{"id":5415,"date":"2022-08-20T21:56:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-20T21:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5415"},"modified":"2022-08-31T20:37:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T20:37:07","slug":"mr-death-by-alix-e-harrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5415","title":{"rendered":"Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mr Death <\/em><\/strong>by Alix E. Harrow (Apex<\/em> #121, January 2021) begins with Sam, the narrator, telling us that he has ferried \u201ctwo hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death\u201d before he is given his next assignment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Name: Lawrence Harper
Address: 186 Grist Mill Road, Lisle NY, 13797
Time: Sunday, July 14th 2020, 2:08AM, EST
Cause: Cardiac arrest resulting from undiagnosed long QT syndrome
Age: 30 months<\/em>

Jesus Christ on his sacred red bicycle. He\u2019s two.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sam goes to see Lawrence several hours before his death (a requirement that helps smooth the passing of the dead across the river to \u201crejoin the great everything\u201d) and, when he arrives in the boy\u2019s bedroom, watches him stir. Lawrence\u2019s father, alerted by the intercom, comes in and picks the boy up and takes him into the kitchen. Sam then watches the father hold and feed Lawrence, and notes the father does not know that this will be his last time together with his son. Later on in the garden, the boy (unusually) sees Sam, and the pair later play catch together.
The rest of the story switches between this kind of affecting domestic detail (we see the boy with his mother when she gets home), backstory about the premature death of Sam\u2019s own young son, Ian, and an account of Sam\u2019s own death and recruitment as a \u201creaper\u201d.
Eventually (spoiler), Lawrence\u2019s moment of passing arrives and, when his heart stops, Sam intervenes, putting a ghostly hand into the boy\u2019s chest and massaging it back to life.
Sam subsequently has his tea leaves read by his Archangel supervisor, Raz (\u201cthe kind of sweet, middle-aged Black woman with whom you do not fuck\u201d) and is given another appointment to reap the boy. Once again Sam saves him, and once again Raz appears. This time she asks Sam what he would do if she punished him by leaving him on Earth, never to cross the river and rejoin the great everything, but to fade into nothingness. Sam says he would watch over Lawrence as long as he could, and the story finishes with Raz telling him he no longer works for the Department of Death. Before she goes she hands him a card, which says, \u201cSam Grayson, Junior Guardian, Department of Life\u201d.
Although this story pretends, for most of its length, to be an edgy and dark piece, it is ultimately sentimental and feel-good\u2014and, to be honest, quite well done.1<\/sup> I couldn\u2019t help but think, however, that there are darker and more profound versions of the story where the boy dies. Two options spring to mind: the first, which would appeal to the religious, is that we see the joy of him rejoining the great everything; the second just sees him die, and has the narrator reflect on the need for stoicism to get us through this veil of tears. I doubt any current SF writer is going to be writing that kind of story any time soon.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,100 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. This piece, obviously, is a short story finalist for this year\u2019s Hugo Award.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow (Apex #121, January 2021) begins with Sam, the narrator, telling us that he has ferried \u201ctwo hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death\u201d before he is given his next assignment: Name: Lawrence HarperAddress: 186 Grist Mill Road, Lisle NY, 13797Time: Sunday, July 14th 2020, 2:08AM, ESTCause: Cardiac […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1254],"tags":[50,217,1255,1256,1257,1258,12],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alix-e-harrow","tag-50","tag-3-5","tag-alix-e-harrow","tag-apex","tag-death","tag-reaping","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5516,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions\/5516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}