The drive was deathly quiet.
Ouch, she winced from the passenger seat. Perhaps that isn't the best phrase to use, considering... but Grandpa probably would have laughed.
She had her hands in her lap, and was anxiously picking at a loose knit end of her finger-less rainbow gloves. Her matching hat was securely pulled down over her ears, and her black hair curled under her chin and into the collar of her big green sweater.
The scenery passed by in one long continuous blur of white and gray, and her hazel eyes could barely make out the street signs as they flitted by. Waves of snowflakes made it seem like they were flying through space if she looked out the front window, and it made her dizzy.
"I can't believe it," were the first words out of the driver's mouth.
Andrew. He was her brother.
Ever since they had met at the airport, he'd been quiet and withdrawn, brow knotted in thought. There had been no hug or 'how are you?' to greet her. There had been no warm, heart-felt family reunion. It had always been that way between them, ever since she'd been small and their mother left. Cold acceptance followed by benign indifference.
"Believe what?" She asked.
Her voice sounded alien to her. With the pillowing whiteness that enveloped them as they drove, and the eerie hum of the radio, her words were muffled and disembodied.
Andrew glanced over at her. She tried to smile at him, but he didn't return the gesture. He was older than her by four years, but looked twice that age. He had gray at his temples already, and his face was lean with too-thin skin stretched over thick bone.
She wondered if her brother took drugs. It was the 80's. She knew a lot of people who did drugs.
"I can't believe the old man is dead." Andrew scoffed.
She looks back out the window. The old man was Grandpa, on their mother's side. He'd been a sassy ex-naval officer with a penchant for storytelling, and he had always been kind to her when her own father had not.
"I'm surprised he had a will. I thought he'd live forever." Andrew muttered.
She smiled. She remembered his immortal energy, the fire in his speeches and the bounce in his step. But then she had moved to the city, and between holiday visits, something had changed. She had begun to notice the wrinkles, and the knotted hands and the stooped posture.
Silence stretched between them again. The engine hummed and the chatter from the radio was interspersed with the soothing rumble of white noise.
"...You both always got along though, didn't you?" Andrew asked.
She looked back at him with another small smile. "I think so."
Andrew held her gaze long enough for her to break first and look towards the road. It was snowing too much on these back roads for him not to pay attention.
"...Me too." Andrew said.
She looked back out her window. The snow made everything look so different. She didn't know where she was; the nursing home had been a lovely place, but she'd only been able to visit once in the summer before Grandpa's swift decline. It wasn't even in the same town as her grandfather's old house was.
"...I bet you got the house." Andrew murmured.
She shrugged. She didn't want to think of it. That house without his barrel-chested laughter in it was just a big empty building. She was almost hoping she didn't get the old place.
"He was loaded. You know that, right?"
"Shut up, Andrew." She groaned. She rubbed her eyes with her bare fingertips and shivered. She should put her coat back on, the heat in this mini-van sucked.
"Of course you know. It was obvious. Son-of-a-bitch wouldn't fork any of it over when mom as around, so we had to wait for him to die to get a handout, huh?"
She winced at the anger, the pure bitterness in her brother's words. She cast a sidelong look at him. There was a vein pulsing in his forehead, and a flush crept up his neck. What was he so angry about? If he hated their grandfather so much, he should be happy the man was dead.
"And I bet it's all going to you." He sneered. The words flew like spittle from his lips, and she leaned on the door as if that would put her far enough away from him.
Andrew hadn't always been like this. She had vague memories of playing with him as a little girl, splashing in a creek behind their Grandfather's house, making cookies. But after mom left them, he got edgier, started hanging out with a rough crowd. He'd never been angry at her, not really, but he'd never gone out of his way to be nice.
This was new though. This was directed anger, and she didn't like it. "Shut up, Andrew."
"No, YOU shut up! You've just been sitting there, doing whatever it is you do in the city, and you're barely even around anymore and the old man STILL liked you better then me. HATED Dad, you remember that, right? What, is it because you look like his little girl? Is it because you look like mom?"
"I don't know, Andrew." She grasped the door handle.
He was taking his turns a bit faster now.
"Slow down." She looked towards the road, past the shooting stars flowing past the windshield.
"Christ, he never cared about what our family needed." Andrew hissed.
"Andrew -"
"High and mighty mister veteran, judging everyone else like they were lesser creatures."
She felt bird wings violently slapping the inside of her chest as they drifted in the road. She slammed a hand on the dashboard. "Andrew!"
"What?" He shouted.
"Its SNOWING." She blurted.
Andrew blinked at the road, and his face twisted. Such a myriad of emotions blitzed across his face that she couldn't pick all of them out. And then, like a maniac, Andrew slammed on the brakes.
She oofed forward, bracing her hands on the dashboard as the seat belt went taught across her chest. Their bags shifted violently behind them, and then slammed into the backs of their seats before scattering.
The Mini Van listed right and then left and then slid slowly before rocking to a halt in the middle of the snowy road.
She gasped, hands clutching at her rainbow striped hat fr comfort. She turned her head to look at Andrew.
He was a mess. What happened to him? Where had those wrinkles come from, those circles under his eyes? Where had all of this aggression come from? Should she have stayed in closer contact over the years?
"Fuck." Andrew punched the steering wheel, setting off the blaring horn. She eeped, clinging to her seat belt for dear life.
"...Andrew?" She whispered, very much disturbed.
Her brother cast her a wary glance and then barked a laugh. He fumbled with his seat belt and threw open the door, stumbling out into the snow.
She stared at the open door for a long moment. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she watched him pace back and forth, and then circle around to her door. Cleo tightened her hold on the seat belt just as Andrew yanked her door open. The dead-winter wind blasted her with a face full of icy flakes.
"Get out." Andrew snapped, a lopsided grin on his lips.
"What? No! Why?" She glared at him. Why was he smiling? Why was he acting so weird?
"Just get out of the car."
"No!"
Andrew ran a trembling hand through his hair and sucked in a breath. "Just - I need you to help me check the mini van. I think I fucked something up in the front when I stopped. I'm - I'm sorry."
She watched his face. Her brother stepped away from the door, holding it open for her.
When Andrew smiled like that, he looked so much more like himself - like the angsty teenager that had stood up for her once in grade school, and got himself a bloody nose. He looked like the kid who came home drunk one night and told her blonde jokes in return for her not telling Dad about it. He didn't look like the unhinged, malnourished man who had been driving the mini van moments before.
Besides, he HAD stopped pretty hard. She remembered his legendary temper. One day, a girl broke up with him in high school and he punched a hole in the wall. Didn't realize until the next day that he'd broken a finger in the process.
She clicked off her seat belt and pulled her sweater close around her before sliding out the door.
Her feet crunched in the snow. She shuffled towards the front of the mini van and Andrew shut the door behind her.
Dang it was cold! She pulled her hat down on her head and rubbed her hands together as she bent to look at the front of the car.
Suddenly, arms grabbed her around the middle. She yelped. "Hey!"
Andrew heaved her right off her feet - it wasn't hard, she was pretty small, especially compared to him - and started pulling her off the road.
"I can walk myself, thank you!" She laughed. She actually laughed. If he dropped her, she was going to amass a snowball the likes of which he had never seen, and she was going to pelt him in the face with it. They would laugh until they cried, he would apologize, and they would get back into the car and blast the heat. She laughed again with the thought of it.
Andrew heaved her up and to the side, depositing her into a righteous snow bank.
She sputtered with a face full of snowflakes, and hastily brushed them out of her face. "Not fair! You're bigger then me!"
She heard crunching footsteps as she bent to gather her snow ball, grin plastered onto her face. No doubt he was on his way to push her back into the snow, but he'd get a surprise this time!
Then a door closed.
She hefted the snowball, only to see Andrew in the driver's seat, putting the mini-van in reverse.
"Andrew?" She blinked, baffled.
The Mini van withdrew from the snow drift and then straightened. By the time She had clawed herself out of the powdery embankment, Andrew had the mini-van in drive and was plowing ahead down the road.
"ANDREW!?"
The snow swallowed the sound. Eddies whirled around her, tickling her nose, sending a frigid chill up her spine. The rear lights were fading quickly, and She couldn't move fast enough to keep up, but she tried. She stumbled down the road in Andrew's wake, even when she could no longer see the tire marks.
Her fingertips were blue. She could see crystals forming on her eyelashes as she trudged onward. Ice was starting to cling to the ends of her black hair.
Where were the road signs? Was she even on the road? How long had she been walking? There were an awful lot of trees around. Had there been this many trees when she went to visit in the summer? She didn't think so.
She stopped. No. No there hadn't been this many trees. The nursing home had been in a nice suburban neighborhood. Organized cul de sacs and neat street signs and small decorative hedges. There hadn't been tall, ominous pines, densely packed around like soldiers in a line...
Andrew had done this on purpose. Andrew. Her brother.
She looked up at the sky - nothing but more grey. She had no idea where she was, where Andrew had dropped her. The snow was still coming down, faster and faster, and the longer she looked up at the sky the dizzier she became. The next step she took sent her right into the snow face first.
She pushed herself up. Her fingertips burned, her toes burned, her cheeks and nose and chin all burned. Her sweater wasn't thick enough to keep her warm, and her shoes weren't made for tromping through snow.
She tromped on anyway. She didn't know how long she did. She only knew that when her hands went numb, she decided to take a break. And when that break turned into a nap, she didn't realize the danger of shutting her eyes and letting it all slip away into a dream.
It wasn't until she opened her eyes to see the Grim Reaper before her that she realized her mistake.
"Oh. No... no..." She sniffled, covering her face.
"Do not fear." The Grim Reaper said. Cool bone touched her hand and pulled her fingers away from her face. "No more harm will come to you."
She looked up into the deep, darkened hood to a pair of chilled blue eyes; a thin layer of frost over a blue lagoon. "...I'm dead. Aren't I."
The Grim Reaper nodded.
"...That sucks."
The Grim Reaper chuckled. "I suppose it does."
"What now?" She asked, looking around. It had stopped snowing.
"I come offering you a choice." The Grim Reaper's voice was strangely soothing, like water in one of those bamboo fountains.
"A choice?"
"You may pass on - or you can help me with my work. Collect for me the souls of those passing and lead them to where they belong. For this work, you shall be rewarded. When you assist one thousand souls in passing, I shall grant you any one wish you desire."
She blinked. She understood as they spoke. It was a strange sensation, knowledge just appearing in her brain as if it had always been there. She chewed her lip, trying not to look in the direction the mini-van had gone off in hours ago.
She realized she was afraid. Of dying. She looked up at The Grim Reaper and smiled, tugging her hat down on her head.
"...When do I start?"
The Grim Reaper extended a long, bony hand. "Right now, Cleo Tanderfel. Right now."
