Isa, my Reaper

He's gone

They say everyone has a reaper. The further away it is, the longer you have left to live. Every day it inches a bit closer, but it is always there. Except yours, which disappeared three weeks ago.

I pulled over the side of the highway, legs aching from sitting too long. I was in the middle of nowhere, and I'd driven hours to get there.

I steeled myself and turned off the car.

Everybody's born with one. A reaper. People say nobody's reaper looks the same, like everyone's personal terrifying snowflake of death. No one knows for certain, though, because you can only see your own reaper.
Very little is actually known about them. Its hard to study something you can never touch.

The car door slammed shut more loudly than I'd expected. Now that the engine was off, the only other sounds were the wind softly tickling through the brown grass and the soles of my sneakers on the pavement.
For miles around me, there was only grassland, flat, empty. I turned , round and round, searching.
And saw nothing.

When you're born, your reaper is far away. From that moment it starts to move closer. Sometimes its slow, not even an inch over years. Sometimes you look up, and its standing face to face with you.
The things you do can affect how quickly it moves. My grandfather confessed that it started moving faster the day he smoked his first cigarette. Drunks report getting behind the wheel of their car only to find their reaper sitting beside them.

They say you never touch your reaper until the day you die.
My reaper disappeared three weeks ago.
I'm not sure exactly how it happened. It isn't close enough to always be in the same room with me, and it isn't like I'm constantly checking to see how close it is. But I usually catch glimpses of it in the hallways of my office, lingering near the doorway while I wait in line at the coffee shop, watching as I get in my car in the morning. And one day, I just.... didn't.
It was gone.

It. When did I start calling it "it"? not it, him. He. My reaper's not an it. He.
Was it my parents or teacher who first told me to stop calling him a him? Don't personify it. Don't give death that kind of power in your life. Your reaper is not a person. Your reaper does not have a gender. Your reaper does not have a name.
When did I start listening to them? When did I lose his name?

I spent the first few days in denial. I just wasn't looking in the right places, I told myself. Just because I didn't see it(him) didn't mean it was gone. But Ididn't see it (him him him) anywhere.Not in the grocery store parking lot, not in the stairs of my apartmentbuilding, not in the long dusty stacks of the library.

So I turned to the internet.

Reaper Disappeared

My reaper is gone

I can't see my reaper

What does it mean if I can't find my reaper

I found all sorts of articles and forums on reapers. People freaking out because their reaper was moving faster, people trying to figure out why their reaper was further away, people arguing over what it meant if their reaper's appearance changed.
No one claimed their reaper had suddenly just disappeared.

Reapers aren't people

My mother was firm.

Reapers never talk.

But that didn't mean I forgot.

There wasn't anyone to talk to. How could I even start? What did this even mean if he was gone? Had I discovered the cure for death? Was I going to live forever? Or was I simply going to have to walk through life, blind, never knowing when death was gonna get me.