At times, Ash thought he was meant to regret harvesting humans. They had no chance. He’d sweep in, steal their life essence, and be gone before the carcass hit the floor. Disease, malnourishment, and age were like little ticking timebombs that so few people anticipated.

Walking amongst the crowd of a sunny Savannah day, Ash counted all the faces that wreaked of death, and well over half of them were clueless to their incoming demise. Jobs for another time. The crystals in his eyelids steered him like a compass to a figure across Forsyth Park--his one and only target for the day.

Time had kept her promise, as Ash had followed through on his side of the bargain. He went home, greaved Detritus, and slept with Love and Hatred tucked under either arm.

A mariachi had popped up in the park, irking some of the more ‘patriotic’ picnic-goers and joggers. Their loud instruments shone across an otherwise bug-riddled and humid day.

War spilled from the lips of mortals as he passed, deathly afraid of the ‘Grand Gorge Star’ as profiteering news outlets called it. A lone survivor had described the moments before the explosion as “like a star ascending to heaven.” Every nation was blamed, every nation denied their role. Navies mobilized, missile demonstrations skewered regular programming, little men in big chairs shouted at each other.

Ash’s victim slid into view, striking a leisure pose at the gated edge of an ornate, white fountain. She was a gaunt, bug-eyed woman of Asian descent. Her outfit called out to death, dressed in leather shades of dark to darkest black. A beret sat crooked atop chopped, black hair. She was looking all across the crowd, perhaps touched by addiction. It was sometimes hard to tell what the human implication was for a random death.

What would the obituary even say?

None of Ash’s concern.

Ash raised the maul, charging through humans like they were made of mist, and removed the distance to his target. The crystal compass dissipated. He cried out, swinging for her chest.

She looked deadset into his eyes. The maul rebounded, then rattled. The woman had caught the hammerhead between locked ivory sickles.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

Ash jerked the maul back.

She tightened the sickles.

“No, you're not getting away yet. Answer me, jerkwad. What the fuck?”

“You’re a reaper,” Ash muttered.

“Damn skippy I am. Now tell me or I’m keeping this maul up with one half of communism and disemboweling you with its twin.”

Ash flexed in some absurd attempt at dominance.“Are those their names?”

“Commie and the twin? No. Why? Do you name your tool?”

Ash glanced briefly at the obsidian maul, trying to control the wild adrenaline flaring his expression. “No. That’s ridiculous.”

The other reaper puckered her lips aside, then shouted “Oh, you totally do. What is it? What do you call that stupid big hammer?”

“I don’t name it anything.”

The sickles closed, hooked over each other, trapping the hammer’s hilt completely.

Ash cried forth, “Hegemony!”

The woman’s face fell flat, devoid of fear, hate, or even amusement. The sickles parted as she stepped away from the falling hammer.

“Hegemony. You’re kidding me. What kind of sick joke name is that?”

“What? I’ve had it since antiquity.”

“Oh man, I thought you looked old.”

Ash raised the hammer. “I’m not old.”

“Dude. Antiquity. Hegemony the Hammer. You’re as old as Sol’s damn birth.” She smacked the hammer down gently.

“Even so.” Ash pouted.

“Aw. You’re pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.” Ash still pouted.

Both her sickles raised, pushing his cheeks into a smile.

“That’s not a pout right there.”

Ash frowned against the blades. “Either way, I was sent to kill you. Why? Who are you?”

“Reaper Harakiri.” Harakiri curtsied.“And you are?”

Ash turned his back, dropping his maul altogether. He shifted every few seconds and he glared at nowhere in particular. So many faces, petulant and spoiled. He wondered how much someone had to hate them to try killing them all. “She sent me on a god-sanctioned suicide mission.”

“Oh, yikes. Bummer. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Ash.”

Harakiri started rattling off reasons why Time might want her dead, but Ash was too busy honing in on one spot in particular through the crowd. He couldn’t remember if there was a word for reliving a previous event through someone else’s eyes. He didn’t think so.

Déjà visité?

Another reaper walked the same path that Ash had, glaring with violent intent in his beady eyes. His dark expressions and even darker wardrobe proved his dedication to the reaper life, even when steeped in Georgia heat.

“Harakiri,” Ash said, not taking his eyes off the incoming reaper. “What’s the term for reliving something through someone else’s eyes?”

“Like, with a mind’s eye? Could be a reflection.”

Déjà connu?

Harakiri twirled her sickles and body, whimsical and synchronous. “Some sorta spirit eye. There was a harvest when I let a kid come back from the dead. Maybe that’s why Time’s so pissed at me. But that was like two thousand years ago.”

Déjà arrivé. Maybe.

A halberd stretched over the reaper’s broad shoulders, atop a broad torso; a man built of pure muscle and a crooked, ratty face. He was probably sent into his suicidal harvest blind, just like Ash.

Being somewhat kind and wanting to avoid dodging such a mammoth blade, Ash gave the reaper a wave and smile.

“Friend, we’re reapers, too,” Ash said.

The reaper’s name was Volatile. Up this close, his oafishly unforgettable features were clear as day. He popped the halberd from his shoulders, not slowing. “Not for long, bud.”

The mammoth blade wailed through the air.