Reap3r by Eliot Peper

Author:Eliot Peper [Peper, Eliot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eliot Peper
Published: 2022-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

31

Isabella Ko stared through the tiny window bolted to the front of the industrial oven and watched the bones slough into white-hot ash. Marisol averted her eyes, of course. She was only interested in life, living it and taking it. But the minute the soul departed, her curiosity departed with it.

Isabella was different. She believed that death had something essential to say about life. You couldn’t watch a time-lapse video of mushrooms growing on a forest floor and not believe that. Consciousness was forever trapped in the present, but nature waltzed in cycles. Shimmers of heat rising through the dust during dry season. Afternoon thunderstorms rolling in over the ocean during wet season. Cicadas filling the air with their booming rattle for a month before going quiet until the following year’s mating season. The moon waxing to suffuse the night with its pale light and then waning so that the stars might glitter in the firmament. Life sprang from death, then died to pay it forward. Alone, the soul had no substance, it was a breeze rippling the fabric of reality.

“So, how’s business?” asked The Baker. His name was Sam, but everyone called him The Baker. He was a kind, nervous pastry chef with too many chins and an extraordinary talent for losing money. Isabella had stopped counting the number of ill-advised ventures he’d supplied the seed funding for, but she was happy to help plug the drain as a customer of this little side business of his. When he wasn’t baking kouign-amanns in the main kitchen, he was out back in this little shed helping Isabella, Marisol, and their professional competition tidy up after themselves.

Marisol sighed her melodramatic sigh. “Slow,” she said. “Too slow.” Isabella loved how the luxurious thickness of Marisol’s accent turned English words into melted chocolate. Isabella’s own facility with linguistic assimilation had its advantages, but her fluent precision lacked flair.

“I haven’t seen you here in a while,” said The Baker. “I was starting to worry you were taking your business elsewhere.”

“Oh, come on,” said Marisol. “Who else is there? It’s not like we’re going to dump a body in the Bay. We’re not two-bit amateurs.”

Isabella tore herself away from the oven window, purple afterimages pulsing. “As a matter of fact, that’s the problem,” she said. “It took us years to build up our reputation for professionalism, to meet the right people, win the right contracts. But now, jobs are going out haphazardly. Major targets getting assigned to random thugs doing shoddy work, like that asshole, Daryl. It doesn’t make sense. Did you see the news about the Palo Alto gig?”

Marisol was shaking her head sadly. “Leaving the body for her kids to find,” she said, a shiver running through her. “It’s fucked up is what it is.”

The Baker nodded. “Damn shame.”

“Damn shame,” Isabella echoed.

They all stood in silence for a moment, and then The Baker checked on the oven, shut off the gas, and scraped the remains into a small ceramic urn. Isabella and Marisol watched him work.

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