"There is another...."

A sourceless whisper echoed around me, bringing with it a deep chill. As the words reached me I set down my book, looking around the crowded tavern. The patrons seemed oblivious, though the tables close by shivered. They drew their clothes tighter, hunching thier shoulders. It was as though they could feel the grave beckoning, though they did not realise.

I gulped down what was left of my drink, placing the empty mug on the table. Quietly I made my way towards the stairs, as people looked up at me, before glancing away. They knew of me, my exploits teaching far and wide. But it did not make me welcome. Conversations quietened as I passed, words killed by the thought of my patron.

I paid them little mind. I had a duty, one I would not shy away from. My patron had my utmost trust and loyalty. Whatever they asked, I would do. Even thought it marked me as different, and one that all would be unconsciously wary of.

Floorboards creaked as I made my way to the room I had hired. It was small but functional, a single bed set against one wall. At its foot was a chest, currently holding my pack. A small table and chair finished its furniture, arranged beneath an open window.

I laid down on the bed, crossing my arms over my chest. I slowed my breathing, focusing on just letting it in and out. My awareness of the room drew in, sounds being lost, sights ignored. My breath was all there was, even as it slowed further. A creeping cold flowed over my limbs, a familiar sensation. It seized my chest, chilling further. My breaths came even slower, until finally they stopped.

"Champion, I require your services once more."

I opened my eyes, seeing a forest around me. It was devoid of colour, as these places always were. I caught glimpses of animals racing away, primal instincts making them flee. A shadow beside me bulged upwards, shaping into a floating ragged figure. I bowed my head, speaking in a quiet tone. "Who cuts short fate now?"

Death hovered through the forest, unspoken words bidding me to follow. I did as asked, seeing a worn path leading through the trees. Before us a tower rose, worn stones reclaimed from their decay. "The Dark Witch of Dazu resides here. She sacrifices the innocent in the name of her unholy masters, feeding their souls in return for power."

As if called, the door to the tower open. From within came a new person, coloured in this greyscale world. She wore a dress of red, with a lace pattern of flames set around her neck. A brown leather belt was wrapped around her waist, holding a series of bags, with a thin wooden wand stuck inside. Her blonde hair hung loosely around her shoulders, with a pointed black hat set atop. I took in her close set eyes, and button nose. Her face would be burned into my thoughts, until such time as she fell.

Death out a spectral hand on my shoulder, a surprising source of warmth. "Send her to me, that she might receive that which she deserves."

I nodded, bowing my head once more. "I will not fail you."

"I know. Now breathe."

Suddenly I took in a great gulp of air, my lungs burning. The forest vanished, as I sat up on my bed. My rested heart beat rapidly, working to fight against the chill of the grave that always came.

I had a new villain. A witch, with power of infernal origin. I would not celebrate her demise, but I would send her there nonetheless. This was my duty, as the Reapers Touch. The only hero chosen by Death.

It’s always the same. First, there is a slight, yet sharp sense of awareness that spreads from the head to the spine, that makes the legs tense, and the fists clench, gearing up for a punch that will never come.  It is not unlike the sensation of being watched, especially when your eyes do not, or rather cannot meet those that are already fixed on the back of your skull.

Besides; even if you were to turn your head, there would be nothing there to meet your gaze.

The feeling continues. It sinks into your palms, settles into your shoulders, and you feel yourself rising, up from the stool, away from the bar and the feel of a glass in your fingers.

‘Hey!’ A voice cuts in, but it’s not enough to make you stumble. And dimly, as the voice rants on about how they’re not a charity and you better think twice before daring to scamper off into the night, your fingers remember the feel of your wallet, and how to shift through the coins inside, to draw them out with a shimmer of silver. They rest on your palm for a moment, miniature moons, fallen from the sky, and then you place them, oh-so-gently against the glass you left behind. There’s something satisfying about the clink they produce and how the cold presence of the metal vanishes from your skin; and then you’ve moving, leaving the voice and your money behind.

Beneath both the shadows of people and the flare of electrical lights, you wind your way between tables, clamber over steps, banishing the feel of the wooden banister the hand as soon as you meet the dark, drifting space of the night air moments later.

You turn right, and the awareness fades. Turn left and it sharpens.

That’s all it takes to make you walk, to pace beneath street lights that almost, but do not quite flicker as you pass. If people were to stop, to stare a little longer than the seconds it takes to pass you by, they might notice the way your shape jolts and moves a little too fast, from one shadow to the next. Especially when you pass hedges and panes of glass, the easy-to-see habitat of cobwebs and the tiny deaths they entrap. It’s easy to tug on the energy that spills over from the cessation of lives here, the snap of electricity that fills your skin and that makes you a little faster than anything that still has the right to breathe.

And time flies by sooner than it should as a result, enough for minutes to pass instead of the hours it should take to reach the place that makes your scalp prickle and your sense sing, to tell you here, here, before anymore go there,to the place that is not yet ready for them.

But this place, this place you have arrived to, is tall and cumbersome, a house with four stories and blackened beams that criss-cross over white walls. A place for someone richer than you, except when it comes to time; and the proof of that is in their groaning door that falls open with a simple push from your palm. Locks, and other time-wasting measures do not work for someonewho has altered death’s timetable, enough to push their own appointment up a few decades.   

You walk and feel the crackle of energy as you pass various items; a jolt past the table where a solicitor choked on soup filled with something other than pepper and meat; a snap where someone stumbled and fell, the knife rising and falling along the curve of their chest as they struggled to breathe. These deaths are bigger than the ones before, though many, you know, would argue that they are still small. Small in comparison to others.It does not matter.

They were still meant to travel on a little longer.

‘Who are you?!’Another voice cuts into you, for the second time tonight. You stare at the mouth that moves, at the eyes that glare. At the shoulders that square, as the figure stands and starts to move.

But you are faster, and the butter knife that was on the table is already in your hand; because that’s how death works. Using anything and everything in the immediate environment as a catalyst. For the surgeon a few hours ago, it was a cracked petri dish, the broke edge as jagged as a shark’s tooth; but for this person here it is a butter knife, blunted both by farmhouse bread and margarine.

The figure flails as you press in, panicked when their arms are too weak to push you back, and even more so when the hand that grasps for a candle cannot force you hair or clothes to catch aflame. The orange light runsoff and away from you, in a waterfall of fiery colour, but it cannot catch holdof you, not when it is not yet your time.

‘No, No!’

Last words, soon whispers, and then even those cease. You pause, look curiously at the blood on the knife. It’s good blood, strong blood. It should have carried the person beneath you through many more years. But if it had, itwould have carried away others, others who protested having the wills of theirloved ones altered in ways that made no sense, who cried out for answers overlost homes and unfulfilled insurance pay-outs. You can feel their stories in the air, and the endings that they were given.

Yes, you know there are others out there, who make bigger waves, cause more deaths. But you are here for the stragglers, the ones who fall through the paperwork, never to return.

You go back out into the night. You walk and walk under you find a river, or a washroom, or any kind of water. Once, one night, it was a puddle.You gaze down at your face. Try to spy more lines, more wrinkles under thebrow. But there is nothing new enough to worry you

.But you still must pay the toll. So you raise the knife. Plunge it down. And the blood clinging to its surface peels away, your fingers already diving in, through the threads of red and brown, to pull energy through and mould it like clay. You whisper to it of the girl who came to claim her fortune and how her breath was divided from her lungs with a blade; and of a solicitor who was loyal enough to his clients to end up choking on soup that stained his insides, all because he tried to bargain for a truth that would help them and doom himself.

The red and brown within the water shifts, slips fish-like into a silvery gleam, the colour you have sometimes imagined to be that of the souls you speak of. You lift your hand from the water, carefully. And there, perched between finger and thumb are two coins, bright as the moon, and small enough to roll up inside your fist. Perhaps you will use it to pay for another drink. Maybe bless another bartender with a just a little bit more time to their life, reallocating the hours stolen from another, all to help correct a balance you can still mostly guess at.

And if Death itself minds? Well. They have yet to speak to you about it.

Still…

‘Death?’ you ask the air, the sky, and the coins in your hand. ‘Death?’ you ask again, without knowing where to look, knowing there is no mouth ready to answer you. ‘Am I doing the right thing? Do you mind it when I give others the coins? I…’

But you trail off. Because you were warned once, not to bargain with Death. Serve them, yes. Speak? Well, if you must. But to understand it? To have an actual conversation? No, that is beyond any and all means of the living.

And that is what you must do. Live. And trust that you have not already turned against Death’s judgment.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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