The Brushers

Have you ever had a brush with death? What we call a “brush” is one of those instants when one misstep sets your life hanging by a thread. A “brush” is when several paths are suddenly laid out to your subconscious, and the path that you choose to travel will either allow you to continue living your life or end it. This split instant, this brush with death, is one of those instinctive moments in which you don’t have time to think, but time only to react. It isn’t a time where you can ask for help. Deep-seated instincts alone will guide you during your “brushes”, and it is only with these that you have hope of survival. Most people don’t notice when they have a brush, though the average person will experience them a few dozen times in his lifetime. An individual may have a few more than normal if he’s some sort of daredevil, or particularly clumsy, or just an idiot. Somebody who lives to the average age and doesn’t go throwing himself out of planes too often will have about twenty “brushes” in his life. Many “brushes” will occur naturally… but some of them will purposely be created. These brushes with death can be anything, ranging from traumatizing to unusual to normal clumsiness. They can revolve around buying bread that has been pre-sliced from the supermarket, instead of choosing bread that you would have to cut yourself and risking death by way of a knife wound. I’m serious— sometimes they’re that simple. Or, they can be more dramatic, like choosing at the last second which way to duck when you’re being mugged. It could be something that city-goers survive every day, such as waiting those three seconds before stepping off of a curb as a bus barrels around the corner. It could be nothing more than staying inside during bad weather. And surprisingly, most people don’t recognize these brushes. Some of the more extreme ones will cause tears, yet very few will trigger lasting damage. In the future, a few will become stories to caution your children and grandchildren with. But the average brush will only make a person pause, step back from his daily activities, and say “Well, that was close,” before he goes on his way. Most of the human population barely notices as they come but an inch away from dying. It’s the people who do notice who are the important ones. What everyone doesn’t know as they move through life is that each “brush” could determine what happens after real death takes them. I myself have no definite idea what happens to the majority of those who pass, the ones who haven’t become like me. But if you are like I am, after you die you will become something much more. There is no true name for what we are. No title has been discovered and set down as official. But a group before my time jokingly began calling our race the “Brushers”, after our brushes with death, and the name stuck. We Brushers are like something out of imagination. We are not alive, yet we’re still walking around. No, we aren’t ghosts; we‘re as solid as any human. We’re not vampires— one of the recently popular living-dead legends of the human imagination— as we would ten out of ten times prefer to eat a hamburger instead of a human. We can walk around in plain old daylight without exploding into flames and burning to ashes (or sparkling, if that’s your idea of a vampire). If your gaze chanced across one of us on the streets, it would keep right on going. Brushers may have incredibly important jobs on earth, but we don’t need to stick out. In fact, camouflage is one of our best tools. So really, we’re pretty much like everyone else on planet earth. Well, except for the wings. And the fact that we can’t die. Almost like everyone else. The duty of us Brushers, as far as we know it, entails the following: Our main duty, the part that we assume we were truly created to perform, is to help people. Throughout history, life and death have lingered in a delicate balance, with life usually in the majority. But in the modern day, death has become precariously close to overwhelming life and good. This is where we Brushers step in. We are keepers of the peace, tipping the scale in good’s favor, trying to keep the world from falling into chaos. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest job in the world, especially because there are so few of us. Therefore, another part of our job is finding and initiating as many new Brushers as possible. The way we do so is produce the situations that I began by describing: ‘brushes’ or ‘death tests’. This part is difficult to explain, but I will try to lay it out simply. The thing about Brushers is that we are also gifted with talents more frightening than flying and healing. For example, we can move objects without touching them. We can also force people to do things, such as changing a car driver’s mind to make him decide to go through a red light rather than wait for it to turn green— or, on the other side of the spectrum, giving a half-conscious survivor of a car accident the strength to push her way out from beneath her car if she has the will to live. We use these ‘death tests’ to constantly look for the people who will be the Brushers of the future. Future Brushers are those with the strongest wills to survive, those who notice their brushes with death, and those who survive without trauma or major injury. And before you call us cruel for putting people’s life in danger, you should first know that it really is for the good of mankind. Without Brushers keeping death in check, there would be a lot more of it on planet earth than there already is. (Scary thought, isn’t it?) You need us, as there are those who think that earth would be better with death in control. The thing about these special abilities we are given is that they are supposed to be used in moderation: all Brushers swear to use them only when finding new Brushers, not for personal gain. (Kind of like superheroes, minus the secret identities and spandex outfits.) Usually, Brushers are plenty satisfied with their lives after dying, and choose not to use their given powers for their own reasons. Generally, having wings, super-strength and speed plus an amazing healing power is enough for most of us. But not all of us. The last part of our job description has lately become the most important: relentlessly fighting off and keeping under control those Brushers who have ‘gone bad’. Certain Brushers have rebelled from their jobs of keeping the human race alive, going against their vow of using their power only towards the benefit of mankind. They believe that we Brushers are given our powers after death because we are superior to average humans, and that we should rule over them. These Brushers are busy using powers that should be used delicately in dangerous and unorthodox ways, victimizing any human they take a fancy to torturing. We call these people Rogues. All of them started out as Brushers, but they become greedy, using their gifts for their own good, becoming twisted on the matters of life and death and contorting our purpose on earth. We try our best to help the people that Rogues go after. Have you ever heard of a miracle situation, where someone should have definitely died but didn’t? You can probably thank us for that one. My team is situated in New York City, and we have a lot of work—Rogues love the Big Apple. We do well keeping them at bay, but it's a constant battle; no matter how much we kick them around, the rebels always turn around and kick us back...