i_avoidliving Hazzards of the Job [ Oz! ]
George hit the sleep button on her alarm clock, only to notice it was covered in post-its. Four of them. George groaned heavily. Was Didi doing this? Couldn't she just knock or maybe have a daily meeting spot like Dur Waffle House like all the normal reapers? George was going to have to talk to her new(ish) boss about this.
Making a swipe for the post-its, the reaper squinted at them with sleep goobers still in her eyes. It wasn't until she noticed the addresses that George fully woke with a start.
"No way!!"
All four post-its were were addressed to this building. George quickly looked to see if Oz was listed as one of the four, but breathed a sigh of relief when he was not. Maybe he would be gone for the day and would miss this entire business. (Somehow George doubted that.) How would she explain her close vicinity to four dead bodies?
Oh well. Reapers weren't supposed to have living friends, anyway. At least that's what Rube had pounded into her head time and time again. George took her shower, brushed her teeth, put on her bravest pair of red undies to prepare her for a crappy day and waited.
And waited.
As 9:13 started to get closer and closer (and also appeared to be near the same time that the sun set), George stepped out of her apartment and into the hallway, carefully listening for the first signs of an oncoming disaster.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/18/2006 03:02:50
Oz had been trying to meditate all day – with zero luck. Every time he thought he had gone and found his zen place, something snapped him out of it. Kids crying. Cars honking. Someone two apartments down burning their supper, someone else a floor down leaving their steak out on the counter to thaw …
He had tried to drown out the smells, had lit some incense and tried to ignore the fact that he was completely out of the herbs he was supposed to be burring as well … and than he had began to pace. Unable to sit still he had checked his fridge; empty. He had tried to flip through an old issue of Rolling Stone that had made it to The City with him, no luck.
He glanced up at the clock, 9:10.
Maybe he should check and see if any of the neighbors had any chains, or barring that maybe he should try and find an empty jail cell somewhere. He wondered if he went to the Police and told them he was a werewolf if they would lock him up?
He grabbed his coat, He moved towards his door, trying to ignore his body. He was Oz, and he was in control. Stepping out into the hall he took a deep breath. It was okay. He could do this.
George didn't register on his radar until he opened his eyes. She after all didn't have a scent. "Hey." A quick nod and than he started for the stairs, no time for small talk.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/18/2006 09:55:20
Uh oh.
George managed to check her gut instinct just in time before it became an actual thought: Oz really was crazy and he was going to go kill the neighbors downstairs.
Frowning, George thought of all the terrible things that could happen. One, Oz witnesses four deaths and George's contact with each of the dearly departed. Two, Oz is actually an insane serial killer goes to a movie and misses all the impending violence.
She watched him disappear downstairs.
"Shit!"
George followed shortly afterward.
Downstairs a B. E. Rickley, or better known as old Mrs. Rickly, was giving a hell of a lecture to the neighbor across the hall from her, T. Williams. Timothy Williams thought Mrs. Rickly was an old hag and didn't see the problem with blaring his crappy Nu Metal bands loudly. Ah, youth! (Mrs. Rickly also had a prime cut thawing on her counter. She was expecting company later that night having met someone at the senior center during her weekly bridge game.)
One floor beneath them A. L. Snider and W. I. Snider were attempting to have a nice domestic dinner. Too bad Wanda Snider had burnt dinner and her husband Alan had decided to throw a fit. Love was such a funny thing.
George stayed behind and peeked around the corner as the glares of Timmy and Mrs. Old Fart turned on Oz.
Why couldn't people just be nice?
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/18/2006 17:26:50
Being the guitarist in the Dingoes Ate My Baby had prepared Oz for glares. People often glared at the Dingoes, especially if said people had an appreciation for music. Having been a teenage boy who wore nail polish and had hair color that changed from week to week, and than having been a young adult who wore nail polish and had hair color that changed from week to week, well that had prepared him for the glares too.
So really it wasn't the glares that set the chain of events in motion. It was just that even a guy like Oz could only take so much. He had gone back to his "home" and found out his girlfriend had moved on, and than he had been uprooted from his home and dimension. It was disconcerting.
And now this.
"Excuse me." Oz tried to move between the Older woman and the young guy, and the younger guy sort of got in his way. "Look you really." Oz winced as a sharp pain shot through his stomach. "You really want to move out of the way …"
Timmy didn't. Well not at first. Once Oz changed from guy to wolf Timmy sure moved.
The "funny" thing was that most people probably would have thought that Mrs. Rickly's heart would have done her in. They would have been wrong … she dashed back into her apartment and dashed for the kichen. Perhaps she was going for a knife, maybe she was going to see if the steak would placate the big scary "dog" that was now loose in the building.
The end result was Mrs. Rickly took a fall. And hit her head on the kitchen tap … and her face fell into the sink which was full of water. She never did get to have the Steak.
ooc: Cause of Death, imporable as it seems, inspired by The Darwin Awards
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/18/2006 21:08:57
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.
Werewolves didn't exist! Someone would have told her if they did! Rube should have told her if they did! Wasn't she supposed to cover murders and the like? Didn't getting eaten by werewolves count as murder?
Actually... by the looks of things...
They didn't. Which would make sense. George was pretty sure she'd remember if vampires or werewolves were covered in her division.
And by the looks of things, George was going to be fucked. She'd always been taught to reap the soul before they died. However, she wasn't exactly keen to get to Mrs. Rickly while Oz the Werewolf was still there in the hall.
George was also very, very, very grateful she didn't have a scent.
She waited.
Meanwhile, Timmy had officially freaked out and ran back into his apartment, shutting the door behind him and locking it. He made a heroic dash to his apartment window in order to get away from the beast via fire escape.
But Timmy, in all his excitement, hadn't realized that he jumped through the wrong window. George could hear a very muffled scream as Timmy landed in the alley.
Now she was behind on two reaps. Shit! Shit! Shit!
The werewolf finally left the hallway (onto scare the life out of two other people) apparently hungry for the living. Or something. George wasn't sure how it worked but it was important to get to the dead ASAP.
First she scurried into Mrs. Rickly's apartment, pulling the soul from her dead body.
"What just--?"
"Sorry! Kinda in a rush here!"
George took the opposite direction in the hall as her furry neighbor, hoping to get to the soon to be dead first. (George was playing Triage here. Timmy would just have to wait a bit.) She really didn't want to get eaten. She'd already been dismembered, George didn't even know what would happen to her if she were eaten.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/19/2006 03:17:22
The wolf cocked its head when Timmy screamed and than dismissed that, it also dismissed George as she happened to be behind it, and had no scent. In other words unless she got right in front of the beast, it wasn't going to realize she was there.
Which as Martha would say, was a good thing. It had been too long since the wolf came out to play, it was going to make the most of this before it got locked away again. It headed for the stairs, pulling a Toucan Sam and following it's nose following the smell of burnt meat.
You could track it's progress through the apartment building, screams, shouts, snarling. The other people it ran into lucked out though, they managed to get into their apartments without doing any harm to themselves. Just another day in The City it seemed.
The wolf paused at the end of the hall and took a moment to drool, before setting off at a run down the hall. It skidded to a stop before the apartment door of the Snider's and than threw it's considerable bulk against said door.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/19/2006 09:30:55
Mr. Snider's fits, as per usual, had grown into something else. Nevermind the sounds of the disturbance outside and around the unhappy couple, they'd been too busy competing for which apartment could be the most dysfunctional.
Apparently it was that time of the night for Mr. Snider to threaten Mrs. Snider with a gun. He kept it loaded, but he never really intended to hurt her. He just liked to keep her in a line a little.
With one dead Mrs. Rickly following behind George, the reaper arrived just in time in the hall to see the werewolf throw itself at the front door of the snider residence.
Causing the door to burst open.
The gun went off and directly hit Mrs. Snider. Mr. Snider was now pinned under the door with big bad werewolf on top. But lo and behold, Mrs. Snider hadn't kicked it yet and when Mr. Snider had been pinned he'd lost control of the gun and it slid along the floor to where Mrs. Snider now lay crumpled.
Mrs. Snider took hold of the gun and initially aimed it at the beast. She paused. Lowering her aim she pointed at her husband and pulled the trigger. He died instantly, she died shortly afterward.
George started to creep closer toward the affected apartment.
"Okay Oz... just let me do my job... and we'll get you out of here before someone calls animal control..."
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/19/2006 18:05:03
ooc: You are brilliant and I love you :)
The wolf might not have been able to smell George but it could certainly hear her. It was also in quite a state, not enjoying having guns go off around it. Although it was rather pleased that the gun had not been used on it …. It had no interest in the dead humans.
The wolf wanted to hunt and there was just one thing in the vicinity to hunt. The wolf looked up at George and growled. It than lunged towards her, teeth snapping. In The Wolfs experience so far, people ran from it. Well. Most of the time people ran from it, and that's what it wanted. It wanted to hunt.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/20/2006 11:29:26
"AHFUCKDON'TEATMEOZ!"
George fell backward on her ass as the werewolf lunged at her with snapping jaws. On the floor she was in a good position to reach Mr. Snider on the floor, reaping the soul from his body with her sneaker.
Okay, so reaping someone with your foot probably wasn't very polite but George was having another rough day on the job.
This also put her leg very muchly in biting range of Oz-who-wasn't-crazy-but-was-actually-telling-the-truth. Realizing this, George tired to scramble backward in a crab walk and away from the wolf toward Mrs. Snider.
Meanwhile, Mr. Snider's soul had lunged forward for the gun from his dead wife's hands (who knows if it was to take care of the beast or exact revenge on his dead wife) only to find that his incorporeal state was just as inconvenient as George's corporeal state was for her when facing assassins and werewolves.
Quickly George went flat on the ground and reached up for Mrs. Snider.
Seeing Mrs. Rickly and the Sniders reminded George of American Werewolf in London only they were bloody corpses chipperly telling David Kestler to hang himself.
Mostly the souls just looked confused.
How the fuck was George going to get to the fourth one?
Shit.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/20/2006 18:01:16
Despite all the stories that say animals can sense the sprit world, the wolf could not see the sprits. Or maybe it could, but just didn’t care. It paid them no mind, although it did try and keep an eye on the gun on the floor. The wolf didn't like guns, guns hurt it.
It passed in it's lunge towards George to bat the gun out it's way (it possessed 'animal cunning' it did. Not to mention that Oz was in there, buried down deep) and than lashed out at the Reaper, teeth flashing as it tried to find something to bite down on.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/21/2006 20:06:08
Reaching for the dead body of Mrs. Snider when Oz the Werewolf was swiping at the gun was not a good idea. George was having a lot of those lately. She felt his jaws snap down on the area where her arm and her shoulder met.
George screamed.
"I can't believe you shot me."
Mrs. Snider shrugged. George looked up from her werewolf attack and glared at the souls she reaped for bickering while she was about to become kibbles'n'bits.
"I didn't mean to."
"Yes you did! You aimed at the werewolf and then aimed at me!"
"GUYS?"
If any of them said she looked like a rag doll George was going to scream...after she was done screaming from the pain, of course. George didn't smell like the living. She didn't smell at all. What George didn't know was that George was also tasteless. It felt like blood being spilled, and it felt like flesh being torn, but there was no yumminess of the hunt to be had.
"DOWN OZ! DOWN."
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/22/2006 19:08:29
The wolf was confused, it was pissed off too, but that was the wolf's natural state so that was nothing new. It gave George a shake for good measure and than let go, this did not make sense. It was, in a sense wolf-overload. It backed up snarling, not at all happy, it turned to eye the dead bodies in the apartment.
They where already dead but …
The wolf gave a shake of it’s head and made a whining noise and than pushed past George and the dead bodies and went out into the hall. The wolf made it to the steps before the change hit it.
One second there was a were-wolf on the stairs and the next there was Oz.
"Damn."
This? Had just become the Worst Day Ever, this trumped the Vercua incident and the time he and Cordelia had walked in on Willow and Xander. Oz took a moment to collect his thoughts and than …
"Damn!"
Up the stairs, back up the way he had come to skid to a stop outside the broken apartment door. He looked in. "Oh …"
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/22/2006 20:16:01
ooc: i hope its okay to assume that oz is nekkie after his transformation like in the show?
What could you really do in a situation like this but smile nervously, give a little wave and say, ".....Hi."
George waved with her bad arm, and though the dried blood and ripped clothing made it look pretty bad, it didn't hurt. She was no longer bleeding and the wounds were closed: the advantages of being a reaper.
Oz had really nice abs. George was trying not to stare.
Maybe she had a little too much practice at this but she got up and quickly found some of Mr. Snider's--
"HEY. Those are my sweat pants!"
--quickly tossing them to Oz along with a clean t-shirt.
"She gave my pants to the werewolf! The fucking werewolf!"
"What, like you were going to use them?"
"But they're MY PANTS."
"Oh, move on already." George groaned loudly, having politely turned her back on Oz while he changed. The Sniders, along with Mrs. Rickly, did so. George wondered, as she always did, where it was they went.
"Come on, let's get out of here."
George took the dressed Oz quickly by the bicep and scurried as she made her way for the exit.
"Okay, I'm sorry I didn't believe you. Kinda hard to accept the whole thing, ya know? I mean, you sorta sounded like a crazy person and then I got the post-it notes and you were in the hall and I thought you were a serial killer or something."
George had work to do. Taking the stairs she seemed to be in a hurry. She didn't know why she was telling Oz this, or why she insisted on taking him with her but he seemed like he needed help. Once they reached outside, George took Oz into the alley where Timmy lay.
She let go of Oz and approached the body. Touching with her hand, she helped steady the soul of one T. Williams, though that was hard because his soul suffered from broken limbs and a broken back and George looked like she was carrying something invisible and heavy.
"Sorry," she grunted, "I couldn't exactly get to you on time..."
Luckily the late Timmy Williams seemed to know what was best for him and moved on a little more quickly than the others had. George frowned because she'd obviously fucked up this day pretty big.
George walked back to Oz and asked, "You wanna get a milkshake or something?"
It wasn't a good day, but George was used to pretty crappy days.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/23/2006 09:41:30
ooc: Yes, I completely forgot about the whole naked thing ^^;;;;;
Oz was being silent. Not that this was unusual for Oz, he was often silent. But this was a different kind, this was the 'I just turned into a werewolf and I killed those people' kind of silences. He was also a little preoccupied with keeping his pants pulled up. Mr. Snider was – had been rather – taller than Oz and bigger around the middle.
"Do I … I …"
Oz blinked once and than twice and than; "I killed those people." George was taking this awfully well, and she said she thought he was a crazy person? And --- "Shit. Your arm."
He pointed to her arm, which did indeed look bad, and than stopped pointing as he realized he needed both hands to hold up his pants. Oz had gone paler than normal. "I … I did that to your arm."
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/23/2006 13:21:45
George frowned. It took her a moment to understand what Oz was so worried about. Despite being a werewolf, he was still a living werewolf and therefore all the death was probably a bit on the disconcerting side for him.
"My arm's okay. I heal fast. See?"
George, feeling a little bit helpless as she tried to make him feel better, brushed torn shirt and wiped scentless blood away with her fingers. By now the only indication of bite marks were faint on her skin.
"He jumped out a window." Oz pointed at the body of Timmy.
"The couple upstairs shot each other, and the old lady fell and hit her head too hard. You didn't kill anyone. I don't think werewolf attacks fall into the whole suicides, murders and accidents thing."
Pause.
"I'm a reaper. I reap souls."
That explained things, right?
"It was just kinda their time, I guess."
George pulled one of the post-its from her pocket to show him.
"See? All predestined."
And hopefully Oz didn't run away screaming.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/23/2006 17:45:57
Oz stared at the yellow post it note for a moment while his brain tried to figure out what was going on. Sure, the guy had jumped and the old woman hit her head and the others had done themselves in but … he had been the cause of that. He had caused them to die and she was offering him a post it note.
He reached out to try and grab her arm so he could get a look at it. The fact that he couldn't smell her, or her blood, well that wasn't a concern right now. Besides there was a lot of blood around, his nose was in overdrive.
"You heal fast, great, so now there's going to be a fast healing werewolf running around."
Did she now get how serious this was? Did she not watch the movies did she not – train of thought derailed as something she had said before she started waving the post it note around reached his brain and registered.
"You’re a what?"
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/23/2006 20:24:04
"I don't think I'm going to become a werewolf. I mean, I guess I could ask my boss but I don't think it works like that."
George paused.
"I'm a grim reaper. I collect souls from people about to die and send them on their way. Technically I'm undead. I kinda died a couple years ago so..."
"Since I don't even catch colds I don't think I catch.. the whole.. wolf thing." George tried to explain with waving hand gestures.
"See the post-it notes are how I know where to be. I got these post-it notes this morning. So it wasn't your fault. It was all destined to happen."
George frowned at his troubled expression. "I didn't want to scare you off and I'm really supposed to tell the living about what I do. But, I can ask my boss about the bite thing. Really though, I think it'll be fine."
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/24/2006 03:07:45
Destiny and all that. Oz has heard about destiny, after all he use to hang out with the Slayer. But this wasn't making him feel a whole lot better. Post It notes said it was someone's time to go? If he hadn't wolfed out something else would have taken them out?
Funny. You think the subject of Reapers would have come up before this. After all the Scooby Gang had to deal with death on a pretty much daily basis.
"Your undead. You collect sousl, so you’re a …demon?"
Oz was trying to get this all sorted out. Demons he understood.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/24/2006 09:25:23
"Nooooooo..."
The subject of Reapers probably never came up because they weren't inherently evil. Reapers weren't the sort of thing that Buffy fought or had to defeat. Who could really defeat death?
And what was with the demon thing? Oz sounded like he from the fifteenth century or something. At least he wasn't accusing her of being a heretic. Or a witch.
"I don't collect collect souls. I just help release them so that they can go on to the after life. I'm kinda, basically human. ... I'm pretty sure. It works like this: I died two years ago, but unlike most people I didn't get to move on. I have to reap X number of souls before I can go wherever souls go," George sounded slightly bitter about not knowing herself, "...and I don't get paid or anything like that so I also work at a temp agency."
"You're kinda the only living person that knows. At all. So. I'd kinda appreciate it if you didn't like ... tell people."
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/24/2006 16:52:01
“I don’t think demons collect souls, I think that’s … devils. Or maybe The Devil.” Oz wasn’t sure, he had read the books, sometimes, at the Scooby Meetings, but mostly he had well, mostly he had hung out with Willow.
“Well the dead thing explains a lot. Why you don’t smell.” Really the world was a wondrous place. And as far as keeping secrets went. “I’m good with the secret thing. I won’t tell a soul.”
And he wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t be around to tell anyone because he was already planning on how he was going to leave. Like now. Because bailing is what Oz did best.
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/24/2006 21:32:42
"I'm not a devil, either," George corrected matter-of-factly.
George looked around.
"Maybe we should split up until this is all... over."
She had a craving for waffles.
From: i_howlatthemoon Date: 07/25/2006 03:19:28
Oz glanced at her, could these Reaper people have mind reading powers?
"Uhh, I think your right. I need to change. Get clothes that are … mine. Don't belong to .." He was going to say dead guy and changed it to to; "someone else." He also needed to pack. He could not live here anymore.
"Secrets safe with me."
From: i_avoidliving Date: 07/25/2006 12:01:19
"Cool. Thanks Oz! I'll see you around later."
George looked happy. She had a small bit of a bounce to her step when she hopped off to get waffles. True, work hadn't exactly gone very well and yes Oz was a werewolf. But so what? He turns into a bitey thing, George reaped souls.
The important thing was that George didn't feel so alone anymore. She might have even made a friend outside of (either) work.
Today turned into one of the best days of her unlife.