21: Belinda Yaris

Brig­it stood on the side­walk read­ing the port­fo­lio care­ful­ly. Her as­sign­ment was lo­cat­ed in the sta­tion be­low, wait­ing for the pas­sage to her fate on the sub­way train that was due to ar­rive soon. As Brig­it read the file, she won­dered how they had man­aged to over­look the po­ten­tial of the sub­ject as a re­cruit. John had scoured ev­ery file – or so he had said – and found on­ly a few ac­cept­able can­di­dates. As she read, Brig­it won­dered why Be­lin­da Yaris had not been con­sid­ered.

Be­lin­da Yaris, aged twen­ty-​three, had been the vic­tim of a fa­tal mug­ging on the north bound N train from Brook­lyn. Her dream had been to be a writ­er, but that dream had been cut short by the long end of a switch blade. She was a good kid with an an­alyt­ical mind, or­ga­nized work eth­ic and an imag­ina­tion to reach across the uni­verse and back. She pos­sessed per­fect qual­ities to be a Reaper, and Brig­it’s mind was bog­gled by the thought of pass­ing this one by. Be­sides, at this point, she need­ed all the help she could find.

Clos­ing the file, Brig­it rushed down the sub­way en­trance stairs and stood pa­tient­ly on the plat­form. Down the tun­nel, she could see the light of the ap­proach­ing train. It would stop for on­ly a few sec­onds and Brig­it knew she would have to find the car that con­tained Be­lin­da fast be­fore the train con­tin­ued on its sched­uled course.

As it rum­bled in­to the sta­tion and came to a screech­ing halt be­side the plat­form, Brig­it rapid­ly scanned each car as she walked past. Fi­nal­ly, in the last car, the Reaper found Be­lin­da Yaris stand­ing with her back against the op­po­site door. Silent­ly, Brig­it stepped in­to the car as the doors whooshed shut be­hind her.

Lev­el­ing her dark eyes on the sub­ject of her as­sign­ment, Brig­it re­al­ized that Be­lin­da was star­ing at her. Yet, her bright blue eyes seemed to look through rather than at the Reaper that had stepped on­to the oth­er­wise emp­ty car. The heavy black eye­lin­er around those bright blue eyes seemed to em­pha­size the sense of ap­athy and bore­dom Be­lin­da Yaris had suc­cumbed to dur­ing the years of wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen. As she looked deep in­to those bright blue -- yet bored -- eyes, Brig­it had the thought that Be­lin­da Yaris had suc­cumbed to that sense of ap­athet­ic bore­dom long be­fore she had ceased her ex­is­tence as a mor­tal. Al­most ev­ery­one Brig­it had ev­er known to be a par­tic­ipant of the ‘Goth’ cul­ture seemed to be bored with life al­most from the mo­ment they had fi­nal­ly con­firmed their dark­er iden­ti­ties.

“Be­lin­da Yaris,” Brig­it ad­dressed the young wom­an out loud. She not­ed the sud­den ac­knowl­edge­ment of her pres­ence by the young wom­an by the keen fo­cus of those bright blue eyes. They no longer looked through, but rather, at her.

“Hel­lo,” the young wom­an replied. “You can see me?”

“I can,” Brig­it an­swered. She sensed a feel­ing of re­lief pass through the young wom­an stand­ing across from her. “My name is Brig­it.”

“I’m so hap­py to meet you,” Be­lin­da gushed be­fore she rushed to cross the short width of the sub­way car. Brig­it bare­ly had time to re­act when Be­lin­da threw her arms around the dark wom­an’s neck in a grate­ful hug. “Fi­nal­ly, some­one who can see and hear me! It’s been so long since I’ve had a re­al con­ver­sa­tion. Last week,” Brig­it fi­nal­ly man­aged to push the young wom­an off her, but their sep­ara­tion did not cease Be­lin­da’s ram­ble. “I tried to talk to this crazy, old home­less man, be­cause I just knew he could see me; but, he turned and ran out of here scream­ing. It re­al­ly made me sad. I al­most cried,” Brig­it watched the young wom­an be­gin to pout with the mem­ory of the episode. “But now, here you are and you can see me and talk to me. Hey, that’s an awe­some coat,” Be­lin­da said as she no­ticed the se­quins on the lapels of Brig­it’s black coat.

“Thank you,” Brig­it replied. “Be­lin­da, I have a pro­pos­al for you,”

“Where did you get it? I’ve been want­ing a pi­rate’s coat for for­ev­er,” Be­lin­da cooed.

“It’s some­thing I’ve had for years,” Brig­it ex­plained be­fore catch­ing her­self. “Be­lin­da, you do re­al­ize you’re no longer liv­ing, right?”

“What? Oh, yeah. I’ve known for years now. It’s too bad that I was wear­ing this, though,” she waved her hand down­ward to in­di­cat­ed the ragged black knit shirt with slashed long sleeves, the an­kle length black skirt with over­ly large safe­ty pins as but­tons on the pock­ets and the well worn mil­itary boots on her feet. “Not ex­act­ly the out­fit I would have picked for my last mo­ments on earth, you know? I def­inite­ly had bet­ter.”

“I can on­ly imag­ine,” Brig­it replied as she eyed the young wom­an’s at­tire. “Any­way, I have a propo­si­tion for you.”

“Oh yeah? Would it mean fi­nal­ly get­ting off this stupid train for good?” Be­lin­da asked, read­just­ing the weight of the black leather bag that hand off her shoul­der. In its swing, Brig­it rec­og­nized it to be in the shape of a cof­fin.

“It would,” Brig­it an­swered.

“Then, I’m in,” Be­lin­da im­me­di­ate­ly said.

“But you don’t even know what I’m about to of­fer you,” Brig­it point­ed out in sur­prise.

“Doesn’t mat­ter,” Be­lin­da replied. “If it gets me off this fuck­ing train, I’ll do it. You have no idea what it’s like to be trapped on this thing ev­ery day and night. It’s dis­gust­ing most of the time. I see peo­ple puk­ing or piss­ing in the cor­ner, shoot­ing junk in­to their veins at three in the morn­ing. Oh, sure, it gets cleaned up be­fore the ear­ly morn­ing rush; but most of the time, I sim­ply can’t stand it. Es­pe­cial­ly when I see my friends come on, or I see him, the bas­tard that knifed me for my purse…”

Brig­it watched as the oth­er wom­an cov­ered the cof­fin purse pro­tec­tive­ly. Al­most as soon as she did so, the train lurched to sig­nal its at­tempt to slow down in its ap­proach of the next sta­tion. Brig­it glanced be­hind her and then re­turned her gaze to the young wom­an be­fore her.

“Brig­it, please, you have to get me off this train,” Be­lin­da plead­ed.

As the train came to a grind­ing halt be­side the plat­form, Brig­it eyed the young wom­an one last mo­ment. The doors whooshed open be­hind her as she made a res­olute de­ci­sion.

“Very well, take my hand,” she in­struct­ed. With­out hes­ita­tion, Be­lin­da grasped Brig­it’s out­stretched hand and smiled a huge smile as Brig­it guid­ed her off the sub­way car. As soon as they were both safe­ly on the plat­form, the doors slammed shut once more and the train hur­tled back in­to mo­tion.

“So, what do I have to do?” Be­lin­da asked when the noise from the de­part­ing train had fi­nal­ly died away.

“Have you ev­er won­dered what it would be like to be a Grim Reaper?” Brig­it asked. Be­lin­da looked at her sav­ior in sud­den sur­prise.

“No shit? You’re a …” the young wom­an was sud­den­ly at a loss for words. Brig­it felt her­self smil­ing in ac­knowl­edge­ment of the Goth girl’s awe. “No fuck­ing kid­ding? Re­al­ly? Holy shit,” Be­lin­da fi­nal­ly man­aged to get out. “I’d love to! What do I have to do?”

“For the time be­ing, fol­low me and ob­serve close­ly. You’re train­ing be­gins this sec­ond. Un­for­tu­nate­ly,” Brig­it tucked Be­lin­da’s file in­to her coat’s breast pock­et to make sure it would not end up back with the piles of as­sign­ments it had come from. “I don’t have the time to train you by the book, so you’ll have to go through on-​the-​job-​train­ing. Here,” she with­drew her field guide from the hip pock­et of her coat, “read this while we’re be­tween as­sign­ments. Ask ques­tions as they come to mind. I’ll do my best to an­swer them,” Brig­it promised as she hooked her um­brel­la over her arm and reached for a new as­sign­ment. Be­lin­da, who had been scan­ning the first page of the small book she had been hand­ed, sud­den­ly looked up at her.

“Why me?”

“Be­cause you said you would,” Brig­it replied with a slight smile. “Come, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“No, re­al­ly, why did you pick me? Sure­ly you made some sort of de­ci­sion be­fore you even got on­to the train. Why?” Be­lin­da asked as she fell in be­hind Brig­it and fol­lowed her up the stairs lead­ing to the street lev­el.

“I’m down two Reapers right now. You have a sol­id mind and a calm sense about you. If I can train you quick­ly, I won’t be too far be­hind on my work,” Brig­it ex­plained as she read the file in her hand. Ev­ery­thing she had said was the truth. The on­ly ad­mis­sion was her hope that John wouldn’t come com­plete­ly unglued once he found out all that had hap­pened dur­ing his ab­sence.

“Then, teach me, oh-​great-​Grim-​Reaper,” Be­lin­da in­toned. “I will be clay in your skilled hands,”

“Don’t get too en­am­ored,” Brig­it warned. “It’s not as easy as you might think and it’s def­inite­ly not as mor­bid.”

“Who cares? I’m off the train. Show me what you got,” Be­lin­da replied with an in­dif­fer­ent shrug.

“Okay, then. We’re off to the first as­sign­ment,” Brig­it ex­plained as she turned away. “Read your field guide.”

“Read­ing now, oh-​great-​one,” Be­lin­da quipped as she fell in be­side Brig­it.

“Stop that,” Brig­it mut­tered.

“Yes, oh-​great-​one…”