The Soul Collector

I'm a Soul Collector. No, not like the Reaper; he takes your soul when you're dead. Me, I take your soul while you're still alive. Don't worry, though, I don't usually take it all, just a little bit off the top. Any time I touch someone, I gather a tiny bit of their soul and store it away. The more exposure a person gets to me, the more of their soul I take. If you stick around me, you don't even notice, really.

Most people, though, well... if you bump into me, I'm sorry, you pretty much just handed me a sliver of your very spiritual essence. You won't even notice it's missing. Hells, even the Reaper doesn't notice it's missing, and he deals with souls all day long. Dead people souls, sure, but still.

I don't know how many Soul Collectors there are out there. Hundreds, maybe even thousands. Of course, the Reaper isn't just one entity, either - there are thousands of Reapers, but then there's The Reaper, the big boss man, err... thing? Entity? Whatever. The point is, there's way more Reapers than there are Collectors. I don't really know why that is.

Anyway, the point I was aiming for, before I got sidetracked, is that I take a piece of you, and that makes people afraid of people like me. Granted, most people don't know we exist. You shake my hand at an interview, I harvest a little bit of you, and that's that. But some people are aware, and they just don't like the thought that I take a little bitty part of someone's spiritual whatever and keep it locked away. I don't really do anything with it. That's what makes me a Collector. We just harvest and hold on, like some kind of demented hoarder.

I haven't really met a lot of other Collectors. I think we're just naturally inclined to steer clear of each other. The few I have met were all in heavily populated cities... which makes sense, really. We didn't touch each other, just kind of nodded slightly and went on our way. Well, after I asked some questions of the older ones. That's the only reason I know as much as I do. The first one I ever met told me what I was, but then something scared her off and she just kind of... vanished into the crowd. It was a little weird, come to think of it. How did she do that? Something to think about.

I'm rambling, I guess. Sorry about that. I was trying to explain why there are people out there who are afraid of the unknown. In this case, they're afraid of an unknown that directly affects regular human beings. So they hunt people like me. There's an underground community of Soul Collectors. Information exchange is vital to our existence, these days. The hunters have gotten worse over the years. They don't go for Reapers; I suppose there's not much point, since you usually have to be dead to get a glimpse of a Reaper.

I've got one of these "Hunters" on my trail. I know who he is, though I've never really interacted with him. We worked at the same place for a long time. I don't know how he found out about me. See, collecting little bits of soul is a natural thing, and doesn't really set off any radars. My guess is that some information got leaked somewhere. One of the other Collectors, maybe. I've heard that the Hunters have a way to harvest information. It can't possibly be pleasant, and it is definitely not something I want to go through. So I've been trying to lay low. New job, new city, new home, new everything. The only problem is that my closest friends, well... they had to follow along. Some kind of subconscious compulsion. If they'd stayed behind, they would have lost... well, almost everything. It was their idea; at least, I think it was. But they make it difficult to hide, especially since they don't know or understand.

And let me just say, staying off the radar is tough when one of your best friends likes to party and gossip. I think he's found me again. Or at least narrowed it down to my area. I have to be more careful. I just don't know how I can be...