Don't Fear the Reaper

Various shades of green and brown raced by as her blonde hair swayed back and forth, her hazel eyes focused ahead on the path. A deep howl filled the silence and then suddenly – it was quiet. She stood alone, heart racing and glanced around. “Boo!” He jumped up behind her.

“Ah! Don’t do that to me!” She pushed him harshly.

“What? It was a joke! Chill,” She huffed at him and he continued to laugh, holding his stomach. Twigs snapped behind them.

“What was that?” She whispered, clearly frightened.

“Probably nothing, babe,” he says, smirking at her. Rolling her eyes at him, she walks away from him, flipping him off in the process.

“Oh come on, babe, don’t be like that!” She ignored him and continued to walk away. “Wait up!” He ran to catch up with her and something held him back.

He tried to call her name but she was long gone. A bony hand with flecks of rotten flesh hanging off of it held his throat tightly. Glancing upward slowly, he opened his mouth to let out a scream, but with the flick of its wrist, the creature removed his tongue. Dropping the jock’s limp body to the ground, the creature began to feed on its prey and dragged it through the brush.

…

“Brad? Brad?” She called her boyfriend’s name over and over again, but no one answered.

“Brad! If you scare me again I swear I am going to kill you!” She stomped through the leaves and the mud. A horrendous smell suddenly overwhelmed her. It smelled like a toxic mix of human feces and roadkill. She covered her nose and kept walking. There was a dark figure that leaned against a tree ahead.

“Brad?” She shuddered; a wave of chills went down her spine. The smell grew stronger as she approached the figure.

“Brad…” the fear expressed itself on her face and she grabbed the shoulder of the figure to turn it around. The lifeless body fell to the ground, flies swarmed out of its mouth. His tongue was missing, and his skin seemed to have been mummified. His dark brown skin now a pale white, the pigment was gone; he was nearly unrecognizable. Tears welled up in her eyes,

“Brad..?” A small groan seemed to come from the corpse and surprised her.

“Brad?” She whispered, horrified. A shadow overcame her and she turned around slowly, her breath caught in her throat. She looked up and screamed. Her screams echoed through the trees as the moon began to rise behind them.

¬¬¬ Moonlight shined through the window of the motel room as Jacob and Ethan were sleeping soundly in their beds. Leftover garbage from their gas station meals lies in the trash beside the door. It was nice to finally get some shut eye. Outside it was pouring rain when a ’69 Mustang pulls up alongside the Impala. A shy girl stumbles out of the car, “Thanks for the ride,” slamming the door behind her and it drives away. As short as she was, she was not afraid of anything - or so she thought. She didn’t have enough money for a motel room of her own, so taking a bobby pin holding her copper curls back, she picked the lock on motel room #3, praying to God it was vacant. As she opened the door, two large men were on either side of the door pointing guns at her. She screams as the men throw salt and water at her. She wipes her eyes coughing a little bit, the men exchanged looks. “What the fuck was that for?!” She screams at them.

“Um hi, I’m Jacob…and this is my brother, Ethan.” Ignoring her question, the taller man spoke up and introduced himself and the other man.

Softly, she responded, “Can’t say it’s nice to meet you. Now. What the fuck was all of that for?!”

Ethan finally spoke up, “Precautions. How did you get in here?” He looked at her with a stern expression on his face.

Silent for a moment, she says, “I picked the lock…please don’t call the police!”

With a small chuckle, Jacob responds, “Relax, we aren’t going to call the police.”

“Yeah, we aren’t really on good terms with the locals at the moment.” Ethan interrupts. She looks at them concerningly, backing up a little.

Continuing on, Jacob asks her, “What are you doing here?”

“I needed a place to stay, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s pouring outside.”

“And what, thought you could just slip into someone’s room? What were you thinking? We could have killed you! You could have gotten yourself killed!” Jacob quickly pulls his brother away and excuses them for a minute.

“Look she’s obviously scared and tired and desperate, why don’t we let her stay?”

“Man, do you hear yourself? What if she finds out who we are? What if she calls the police on us?”

Looking over at the girl, “Ethan, I don’t think she’s going to call the police, she just needs a place to stay.”

Sighing, “Okay fine.”

Fumbling with her fingers, the men walk back over to her. Frightened, she looks up at them.

“You can stay here for the night. We’ll get you some dry clothes to put on, but go ahead and take a warm shower. I’ll go get some food as well.”

As she walks into the bathroom and closes the door, Ethan says, “Dude! Clothes?! Food?! What are you thinking?! We don’t even know her! She could be a demon for all we know!”

“She passed all our tests, Ethan.”

Giving in, Ethan sighs and says, “She’s wearing your shirt, though.”

“Why mine?”

“Because you’re the one who offered her clothes.”

Giving up the fight, “Fine…”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Shutting up, Jacob continues, “Look I’ll go to the gas station next door and pick her up a drink and something to eat. Find her one of my shirts. And Ethan, keep an eye on her, will ya?”

Closing the door, Ethan whispers to himself, “Sure…” and reluctantly looks for a shirt for the girl to wear.

“We didn’t even ask for her name...”

“It’s Emily.” Startled, the 24-year-old looks over and sees the girl standing outside of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. “Well, that was fast.”

Chuckling, she responds, “What can I say, I grew up in a big family with only one bathroom.”

“Where’s your family now?”

Frowning, she just looks down, “They’re gone…”

“Oh…”

After a moment of silence, she speaks up, “I’m just going to go put my clothes back on.”

“No come on, they’re soaking.”

“They’re the only clothes I got.”

“No, they aren’t, here, wear this.” Ethan throws her a shirt.

“Yours?”

“Haha, no, it’s Jacob’s.”

“Wow, thanks…um…can you turn around?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Turning around, Ethan scratched the back of his head, hearing the towel hit the ground. At the same time the door opens, he turns around quickly pulling his gun as Jacob enters the doorway. The three of them look at each other; Emily embarrassed most of all. Jacob and Ethan quickly close their eyes as she hurries to put on the shirt, going to her knees. “Looks like I’ll have to put on wet underwear,” Emily thinks to herself.

“You can open your eyes now.” Embarrassed, Jacob and Ethan sit in silence as she eats her food quietly, sitting on the floor, legs crossed.

Whispering to Jacob, “Dude…what are we supposed to say? What is she, like 18?”

“I don’t know, just forget about it…”

“How am I supposed to do that when we just saw a hot 18-year-old with nothing more than her birthday suit?”

Punching Ethan’s shoulder, Jacob says, “You can’t have that, she’s too young!”

“Well, she isn’t jailbait anymore!”

“Why are you two talking about me like I’m not here?” She butts in.

Looking over at the same time, Jacob and Ethan start stuttering trying to explain, until they’re shushed. “Forget it, I’ll just leave.” Throwing up her arms, she walks towards the door and Jacob runs out in front of her and says, “No, don’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

“That’s awfully kind of you but I can take care of myself.”

With pleading eyes, Jacob begs, “No please don’t go out there, not tonight.”

“And why not?” She looks at them coldly.

He glances at Ethan and gestures for him to help him out. “This might come to a shock to you, sweetheart, but the monsters your parents said didn’t exist? Well, they do and right now there is one prowling somewhere out there. That’s why we take precautions, like throwing holy water and salt at you. We had to make sure you weren’t a demon.”

She laughs sarcastically, “You don’t think I know that, Hasselhoff? That thing murdered my family! And I intend on getting revenge.”

“I know how it feels to have everything ripped away from you, but that thing out there? It will tear you to shreds. Let us handle this. We’ve been doing this since we were kids.”

“What? No way! I want in on this and you can’t stop me. I can handle myself.”

Tired of arguing, Ethan exhales sharply, “Do you even know anything about it?”

“I saw it. I’m sure that’s more than you can say.”

“Jacob here has been doing a lot of research; it’s kinda his specialty. It’s called a Sacrificial Reaper. It’s part of Egyptian legend, said to be summoned by the pharaoh to take out his enemies. It feeds off the life energy of its prey, forever silencing them by removing their tongues. The only way to kill it is by removing its tongue.”

“But I saw that thing, it didn’t have a tongue! It was all rotting meat and bones!” They looked at her skeptically and she explains what happened.

“My little sister, Morgan, and her boyfriend Brad were out at the football game. He was the head quarterback of the team. She was supposed to come home right after the game...and I was supposed to pick her up. I had totally forgotten, I was so busy writing a paper for my PolySy class. Anyway, I guess they headed into the woods behind the high school. When she wasn’t home at midnight, I was going to go searching for her at the school when the rest of my family arrived home from my youngest brother's junior hockey game. I explained to them that she hadn’t come home yet, so we went searching for her out in the woods. We called out for her, but we had no responses. Our flashlights bounced everywhere. We were out there for hours. It was almost sunrise when I heard screaming - it was my family. I could hear them running by the crunching of fall leaves and twigs on the ground until it became silent. I looked everywhere for them, and panicking, I started sprinting and tripped over a root of a tree. A shot of pain ran up my leg, and I looked down to assess it. There was a huge gash running up my shin. Then I looked up to see my family...they were all dead...pale, thin and lifeless...leaning against each other. A shadow overcame me and I turned around slowly I was shaking with fear when a dark hooded figure ascended down inches away from me. I could see his yellow stained skull and bloody hands, with bits and pieces of skin and torn muscle dangling off the creature’s bones. The sun began to rise and the creature vanished into the shadows.”

Jacob looked at her pitifully.

“It’s been a couple weeks since then. My grandmother is all I have left; she’s taking care of the funeral arrangements. The cops have no answers as to how it happened, and they said they’re keeping it ‘under wraps’. I guess they don’t want to cause a mass panic when they don’t even know what happened. I’ve been hunting for it since that night, finding out any information I could on it.” An awkward silence filled the air when Ethan cleared his throat and spoke up, “Well you’re lucky you found us, then. We’re looking for the same thing. And now we know where it lives.”

Looking at his watch, Jacob says, “We better get going. The sun rises in three hours. How far is the high school from here?”

Emily says, “Only about an hour from here.”

“Let’s get going then!” Ethan speaks up with excitement as he and Jacob start throwing guns and lighters and a strange hieroglyphic book into a duffel bag and hurries out of the door.

Slamming the doors, Ethan goes around back and opens the trunk and grabs the duffel bag, passing out guns and flashlights to each person, “Now remember, the guns aren’t going to kill it but they’ll slow it down; and whatever you do, do not scream.”

Nodding, Ethan slams the trunk closed and they move out, “We’ll spread out. Jacob and I will be right behind you, but Emily, you need to get its attention.”

“Wait what? You’re going to use me as bait? Hell no!”

“Emily, you wanted to get revenge and you’re the only one who has seen it. This is how you can help us. Please. This is how you’ll get your revenge. Don’t let your family die in vain.” Jacob looks at her and her heart melts. “Fine, but you guys better not let me get killed or I’ll haunt your asses.”

“We won’t let you get hurt.”

“You better not.”

They split up and she limps into the woods looking around intently. An owl hoots and surprises her; she spins around with her gun in the air and laughs half-heartedly, taking a deep breath. “Goddamn, Emily, get your shit together.” She thinks to herself. A smell of decay overwhelms her and she holds her breath, glancing around. Turning around slowly, she sees the hideous creature above her. She covers her mouth as to not scream and tries to remember what Ethan said, “Guns aren’t going to kill it but they’ll slow it down.” Okay, she thought, just shoot it. That will startle it and give Jacob and Ethan a chance to do their voodoo shit. Shooting it, her ears ring and she can see the boys run up. Jacob begins chanting something as Ethan stands there distracting it and occasionally shooting it. Within minutes, the creature turns into a large ball of light and explodes, hunks of flesh falling like rain. Jacob runs over to her and speaks to her, his voice far away, “Are you okay? Emily? Emily! Are you okay?”

She looks over herself and sticks her tongue out at him. Exhaling in relief he begins to laugh and Ethan simply smiles.

As the sun rises, Ethan, Jacob, and Emily get out of the Impala. “You know, we made a pretty good team back there.” Ethan says.

“Yeah, we did, didn’t we?.” She smiles softly and hugs Ethan, surprising him. Then goes over and hugs Jacob. “Thank you so much,” glancing at Ethan, “both of you. I couldn’t have done it without you.” She turns away and begins to walk away and looks back at them. Ethan clears his throat, “Do you wanna maybe come join us on the road? We could use someone like you.”

“That thing...the reaper...it’s gone? For good?”

Jacob responds, “Yeah, he won’t be silencing anyone ever again.”

Ethan speaks up, “But there are a lot of other things out there we gotta take care of. So what do ya say?” Emily walks back over to the men and kisses Jacob softly.

“Let’s do it.”