The Collector's First Day

         I was coughing up again and could feel that old familiar metallic taste building up, pooling on my tongue.  I saw the crimson on my tissue, and knew what was next, my chest tightening, caving in, the concentration of heat boring through me.  I hated it, but there was nothing to do but ride it out.  Old habits and all.
         The first time it happened was not too long ago, right after I came to Baltimore from the war, during my entrance interview for the Group.  Heh, a sliver of me kind of got off on some of that red contrasting with the whiteness of the entire fourth floor office—the desk and chairs, the walls, the floor, the light coming in the windows, Mrs. Nyx’s tailored suit.  The rest of me thought I was going to die, and she handed me a tissue and just kept on, telling me my replacement was transferring to Philadelphia.  Something about more action.  Her gray eyes pierced through cat-eye specs.  “You’ll be working with a lot of children—that gonna be a problem?” 
         I sunk in my chair, palming my burning chest.  “I think I’m having a…heart attack?  Stroke?  Aneurysm?  My chest….”  Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth.  God, how embarrassing, but Mrs. Nyx didn’t seem to care.  What the fuck did I get myself into?  “Could you call someone?”
         Mrs. Nyx rolled her eyes.  “Look, hon, I know this is new for you.  Your mind’s still adjusting.  Happens to us all.  My wrists still act up from time to time.  It’ll subside once you’re settled.”  She pushed the tissue box toward me.  “You had to be messy with yours.”
         “So it’s not going away?”  It started to subside, but I was still stanching blood from my chin.
         She shook her head.  “Nope.  Part and parcel of doing it yourself.”  Fuck.  “Now all the drama is over, you got cases.  You bring your collections here to me for processing.  Bob’ll do your orientation; he likes them new and pretty.  He won’t be with you while you’re working, natch.  And you’re going to need a new suit.  Black, I think.”  She stood up, prompting me to stand, and held out her hand.  It was icy to the touch, and I could see the long black scar creeping from her wrist up behind her sleeve.  “Welcome to the team, Archer.”
 
 
         “So, you the new Keres, huh?” 
         I looked away from the upside-down dollhouse on the ceiling of our section of the Papermoon Diner to focus on the gaunt man with thinning brown hair sitting across from me.  I had to admire his sense of ambience; eBay threw up on yellow in here.  He’d never appreciate it.  He saw me through perceptive black eyes that got milky when anyone else saw him.  He’d memorized what others told him was on the menu.  Shame he’d never get the irony of it being pressed in an old cover of Are You My Mother?.  “Yeah, Bob,” I replied.  “Nothing gets past you.”
         “Smartass,” he snorted. 
         “Well, that’s what you get with ‘new and pretty’.”
         “Can you blame me, given my condition?”  He waited for me to sigh in agreement before going on.  “Good thing you came here this year.  Last year there were so many collections.  Not so many now.”  He sipped the coffee he’d laced with plastic-bottle vodka.  “Still too many, though.” 
         “I keep hearing that.”  I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug.  At least I get to enjoy the warmth through my leather gloves.  Had to avoid an accidental collection.
         “You’re not from here, are you?”  He gave me a coffee-stained grin.  “I detect a slight bit of a Southern accent—Carolinas.”  He pressed his lips closed with his fingers in thought.  “Outer Banks, exactly.”
         I laughed, but I no longer had mirth.  “Impressive.  Is that you?”
         “Well, they say the senses compensate for each other.  Nothing special about that.”  He took another sip.  “Why’d you come here?  No openings back home?”
         “No.  Too quiet for its own Keres.”  I shrugged.  “Ain’t really home anymore.  I was stationed near here once.  Liked what I saw, for the most part.  Interesting how one block can be all neat and the next decaying.  Not like that in Bumfuck, North Carolina.”  I sighed, took in Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” for a minute.  “But back home, people are quiet, retiring, waiting for something to happen.  Here, people are loud, passionate, alive, right up to the very end.”  I changed the subject.  “So, why you, Bob?  Not content with just making brooms?”
         “What, you wanted Haley Joel Osment?”  Bony fingers found the position of his turkey sandwich on the plate.  Bob swallowed after two bites, adding, “Look, who knows?  Some got it, some don’t.  I’m too old to give a shit about the  ‘Crazy Bob talking to himself’ thing.  Besides, you need a reminder of what you once was in case you start cracking and doing your own collections.”  He sighed. “Damn, you got a rough job.  Only women are Keres?  Whose idea was that?” 
         “Greek to me,” I said, trying to make a joke.  Bob’s expression told me I had no future in comedy. 
         “All that anger and pain can’t be good, not even for a vet like you. That’s why I help.”
         “Yeah, well, the Thanatos got it easy—collections are almost always ready, ‘cept the douchebags that think they can cheat ‘em.”
         “Hey, some of us like sticking around.  I don’t even work with the Thanatos.  Don’t really want to meet him until I have to, get me?”  He used his hand to feel for anything that might have dripped on his blue sweater vest, frowned when he felt the sauce.  “At least I know one thing for certain.”
         “What?”
         “That ‘permanent solution’ saying?  It’s a load of bullshit.”  He took another sip, grabbed his red-tipped white cane and stood up to feel his way to the washroom. “Ain’t it?”
 
 
         First collection had me up at two in the morning, sitting on a bench no longer proud to say that Baltimore is the Greatest City in America.  I removed my gloves and put them in the pocket of my black coat, displaying the crimson inner liner while I waited for the argument between two youngsters to escalate. They thought they were clever enough to stand in the blue-tinted shadows, mindful of the scope of both the Citiwatch camera on the street lamp and the white-shirted soldier running the corner.  Why two young men were up that late beefing about something insignificant wasn’t the point of my presence. The twenty-year-old pulled out a pistol from the front of his saggy jeans. 
         That was the point of my presence. 
         The seventeen-year-old turned to run, but no one can outrun inevitability.  I saw the increasing red blooms of two shots—one in his side, one through his back.  He coughed up blood; old habits and all.  I was behind him as his body fell.  The shooter fled; I knew I’d be back for him in a matter of days. Corner boy was gone, too.  I tapped my bare finger on his forehead.  He separated from his mortal coil and his dark eyes had that obligatory scared/confused expression people in his predicament get.
         I smiled, waved my fingers.  “Durrell Amir Woods?  I’m Archer, a Keres.  What you call the Grim Reaper, Death, whatever. You’ve just been violently killed—” I pointed to his corpse at his feet—“and I’m here to take you in for processing.”
         Durrell stared at me for a long period of time, long enough for the sirens, long enough for the crowd, long enough for his mother’s screams.  Not everyday he came face to face with a black woman in a black suit telling him he’s dead.  He looked somewhat disappointed I’m missing a cowl and scythe, then he was pissed that he was, well, dead.  “Bitch, you crazy!  I ain’t—Ma?”  He backed away and reached out for his mother, who tried to collect his lifeless shell in her meaty arms off a gurney.  Reached through her, actually.  He took off, trying to outrun inevitability again. I blinked and ended up in front of him.  After going through this exercise three times, the young man seemed to buckle under futility’s weight, and it did not become him.
         I rolled my eyes and sighed.  “You get it now?  They can’t see me, and what she’s holding is all that’s left of you in their world.”  He cried, asked why.  I could only shrug; the answer to that question was either stupid or nonexistent.  At any rate, it was never worth answering.  I knew what needed to be done but damn, he was still a child.  I was wrong.  This was worse than the war, because I no longer had the ability to empathize—I couldn’t truly emote; attempts just ended up looking like sarcasm.  “Didn’t imagine this when you said you were ready to die, did you?” 
         I held out my hand.  “I’m sorry, kid.  Someone punched your clock early.  If it makes you feel better, you didn’t name your own bullet like I did.  You can go on.  You don’t have to be stuck here.”
         “Where do I go on to?”  He reluctantly brought his hand up, already feeling the coldness coming from my hand.  “Heaven or hell?”
         “Abbadon, Diyu, Duat, Elysium, Fields of Aaru, Gehenna, Hades, Jahannam, Jannah, Naraka, Nifelheim, Nirvana, Sam Hill, Samsara, Shangri-la, Sheol, Summerland, Tartarus, Tian, Tir-na-nog, Valhalla, Yomi, Sto-Vo-Kor, Gallifrey—I don’t know, son. Not up to me. Point is you go on.  ‘Cursum perficio.’  I’ll still be here collecting souls lost to vengeance.”
 
           
         I sat with Bob on a bench where North Avenue collides with Belair Road.  As my latest attack subsided I looked left and caught a funeral procession entering the castle gate of the Baltimore Cemetery. Always something dark to tint even my sun-drenched days in Charm City.  Not my handiwork, though; elderly guy that passed in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones—the picture’s clear.  The damn Thanatos always got the easy ones.  Shit, he was probably at Port Discovery or the zoo observing a school field trip when not on the job.  Certainly not near a cemetery.
         I turned away from the view; I was just there reading the "Murder Ink" section of the City Paper to Bob until he caught his bus—a psychopomp and her blind seer reading Anna Ditkoff’s digest of people I first and last met in the most fucked-up manner.  I wondered sometimes if she has to stop typing to grieve a little or if she has to become like me, sacrifice empathy to give us an account of a Baltimorean’s last moments in the flesh.  Lives ripped from the fabric of a family, a neighborhood, a city, and it’s left to the living to mend and patch with grief and empathy.  The fabric never gets bare.  People are too alive for that here.  A little worn, but never bare.  Someone always grieves. 
         Bob put his face in his hands; he could feel for the entries even though he’d never see them.  He’d never see anyone except Death, and he’d since been okay with that.  But he could cry if he wanted to, and today he wasn’t up for it.  Grief and empathy serve the living well.  Me?  Not so much.  Not for what I do.
         But cemeteries?  Yeah, they bother me to no end.  I always hated the idea of a neighborhood of rotting shells with their markers, mausoleums, and mourning angels.  Pointless, if one thought about it.  It’s all for the living, anyway—the dead don’t give a damn. 
         I should know.