The Conference
It’s mid-afternoon at the conference. The session has stopped for a coffee break. I take the opportunity to step out for some air. An older member of the federation follows me out and sits on the other end of the bench.
“So which branch do you work at?” he asks.
“Liverpool,” I reply, raising my eyebrows, “never a dull moment. How about you?”
“St Ives, Cornwall.”
“Lucky you, I’d give anything to be somewhere quieter. I’m Stewart, by the way.”
“Walter,” he said, holding out his hand. “I know how you feel. I started out in London.”
“How long were you there for?”
“Almost twenty years, then Leeds, and Newcastle, before some of the smaller city offices. They finally let me slow down a little when the position in Cornwall came up. The wife and I love it, we’ll be staying in the area once I retire – only a year away now.”
“Wish I had that to look forward to, seems a long way off at the moment.”
“Ah, don’t wish your years away. You’re young, you just need to show them what you’re capable of.”
I accept his offer of a cigarette, and we sit for a few silent moments, enjoying the feel of the nicotine and watching the smoke swirl through the air as we exhale.
“How come you still have to come to these conferences? You must be a bit advanced for all these talks.”
“Just a little,” he laughs. “I’m actually covering for the guy in charge of this region, he didn’t want to miss the conference. If anything crops up, I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I might as well be here too.”
“You must have seen some changes over the years?”
“A few, things have sped up, targets are higher – but then so are the town and city populations so they’re still achievable. Every few years, some bright spark will introduce a new and improved method but they don’t usually take off. Some blame the older members, but it’s hard to fault a system when it works as well as it does. If it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.”
“I guess, but you have to move with the times.”
“Maybe, the tradition is still there and I don’t think that will ever change – it’s what the whole thing is built around.”
Just as I open my mouth to speak, a beep rings out. Taking his phone from his cloak pocket, he reads the message.
“Time to get to work,” he says, tossing his cigarette to the floor. “Big pile up on the motorway, lots of souls to harvest.”
He bids me farewell, I watch as he pulls up his hood, picks up his scythe and walks into the mist.
“Need some help?” The words are out without thinking.
“What about the conference?”
“I don’t think I’ll be missed,” I say, as I jog after him.
The mist brings us out on the hard shoulder of the motorway, it’s carnage. A coach has spun out of control and is pressed up against the central reservation, facing the wrong way. Ten or twelve cars behind are piled up like dominos. Cars on the other carriageway are slowing down to look, some have stopped on the hard shoulder, drivers are out of their vehicles and on their phones. We stand for a moment, taking it all in.
“Why are people always in such a hurry?” he says, sadly. “You take the back of the line, and I’ll start at the coach. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”
I nod and march past the line of crushed cars; some of the occupants are moving, just. On the cusp between life and death, they recognise me instantly, and expressions of fear replace the pain on their faces. I turn my head and look at them as I go by. “Soon,” I tell them.
It’s already too late for some of the others. Their souls are beginning to appear. They stand beside their cars peering in at themselves, utterly confused. They see me and rush over asking a thousand questions at once. “I’ll explain everything in a minute,” I tell them.
I reach the end of the wreckage and quickly see that there’s nothing for me to do there. These are the lucky ones, with the help of the emergency services, they’ll live to see another day.
Making my way back down the line, I call to more souls to follow. Tearing themselves away from their corpses, they rush over and demand to know what’s going on, desperate to learn their fate. This is the part of the job I hate and I almost regret coming. I turn around and raise my hands.
“I’ll explain everything in a moment,” I repeat.
I look for Walter and see him ushering the soul of an elderly woman. She is clearly terrified by him and what he represents, but she says nothing and just follows him in silence. I watch him for a moment longer, the next soul is just the same. Why can’t all mine be like that?
He doesn’t speak, not one word, just silently guides them away from the scene and over to the mist one by one. The longer I watch Walter, I begin to realise where I’m going wrong. I’m not telling my group anything, but I am still saying far too much, and they don’t trust me. It’s their own unanswered questions that have them in such a state. The silent way that Walter works gives them a calm reassurance of a peaceful crossover to the next life and that’s why they follow. Mine follow me for one reason alone, fear of being left behind in purgatory.
Just a few minutes of watching Walter at work has taught me so much more than I would ever learn at any conference or lecture. He thanks me for helping, and I thank him for my new-found wisdom, before we both head back towards the mist.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash