Page 10 of Reaper

Chapter 5

Janelle

Icouldn’t keep my eyes off him. Even through my blurred vision, showing me barely a silhouette, I knew he was beautiful. My fingers still remembered the perfection of his features as his body had grown cold. I didn’t understand what he was. The arced horn on his forehead marked him as a Kryptid. Those evil insects had all possessed one, black and shiny, shaped like a crescent-moon. And yet, he wasn’t a bug. His face alone confirmed it. The scales on his forehead and on his cheeks had given way to such soft skin, with nice lips, a straight nose, big eyes—bigger than a human’s—and the softest hair. I wanted so much to touch his silky locks again, but I was feeling too weak. His hair smelled good. Everything about him smelled so incredibly good, it was intoxicating.

His strong, hard body around me, holding me, made me feel safer than I had felt in the past twenty years. I didn’t want him to ever let me go. And his voice was the sweetest music, like the whispering wind, the sweet humming of a mother putting her child to sleep, or the rumbling purr of a baby Creckel getting his tummy rubbed. And that beautiful voice spoke such wondrous words, with such depths of sincerity. No hunger. No thirst. No fear. And above all, freedom… Beyond the hallway, I could hear the sizzling sound of Reaper’s companions cutting through the rocks and twisted metal that kept us trapped here.

I was likely hallucinating. After all, I was still down here, in this crumbling base. The last poisoning from the bad water and bad vegetables was no doubt messing with my mind. But I no longer cared. If I was currently dying in a delirious fever, I couldn’t have dreamed of a better death. I wanted it to last, to be forever surrounded by his clean, crisp, delicious scent. It was warm and comforting like the smell of freshly baked bread slathered with melting butter.

The happy chewing sounds of my companions and the wondrous smell of clean meat filled my heart to bursting. Mother had been wrong. Reaper wasn’t the bringer of death, but the bringer of life. He was feeding my friends and me. He was our sun. My Sun.

I swallowed painfully, my throat still parched despite the insane amount of water I had already drunk. Normally, I would have rationed such a large quantity over nearly a week. My stomach still quivered, unsure as to how it wanted to handle such bounty. But it had settled enough for me to seek more of that wonderful water: slightly salty, amazingly sweet, and clean… so incredibly clean…

I instinctively projected an image of a water bottle inside me. Although I couldn’t see his face, his slight recoil and the way his body almost imperceptibly stiffened told me he had likely not understood. I mentally chastised myself for not using my words. It would be difficult to remember to use speech. I understood spoken words perfectly, but after not using them in decades, I realized expressing coherent sentences out loud would be very demanding.

“M-more? P-please?” I whispered, my voice hopeful.

I had already drained the bottle he had brought. But he had said there was more, as much as I wanted…

“I will give you a lot more in a minute,” Reaper said in that sweet, rumbling voice that made my skin tingle. “First, I need to give you a small injection of proteins that will help your body get back to health. And then, I want to run a couple of tests on you to make sure you don’t suffer from some other serious conditions that need to be treated right away.”

I didn’t really want to wait or to be examined, but his request was reasonable. Plus, I didn’t want to make him upset with me. He lifted the two bags that were slung around his neck and placed them on the table. My mouth watered—or at least tried to—at the sight of the second bottle of water inside one of them. But Reaper picked a sealed container from the other bag, flipped open its lid, and pulled out some kind of tissue. He gently rubbed it over the exposed skin of my arm. The wetness surprised me, although it shouldn’t have. The wet wipes didn’t have the medicated scent of a sterile solution but smelled enticingly fresh.

It suddenly struck me how dirty I must appear to him. I’d been living with my own stench and filth for so many years, I no longer noticed it. A wave of shame fell over me. I wasn’t a dirty person, but water had been too precious to waste on laundry and bathing. The particle shower had also become defective a while back, and I didn’t have the technical knowledge to fix it. I almost opened my mouth to apologize for how badly I must stink but remained quiet. It was stupid to think he hadn’t noticed, especially considering he used four wipes on the same spot on my arm before deeming it reasonably clean enough. But just in case, I wouldn’t draw his attention to it.

Reaper took a hypospray from his belt before lifting it to my arm. “This will sting a little,” he warned.

I nodded, expecting some major discomfort when he injected me with its contents, but it barely tingled.

“I’m going to take a blood sample from you and analyze it to see if there are any other health issues, and then I will scan you for other internal injuries. Okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered.

He removed some kind of box from the same bag that had contained the wipes. After cleaning the tip of my index finger, Reaper pricked it with the leanest stylus I had ever seen—or at least, that’s what it looked like to my blurred vision. He then inserted it inside the box, making me realize it was some sort of analyzer.

“I’m now going to perform the scan,” Reaper continued. “At the same time, I’m going to ask you a few questions. Is it okay if I record your answers for our Medical Officer?” he asked.

I nodded again. It struck me as odd that he would think it would bother me. How else was the doctor going to help me? Still, I liked that he didn’t try to do anything against my will. It further reassured me that he would indeed do me no harm.

“How much do you see of me?” he asked.

I projected an image of a manly silhouette with his half-moon horn, surrounded in fog.

“So, very little,” he replied.

I cringed, realizing I’d once again failed to use my words. “Yes, little,” I said, pleasantly surprised that my throat didn’t hurt as much anymore, despite the thirst—although now bearable—that still plagued me.

He ran a handheld device I recognized as a scanner over the throbbing ports on my temples to which I used to attach my optical aid.

“Hmm…” Reaper said. “Your ports are heavily infected. You must not use your device again until you are fully healed, or you might become completely blind or cause yourself some serious brain damage.”

This time, I caught myself seconds before I would project an image. “I… I know. I use it rarely. It’s…” I paused, looking for the word.

“Painful?” Reaper offered.

“Yes. But also… Hmmm…”

“Defective?”

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