The Untold Story of a Grim Reaper: Chapter 31: The Dead End

Hell was neither flames nor monsters. It was complete darkness. Not like the sanctuary where I found myself at my death. The darkness there was serene and peaceful but here… here it was sinister and painful. Hate burned in my heart, scorching any blessing that I ever held onto. 

Whispers would fade in and out of the abyss, their words vibrated around my flesh, making it tingle and sting. Hate kept creeping through my veins, like a terrible disease that burned and chipped away at everything I was. 

Trying not to give into it, I reminded myself of my purpose here and knew I couldn’t let this world consume me. 

I climbed to me feet and a swarm of guilt engulfed my stomach, making me stumble in nausea. Memories of my mother and father warped in and out, of moments I felt true anguish and hatred towards them. Memories of my classmates fluttered through my mind, of moments when I felt like making them suffer for everything they did to me. Memories of Vincent pressed forward, of the moment when he ruined my reputation so that he could keep his… a depression so full of rage kindled my heart.

Taking my first steps, I shuffled my feet, accidentally kicking something. It tore at my neck muscles to look down at what I knocked, it was a scythe. Leaning down I grabbed the steel rod and used it to help me regain my balance. Pressing my weight against it gave me a moment of relief but it was soon eaten away by the hatred that festered in my arteries.

Running only made it worse. Misery scratched at my throat and made it nearly impossible to breathe. Millions of downgrading emotions attacked me and the sorrow clogged my lungs. I tried using the scythe as a cane but it wasn’t making it any easier. My fingers were freezing and I couldn’t loosen my grip from the scythe.

A scream rattled the air and ripped through my ears. I tripped over myself and the pain of it was a deeper hate for everything and everyone I knew. All my happy memories were passing through my mind, becoming warped with rage. It was eating away at me and drowning me in defeat. I looked down at my feet, they were bleeding black. 

The screams persisted at different ranges and stabbed me with hatred. The monsters within me were awakening and wanting more. Suppressing the anger rising in me, I covered my ears begging for it to stop feeding the beasts.

I got to my feet again and blocked out the pain of the rage that soaked in my every joint. Eventually walking into something that resembled a puddle but as I walked through it soaked into my body, the cold liquid invaded my pores and the hatred boiling within me clung to it. 

I could barely remember what it felt like to be loved or give love. Any genuine memory of my loved ones were gone and thinking of them made the beast within me relish in the hatred that quenched its thirst. The hate was becoming denser and my feet ached. Every step was just another beat on the monsters tempers and it wanted nothing more than for me to succumb to it.

I heard another cackle and immediately knew whom it belonged to. Lilli. I stopped running and frantically turned in a circle. The laugh sounded as if it was coming from my own skin, it was so close. 

It grew completely silent. The silence flourished through my scalp and attempted to release the rage within me. I needed to keep running to distract me from paying attention to the hatred that wanted me to bow to it.

“Watch out!” 

The raspy whisper came at me like a brick. It sounded like Lilli again. Closing my eyes didn’t help at all. Keeping my eyes open with minimum blinking slowed down the disease of lust that feasted on my muscles.

My eyes felt like they were finally adjusting to the atmosphere and it looked as if I was running on black cement. The sky was like a poisoned tarp that exposed any of its residence only through a slight silhouette through gray, what looked like, clouds. 

Distracted by my discoveries I was tripped up by a crack in the ground. Landing on my face, I skid across what seemed like a different surface than before but the pain was a depression that rubbed into all of my feature.

The pressure of giving up pressed against my conscience and I laid there… ready to let it conquer. I spoke aloud so that way the infection wouldn’t twist my thoughts anymore than it had.

“Is this how it ends?”

My peripheral vision detected all the creatures that infested this place were drawing near. 

I whispered, “I’ve failed.”

I turned on my side and shriveled in a ball. I wanted to cry but it was impossible. The emotions orbiting within me were bottling up and there was no outlet for them to be released. I shook from the intensity it was breaching. I closed my eyes and accepted my ending.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

My eyes shot open and I looked down at what I was laying on. I was lying on a door. Engravings of vultures, ravens, and other large birds and of a language I didn’t understand yet I knew what it said, 

 

BEHOLD YOUR SON,

BEHOLD YOUR MOTHER

 

Crawling I searched around for a handle, to ward off the monsters approaching, I swung my scythe side to side. I slit a few and they immediately dispersed away from the door. 

I couldn’t find the handle but I knocked on the door three times. 

Knock. Knock. Knock. 

I raised my scythe high, ready to cut away at the door, I screamed, “I’m gonna get you out!”

“Who goes there?!” The screaming whisper came from behind me. 

With only a second of reaction time, “Lilli?!”

Lilli grabbed my feet and dragged me from the door with such intensity, the ground felt like sandpaper, etching back in all the unpleasant emotions I had blocked out. 

I dropped my scythe and by my legs I was tossed over Lilli. The ground was shifting in different areas now and I kept sliding across it. 

I caught a glimpse of what I was being sucked into, a cliff of quicksand dominated its purpose of this vortex. Like being hypnotized, the cyclone of sand whispered for me to quit, to give into the sand and to let hate consume me.

I dug my fingers into the shifting sand and resisted its pull as much as I could. Getting closer to the edge, I rolled over and got to my feet. Before I could make a run for it, a thrown dagger spiraled and hit me in the chest. My heart felt like it was blackening and revenge was festering in its being. I liked it. My mind was fighting the hate as much as it could but my heart soaked it in like milk, all of this was making me happy.

I screamed to try to shed the virus. Lilli’s scream blended with mine as she lunged on top of me. Grabbing my shoulders and shaking me aggressively. The sand was shifting us closer and closer to the edge of the dead end. She slammed my shoulders down and red sweat dripped from her face. 

Pinned to the ground, Lilli was breathing heavily and her voice was so hoarse and dry that it drowned me in misery, “You’ve ruined everything!”

I coughed to make room for my words, “Please, Lilli, let me let them go.”

She laughed in my face. The memory of Tori intruded when her spit spewed all over me, “Noa, sweet, sweet, Noa.” 

She jerked the dagger from my chest. The pain swarmed my veins and I wanted to kill Lilli. I wanted to give into the revenge I thirsted for and I wanted to take her dagger and stab her eyes out. 

Lilli rested the dagger under her arm and leaned in close to me, “I could have lived forever! But you ruined everything! I needed one more soul! ONE MORE!” Her scream roared in me and feasted on my morality, “One more soul! So that I could rise with Samel to wreak our revenge on this God-forgotten world! But I failed and he abandoned me. I have no one to suffer with,” a smile consumed her cheeks and she gave a small laugh, “Except you. I will make sure you suffer as I am. We’ll be together for all eternity.”

Weakly, I whimpered, “Why did you do it?”

She pinched my face between her grip, “I was born for this! This is all I was created for! This… this was my purpose.” 

Blacks tears flooded from her blood lusted stare. 

I fought the desire to laugh in her face, “No, Lilli, please, you still have a choice!”

She shook me, “We never had a choice!” her words drowned me in a despair I was trying to resist, “Noa. There’s no hope for me. This is what I was meant to do. This was my destiny.”

Her black tears crawled down her face and I fought the hate I had for Lilli with sympathy. Sympathy that she told herself she couldn’t live in peace, sympathy that she condemned her own self. 

My body burned against the black shifting concrete and the words I desperately wanted to share were becoming harder to leave my tongue, “Lilli, you still have time to make this right! Let me go! Open the door!” 

Lilli took her dagger and stabbed me in my side. The pain pulsed through me like a fever. A fever spreading hate and rage through my every bone and intention, “Lilli, look at me! Just look at me!” Lilli’s eyes stilled on mine and I had her attention, “You don’t have to do this. I’m here for you. We can leave this place… together.”

Her face tensed, her tone was deep and rough, “You are so pathetic. Maybe I can offer you as my last soul. Maybe there is still hope.”

We were nearing the edge of the dead end and time was running out. Lilli wound her grip on the dagger, yanked it from my waist, and raised it high above me. With head held high and eyes reflecting doom Lilli screamed from the top of her lungs, “Hallelujah!” 

Suddenly, all the hatred in my bones, muscles, lungs, mind, and heart… suddenly… it had all melted away. There was a small breath of release and in that moment, I loved Lilli. She carried this burden and out of fear, out of lack of faith in herself, she made a deal with the devil. And now she’s alone. I wasn’t naive in thinking my love could save her, I wouldn’t try to force myself on her like that, but just knowing it was there… it saved me.

“I am so sorry, Lilli.” 

Dodging her dagger, I leaned forward and kissed her. Kiss of death.

A witch-like scream hurdled from her throat and she dropped the dagger. My vision blacked in and out. My head was spinning but I was fighting for consciousness. I knocked Lilli off of me and crawled to steadier ground. Within the haze of darkness and Hell, I saw Lilli was still coming after me. 

Lilli’s face was blue, her veins pulsed from her flesh. She held her face still screaming over her bleeding lips. The kiss of death caused my face to twitch intensely, giving me barely any control over my sight.

The black sand shifted against my bearskin and it was numbing. I braved the danger of what the sand would do to me and dove in after the door. Struggling to keep my head above the surface, I felt bony hands scraping at my knees trying to drag me under. 

The Kiss of Death was overpowering me, a small crescent moon trapped under my eyelids and I was beginning to pass out. Sinking deeper into this world.

My hair was being yanked upward and my eyes opened. Dragging me out of the depths, at first believed it to be Lilli but an overwhelming sense of hope radiated through me and made my vision clearer. 

It was my raven, my spirit, dragging me from the sand. When my arms were finally free from the sinister beach I continued trudging through. My raven grabbed the back of my shirt and helped keep my knees above the surface. There was still hope and, deep within me, my raven knew it.

Still stinging, my face was becoming difficult to control and if it wasn’t for my raven I might have sunk back into the depths. But my raven never let go of me and in no time I reached the door.

Growing blind, I gave a glimpse back to the sand to find Lilli. Fear soon took another hold on me as I realized the door was moving closer to Lilli, the sand was pulling the door closer and closer to the dead end. She was still holding onto her face but her screams were turning into roars of frustration. 

Lilli’s feet were firmly planted in the unstable desert, all she had to do was wait. Fear numbed my entire body and froze me where I sat. I couldn’t move.

She rigidly yelled, “You really think the death of Aaron’s twin was a random murder?” She laughed with a high heaving chest. A wet cough interrupted her but she kept laughing under her teeth, “. Oh, you can trust that I felt every life slip away when I burned my village to the ground. And I couldn’t have felt more alive!”

I tried to ignore the confessions spitting from her tongue but the monsters in me enjoyed hearing each of them. It craved for more to feed into its tantrum.

The door handle. I needed to find the door handle. It grew more and more complicated as my vision began playing tricks on me. When I would think I found the handle, it would move to a different spot and I kept missing it.

She continued admitting her sins, “And that poor catastrophe reaper. You know if it was for his spirit catching on fire I don’t think I’d be half the reaper I am today.”

Don’t listen. Don’t listen. Don’t listen. 

When I found the handle I tugged on it with every last ounce of energy I had. Channeling the hatred that licked my bones to help me open it. But it was useless, it needed a key. I shifted my hands around the door to find the keyhole. My fingernails brushed over three inconsistencies in the frame. I followed the indentions with my hand and tried to focus on the picture.

A vignette circled around my sight and it gave me tunnel vision. Focusing on the keyholes I finally grasped what was etched into the gate. A carving of a three people like creatures laying flat on their backs. Vines and birds wrapped around their bodies. Deep indentions in the wood were placed on each of their necks. 

The door could only be opened by a reaper.

Lilli screamed my name and I turned around terrified that she was in reach. My eye caught a glimpse of another dark figure sprinting through the blanket of sand. I ignored it, my only hope was to fight through my loss of consciousness and to unlock the door. 

I focused on the shadows of my heart that the disease had not taken hold of. Wrapping my arms around me and placing my palms over my markings, I forced a heavy breath. The markings slip into my fists and I gently pressed them over the keyholes. The keyholes sung and sucked my fist in, I could not remove them. But the door still wouldn’t open, the third keyhole, I didn’t know how to unlock the third.

My calf started burning, I looked down to it seeing that my entire left and foot were covered in the dark roots. I brought my knee to my chest and placed my foot over the third keyhole. This lock did the save, it sang a glow and anchored my foot inside.

The door lost all its coloring and turned solid gray, the locks ejected my hands and foot, pushing me nearly off the door. 

I rolled myself over looking for the handle to open it, my fingernails finally scratched over the black knob and I gripped both hands around it. 

Before I could pull it open, Lilli grabbed my ankle and screamed, “Never!”

She reared another dagger at me and I thought this was the end, until unexpectedly, Salvatore sprinted from the depths of the quicksand screaming and charged at Lilli. His eyes were crowded with revenge and anger for the broken heart Lilli gave him. As he made contact with her, she and him both were hurdled into the never-ending pit below. Lilli’s grip on me jerked me down, slipping me to the edge of the door. 

Her hand released from my ankle and within my darkening vision I caught my last glimpse of the poor souls who told themselves that they weren’t worth more than this fate. 

The darkness swallowed my sight, blinded, I was losing focus on what I needed to do. But I had to make sure I opened the door even if it was the last thing I ever did. 

My fingers slipped deep under the handle. A warm glow spilled into the room and a deafening chorus chimed through as I successfully opened it. There wasn’t enough room to stay safe on the door while opening it, so I leaned with the opening door and jumped into the dead end. I felt my raven curl itself within my arms, I wrapped myself around it, holding it tight. We both knew it had to be this way. 

Falling into this abyss did not mean I gave up, what I did was out of love not escape. I knew these souls had a far better chance of peace, and knowing that they’d be safe and that Jonah was alive, was enough to end the wars within me. I trusted God would deliver me from evil, I thought of home, and finally… I blacked out.