The Harvester

By Kendra Pintor

Every time I blink, it brings the skeleton closer. He’s known as The Harvester because he

collects souls like bundles of wheat. A lantern hangs inside his ribcage, swaying with every step.

He used to roam the hillside, but now he roams the cities, the suburbs, the freeways, the school

yards, the shopping malls, the airports; he’s everywhere and nowhere, all at once. We all watch

him warily, using our peripheral vision. We pray for the people whose homes he visits; where he

stops and bends his boney legs to fit his eight-foot frame through the door.

I have learned to sleep with my eyes open. My medicine cabinet is full of eyedrops. My

refrigerator is full of energy drinks. I’ve subscribed to receive monthly packages of solutions and

stimulants in bulk. Every Thursday, I hear the thunk of a box being dropped off, the idle rumble

of a delivery truck, footsteps coming and going so fast sometimes I wonder if there is anyone

there at all. Until I hear the thunk. And I know that I have bought myself some more time. 

Keeping my eyes open unsettles people. I blinked once as a child – closed my eyes to

make a wish – and when I opened them, I was in my twenties, blowing into a breathalyzer.

Behind the flashing red lights, there was a shadow stalking the highway. And a yellow spotlight

swinging beneath a toothy grin. That was the first – and I swore it would be the last – time I ever

saw The Harvester. 

I am afraid of where the next blink might send me. I am terrified to go to sleep, to shut

my eyes, and wake up to The Harvester, dragging me out of bed and into his wheelbarrow. So, I

drink uppers at work; three cups of coffee in the morning, an energy drink at lunch; a whole case

stored beneath my desk. My hands shake, clacking on the keyboard, while my coworkers

whisper, and keep a wide berth; it sometimes feels like my cubicle is a cage and I am the

attraction no one paid to see and still, they cannot look away. 

The Harvester roams at all hours of the day. The lantern in his chest only glows at night.

No one knows where he takes the souls he collects. Somehow, his wheelbarrow is never empty,

and at the same time, never full. He has only one expression; a skeleton’s smile. His eyes are

dark, hollow sockets. People speculate about his unnatural height more often than anything else.

As if this is the strangest thing about a skeleton that reaps souls, whose arrival is met with

resignation, acceptance, defeat. Everyone seems to spend their entire lives raging against The

Harvester’s arrival… until he arrives. I’ve never heard of The Harvester breaking down

someone’s door. They all open willingly, and let him in. 

My friends are sympathetic, though none of them really understand. All of them chitter-

chatter about sleep-aids, nighttime routines, diffusers, pillow misters, tracking their sleep

patterns, how good it feels to shut their eyes. None of them have dark circles, or heavy bags, or

puffy sockets. They don’t have crow’s feet, or blue veins pulsing beneath their lids. They don’t

live in the past, or the future. None of their eyes are red. 

The Harvester was spotted roaming the suburbs by a local paper. In the photo, he’s

pushing his wheelbarrow down Broadway, walking through a four-way intersection, past the gas

station and abandoned drive-thru dairy. All the cars stopped to let him pass, not a single person

brave enough to honk their horn or cut him off. In the newspaper’s photo, The Harvester’s

wheelbarrow is only half in the frame, but the arm hanging over the edge is clear as day. 

He’s getting closer. 

I set the article aside and shove my head into the kitchen sink, filled with saline solution.

It relieves the redness, but it does nothing to stifle the scream. 

My mother wants to know when the hell I am going to shut my eyes. I stare at her from

across the bistro table, wide and unblinking. I stuffed my pockets with bottles of eyedrops in

preparation for this lunch. She’s blinking furiously against the sun, while a waiter refills her

glass. The ice cracks when met by the lukewarm water. Every time my mother blinks, she ages

one year. I have told her so many times to stop, but instead of listening to me, she went out and

bought herself a burial plot. “It’s just one less thing,” blink, “that you girls,” blink, “will have

to,” blink, “worry about.” Across the table, she’s gone from 45-years-old, to 60, in three blinks of

her eyes. I reach into my pocket and pour one whole bottle of saline into my eyes. My mother

shakes her head and frowns. “Just close your eyes,” she says. “He’s coming, no matter what.” 

The mirror is my enemy. All it ever shows me, is the past, or the future. I have kept my

eyes open my entire life, and still, I cannot see what I look like in the present. In the morning, I

am young. In the evening, I am old. In the bathroom at work, I am someone else entirely. The

Harvester is coming, no matter what. I know that. I’ve always known that one day I will look out

my bedroom window and see a hulking skeleton, bent over and staring at me with those empty,

cavern eyes. He will point a boney finger at his wheelbarrow, at the other souls lying on top of

each other, their spirit-flesh no different from skin, and I will get up and go. I know that I will

walk out my front door and climb onto the pile, lay down, and let him cart me across the country,

until I am buried beneath the other bodies, until I am at the bottom of the barrel, until I have

disappeared completely; until there are no more photos left of me, no one who remembers me,

lost forever to history and the March of Time, the only other creature as consistent and terrifying

as The Harvester. 

I wake up, gasping in the dark. I open my eyes. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I run to the

bathroom, flip on the light. I find myself in the mirror, older than my mother. Is this me, or is this

the future? I grip the edge of the counter and stare at my reflection, long and hard. 

And then I do it. I blink.

About the Author: Kendra Marie Pintor

Kendra Marie Pintor (she/her) is an emerging author from Southern California with poetry appearing in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, fiction featured in Lunch Ticket Magazine’s “Amuse-Bouche” series, and creative nonfiction published by CRAFT Literary, among others. Her flash fiction piece "THE SLUAGH" is a Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2023 nominee. Kendra holds a BA in creative writing from the University of La Verne, is a graduate of the 2022 UMass Amherst Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and works as a volunteer reader for Ariel Publishing. Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, Kendra’s writing style favors eerie, atmospheric language that seeks to combine the mundane with the magical until both worlds are irrevocably intertwined.