1
Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. Unfortunately for Nora Bird, her parents beat the odds and died onherbirthday instead. Eighteen years later and that gray mid-November air still weighed heavy as she shut the day behind her with the swing of a pigeon-graffitied glass door and began the daily trek up the stairs to her office.
It was just after seven a.m., and the corporate-beige halls of S.C.Y.T.H.E.—Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences—were still holding their breath between shifts. Nora liked this part of the day best, when the world was empty and belonged to no one in particular. She tucked herself into her office on the top floor of the building. It was a room with no windows, which had served its previous occupants just fine since they were mostly mops, brooms, and the odd bucket. It served Nora just as well. No natural light meant no sun exposure, and no sun exposure meant less risk of skin cancer, something the fluorescent bulbs that buzzed from their rectangular homes on the ceiling never threatened.
In the middle of Nora’s desk sat a cupcake frosted with bright blue icing. She cocked her head at it. Ran a finger through the icing and examined it with narrowed eyes. The food dye Blue No. 2 had been found to contribute to brain tumors in rats. She wiped the icing on the rim of the garbage can under her desk, wrapped the cupcake in tissues, and threw it away too, making a mental note to thank Larry, janitor extraordinaire, for the gesture.
Then she got to work.
It always felt fitting for Nora to work on her birthday. It had longs been a day marked by death, and after all, that was the nature of her business. Beside the now-vacant spot where the deadly cupcake had just sat rested a pile of manila folders that reached to Nora’s chin. The day’s cases were patiently waiting to be sorted into their designated department—Natural Causes, Murder, Accidental Deaths—and assigned to specific agents. It was an easy job for Nora, almost mindless at times. Each file needed to be matched with the most appropriate person to collect the soul and bring it to the next stage of its journey. And Nora had studied the agents’ files thoroughly enough to matchmake with the prowess of her bubbie.
Moira from Accidental Deaths had studied proctology before coming to S.C.Y.T.H.E., which made her disconcertingly comfortable with nudity, so Moira got the shower falls and toilet mishaps. Ricky from Murder went to school with the kids in most of the major mob families in town, so he got the mob hits and a chance for a quick class reunion to boot. It was easy. Routine. Almost formulaic. Sometimes all Nora had to do was glimpse a single word in a file—“peanut” meant she was dealing with anaphylaxis, which would go to Jorge, who had an unexplained vendetta against legumes and would be the most likely to empathize with anyone who fell victim to one.
Nora skimmed the file of an essence who would definitely be handled by Heart Attack Harpreet in Natural Causes and let her mind drift beyond the four walls of the former broom closet. Nora had been working as an administrative coordinator at S.C.Y.T.H.E. for nearly two and a half years and was finally content with her life. Not happy, exactly. That felt too high stakes. But her dream of pursuing architecture was fading nicely, and the loneliness that came from losing her parents at eight and the grandmother who raised her a few years back didn’t sting as sharply as it once had. Her apartment was fine—nice, even, now that she had some art on the walls and a few plants that hadn’t yet died despite their best efforts.
She hadn’t texted Charlie yet. That was something she should do, probably. Maybe. Unfortunately. It was his birthday too. Though he hadn’t texted either, and it didn’t seem fair that she had to be the one to send the first text every year.
She opened her phone to Charlie’s contact profile. The dumb picture of him with a Fruit Roll-Up hanging out of his mouth like an endless tongue. Their last text exchange, one year ago to the day.
Nora: Happy birthday!
Charlie: HBD butthead
Then silence. She scrolled up to find a similar exchange from the year before that, and the one before that, and several prior, and nothing in between. She closed her phone and returned to her files. Charlie had always been a mystery to Nora, which in and of itself was a mystery to her. Twins were supposed to have something in common, weren’t they? And yet, despite sharing awomb and half of their genomes, they couldn’t have been less alike. Nora liked facts and statistics and a world that made sense, while Charlie…Charlie Bird…Charles Ezra Bird was…written on the file in Nora’s hands.
Nora stopped her daydreaming and sank back into reality, hard. She stopped skimming the page and read it properly, certain she must have mentally inserted her brother’s name since he was on her mind. And yet, no matter how many times she reread the name at the top of the file, it never morphed into something different and unconnected to her. The ink was stark and confident.
Case # 73588
Charles Ezra Bird
Age: 26
Cause of Death: Struck by Vehicle
Time to Collect: 11:15 a.m.
Location: Calton Avenue
The walls of the dark, windowless office marched towards one another, trapping Nora inside. She could almost hear them stepping forward to suffocate her, which wouldn’t do much good since she’d stopped breathing all by herself.
Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. But Nora couldn’t let that happen. Not again.
Without thinking, without breathing, Nora stuffed Charlie’s file under her arm and fled the broom closet.
2
Case # 36658
Mary-Beth Duke
Age: 83
Cause of Death: Struck by Vehicle
It was the third case Nora had sorted after joining S.C.Y.T.H.E., and she’d thought Mary-Beth’s death was an easy enough one to avoid. The octogenarian had been on her way home from a farmers’ market when one of her freshly acquired peaches tumbled from the top of her bag onto the road. Mary-Beth chased after it, and within seconds both were asphalt cobbler. Nora was still under a probationary period, with her supervisor, the ever-disinterested Janice, sitting beside her at the already-cramped desk. It wasn’t until Nora sorted the file into the “Natural Causes” pile that Janice perked up enough to tut at the new hire. Mary-Beth’s case, she explained, belonged in “Accidental Deaths.” But to Nora, there was nothing accidental about it. You cross the road without looking both ways and then both ways again, well, you experience the natural consequences.Everyone knew that. Someone would have to be pretty careless to ignore the cause and effect in a situation like this. Someone like Charlie.
* * *
