The Reaper's Almanac

Absalom: 2nd Letter

6th April

His airbag light was on for weeks.

Hello, my friend. It has been too long since my last correspondence. I hope you continue to think fondly of me despite that. I write to you today to speak of another who fell into my care.

It has been some time since Franklin's departure. The flask had been bought, sold, gifted, and left forgotten by several until it fell into the hands of a boy named Ezekiel, or Zeke as he had grown accustomed to answering to.

Zeke had found the flask among what remained of his father's collection when he had left. Deemed too valuable to be thrown out, but not valuable enough to be sold again, it instead helped a boy pretend to be a man. He carried it everywhere he went, filling it with juice that he would pretend was liquor, holding onto the belief that his father might return if he grew up acting in a similar way to the man whose own demons forced him away from his family.

It was a hope that I was both pained and pleased to see, as he desperately believed as only a child would. As only a child could. I wish I could say that I had been able to help him, or guide him, or console him in any way. Instead, I could only watch and hope that he would be able to make the right choices in life.

I had watched others before, broken men and women, previous owners of my charge. They had been beaten by the world before I met them. Zeke, on the other hand... I watched him grow. I cared for the boy as if he were my own. How could I not? He had grown a fascination with us and our kind in his early teens, as I've heard most of them do. He fell in and out of love, he found friends, and he grew up happy... at least as far as the world around him knew.

He fell into an illness that he had battled for years that no one but the two of us knew of. An illness of the mind brought on by the early loss of his father. He succumbed without knowing it. Others who fell to this were more drastic, being active in their means of passing. Zeke though, just let it happen. At 33 years of age, he noticed his airbag light on. He chose to ignore this. He had decided it wasn't worth the effort to try and save his own life. Today, he got what he wanted, and met me for the first and last time.

It was a jarring realization for me. I had always known the flask to be a symbol of hope, misguided as it may be. Today, Ezekiel showed me that hope alone isn't enough to keep a person going. Hope alone can't save them. Hope alone is weak.

I do not know who the flask will go to next. I do not know where this journey of powerless spectation will take me. What I do know is that I will share it with you once I find out.

Your friend,

Absalom