Light. Blinding light. My eyes snapped shut to avoid the harshness. An oddly heavy type of silence met my ears. It was like the type of silence I would find, when I was a child, sitting on the bottom of our swimming pool. Panic started seeping into my core as my breathing quickened. Slowly the heaviness lifted and a soft buzzing filled the space.
"Ah, you're awake." Said a muffled, deep and raspy voice. The quality was that of a lifetime smoker, yet it was almost as if it was a faint whisper of its former glory. I turned my head in the direction of the sound and cracked open an eye. A hooded figure stood to my left seeming more shadow-like in the relentless influx of light.
"Where am I?" I croaked out. My voice had that same faint whisper, as if it was a memory echoing in the back of my mind.
"You are in, what you humans refer to as, limbo. Neither living nor dead."
Confusion swirled as I tried to recall the circumstances that led me here, but everything was a blur, as if looking through a waterfall, distorted and disjointed.
"Who are you? What are you?"
The hooded figure crept closer ignoring my questions and I knew there was no going back.
"Callie Daniels, you have a choice to make."
"A choice? As in if I go to heaven or hell?" Nothing was making sense. If I was in limbo between life and death, why would I be given a choice rather than standing outside those infamous pearly gates awaiting judgment by the big man upstairs?
The hooded figure rasped out a chilling laugh and replied, "No Callie, I am giving you the choice between eternal life or death. I can give you back the life which you lost, but it comes at a price." His tone was not harsh or menacing but calmly business like, and yet it still sent a current of chills goosepimpling down my skin from my head to my toes.
A door opened and in walked two men dragging something between them. Both were menacing in size and stature. One had beautifully bronzed skin and deep set eyes with ebony hair in a buzzed style cut I would associate with a person in the military.
The other was paler, with skin like alabaster and his dark brown hair had that same buzzed cut to the sides and back and yet the top of his hair was slightly shaggy and swooped over his eyes like a shield. As they approached a feeling of dread coiled in my stomach. They callously dropped what they were dragging into a heap on the stark white floor.
A person! That is a person! My mind screamed at me, and I gasped as I realized I knew the person. BRIAN! My boyfriend of two years. I glanced up at the men confused, but their cold unattached stares gave away nothing. Why would they have Brian? What is going on here?
I scampered over to Brian's unconscious form as tears welled in my eyes. "Brian! Brian can you hear me? Please don't be dead! Please!" Suddenly cool and toned arms snaked around my waist and gently pried me away from Brian's lifeless body.
Vicious sobs racked my body and the arms tightened as if silently trying to comfort me and infuse me with strength. Why this person or thing was being kind to me I had no clue. It was as if they could feel my pain and understood more than I could ever comprehend.
"Like I said before Callie, you have a choice to make. I can give you back the life that was taken from you but, there is a price. You will have to determine if the price is worth it, or if your demise in the human world is a far greater sacrifice."
The hooded figure moved silently through the room, ghosting closer to where Brian laid hapless on the ground. I struggled against my captor's hold but it was no use. Their arms tightened and cool lips faintly brushed my earlobe as he spoke in a soft whisper, "Don't fight, it will only be harder if you fight." My body stilled instantly at his words. While my mind deemed his words a threat, something far deeper acknowledged it as a warning.
"Who are you? What do you want from us?" My voice was tight and my throat ached from sobbing. Desperation poured from my veins like blood and I knew the hooded figure, could sense it, expected it, craved it even. Something inside me knew he wanted me desperate, needed me to be so desperate that I couldn't form a coherent thought. And I was playing right into his cloaked hands.
He knelt down beside Brian and examined him as if he was something to be discarded, a piece of trash mixed in with priceless artifacts. Poking him and tsk, tsk, tsking as if to say, 'This is not the filet mignon I ordered but more like subpar ground round.'
He turned his attention back towards me and my captor gave me what felt like a reassuring squeeze. I knew I needed to focus on the man before me but my eyes and thoughts kept cutting back to Brian. "Well, Callie Daniels, are you ready to decide?"
Again confusion took dominate point in my brain. "Decide? Decide what? Seriously, what are you even asking?"
I was on the verge of hyperventilation when the hooded figure spoke again, "You may choose to either take back your own mortal life. Upon making this choice, that of saving your life, you forfeit the life of one Brian McDougal and, upon the future termination of your human life, your soul will forever reside in the fiery depths of hell for it shall be deemed tainted."
"Or you may decide to keep your soul pure and forfeit your life, thus terminating the life of Mr. McDougal as collateral damage to the happenstance in the mortal realm that landed you here."
I opened my mouth to protest, but the hooded figure paid me no mind and continued on with his oration.
"The final choice available is for you to sign your soul over to us, forfeiting your mortal life, and be drafted into our agency as a new being of your choosing. Carrying out the duties set before you swiftly and without question, or prejudice. The soul of one Brian McDougal will be held in limbo as collateral for the favor of reinstating his life and as insurance that your commitment and alliegence is to the agency. Be advised Miss. Daniels, that if you select this option and should you fail at any of your future duties the soul of one Brian McDougal will be penalized and sent to dwell in eternal damnation and his life shall be deemed forfeit."
"Choose wisely Miss. Daniels, as what is done can not be undone."
