Yesterday, I put on Simon’s skin. You see, Simon just died, poor fella. So young. Simon also happens to be my god-son. The whole family had been expecting his death for a while, trying to prolong the day I had to take him away. As it happens, the family kind of disagrees with my profession, probably because they know I’ll have to take them someday. If I out-live them of course.

Whenever I am forced to take one of the nephews or nieces or any of the young children, I put on their skin, purely so I don’t have to see their poor lifeless face, with all the color drained from it. It kind of compresses my body, but I don’t mind, because, they’re family, gotta love ‘em. It doesn’t take long to get to the family orchard, it’s number six, on Orchard of Bones Ave. Fitting, right? See, spirits when dead have the look of their formerly living self, but they’re shimmery and transparent, you could walk right through them. Whenever I deliver a new spirit, the ancestors who didn’t know this new addition all crowd around to try to see, while the ones who did know the person greet them and showed them around.
For Simon though, it was different. There hadn’t been a death since before Simon’s mother became pregnant, so no one knew him. I could feel his fear of going to a new place, and I tried my best to comfort him, but I’ve never been very good at the whole lovey dovey stuff.
Simon seemed very uncomfortable in the orchard. There are some security precautions, but those are easy to avoid and escape is possible. No one has done it in years, though, because where would they go? The orchard has everything they might ever need. Well, I guess crazy uncle Bill tried to a while ago, but the other spirits held him back. That was when my dad was still in charge of the orchard business though.
Anyway, I was kind of worried about the kid so I checked back in an hour or two. I wandered around the orchard, looking everywhere. He was nowhere, vanished. No trace either. I stopped two floating women, I think one was great-aunt Aggie. I asked her where Simon was.
“Simon? Who’s Simon?”

“You know, the kid I brought earlier…”

“Ohhhh, that Simon. Yeah, he left about an hour ago.” She said it very nonchalantly.

“I think he took a left, but he kinda ran out before we could stop him so I dunno. Wasn’t really paying attention… I had just won bingo.”

So I left the orchard in search of Simon. It’s kind of difficult to look for a spirit, because if you don’t know what to look for, you see right through them. I looked around downtown, but then I realized, Simon’s never been downtown. Why would he be there?
After I realized that, I went back to the house to see if the relatives knew where I could look. I get to the house, and walk inside.

“Hey, have any of ya’ll seen Si-”

And then I saw him. Well, his spirit anyway. Just chatting, hanging out with the relatives. So, after much arguing, I convinced him to go back to the orchard. When we got there, aunt Aggie greeted him like an old friend- the way all family should be treated. As I left, I heard her showing him around and clueing him in on all the “haps” as she called it.