Side A: Beginning

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Strawberry
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Side A: Beginning

Post by Strawberry »

“Normally I don't get out of bed for anything less than mass pandemonium and calamity.” I told him once.

I suppose this would be a good reason to get out of bed, wouldn’t it?

Maybe I would if my legs didn’t feel so heavy.

My soul is a precarious thing, cobbled together by excess bits and scrounged up scraps. To intertwine itself with another was an easy matter. Unknotting it after though… that was a different story.

She told me to kill him and that’s what I tried to do…

Thanks, I hate it.

Never have I lost control so badly. Thankfully for us both, he is the better swordsman.

My self imposed eternal damnation would have made the Nine Hells look like child’s play in comparison had I killed him.

You’re only going to hurt him in the end.

Maybe. Maybe…

But not before he stabbed me with that accursed blade. You know, I’ve been stabbed… more times than I can count, but never with something that felt like that. It ripped me from the dark like the flip of a light switch and as it sundered flesh and soul alike, his face was my clarity. I would have reached for him if only my limbs didn’t feel like cement. Instead, I fell down, down, down until the bridge caught me in its not-so-soft embrace.

Ow.

It gets a little hazy from there. I felt a brief shock to my system as Angela tried her best to revive me. Vague weight from the various items that Caleb had brought along to try and keep me going in the event that worse came to worst. In this case, it did… and then some.

I could feel it calling to me, the black of the Abyss. An insurance policy more than anything really, but no matter the good that I do in my life, this will be my home when the final end comes to claim me.

But wait… how would that work…

My souldebt had been forged by the Lord of Destruction himself well before I even knew how to walk. It mounted throughout my life until I was given a shot at freedom. The Paragons “bought” my debt, how I don’t know. But they as good as owned me, for all intents and purposes. So if they carried my debt and they were now gone… did that mean I was free?

Or did that mean I was dead?

Dead-dead, even. Not car accident dead or volcano incident dead or botched convenience store robbery dead.

Dead-dead.

Shit.

It was getting cold, why was it getting cold?

Was this where I was supposed to see the light at the end of the tunnel or have an out of body experience where I watched my friends and loved ones try futilely to bring me back? Would there be pearly gates or would there be the flames of damnation awaiting me?

You know, I always thought I had all the answers.

How wrong was I?

The soft, distant tinkling of a familiar lullaby reached for me, like some echo of a memory from my childhood. It was distorted, like I was hearing it through water or maybe the source was broken in some way. It would be suiting, wouldn’t it. Or maybe this was my brain shutting down. I read somewhere that the brain is the last thing to shut down when you die. I couldn’t even feel Caleb’s hands on me anymore. That must have been it.

I was dead.

Fuck.

I didn’t even get the lifetime montage.

The movies got it all wrong.

Perhaps if I just relaxed and let it happen it would be over sooner than I thought. The lullaby was a soothing thing and as it began to repeat a second time, I felt a pull. If I could have felt my body, I would say that it came from just behind my navel, like a fishing hook with a firm grip reeling me in.

“Go on, Kitten.” A voice, my mother’s voice. No face, just the voice. You know, for all of the issues our relationship has and had, I would have liked to see her in the moment. She may not have brought me into the world herself, but there was something soothing about the thought of her being there to say goodbye when I left it.

Another tug, another pull, slow and steady. The lullaby wound down and to my surprise started a third time.

“Five more minutes…” It was getting harder to move, to think, to do anything really.

Now see, normally when this happened… and trust me, it’s happened a few times, when I would die, I would find myself somewhere in Purgatory. The Powers That Be would pull me out of there, patch me up, and give me time to mend and reform a bond with myself. Then they would send me on my way as good as new. This felt a little like that only… mmm, a little different.

Maybe I wasn’t quite there yet.

Dying is a weird process, you know?

It felt like falling only… right when I expected my soul to hit rock bottom, I felt a hard jerk in the opposite direction. Spiritual whiplash? Something like that.

As the third round of the lullaby wound down and time seemed to run out for those gathered around my body, I felt like I ran into a wall as my spirit was rejoined with my mortally wounded body. All I could do was groan.

Wait… does that make me a zombie?

Don't question it, Karma. You're alive. Consider it... skipping the queue or something.

Don't question it.
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