Book one; Chapter one

In which a fat boy is used as bait, and Oprah is the answer.

Valgrim’s job could be summarized in three words: boring, cyclical, and underpaid. He was a paper pusher, sitting in the same ratty, manky old chair all day long, seven days a week. The boy, a junior detective to his partners really, spent his afternoons next to the popular water cooler, listening to the new gossip circulating around the Las Angeles police station’s central unit. But he never spoke, opting for the appearance of the quiet individual whom anyone could confide in. Valgrim had a dreary life with spiteful co-workers and heinous office hours so, why did he get assigned to such a mission as the one he was currently on?

 

            Put simply, Valgrim made fantastic bait due to his chubby exterior and timid interior. But he didn’t have to know that, his companions, Leland and Cleaveland, had decided before informing the boy of the job. Valgrim was quite out of his comfort zone wandering around the gang infested streets of southern L.A. The buildings looked to be barely held together by their bricks, leaning towards one another and narrowing already thin alleyways and passages. Smog drifted idly through the air, making the damp concrete almost impossible to see. In the distance a baby was crying and something smashed into a boarded up window. Valgrim seriously prayed that whatever is was, it wouldn’t be trouble. He was going to have more than enough in only a few moments, if Leland’s sources were correct.

 

            “309, 311, 313 Seventh Street.” Valgrim quietly counted the apartment numbers, stumbling over a piece of upturned sidewalk. The boy paused, looking at the building before him. It rose above him six stories, made of crumbling greystone. There were bullet holes in the door and over half the windows were shattered. The building did not look livable by any human standards, much less supernatural.

 

            There was a small stoop on the front of the house and Valgrim easily shuffled up the few steps to the door. He stood before it, waiting. Hesitantly, he lifted his hand to knock but lowered it when he realized the absurdity of knocking at an abandoned house. Besides, the door was partially open, radiating a foreboding vibe. He inhaled deeply, preparing himself for what he was about to do. Gently, carefully, he stretched a hand out to fully open the door. It creaked as it swung inward, revealing the dark hallway beyond it.

 

            “I don’t get paid enough for this.” Valgrim murmured. With that he ventured into the dark bowels of the house.

 

            The inside was just as bad as the outside, with moldy carpets and roaches skittering along the walls and the floors. The boy took a step forward, freezing when something under his shoe squeaked. He pulled back, peering down to see a used condom squished against the wooden floor.

 

            “Oh god!” Valgrim squeezed his eyes shut, fumbling around the many pockets of his heavy leather trench coat. From a lower pocket he produced a small bottle of disinfectant spray, which he quickly angled towards his shoe and fired. “Gross, gross, gross!”

 

            It was around this point in time that the boy realized how much noise he had been making. His normally pale face colored, as he shoved the cleaner into a random pocket.  He carefully stepped over the condom. If there was someone in the building, they were either deaf or hiding very well. Valgrim took another deep breath, venturing further down the dimly lit hallway towards a staircase near the end of the hall. Every step the boy took seemed to alert the entire house of his presence--if they hadn’t received the memo already--as the floorboards creaked and groaned underneath his weight. At last he made it to the bottom of the winding stairs, checking around himself carefully.

 

            There was someone standing directly behind him. He froze. Valgrim’s nerves felt as though they were being electrocuted, and all of his senses were suddenly hyperaware of everything around. His breath caught in his throat, then came out in a choked sigh of relief. It was a mirror; a broken one, but a mirror nonetheless. His own reflection stared with wide baby blues back at him. There was his pudgy face with dirty blonde hair plastered around a sweaty, flushed forehead. His nose was round but sat on a round face and so didn’t stand out. He looked like a totally normal fifteen year old, considering he was born in 1969, if not a tad overweight, and extremely unhappy to be in such a place.

 

            “Stupid mirror.” Valgrim whispered, frowning at the offending object and turning back towards the stairs. This time however an actual person stood behind him, with two others stepping gingerly down the stairs and making no noise. Anything Valgrim had been planning on saying died in his throat, coming out as a strangled squeak.

 

            The three figures before him were taller than he, with thin, pale limbs. Their faces were angled, narrow and bony, with bright cat-like eyes staring at him. Pointed ears poked out from beneath ratty, tangled, dark hair framing scowling faces. Their teeth were stained but sharp and their nails were more like claws. Devil-like tails swished agitatedly behind them. Their appearances were dirty but threatening; humanoid monsters.

 

            “Daemons!” Valgrim finally managed to say in a strangled gulp of air, “Oh crud!”

 

            The boy immediately took for the entrance, surprisingly quick on his feet. This may or may not have been the adrenaline rush fueling his body.  Valgrim stretched out an arm and yanked the door open, sprinting as  it crashed into the wall. There was no one else in sight outside, just the damp street and the cool night air. Valgrim’s stomach lurched as he realized how alone he was--had his comrades abandoned him?

 

            “Cleveland! Leland!” The boy cried desperately, feet pounding on concrete. Slim fingers suddenly wrapped around his arm, digging into his skin with an iron grip. “Agh!”

 

            Panic rose as he was jerked backwards and around to face a mean smile and slitted eyes. The daemon’s free hand was cocked back, and then thrust foreword into Valgrim’s left eye. Valgrim’s head snapped to the side, and he reeled backwards, tripping on the curb and landing heavily on broken cement. The same daemon straddled his groaning form, grasping his neck with wiry fingers and adding pressure.    

 

            “Cl--!” Any air he had in his lungs was being choked out. Valgrim was able to see the other two daemons standing behind their leader, sneering and insulting the ‘lardo reaper’. The boy felt his eyes bug out, hands trying to push the malnourished daemon away. He had to do something right for once- he wanted to. Quickly Valgrim shoved one hand into a pocket, attempting to grab something before his fuzzy vision faded to black.

 

            There- his fingers fumbled against a familiar shape, and he numbly grasped it, pulled it out. With the last of his energy, Valgrim raised his bottle of disinfectant spray and shot the cleanser straight into the daemon’s eyes.

 

            “Arghh!” Said daemon fell back, rubbing his eyes frantically in an attempt to clear them of the spray.

 

            Valgrim wheezed, gasping for air, and rolling himself awkwardly onto his stomach, trying to push himself up onto his elbows. Similar bony fingers dug themselves into his hair, yanking him upright onto his knees. “Cleveland! Leland!”

 

            Footsteps pounded on cement and Valgrim was able to turn his head just enough to see a glimpse of ginger hair and grinning teeth. Cleveland swung his large scythe and caught the female daemon holding Valgrim in the face, lopping off the top of her head and splattering grey matter across the ground. The leader, now smelling lemony fresh, pulled a handgun from the back of his pants, shooting wildly at the ginger’s form. The girl’s corpse served as a shield, held protectively in front of Cleveland as he sprinted foreword. The boy flung the body at the daemon, who staggered under the dead weight. Quick as a flash, the scythe was swung again, ripping a bloody gash up the leader’s stomach and neck. Both bodies fell limply to the ground, blood pooling around their forms and dripping into a nearby drain.

 

            “Goddamn reapers!” the second male, and final daemon spat, also pulling a gun. He was silenced by a large blade slicing through his skinny neck, head flopping to the ground and body collapsing in on itself.

 

            Behind the body stood a large, muscular man who appeared to be in his mid forties. His hair had almost entirely fallen out due to the stress of the job, but the little that was left was blond,  peppered with grey, and matched an impressive mustache that would have put a 1970’s porn star to shame. Like his comrades, he had dressed practically in black and a leather jacket that did little to hide his remarkable body. This was Leland, the most powerful reaper in southern Los Angeles. He had saved Valgrim’s a*s on a number of occasions, and it was rumored that he was up for promotion to central.

 

            “Stupid b*****d,” he muttered in a gravelly voice that spoke of hard living and harder drinking. Leland stepped over the body of the daemon he had just killed and surveyed the scene before him. He saw the carnage and his comrades; one standing proudly and the other sitting on his knees. “Good job Cleveland. Valgrim… what the hell did you think you were doing?”

 

            Valgrim couldn’t answer a question he didn’t know the answer to himself. He looked away. Leland sighed and pulled him to his feet. The eldest reaper looked over his shoulder at the street, where a small group of vans and police cars were driving up. “I called the cleaners.”

 

            Cleveland put away his scythe: it collapsed into a large amount of thick black ooze and seeped up his arm and into his skin. Leland did likewise. Valgrim, who had been too frightened and weak to even consider summoning his scythe, pulled a wet wipe from a pocket and cleaned his hands with it.

 

            The cleaner van pulled up to the curb and everything went quiet. Its door slid open. Out came the three cleaners assigned to the district. They were androgynous in their heavy, masked suits and looked more like something out of a 1950s anti communist movie than supernatural secret keepers. Their jobs were to take care of the bodies, to wipe the minds of any witnesses, and to follow the demands of the reapers to the last word. They themselves were reapers who had broken the rules a long time ago, and in the minds of Valgrim and his partners, they could not be trusted. When they walked up to the silent patch of gore, the reapers were the ones who moved away.

 

            Leland made a face at the group of cleaners as they cut up the bodies of the dead and shoved them into a series of body bags, where they would never be seen again. “It’s been a long night.” He sighed, rubbing his tired old eyes with one hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

@

 

            The three reapers caught a ride back to the station in a police car. They had to sit in the back seat, cramped together and facing a fifteen minute drive full of sweat and tension. It was enough to make anyone uncomfortable, but Valgrim was the only one with the poor grace to show it. He found himself sandwiched between Leland and Cleveland, both of whom were much larger and dirtier than he was. The least experienced of the reapers sighed as they began their journey back to the place where they spent most of their time.

 

            Reapers were all humans, albeit dead humans, having the bad luck to be born into families with a nasty predisposition of being reapers, they often lived full and happy lives. That is, until the day they died. When that day came, the reaper would find him or herself pulled out of the darkness to face eternity as a supernatural SWAT team member.

 

            Valgrim was one of the lucky ones. He had died at age fifteen. Now he was stuck there. Forever young.

 

            Forever young. More like ‘forever stuck in puberty’. If the zits and the voice cracks weren’t bad enough, Valgrim had to wake up every morning without the faintest clue as to live in his own body. At least Cleveland, Leland, and the others were out of their teenage years. He had heard of reapers younger than he was, but had never met any.

 

            The cop who drove the car had turned the radio to classic rock. He bobbed his head in time to the music, then looked into the rearview mirror to address the trio. “Whaddya guys get mixed up in tonight?” The tone of his voice did not give away suspicion or curiosity. He just wanted to make small talk. It let both Leland and Cleveland drop their guard.

 

            “Working on some gang activity,” Leland said. He smiled and even though one couldn’t see his mouth, they all knew he was smiling from the upturned corners of his mustache. “We caught some of the little b******s dealing and chased them a few blocks. Uneventful night.”

 

            He laughed. The cop laughed. Valgrim tried to laugh, but all that came out was a series of nervous squeaks. He didn’t know why anyone would want to be a cop, and didn’t hold much regard for anyone of that profession. They were followers and had no choice when it came to assignments. The police force was a lot like he was"except they signed up for the job. They hadn’t died into it. The only choice anyone had when it came to being a reaper was this: will you be happy? Valgrim was decidedly unhappy.

 

            Somebody in the car smelled of sweat, as if they had forgotten their deodorant that morning. Valgrim tried to keep his expression polite, but felt like vomiting. He wondered whether Cleveland, Leland, or the cop was the slob. Probably all three. At least none of them smelled of blood anymore.

 

            The rest of the trip was silent and uneventful, save for The Rolling Stones playing in the background. When the car pulled up to the front doors of the tall, brick station, and the reapers tumbled out as quickly as they could. Leland waved goodbye to the cop as he drove away toward the parking lot, then turned to Valgrim and smacked him upside the head.

 

            “You idiot,” he snapped, crossing his arms. While his impressive stature was upright and threatening, his face had softened. “What were you doing back there? God in heaven,, Broadhurst, you could have been killed. You should have been more careful.”

 

            Even though it was a dark night and they were outside where no one could see them, Valgrim blushed. He looked down at his heavy boots, finding himself incapable of meeting his superior’s disappointed eyes. “Sorry,” he muttered.

 

            Leland continued to berate him; “ Honestly Valgrim. What would I have told your daddy if you had been torn apart tonight because of your carelessness? It’s not fair to the rest of us when you slack and"“

 

            Sensing his younger friend’s discomfort, Cleveland butted in. He raised his hands, palms turned outward in the universal sign of ‘calm down.” The wiry redhead tried his best to protect Valgrim from the cruelties of the job, but often ended up sheltering him. “He’s not used to this, Leland,” he protested. He moved one of his hands to rest on Leland’s broad shoulder, the other to Valgrim’s small soft one.

 

“We shouldn’t have bullied you into a mission,” he told Valgrim. “You’re not used to the action. Sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” Valgrim said, feeling that more of an apology was needed here. He gave a small, weak smile. “Can we just--can we just go inside? I want to use the showers.”

 

            Cleveland laughed. Leland brushed off his offending hand. They walked up the plain brown stairs of the station like they owned the place. Inside, the building buzzed quietly with the movement and the voices of those who worked too hard, those working the night shift, and those looking for a promotion. Nobody looked up when the reapers passed. It was a normal, every-day occurrence to see the strange black clad agents, and nobody thought twice about it.

 

            The trio made their way around the station’s dirty desks and cubicles until they came to a single door in the back corner. Leland pulled a huge ring of keys from one of his pockets, and they clanged and jingled at the slightest touch. After some searching and swearing, he found the correct one, and opened the door with it.

 

            What lay behind the door was the main office of the southern LAPD reapers. It was large for an office, with several desks for the four reapers who worked there. Weapons, old weapons like maces and crossbows, hung on the back wall to serve in the case of a creature that could not be killed by a simple scythe. There were books on magic and on the supernatural lying about everywhere, simply gathering dust. In this case ‘gathering dust’ is just an expression--Valgrim was far too tidy to ever let that happen.

 

            Alerted by the creak of the door, a female reaper stuck her head out around a wall of ancient books. Her face lit up with a smile when she saw them and she jumped to her feet. “How’d it go?” she asked. She pulled a small chart from her desk and held a pencil above it, waiting.

 

            “Three,” said Cleveland, and the woman recorded the number in the chart.

 

            “Any witnesses?” she queried.

 

            “Not a single one, Juliet. You know that.”

 

            Juliet put the chart down, then walked to Cleveland in order to hug him. Reaper central had no policies against employee dating, so long as the employees did their jobs well.

 

            The only female in their department was a pretty brunette, slightly plump, and had a brilliant smile. She rarely went on missions, preferring to research and to book-keep. Leland and Cleveland did the muscle work Valgrim just filed an endless number of reports. Three more tonight. He sighed, it was already past midnight and he was expected to be up bright and early.

 

            “Think I can shower before I get the stuff?” he asked Juliet. She nodded, knowing all too well about his…quirkiness when it came to germs.

 

            Valgrim went to the locker-room. Thankfully, there was no one in there. He didn’t know what he would have done in a hairy sweaty cop was in there showering with him. The young reaper quickly stripped and folded his clothes, setting them carefully on top of the lockers. He stepped into the shower and smiled when the warm water hit his skin. Goodbye dirt. Goodbye sweat. Goodbye horrible job!

 

            Showers always relaxed him, even as a child. Back home he would always lock himself in the bathroom and shower until his brothers decided that it wasn’t worth their time to bother him. Good times.

 

            He soon remembered that the shower floor was covered in bacteria and he would probably get an fungal infection if he stayed in too long. So Valgrim hopped out, slipping slightly on the wet tile; toweled off, and pulled his clothes back on. Fresh and clean. The young reaper walked back to the office with a spring in his step.

 

            Juliet handed him and armful of papers that needed to be filled out and sent to central in Baltimore. She smiled at him. “Leland and Cleaveland are gone,” she said, “you should go home too.” For as long as he could remember, Juliet had been working at the station. For as long as he could remember, she had been extra kind to him. Almost as if she was sorry for him. Valgrim didn’t know whether this was a good thing or an insult.

 

            “Yeah I’ll just--” he started to turn to go but Juliet grabbed his arm. “What?”

 

            “I might as well tell you what I told them,” she whispered. Her face was scared, but had the glow of a good gossip about it. “Central doesn’t want us to know. They don’t want us to freak.”

 

            Valgrim felt his heart sink and his stomach churn, as if he had been socked in the gut.. it wasn’t often that he saw Juliet frightened, because she worked in an office setting. Now fear was practically radiating of off her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, playing the options in his head. End of the world? Pay cuts? They were all fired? No, no, and no. Juliet wouldn’t get so scared over that.

 

            She looked around conspiratorially, as if someone higher up was listening in. “Reapers are disappearing,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. But eight reapers have disappeared off the west coast in the last month! Only two bodies have been.”

 

            Valgrim felt a chill go up his spine and had to remind himself that he was perfectly safe and surrounded by policemen. “Oh man,” he whispered. “That’s bad.”

 

            Juliet nodded. She let go of his arm. “Take care of Cleveland for me, okay?” she asked.

 

            Take care of Cleveland. Funny. It was more like Cleveland needed to take care of him. But Valgrim nodded to appease her and said his goodbyes.

 

Instead of walking the ten blocks home, Valgrim called a cab. It was no longer safe to be a reaper in the city of angels.

 

@

 

At home, Valgrim quickly changed out of his dirty work clothes and into something more comfortable. He put a TV dinner in the microwave, then sat down on the couch with it and with his pile of paperwork.  He sighed and turned on the television. This was it. This was the grand old life.

 

Ever since he had been a kid, Valgrim had known he was going to be a reaper. So he had never made up elaborate fantasies about his future occupation. He had never said “I’m gonna be a fireman,” or “I’m gonna be an astronaut.” It had always been, “I don’t know what I want to be,” and a shrug when he knew that he had the rest of his life carefully planned out for him.

 

            There was an Oprah re-run on and Valgrim listened half-heartedly as a woman hawked her new diet book. He had wanted to lose weight for a while, but had never bothered to do anything about it. After all, he had all of eternity to diet and exercise. The few extra pounds could stay as they  were. The only thing that really bothered Valgrim about his weight was when somebody made a comment about it. Then he just wanted to shrivel up and die.

 

            He grabbed a book to act as a lap desk and slammed a few papers down on it. They were full of useless information to be filled out concerning the way the daemons were killed and what they looked like. Central required it for some reason. Valgrim supposed that it was in order to keep track of them. He took a bite of the overcooked lasagna he had heated up and got to work.

 

            Time passed. It wasn’t long before Valgrim became weary. Usually he was able to get the paper work done before midnight. Now he was entering the wee hours of the morning. He continued to write his report, unaware of what he was writing or what it meant. The young reaper’s mind was too full of exhaustion and the day’s events to work properly.

 

Reapers were disappearing. Reapers were disappearing. That was impossible; they were the most powerful of the supernatural. He didn’t understand why or how or who. All Valgrim knew was that he didn’t want to get involved in the whole nasty business.

 

Author's Note

Be brutal.

Also, check out the pictures if you'd like.