I swear, I always have to mind my step around here. No matter how many times I think I’ve had it all mapped out, at the start of each graveyard shift, I have to pound the ground, you know, give it a good shake before taking another step. That’s what I get for walking barefoot everywhere. And yes, technically I can be called in anytime, although full moon nights tend to be the busiest for some reason. Don’t get me started on this whole thing with the second moon, it’s really thrown a lot of my friends off their routine. Well, to be fair, we’re not all friends – I’m friends with the cat reaper because we cross paths more often than not. I suppose the dog reaper and I, we’re, uh, companions, although I feel bad whenever my subjects morph theirs into something that needs to be reaped earlier than usual. Just look at what happened to pugs over the past Plutonian cycle, really. It’s a shame. Anyway, that’s the thing they never tell you when you start your first shift: whatever form or, umm, uniform you choose, you can’t update it. Ever! Not being recognised is worse than being feared. Sure, the hooded getup was a good idea at first: it dampened the skrrr-skrrr of my bones rubbing against each other. It also helped hide my face, or whatever’s left of it, once barred teeth no longer meant hello, I’m an old friend, but beware, I’m the predator you can’t outpace. The hood is a pain on new moon nights, though, I truly hate seeing them flinch. They always think they have more time and I’d hate to tell them how many times they’d actually already narrowly avoided me. They’re too busy to think of me anyway, what with all the work to keep themselves alive. Could have been worse, actually, could have chosen the wrong hood colour. Black hides dirt.

That’s how folklore comes alive, isn’t it? You have something that makes sense because it serves a function, but that’s never enough for the ones you reap, so they keep shoveling more meaning on top so that you can make sense in their own story. Can’t even begrudge them, no matter how much it burdens me. It’s not debris to them, is it? It’s just the dehydrated form of their memories. Not everyone has someone or something to cry for them, so I have to cherish it and shield it from the winds, dust to dust as it all may be. What? Pulverised? Now you’re just being unnecessarily cruel. I get that dryness and violence don’t make sense to you yet but look, they will. That’s what dealing with mine gets you. Let me tell you something – I said it to the organoid before you, too – but they hate the word “moist” for some reason. They do this thing, it’s called the euphemism treadmill, where they keep finding new ways to shield themselves from seeing and knowing – wait, have I told you what a treadmill is? Good. Where was I? Ah, yes, calling it a “hydrogel” won’t make you less uncanny, so show some respect. We’re not just archiving their life work, there’s a lot that goes into death work. Without it, they don’t get to do their grief work, which just lands you more of them in your backlog. None of them are an open-and-shut case, that’s why the path is never direct, it snakes around. It’s never good news when you get assigned a big batch all at once, either, but it does raise interesting questions, like do you keep going with the new form or do you hand over your keys. That’s how the chicken reaper got all those keys, a meteor. No, the mini-moon is an asteroid, not a meteor. You’ll know the difference soon enough. Now that I think of it, you look canned. Ready to return to the primordial soup. Can’t wait for the urban myths about you.

So anyway, I’ve been meaning for ages to swap my scythe out for something more practical. I didn’t mean to become a costume for mine to scare each other. There’s some irony there, how they’re putting on an outer layer copying what’s on the inside. They do that a lot, actually. I understand how me sharpening this damn thing in a dark corner can cancel out my deliberately slow movements– look, that was meant to give them the time to compose themselves before, you know, it’s time to decompose. I could walk faster, thank you very much, but efficiency is not rewarded in death work. When I picked it out over a shovel, I wanted it to reassure them: it’s not meant to be a weapon anymore than a potato is meant to be a battery and, like grain, when reaped you’re just joining the heap in the dark and warm. I don’t know why everyone makes it out like it’s cold and desolate. You’re never alone down here. I should have accounted for the sharpness of it bringing along the whole toolbox of nightmare imagery, of something that cuts deep in a flash. Ah, severance. Alright, so you saw how to adjust from bogland and swamp to desert or rocky terrain. Here’s where it gets complicated: when you go digging, you never come back up the same way. You are not to disturb whatever remains behind you. I suppose you could call it tunneling but it would be short-sighted to think we’re always at the forefront, it’s usually the fireflies but they don’t tell me much. Have they shown you Grave of the Fireflies yet? Come on, you can be honest, I know they don’t protect old works that fiercely from you. Mmm, you ate it up, didn’t you? …the squeaky wheel and all that, by the time you’re following the bees, you know the ground below you has already shifted and you have to readjust once more. It’s too easy to lose your foothold and then you’re also dragging down those besides you. That’s why I let the dog reaper off the leash. It’s never too far away but once it alerts, there’s not much I can do. Speaking of which, don’t mind the cat reaper. It doesn’t follow the same rules as us, so you’ll see it go back and forth all the time. No, I don’t think we have our own reapers. See, we had someone who retired a little over a Plutonian cycle ago, actually. He never saw my subjects coming and now he’s a symbol for all those who retreated into the silence. You know what, the Mauritian flying fox can tell you more about him and about those who try to come back. Sometimes, when the graveyard below us shifts, it just connects us to another one we haven’t paced about in a while. There’s talk of megafauna being brought back next, but I’m honestly dreading it. You don’t understand how musty they could be! Not to mention they could bring back all sorts of smaller reapers that could take out my companions. I’ve grown quite fond of them, thank you very much. No, we do not speak of the plague. Tread softly.

That’s the other thing about folklore, it doesn’t just keep re-shaping you in someone else’s image. Your relationship with others also gets reshuffled. Corvids have been following in my trail for as long as I can remember and we had a pretty close call a while ago, when my subjects messed with their spawning points. Their young ones adjusted better than pigeons and even started threading cigarette butts into fishing nets to ward off those pesky smaller reapers. I’ve even seen magpies use the spikes mine originally made against them. One for sorrow, two for joy. Did I tell you about the lovers’ curse? The sorrow of dying before or after your loved one. It stays with them, it seeps into their bones. They’re usually the ones that don’t flinch, no matter how you meet them. They’ve been waiting for you. Those are the worst to deal with because they always ask the same thing. Why, why, why? How should I know? The reaper before me didn’t tell me anything, just left me some paintings and I lost all of them except the ones on the cave walls. That’s why I always warn everyone to mind their steps, it’s only in hindsight that you can judge solid ground. See, when I first started meeting mine, I wanted to ask them what they lived for. I thought we’d all been briefed that not meeting me wasn’t an option. Imagine my surprise when they each had a different version where they’d trick me, live forever and, well, live to regret it. Far be it from me to judge how they cope. Life work looks like dirty business through and through. I do admire their light, though. Going back to that word you used – pulverised – I’ve seen them mix the dust of their old houses to build new ones. Sometimes, they’ll pick up a half-broken language and reshape it to hand it to their children. Even the dead ones, they give them to me and then make up songs about me using them. I think that’s a form of care work. They don’t want to picture me lonely, so they hand me their bits and pieces as they fall apart at the seams. To be fair, until you came along, I thought I’d never have a hope of handing over my keys. I didn’t expect to pick such a long shift when I started. Believe it or not, I’ve had so many companions retire and we still haven’t managed to fully bring one back just yet. There was this Pyrenean wild goat that made a brief comeback but it slipped away again. It’s not just life work that’s fragile; death work is, too. Ever since mine started harnessing lightning, they keep snatching more and more back. They don’t all return in full, but I have to admire the effort. Sometimes, when I reap one, I’ll detect leftovers from another I thought I had already taken away in full. You never know, really, what part of them was repurposed, like a spare tire from a car graveyard. Stop groaning, I’ve earned the right to puns. Occasionally, you’ll meet one that didn’t even know they were sharing parts with an unnamed twin. That’s why you have to be careful when you greet them: use the singular form unless told otherwise. When dealing with a plural case, they’ll usually brief each other in front of you, so you have to give them time. It’s the one thing they need and it’s usually no bother to us. For now, at least. I’m not sure how much longer I have left on my shift. I hear there’s an update on the Clock due soon. Seriously, they have to find a more energy-efficient option for you guys.

That’s the other thing, by the way – not all remains are dehydrated. The chicken reaper told me that the one before her actually got liquified. On purpose! Mine have been pumping them out into the air and into the sea alike. That led to more of a backlog for the chicken reaper’s cousins, of course. Remember what I said about cross contamination? We got some of them now in pretty much everyone’s bloodstream, I’m sure. I didn’t say in everything, did I? You’re not truly a someone to them at the moment, more of a something. That says more about them than about you, though. Yes, you think you’re safe for now, in your glass containers, but plastic comes for us all and the plastic-eating fungi are never too far behind. It’s a real dog-eat-dog world down here and the early worm gets the…late worm. After all, as above, so below. So, have you thought of a uniform yet?