ETERNITY'S ECHO

On the morning of the apocalypse, Ellie stood on the street corner and waited for the man to die.

His name was Keith Smithson. Age sixty-four, greying hair, twenty pounds of beer gut. He was sipping a latte in a plastic chair at the café patio across the street, holding the cup perched between thumb and forefingers as though it might bite him.

Must be hot, Ellie thought. She imagined the cup in her hands, how warmth would seep through her chilled fingers to nestle in the bones. She did not like coffee, but would make an exception for a six-o’clock November morning in Colorado Springs.

The buildings lining the street created a wind tunnel. Another gust sent Ellie’s yellowy hair billowing out like streamers, burned her cheeks ruddy. The image in her mind—the warmth of the cup—popped like a soap bubble. Ellie pulled her coat closer around her shoulders, tugged her red scarf, winced at the sting of bruises on her neck.

She glared at Keith Smithson and said, “Hurry up already.”

Keith Smithson gave no sign that he heard her, but he did shiver and stick his free hand into his pocket. His cup sent little waves of steam into the morning air.

Briefly, Ellie considered his coat. Forest green, roomy at the shoulders, knee-length. Her own red coat was wearing out. Three years reaping souls would do that. Rips at her elbows let in air, holes in the pockets she could stick her fingers through. Almost anything would be an improvement. He would not need his coat soon, anyway.

But Keith Smithson was drinking coffee just before he died—this would probably make him piss himself. Ruin his coat.

Most dying people peed themselves, Ellie had discovered. Then again, this could simply be due to the way they died—for Ellie had been assigned to the accident squad. Not the simple accidents, either. The messy ones.

Glancing down the street, Ellie noted the garbage truck turning the corner. Just on time, as the file had said: garbage truck collision at the crosswalk of West Brighton and Kimble Street, in the street in front of Stella’s Café and Bakery.

Ellie found herself hoping that Keith Smithson was an asshole. There was something poetic in a garbage man dying from a garbage truck.

But Ellie also knew that she could not count on poetic justice. Often, people died without any justice at all. One of God’s little quirks, she thought.

“Hurry up,” she said again, as the wind tugged her hair once more. She shuffled her boots, scuffed soles against concrete, stamped a foot to warm her toes. The streets were slick with rainwater. October was officially over; Halloween celebrations had been cancelled all over the city due to the downpour. In another week there would be ice.

She glared at Keith Smithson, as though all her discomfort was his fault. Technically, it was. Kind of. Why couldn’t he have an accident inside a nice warm building?

At the far end of the street, the garbage truck halted and a scraggle-bearded middle-aged man leapt out and rushed to the bundles on the curb. Must have been behind schedule. Not paying attention to his surroundings. He ran around the truck and back into the driver’s seat.

Ellie did not check her pocket-watch, but this rate would be another ten minutes before the truck was close enough. She held back a groan and shuffled her feet again.

Keith Smithson, cup mostly finished, glanced to his right across the street and paused. Ellie glared harder at him. She made a frightful face, but settled back to glaring when the wind scourged her ears again, turning them pink.

He blinked in confusion and then—deliberately—frowned back at her.

“Oh, ho, ho,” Ellie said. “You can see me now, eh?”

She did not voice the conclusion aloud: You’re a goner.

Only those near death could see reapers. Men stepped around Ellie on the street, oblivious. She used to amuse herself with this. Once, she spent hours moving a cell phone to other tables at a restaurant. The owner kept getting up to fetch it, never once asking how it had moved. Nobody else commented on the odd sight.

Weird, how being invisible worked—it was not that Ellie did not exist in space, but rather like she was beneath notice. Nobody could look at her directly.

Except the dying.

Keith Smithson kept glancing Ellie’s way, but side-eyed, as though he did not want her to see that he was looking back. She did not bother trying to be subtle. She kept her glare in place and did not look away from him once.

“Keep those eyes on the ball,” she muttered, in a deep nasally tone.

When the words left her, however, she realized what she had said and fell into awkward silence. Sometimes when alone Ellie still felt embarrassed, as though she was a second person in her own company humiliated by witnessing her own behavior.

She had just quoted her own father in a muppet voice.

“Stupid,” she said, returned to glaring again at Keith Smithson. Hurry up, she mouthed. Let’s get this over with.

On the café patio, Keith Smithson tossed his cup into the trash, blew into his hands.

The garbage truck was halfway up the street. The scraggle-faced man was more frantic, now, moving from each stop to hop out and grab the curb trash in a flurry of legs and arms. Definitely behind schedule.

If you don’t hurry up, thought Ellie, I’m going to be behind schedule, too.

This thought was only a joke. Falling behind was impossible. The file system upstairs was never wrong. If someone was going to die at such and such time and place, then that was going to happen.

Keith Smithson risked another glance her way and seemed to jolt at the look on her face. Now he looked offended, a huffy expression. Ellie supposed that having a strange teenager glaring at you nonstop would offend anybody.

When Keith Smithson looked away, Ellie glanced again at the garbage truck. The driver was mid-toss with a garbage bag into the back, then in a full sprint to the front seat. Her eyes were back on Keith Smithson when she heard the rumble of the engine. The driver was gunning it.

Here we go, Ellie thought. Not a ten-minute wait after all. She still did not check her pocket-watch.

The café patio had a spire metal fence blocking off the sidewalk, but there was a gate. Keith Smithson’s attention was divided: he was looking down to unhook the gate and glancing up to frown back at Ellie on the other side of the street.

Is he going to come over here? Ellie wondered. It occurred to her that there could be no other reason for Keith Smithson to be crossing the street, because the café parking was behind the building. She had watched him arrive in his Prius fifteen minutes ago.

Then the gate was open, and Keith Smithson, with a determined look on his face, was marching toward her like one of the snitches she knew at her old high school, who would prance over to teachers if anybody was having too much fun.

He really is coming over, Ellie realized. This is how Keith Smithson would die: walking across the street to tell off a teenager for glaring at him while he drank his coffee.

She could hear the truck humming closer. A wonder that Keith Smithson did not—then again he was very focused. On her. He did not even look both ways.

Clearly, Ellie thought, you deserve it. You should know better.

What a stupid way to die.

For a second, everything was suspended. Keith Smithson’s foot was off the pavement, his other foot half-on half-off one of the white crosswalk lines. His focus did not waver from Ellie. The light of the sunrise was cast over the left side of his face, the direction of the approaching truck. If he looked, the sun might blind him.

Freeze-frame moments. Ellie knew these well. Ellie knew a lot about time now.

In her breast pocket, she felt her pocket-watch vibrating like a phone, the seconds hand stuck in place and struggling to tick to the next dash.

She wondered if she should look away. The garbage truck was close, had to be mere feet from Keith Smithson, probably accelerating. There was the temptation to glance over and look, see how close it was.

Why would the driver not stop? Surely he would see Keith Smithson in the road, even if the man was crossing against the signal. If Ellie looked to see what the driver was doing, would Keith Smithson look too?

If she looked, would Keith Smithson see the truck and stop?

If she looked, would Keith Smithson stop and not die?

Just the sort of question she had asked when she first began her job. She had stopped asking such questions. They were bad for one’s mental health. Not that Ellie’s mental health was all that good in the first place. But now the question was lingering as she stared at Keith Smithson coming at her.

Almost enough to have her call: “Look out!”

Mid-stride, Keith Smithson shouted: “Just what is your problem—”

Impact. A wet sound, whump, with flopping and clanging like trash does when someone picks up a garbage bag and the bottom caves out, spilling contents everywhere. The driver slammed the brakes, high-pitched, a dog whining.

Ellie realized her mouth was open, shut it. Her teeth clicked.

Keith Smithson, or what was left of him not smeared across the pavement, lifted his head and caught Ellie’s eye. She saw his own looked buggy, inflated, that she could see the whites all around the pupil. Crazy eyes.

He groaned, “Help me.”

For her first few jobs, Ellie did not know what to do when the soul in question asked for help. They often did, and often to the reaper. Ellie did not know why. She had been sorry for them, back then. She had tried to come up with excuses: I’m sorry, I can’t, it’s not meant to be. Hollow words meant to make herself feel better.

Now, Ellie knew there was no point in discussing the matter.

She watched as the truck driver opened the door and fell out of the cab, crawling over to Keith Smithson and attempting some rudimentary first aid. This was not going to work. Keith Smithson was too chewed up. Ellie had seen enough accidents to know that the driver was not even doing it the right way. But he was trying.

Keith Smithson no longer could speak, yet kept staring at her.

Ellie’s nose wrinkled at the smell of urine. She had been right about the coffee and ruined coat. Vinegary smell. There was also garbage. And beneath, the tang of blood.

Reaching into her breast pocket, Ellie pulled out her pocket-watch. Golden. But just in little bars, rivets like the sides of a bird cage, so that she could see the internal mechanisms whirring within. There was no glass; the insides were all exposed.

The hands read 6:42, and a little dial underneath gave the date and year.

Looks about right, Ellie thought. She glanced back up and noted that while the truck driver, apologizing profusely and weeping, had not managed to patch up Keith Smithson correctly, he was now batting up his jacket so Keith Smithson could rest his head. Keith Smithson’s eyes never left Ellie, and she found that she had to look away.

The side of the garbage truck had an advertisement:

DON’T LITTER.