Even While Dead /2/

/-2/

    “Hi,” she greeted, her voice soft and melodious. “Would you like a cookie?”
    Adam stopped, dumbfounded, in his tracks. His eyes grew wide. He could feel no life forms, save for a few birds and a hyperactive dog, and so knew that the girl must be talking to him. Her cool brown eyes met his without fear, and without malice. The Reaper took a shaky breath.
    She can see me, he thought, swallowing hard. No one has ever seen me before.
    “They’re real good,” she said, her face upturned so that she could meet his eyes properly. She sat on the grass outside of her two-story house with a little plate of chocolate chip cookies. When he’d come up, she’d been watching the clouds go by. She smiled sheepishly at him, and then stuck out her hand. “My name is Reyden Mortenson.”
    He recoiled, and he was sure his face was a mask of disgust. At her slightly hurt look, he composed himself and smoothed the front of his coat.
    “I apologize,” he managed to say. “I mean, I’m sorry. I just… have a problem with touching people. That’s all.”
    “I’m sure that one day, you’ll overcome it,” Reyden told him, brightly. “I used to have a problem with talking to people, because they’re usually so mean, but I learned that people don’t know or really care what they say to other people. They think a lot about themselves, and it’s sad, but that’s life, I guess. Now I just listen and try to understand.” She offered him the plate, so as not to appear as though she were trying to touch him, and a small, knowing smile spread across her young face. “Maybe a cookie will make you feel better.”
    “Do you usually talk to strangers?” he asked, reaching for a dessert and taking a hesitant bite. She was right; they were delicious.
    “You’re only a stranger until you talk to someone,” she replied with a shrug. “Why don’t you wear gloves?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Well, gloves could be the first step you could take to help with your problem. If you wear gloves, you’ll never really be touching anyone.” She sighed and lay back in the grass, taking a small bite of her cookie. “That’s what I would do.”
    “How old are you?” he asked, slightly befuddled. He knew the answer, of course; it was his business to know. He just had to appear ignorant.
    “I’ll tell you if you tell me your name,” the girl reiterated, without facing him.
    He told her the first thing that came to his mind. “Grimm.”
    She sat up, intrigued. “Your name is Grimm?”
    “Yes. Two m’s.”
    Reyden narrowed her eyes and lay back down. “That’s an interesting name. I’m seven, by the way.”
    “Already seven, huh? Lots of life ahead of you.”
    “I think of it more along the lines of only seven. Seven years is a very short amount of time, Mr. Grimm! Considering how long everything around me has been here? People don’t seem to get that they’re here only for a short time. Their lives don’t really mean anything in the long run. They die and go to Heaven, and that’s it. It doesn’t make a lasting impact on anything but other humans.” She shook her head sadly. “Unless it’s a bad one.”
    “You’re… you’re very smart for your age, Reyden. You think much like I do.”
    “Not very many people I know think like that. Not normal ones, anyway.”
    “You and I, I suppose, are not normal.” He finished the cookie in a couple of bites and sat on the grass.
    “My mom and dad don’t like it when I talk like that, but I love them anyway. They’re really great people, you know? They try to do something good, even if it is just for other people. Dad is a doctor for people with problems in their heads. Mom is a college teacher. Do you think that those kinds of people help?”
    “I suppose so.”
    Reyden nodded and absentmindedly picked a flower. “I think they do. I think that teachers and doctors help a lot more than most kinds of people.” She started to take off petals, and Adam could feel the flower dying. “People become better when Mom and Dad help them, you know?”
    “Reyden!” a woman, with beautiful auburn hair like her daughter’s and olive green eyes, called pleasantly from the front door. “It’s time to stop playing in the yard and come in for dinner!”
    “I’m just talking to a friend, Mom!”
    “Of course you are, sweetheart. It’s time to stop playing now, and come inside to wash up.” Her mother went back in, and Reyden sat up, curiously.
    “She didn’t say anything about you being here,” the girl observed, curiously. She glanced over at Adam. “She didn’t even see you. Are you imaginary?”
    “I suppose that I just might be,” he admitted, an inexplicable grin plastered on his face. No one, no human, had ever made him feel joyful before.
    “Huh. Well, I’m afraid that my dad wouldn’t want me to have an imaginary friend at this age. He would think there’s something wrong with me. So you can’t exactly come inside for dinner, Mr. Grimm.”
    “Well, that’s alright, Reyden. I’d best be going, anyway. I have work to attend to.”
    “I didn’t know imaginary friends worked,” she said with a laugh, and stood.
    “This one does. I’ve got dues to pay, so to speak. You run along now.”
    “Alright. It was nice to meet you. Please stop by again; I’d love to chat.” She gave him a bright, beautiful smile, and turned to walk back inside her house, carrying the plate of cookies.
    Adam stood there for awhile, thinking. He was supposed to go in there and give the touch of death to the girl’s parents, Charles and Delia. Yet, now, after meeting her, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to take from her the family that she loved. There was something about her that was different from every other disgusting human on the planet. Something about her was beautiful.