As Far As I'm Concerned [Ziam Palik AU]

i. The Job of a Reaper

[Chapter One: The Job of a Reaper]

January 2013

            Zayn sighed wearily, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he trudged onwards through the slushy snow.

            Despite being (technically) dead for close to fifteen years now, Zayn found that he really didn’t like the cold anymore than he did when he was alive. It was bitter and numbing and just kind of sucked, and he didn’t need any of that type of stuff anymore.

            Though of course, it would be just his luck that even in his technical “afterlife” he’d get stuck with the same world he was in when living.

            His would-be thirty-fifth birthday had passed just the other day, yet he honestly didn’t care. He was dead- no, not just dead, death- and didn’t physically age anymore, so what did it really matter?

            Zayn stopped to the side of the sidewalk, by a bus stop on the border of one of the many community universities of the town. He watched as many students flooded out on their normal, busy schedules, rushing to the next class or off to meet a friend during a break.

            Now, in a retrospective way, Zayn found it mildly amusing. He remembered rushing around like that, naïve and imperceptive of the big pictures in the world, only focused on the then and now of his personal future.

             Hell, he didn’t even just laugh at average college students anymore, he laughed at humans in general, petty as they were, at least most of them.

             “Watch it, will you?”

           Zayn frowned as he was bumped into by a stranger, a man who was moving at full speed down the sidewalk. Yet of course, he had the nerve to blame the person standing completely still and to the side.

        Zayn rolled his eyes. He often had admittedly cruel thoughts about idiot humans- as if he weren’t one previously- always wishing he would get another one of the real dicks to reap.

            He knew that he wasn’t to reap anyone whose time wasn’t up yet though, and this man was no exception. His time would come soon enough.

            Turning back to watch the university, Zayn vaguely wondered if he’d end up reaping any of the hundreds of young adults in that school soon. Part of him hoped so, just so he’d actually have an excuse to see the inside of a place like that again. Part of him was just too tired to do another job for the day.

             Of course though, after that thought, he got the familiar tug in his gut, telling him that someone close by needed the catalyst to lead to the chain reaction and therefore to their death and reaping.

           This didn’t come from the university though. Instead it was from one of the many cars further up the road, parallel to it, an accident literally waiting to happen.

           Zayn sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly, making sure to check that no one else was watching before he made himself invisible to the human eye in preparation.

           Looked like today was a day for a car crash.

         Zayn closed his eyes and focused in on that gut feeling, knowing that it was one of the crucial parts to the whole process, and one of the only ways it would work.

         When he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the sidewalk by the college, but about five blocks up the street, sitting in the passenger’s side of a shining, moving vehicle.