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The Mall Reapers

by Daniel Roop

The second time I died, when I was fifteen, I didn’t. Mama and I had been arguing about the usual things, including my black eye shadow and mascara and how it “made me look awful pretty for a corpse.” I’d stormed off to my room in the back of our trailer in a huff, and she just stayed in the living room and drank coffee and smoked at the rickety brown table next to the stove so the vent would siphon off the smell. I threw myself on my bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying not to smudge the eye shadow. In fairness to her, I did cake it on back then. I laid there and listened to Concrete Blonde and The Cure and mumbled the lyrics into my black comforter. I was pretty dramatic in those days, and that along with the Crow’d up outfits didn’t help me fit in much in our little town in Scruggs County, Tennessee. I only knew three things for sure: I hated my life, I hated this place, and I was never, ever going to get out of here. This smoky trailer, this rutted gravel road, this hemmed-in Appalachian horizon was the only one I would ever see. So, I butchered a few more songs, earnestly at least, and then Mom called, “Elsie!”—it’s hard to be goth when you’re named Elsie—“Elsie, come look at this!”

I groaned and delayed as long as I dared, but I knew she’d just nag me until I joined her. I shuffled down the hall as morosely as possible, and when I entered the living room, I found her sitting on the floor at the edge of the coat closet, a big Rubbermaid container open next to her. She was going through her memory box. “Look at this one,” she said, and held up a picture of me from Halloween, when I was seven, dressed like Rainbow Brite, a gigantic chocolate-smeared smile splitting my face. She was never very subtle. Yes, mother, what a timely insight, I’d forgotten I used to be a bundle of joy and light. When I finished rolling my eyes clear to the back of my skull, I noticed, wedged in the corner of the closet, my old Pogo Ball, which I thought I’d lost years ago. I reached in and pulled it out, and as I laid it down on the floor between us, something in her memory box caught my eye.

“What’s this, Mama?” I held up a thin piece of curved metal, no longer than my finger. It didn’t reflect the light from the floor lamp, and it felt heavier than it should, like a moon rock or meteorite. Like something not from here. Mama glared at me through her one eye, the hollow on the other side covered as always by a violet eyepatch. “Put that down right this minute.”

“But—”

“No buts. Right now, before you cut yourself. I don’t think anything’ll happen if you do, but I’m not taking no chances.” I laid it gently back in the box.

“But what is it?”

“It’s—oh, what do you call it—a good faith gesture, I guess? Not really collateral. More like a keepsake to mark an agreement.”

“What agreement?”

She huffed and hemmed and hawed, and took a sip of coffee, then looked at the piece of metal nestled back in the box, then looked out the window across the room, brow furrowing. I didn’t badger her. I knew that expression. I knew she was on a tightrope in her mind, and she’d figure out soon enough she had to keep walking forward or fall off, if I just gave her a minute.

“I guess it’s time. I had in mind to tell you when you were eighteen, but life comes at you fast, and your kids are never as ready for anything as you want them to be. You’re gonna find out one day anyway, and it better be from me. Probably waited too long to tell you as it is.”

“Tell me what?”

So, she rose up off the floor, and plopped down in her worn out recliner, and she told me. At least, she started to tell me, until I cut in.
I yelled at her that she was out of her mind, and she yelled back that she wasn’t gonna be spoken to like that, and I yelled back that’s fine I’m done speaking at all, and I grabbed my black jacket off the back of the chair, and I grabbed my stupid Pogo Ball, and I bolted out the door.

I ran to the far back end of the trailer park, to the gravel strip at the edge of the railroad tracks, to the boundary of my pitiful world. Tears were streaking my eye shadow, and I was crying like a five-year old, just blubbering, and I’d wipe my face with my sleeve, and I’m sure mascara was wiping off on my jacket, but black on black in the dark, I couldn’t see. I felt like I’d never seen anything anyway, and that I’d never, for the rest of my life, gaze past the edges of this stifling box of a town. I put down my Pogo Ball and balanced on its hot pink platform. I remembered bouncing on it when I was seven, when I was Rainbow Brite, jumping in our tiny green patch of yard and pretending I was soaring to New York, to Australia, to Mars. I wiped my nose and jumped twice, and the stupid dry-rotted thing punctured on the gravel and crumbled. I screamed and threw it across the tracks, and I asked myself over and over why my mother would mock me like she’d just done, why she would say the last thing in the world I’d ever want to hear, and act like it was something good, like she didn’t know me at all, like she’d never really seen me. I kicked at the gravel, then farther down the track I heard the whistle and the rumble getting closer. I felt the vibration in my body, and then the light bearing down, and I waved to the engineer with my snot and mascara-stained sleeve, and the horn blew, and at the very last second, I closed my eyes and stepped onto the track.

The next thing I knew I woke up staring at fluorescent lights with Mama shaking her head next to me, saying, “Do you believe me now, Elsie? Are you ready to hear the rest?”

I was, and I had a lot of time to think it over, laying there with two broken legs and a broken back knitting themselves together, slow as molasses, with everybody who came to tend to me saying, “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

But it wasn’t a miracle. It was the Mall.

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Everyone knows about mall Reapers now, of course, but in case you’ve been in a coma for the past decade and are just waking up, I’ll explain. Now, I know you’ve seen mall Santas, right? Well, shortly before I was born, malls decided, in an effort to cash in on other holidays, to promote appearances from Grim Reapers in the weeks leading up to Halloween. People would line up to sit on the Reaper’s lap, and he’d look at you out of those empty, bony eyeholes from under that black hood—very traditional, very on-brand—and he’d ask you two questions.

Here, now, at the end, what do you wish you’d done?
Here, now, at the end, what do you wish you hadn’t done?

When people first heard about mall Reapers, they were skeptical. It seemed forced and commercial, awkward and desperate. But the truth is, we already treated malls like churches anyhow, and people are always in desperate need of rituals and reflection. So, folks showed up like it was a homecoming football game or a sermon from the Pope and waited in massive lines snaking through the malls. When your turn finally approached, you’d enter a fake stone archway with rooms on either side. You’d step inside one of the rooms, alone, and sit or kneel or pace in tiny circles, and reflect back over your life. Then you’d step out when your number was called, and you’d go sit on the Reaper’s lap. Reapers would rotate shifts as long as the mall was open. Children weren’t allowed, of course, but everyone from teens to great-grandparents lined up to face that cavernous stare and pour their lives out into the folds of that black robe.

The biggest reason this was so moving, the reason people still do this every year for catharsis and perspective, is that, out of the half-million mall Reapers, one of them is the actual Grim Reaper. No one knows why, exactly, he agreed to do this. Maybe for public relations, maybe out of a genuine desire to help people lead more examined lives, or maybe just a sick sense of humor. Regardless of his reasons, the result is that every year, whenever a person sits down on that bony lap, there is a tiny but real chance that answering those two questions is the last thing they’ll ever do. That chance charges every single encounter with meaning. In a world where we all skate across the shallow surface of life, it forces depth upon us. They say, if it’s the actual Reaper, a purple light flashes deep within the skull’s orbits as the questions are asked, and you know, right away, that this is the end. Almost everyone holds their breath as they sit down. Some people cover their eyes through the entire experience, not wanting to know if it’s their time. A few seem disappointed to walk away still breathing, but most of the tears that dot the exits are tears of gratitude.

Mama had never been to the mall Reapers. She said she’d never felt the need. But when I was two years old, and in the hospital with an infection that the antibiotics wouldn’t even touch, and the doctors were all shaking their heads and saying they didn’t know what else to do, it was just a waiting game, Daddy forced her to take a two-hour break from sitting by my bed and reading to me. He told her she had to take a moment for herself to catch her breath, and he’d stay right there with me. And he did, and she had no idea what to do with herself, so she drove, and cried, and drove some more, and ended up, as people in distress do, at the mall.

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Mama told me this while I laid in my hospital bed, fifteen years old and smashed to pieces, but not dead, eating chocolate pudding. She told me that, thirteen years ago on that chilly October night, when she parked at the mall and turned the car off, she was just sitting there in the dark, too hollowed out to cry anymore, too lost to know what to do, when she noticed the mall Reaper standing outside on his break. He was leaning against the brown brick wall of the JC Penney’s, smoking and drinking a can of Cherry Coke, which didn’t do much for the mystique. She said she thought nothing deeper than, well, why the hell not? She waited for him to stub out the cigarette, toss it and the empty can in the trash bin, and go back to his post inside. She stepped out into the cool autumn air and followed.

It was late evening, so the line wasn’t as long as usual, but it still took her over an hour to get through. She felt a little silly as she waited, and almost left a half dozen times, but she remembered the co-workers, friends, and family who had all told her about their trips to the Reapers over the years.

“I realized Jake was never gonna appreciate me and I was just wasting my life on him,” her aunt said, and her aunt was right. Jake was useless.

“I poured all my whiskey down the sink and haven’t had a drop since,” her shift supervisor said, and she really hadn’t. She was a good boss, and a good woman.

“I quit my job to pursue my dream of competitive eating,” her cousin said. Well, maybe not that one. But still.

She entered the dark, fake stone room. It was quieter inside, the mall’s cacophony muffled, but her mind was still racing. She had no idea what she was going to say, other than she already regretted taking two hours away from me. Then, what felt like way too soon, a voice called her number, and she stepped out.

She walked slowly towards the Reaper. It was the same bright, garish mall she’d been in moments before, but it felt different now, weighty, each step like climbing a mountain. The Reaper drew aside one robed arm and gestured to his lap with the other. It should have felt stupid and kitschy, but it was terrifying, even though she could still smell a hint of Cherry Coke and nicotine on his breath as she sat down.

She was too stubborn and ornery to close her eyes, and as she looked inside the hood, she saw the empty sockets glow an undeniable purple. Her breath hitched, and she knew she had just signed up for her last few moments on earth. She was determined not to leave this world a sniveling mess, make-up running everywhere, making a scene. She nodded and pressed her lips together as the Reaper said, “Here, now, at the end, what do you wish you’d done?”

She told me, there in the hospital while I tried to scratch an itch under my cast with a fork, “I guess some people, when they’re faced with that moment, they completely freeze up and can’t think of a single thing, and then I guess other people’s minds rattle off an endless list, and me, I just started to think about ways I wish I’d kept you safe, but nobody even knew where your infection came from, so even though you were my whole world, I couldn’t think of something I wish I’d done different, so all that came to my mind was to say, I wish I’d seen the ocean.

“And the Reaper, he pointed those hollow sockets at me, and nodded, not like he was just acknowledging the answer, but like he agreed, and he said, kinda quiet and sad, I wish I could see the ocean, too.

“In spite of all the terror and death and everything, that knocked me back. Wait, I said, you go everywhere in the world. What do you mean you’ve never seen the ocean? And he pointed at his face, at those empty sockets, and said, On account of no eyes, y’know? I’m misquoting a little here, it was an emotional moment, I’m sure he said it prettier than that. He started telling me something real complicated about how he maneuvered through the world and the planes and the spheres, and I don’t remember if it was radar like bats or some kinda whiskery thing, and yes, I know he doesn’t have whiskers, I’m talking the basic principle of it, but I don’t remember the details because the whole time he was talking, I was coming up with a plan.

“I said, You can travel anywhere in the world in a blink, right? He nodded, and I said, I’ll make you a deal, if it can happen fast, because I’ve got somewhere to get back to. But if, before I die, you’ll take me to see the ocean, well—I’ll give you one of my eyes.

“Now I could make this dramatic and act like he thought on it real hard or made me answer some riddles first or something mythological, but really, it’s like he had been waiting his whole life, or death, or whatever, for someone to make an offer like that. He nodded at me, then turned to the mall security guard to his left and said, Jerry, we’ll just be a minute, and wrapped his arms around me, and it felt hot and cold at the same time, like those patches Granny used for her arthritis, and poof, we were at the beach, and poof, my eye popped right out of my socket and into his like it was teleported, and it hurt like hell.

“I forgot that pain right away because I was finally there, and the waves, oh, the waves were crashing and the sun, all orange and fiery, was sinking down on the horizon, and I said, My God, just look at it, and he nodded, and damn if he didn’t reach over and take my hand in his and say, Thank you, and I swear I saw a tear fall from my eye under his hood. I said, You’re welcome, and thank you, too, and we just stood there, flesh against bones, and watched the waves go in and out, and the gulls dive and circle, and Elsie, I could have stayed there forever, but I couldn’t, because I had somewhere else I had to be. I turned to the Reaper and said, I told you earlier I had somewhere to get back to, and you didn’t correct me.

“He said, Everyone wants to get back. Everyone stalls for time.

“I said, Well, I can understand that gets tiresome in your line of work, but seeing as how we just made such a nice deal, and seeing as how it’s really no problem for you, could you please take me one more place before I go? I’ve still got one more question to answer for you.

“He nodded, real somber-like, and said, Usually, I would say no, but I believe we’re both going to the same place anyway.

“Now, you’d think that would have stopped my heart right there, but mothers can sense things, and I already knew. I knew while we stood watching the waves that the worst had already happened. So, I just nodded back at him, and poof, we were standing in the hospital next to your bed, and the line on your little green monitor was flat as could be. I stood there next to Death, as he raised his scythe, I stood there looking at my only daughter, flatlined and fragile, and I smiled. I said, I wish I hadn’t been gone when it happened, but I’m here now. The scythe hung in the air, ready to fall, but it paused, for one, two, ten seconds, and that’s when I knew I’d been right, because the Reaper, what with his no-nonsense demeanor and his Cherry Coke, didn’t strike me as someone who would act overly dramatic just for effect. I patted him on the shoulder and said, You can’t do it, can you?

“He stood there, frozen, looking somewhere between frightened and confused, and said, What’s happening to me?

“I pointed at my eye, then pointed at my eye inside his socket, and said, You can see her now, sure. But you see her through my eyes. You will never, not in a million years, be able to end her.

“He lowered the scythe and rested its staff on the floor between his bony feet. He shook his head slowly side to side and smiled. I knew I hadn’t saved myself, but I’d saved you. The lines on that green monitor began to roll up and down and you gasped yourself back to us. I turned to him and said, Can I have a minute to say goodbye?

“He looked at you, then at me, and said, You can have a little longer than that. He reached up, snapped off the tip of the scythe, and laid it on the bedside table. In memory of our deal, he said, then bowed, and stepped back into the shadows in the corner of the room, and he was gone.

“I figure I’m gonna get whatever my normal span would’ve been if I hadn’t sat on his lap that day outside JC Penney’s. I figure, when he sees you through my eyes, he knows you need me to see you grown. Then, sometime after that, I’ll be going.

“But you. Well, that’s different. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to take you. If the train didn’t convince you, maybe this will.”

Mama reached inside her purse and pulled out the sliver of metal. “I’m always surprised at the weight,” she said. “I lied about being worried it would cut you. I don’t think it can. But I’ve had a hunch about what might happen, and I wanted to explain first.” She reached out and offered it to me. I put down my pudding cup and spoon and took it.

For a moment, nothing happened, other than just feeling the weight. Then, the metal went hot and cold at the same time, and he stepped out of the shadows in the corner. His head was lowered, hidden in the hood, and his stance looked almost sheepish. Mama said, “I figure you’ve been watching from a distance, anyway, but distance is hard when it’s someone you love, isn’t it?” He nodded once, then raised his head at last, and he saw me through her eyes. He looked at her, then back at me, and said, When you’re ready—I mean, if you’d be interested—have you ever seen the ocean?

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Host Commentary

Death, as a character, is always compelling. An avatar of the undiscovered country, a friendly and terrifying companion when the moment comes for this life to stop. We humanise Death. We create narratives of bargains, and trickery. But really, the true power over death comes from the stories we tell and the lessons we take from them.

What do you wish you had done? What do you wish you hadn’t done?

How, in other words, can we live our lives the best way we can? 

Follow those dreams. Visit your ocean. Share your joy.