Dead Books

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Sofia took a deep breath and ruffled through her notebook. Wishing the candles cast better lighting. They should have set some up by her chair as well as the ritual circle.

The hooded figure floating in the centre of the spiralling glyphs watched silently. Exuding mild curiosity and eternal patience.

“So.” Sofia clicked her pencil a few times. “Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Mr… um. Mr Reaper?”

“Oh, I don’t hold that title anymore.” The voice was a desiccated whisper. “I’m retired.”

“Retired?” Sofia gawped. “H-how can death be-”

The hooded head tilted to one side. “Ah. I think there has been a misunderstanding. I am - or was - a psychopomp. When mortals die, their souls separate from their body. My job was to guide those souls to wherever they needed to go.”

“I see.” Sofia fought the urge to chew on her pencil. “So that doesn’t happen anymore?”

“It does. It always has. Humans feel a gnawing need for comfort after the end. There have been as many psychopomps as there are visualisations of death.”

Sofia blinked and pursed her lips. “Ah. So you are ‘retired’ because another visualisation has, er, replaced you?”

“Exactly.” The empty hood held the vacuous inverse of a smile. “Psychopomps are busy entities. Your current death cannot attend to you yet. But your invitation was interesting. And I was close enough to accept.”

“Well… thank you.” Sofia cast about for how to continue the interview. If this was an ex-reaper than he ought to know the answer to some of these questions, right? “Can I ask you about the Aether Process while you were-”

“I’m afraid not.” The whisper was polite but firm. “NDAs. You know how it is.”

“W-who would you sign an NDA with?”

Silence. Not merely the absence of noise but a suffocating non-answer.

“Rrrright.” Sofia stared helplessly at her notebook.

This ritual had been expensive. She needed to get something.

“So, ah, what do you do now you’re retired?”

The air in the basement returned to normal, a dozen previously unnoticed background sounds popping back into being, and Sofia gratefully gulped in a proper breath.

“I read, mostly.”

“What’s your favourite book?”

Not information the Council would care about. The question slipped out on autopilot.

“Oh I couldn’t possibly choose.”

One of those people. Thank goodness she didn’t have to dig.

“And it wouldn’t mean much to you even if I listed the title. I read dead books.”

Sofia quirked an eyebrow. “Dead… books.”

“Yes. Books which have been entirely forgotten. Written and then lost. Their ghosts linger. Not a proper soul, and unable to conceive of a psychopomp to grant them peace. But they exist. So I read them.”

This wasn’t a valuable line of questioning. And the ritual power was fading. But Sofia was now curious. So she asked “Does reading them grant them peace?”

“No. But it makes them happy.”

The candles guttered out.

Prompt was “What does the Grim Reaper do in their time off?”

[My immediate thought is that the Grim Reaper wouldn’t have time off. There are lots of humans. Even if you assume, as I did here, that you have a psychopomp for each visualisation of death, all but the most niche psychopomp will have a lot of work. I could have done a piece on a psychpomp for a very small group, but instead my mind went to what happens after a particular visualisation fades from belief. Do they themselves die? Maybe. But for now at least this Death is happily retired.]