring a new respect for their profession.

He and Mr Castle watched on as they opened Mr Castle’s shirt and applied the defibrillator pads to his chest, telling everyone to stand clear.

“Well, that’s not dignified,” Mr Castle grumbled. “I never realised quite how big my gut was.”

“It’s hard to see yourself through the eyes of others sometimes,” Jack mused, wondering where such a wise sounding sentence came from.

He realised dimly that this was the first time he’d spoken like a reaper rather than a terrified twenty-two-year-old who’d died far too soon.

“Clear!” came the shout from the paramedics.

“Oof!”

Jack’s head whipped up to look at Mr Castle’s spirit, and for a moment, it flickered.

“What’s happening lad?” Mr Castle said, clearly worried.

“I-I… I don’t know,” Jack said, his voice wobbling slightly. This wasn’t covered by Mr Carruthers.

“Clear!”

“Urgh!”

Mr Castle flickered again, and this time, his spirit looked faded to Jack’s eyes. Jack reached out instinctively, his hand passing straight through Mr Castle’s arm. The absence where he expected resistance made his stomach lurch. A look passed between the two of them – a mixture of panic and fear. Neither knew what was happening and all Jack could do was watch on and wait.

“Clear!”

“Argh!”

Jack watched as Mr Castle’s spirit faded from view and at the same time, his body heaved a deep breath. Jack’s eyes were wide as he watched Mr Castle come back to life on the floor in front of him and wondered what he was supposed to do now.

Relief slammed into him, followed swiftly by confusion. Was he meant to feel disappointed? Had he failed? Or had this been the job all along? To show up, even when he wasn’t needed in the end?

He stared silently as the paramedics hooked Mr Castle up to oxygen and placed a cannula in his arm and began pumping medication and fluids into his arm.

“Where the f**k did you come from?”

Jack’s blood froze in his veins. He looked up to see a woman staring at him, white as a sheet and realised to her eyes, he had just materialised out of nowhere.

“I, uh, I popped in to see if I could help but, um, well… looks like it’s all under control,” Jack stammered before stumbling out the door. The bell over the shop door jingled cheerfully behind him, wildly inappropriate given the chaos he was leaving behind.

He walked back onto the main path and pulled the ledger from his pocket to see whether he had been wrong. Jack flipped to the page that held the doodle of the castle and the number eighty-six, but when he reached it he saw it had been scribbled out and the words ‘False Alarm’ had been scrawled underneath.

Jack groaned in frustration and thrust the ledger back in his pocket. For a moment, the urge to throw it as far as he could manage flared hot and tempting. He resisted, breathing through it. None of this was the ledger’s fault. Or Death’s. Or even his.

He looked back at the sweetshop door and noticed the glass panel above the old Victorian doorway was inlaid with lead, surrounding the number 86 which was made up of colourful stained glass in yellows and pinks.

86.

The property number.

Jack scrubbed his hand down his face. He hadn’t been prepared for the paramedics to be successful in saving someone, though he was grateful to know now what that would look like in future. He was also glad that Mr Castle would be getting another chance at life – he brought a lot of joy to the children of the small town with his jokes and jars of sweets. Jack smiled knowing Mr Castle would be able to keep bringing his special brand of happiness for a while yet.

Jack turned and started back toward town, the ledger cool and quiet in his pocket. For the first time since starting the job, he felt something like cautious confidence. He hadn’t reaped a soul today, but he’d shown up for someone. And for now, that felt like enough.

He headed home to treat himself to a slice of leftover lemon sponge cake, the whole walk thinking about texting Zoie to find out when she would be back in town.

The walk back through town felt different, though Jack couldn’t have said why. Everything looked the same – the same colourful houses, the same bus stop with its peeling timetable, the same charity shop window that hadn’t changed the window display since Easter – but he felt as though he were walking a fraction out of step with it all. Like the world had moved on a beat and he was still catching up.

By the time he reached his front door, the adrenaline that had carried him through the afternoon had burned out, leaving him feeling hollow and dog-tired. He let himself inside and leaned back against the closed door for a moment. The house smelled faintly of lemon and sugar and washing powder. It was comforting in a way he hadn’t noticed before.

He toed off his shoes and wandered through to the kitchen, cutting a generous slice of lemon sponge and eating it at the kitchen counter, straight from the plate. The first bite was too sweet, the second was better and by the third he felt relaxation creep over him.

Jack sat at the small kitchen table and pulled the ledger out again. It lay there innocently, its battered leather cover giving nothing away. He half-expected it to vibrate or flip itself open, but it stayed stubbornly still. Cool. Quiet. Almost smug.

“False alarm,” he muttered, opening the last page and tapping the scribbled words with his finger. “That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”

The ledger did not respond. Jack snorted softly and pushed it away. If today had taught him anything, it was that the job wasn’t as neat or final as he’d imagined. Death wasn’t a line – it was a mess of almosts and maybes and second chances, tangled up with sirens and defibrillators and people refusing to go.

Mr Carruthers hadn’t mentioned that part. Jack wondered if that was intentional. Maybe you didn’t tell new reapers about the false alarms. Maybe you let them figure it out the hard way.

His phone buzzed on the table, making him jump. Just an update notification. Jack exhaled slowly and unlocked the screen anyway, opening his messages. Zoie’s name hovered there, unsent and waiting.

He typed: You back in town yet?

Deleted it.

Typed: Random question, but when are you home?

Deleted that too.

Eventually, he settled on: Hope you’re doing okay. Fancy cake when you’re back? It felt safe and normal. Human even. He hit send before he could overthink it. Jack leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, replaying the moment Mr Castle had faded, the look they’d shared, the helplessness of it. The relief afterward had been real but so had the strange sense of feeling… unnecessary. It was an uncomfortable sensation; one he suspected he’d need to get used to.

Still, Mr Castle was alive. That was what mattered. The shop would open again. Kids would press their noses to the glass and argue over cola bottles and sherbet lemons. Life would keep spilling messily forward, regardless of ledgers and reapers and untidy little doodles.

Jack smiled faintly at the thought. If this job was about endings, then maybe it was also about beginnings, about knowing when to step in, and when to step back. He washed his fork and his hands and glanced once more at the ledger on the table before heading upstairs. Tomorrow would bring something else – a clearer sign, maybe, or another riddle entirely. He didn’t feel ready. But he hadn’t felt ready today either and somehow he’d managed.

For now, that felt like a win..