“Me,” I finally said. “I have leukemia.” Dan nodded solemnly. “I just wanted to…”

  “To see the freak show?” he interrupted.

  “No, I wanted to know how you did it—how you beat pancreatic cancer, to see if maybe…”

  He studied me for a long moment. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I have an open mind,” I said without hesitation. “Try me.”

  “I technically can’t tell you. Unless…” He trailed off.

  “Unless what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” The humor in his face completely vanished when he said it. “Trust me when I say, you don’t want to know.” Dan started to stand, and I stood with him.

  “Please. We risked our jobs to find you,” I pleaded. “The least you can do is tell me your secret.”

  “If I told you my secret, a lot more than your jobs would be on the line.”

  “I’ve got nothing left to lose,” I told him. “Please! Just tell me.” He stood stock still, then sighed and sat back down. I did the same.

  Cam’s voice broke the silence. “What’s up with all the ominous death references from your boy Haden?”

  Dan smirked faintly. “His real name is Clarence Rittenhouse. I’ve known him for about twenty years. I think he did the whole Tom Riddle/Voldemort thing—constructed an anagram name out of the words Hades and Death.”

  “Like Imagine Dragons,” Cam said, then frowned. He was trying to figure out what words the letters of HADEN TETH make. “Wait. I don’t think you can spell Hades and Death with those words.”

  Dan shrugged and took a deep breath. “Fuck it,” he said, resignation spreading across his face. “It’s going to sound crazy, but hear me out. Clarence is a Reaper, the kind who takes your spirit—or soul, or whatever you want to call it—when you finally kick the bucket.”

  Cam started to scoot his chair back, probably to get out of there, but I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. He turned to me, his eyebrows raised. I read the “this dude’s crazy” message loud and clear. I gave a tiny shake of my head.If I’d had this conversation even a week ago, I’d have been right there with him. But a lot had happened in the past week, and both Haden–Clarence–and Dan had known one of us was dying without us having told them. I was willing to suspend my usual disbelief.

  “Please continue,” I said, turning my focus back to Dan.

  “Technically, Clarence shouldn’t have interacted with you,” Dan went on. “He’s only supposed to show up at the end. That’s his job—to shepherd the souls.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because we work for the same organization. Just… different departments.”

  “Different departments?” Cam asked. “Like, in the government?”

  “Not exactly.” Dan’s eyes locked with mine. “As I said, Clarence is a Reaper. I’m what’s called an Endr. But we both work for Death.”

  Cam blinked. “Death, like the black-robe-and-sickle guy?”

  Dan chuckled. “I don’t actually know what he looks like, but yeah. That Death.”

  “And that’s how you survived the cancer?” I asked. Was Dan completely insane? Or had he just unlocked something that could save my life?

  “When you accept the medallion and log in,” Dan continued, “you step away from any physical or mental ailments. It all becomes a memory.”

  “Log in?” I repeated.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Dan’s hand slipped beneath the table and came back out with his phone. He set it down and flipped it over. The back of the device was embossed with a shield emblem. Above it, I saw the letters ENDR, three wavy lines, and then the number 1042. There was a slogan at the bottom of it, but Dan’s voice pulled my attention away from the phone before I could read it.

  “This is how I communicate with dispatch. They used to communicate over the citizen band radio, but now we use the Endr app.”

  “Citizen band radio?” I asked.

  Cam slapped me on the arm. “The old CBs, like truckers use. ’10-4 good buddy’ and all of that.”

  Dan looked amused. “My handle is Overdrive.” He paused. “Listen…I don’t know what you expect to get out of this information, but for your own safety, I really shouldn’t tell you any more.”

  “How can I log in?” I blurted out.

  Dan gave me a sad smile. “Sorry, man. There aren’t currently any openings in this geographic area, and anyway, you have no idea what you’d be signing up for.”

  “Whatever it is, I can do it,” I said.

  Dan shook his head. “I thought I could too, and after twenty years, I can tell you that I was wrong. This job wears you down.”

  “The guy works for Death, Max!” Cam said with mock gravity in his voice. He was openly acknowledging everything Dan was saying, but he clearly didn’t believe it. “Who knows what kind of things Death would ask an employee to do?”

  “Despite the obvious sarcasm, your friend is on to something,” Dan replied.

  “Do you usher souls, too?” I couldn’t believe I was actually asking the question, but I was in it this far…

  Dan shook his head. “An Endr’s job is different from a Reaper's.” He pointed to the four letters on his phone. “Technically, Endr stands for ‘Earth's Next Dimensional Relay System,’ but now they just call anyone who uses the App an Endr.”

  “Earth’s Next Dimensional Relay System,” Cam repeated. He looked over to me. “You sure this isn’t some sort of herbal therapy thing?”

  “I run people over for a living,” Dan said bluntly. “And in return, I’m no longer sick. Clear enough for you both?”

  Mic drop. Cam and I both slowly turned our heads back to the man sitting across from us. Neither of us knew exactly what to say, and the silence stretched until it became uncomfortable.

  Dan finally broke it. “I don’t technically kill them… well, that’s not entirely true. To anyone here in this realm, they cease to exist, but I portal their spirits to another realm.”

  “I don’t understand. You physically run them over with a car?” My thoughts shifted to the Ramcharger Killer segment I had seen on the news the previous Thursday night, and my blood went cold.

  “Whoa now, I know what you’re thinking. I’m not that serial killer that they keep putting on the news. That idiot Axel is drawing far too much attention to us. He uses the same vehicle for every fare!”

  “Fare?” Cam asked a little louder than was necessary, considering there were hardly any other people in the bar. “You call the people you run over your fares?”

  Dan leaned back in the booth with a shrug. “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth. I told you that you couldn’t handle it.”

  I felt something inside me shift. I had always wondered if I might have been the poster child for reverse psychological tricks. Throughout my life, whenever someone said I couldn’t handle something or that I wouldn’t be interested in it, I took it as a personal challenge to both do it and be interested in it.

  Because of this, I felt myself leaning into the story Dan was telling us. But inside, I couldn’t shake the knowledge that this guy was either a serial killer, knew a serial killer, or was possibly even crazier than a serial killer.

  “Show me the app,” I finally said.

  “I can’t. Only Endrs can log into the app. Dispatch would know something was up.”

  “So, I can’t see the relay system unless I become an Endr… but I can’t become an Endr because there aren’t any openings? How convenient.”

  Cam looked at me with pity. “Come on, Max. There’s nothing for you here. Just a crazy, washed-up recruit full of stories and trying to fill you with false hope. We need to get back.” He stood and started toward the hallway we’d come through, clearly expecting me to follow. I rested my head in my hands, feeling the little hope I’d had trickle out of me.

  Something slid across the table. By the time I looked down, Dan’s phone was resting in front of me.

  “If you want proof that everything I’ve told you is true…” he said quietly. “If you want a cure for the cancer that will kill you… You’ll have to log in.”

  “I thought you said there weren’t any openings.” I eyed the phone warily.

  “There weren’t. But…I’m tired, Max.” Dan picked up the phone and turned the screen toward me. It glowed with a login prompt. “I’ve transferred too many people—seen too much pain in too many families.”

  I stared at him. “Did you log out?”

  He nodded. “For all the pain I’ve caused, maybe I can save one person in the end.”

  “Are you coming, Max?” Cam called from the doorway. From where he stood, he wouldn’t be able to see the phone or the choice in front of me.

  I looked down at the screen again. The light from it seemed to reach out to me. I wondered if logging in would end up being a dead end… or if this was where the real journey began.

  - - -

  ? Copyrighted 2026 by The Longwinded One

  No permission is granted to translate, copy, repost, or convert this original work of fiction into audio format. If you are viewing this on a site other than my Patreon or RoyalRoad.com, it has been stolen without my consent and violates the DMCA. Please note that this work is the result of my creative effort and is protected by copyright law. Removing or modifying this notification acknowledges that you are aware that you are violating the DMCA. No permission is granted for my original work to be used to train AI.

  https://longwinded.one/

  For more information on my Celtic LitRPG, you can visit

  For my Patreon, you can visit