VALDUGGERY - catch me when I fall

Chapter Eight - Open Your Eyes

Authors Note - oh...wow! Ok so I'm sorry about the wait guys! I started back at school though...YIKES! Listening to pierce the veil REEEEALLY helps though! Damn our school bus driver! He completely forgot about picking my year up and we had to walk across town in the afternoon sun to get to the fields! Oh yeah, and my teacher said we were representing our school so we had to keep blazers and jumpers on...MELTING! I'M MELTING! So, before i go babbling off again... In the last chapter....that dead man who was holding Valkarie's hand?.... Did anyone else guess that it was Kenspeckle?!?!? No? Shame... I might be the ONLY Valduggery writer that has killed off Kenspeckle! Sorry about that! But admit it, him holding her hand was quite touching! I've included it in the recap below so take a look people! Does everyones friends fight like crazy? Or is it just mine? Some of my friends are having MAJOR b**** fights and I'm in the middle! Shot guns, that is the answer indeed! God I want to gossip about it, no. No I won't. I WILL BE STRONG!!! Weeeeell..... Ok ask me on message and I'll spill with different names! Thank you so much for reading this! 204 last time I checked! The last chapter wasn't really a chapter, more a thank you note for everything you've all done for me! Read it! Shout outs at the end darlings! Love you all!

Finally it reached it's ultimately desired destination, neither the smell of blood or the sight of the girl fazed it. Some of the dead stood watching, closest was a man of both impeccable age and wisdom, his hair was stuck up in white clumps, blood had soaked the front of his shirt as he stood by the girl grasping her hand in his. He made no movement to stop it,the dead knew better then to argue, fates worse than this could be all too easily arranged.

Death stepped forward. All too ready to claim this girls life... But then...

Curiosity was not a normal, or even possible emotion for Death to experience. In fact with all the souls worldwide to be claimed, it had no time to contemplate such things, let alone experience them. Some people had an irrational belief that your life up to that point would flash suddenly before their eyes upon the brink of death. However, it wasn't irrational in the slightest. Before claiming your soul, Death looks through your life, deciding on wether or not to take it for itself.

Death had seen many lives, none of them had moved it. Not the loves or heartbreaks, daring deeds or desperation to turn it all around had no effect on it. Fates people would never see, people they'd never meet, nothing mattered. But... It had been centuries since Death had laid no eyes on such an interesting fate. There was fear too, certainly, but an end that would change so much. No, that was impossible, completely a work of fiction, yet so it made everything around Death seem sceptically unreal.

If he was human, or some kind if fictional character, its hand would have been wavering over her body, ready to continue wavering at the height of suspense with an air if predictable annoyance. Predictable being how readers of such a story would already have noticed how the book was taking a noticeable turn for a cliffhanger. Such a well known yet admirable end was usually expected with a character such as Death.

Finally Death had its result, what to do.

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SKULDUGGERY

Chapter Eight

Open Your Eyes

Valkarie lies on the hospital bed, scratchy blue cover pulled up to her chest, snowy white pillow fluffed.

Skulduggery sits beside her, hat on the plastic hospital table beside him, suit creased, tie undone, hands on his head. Desperate, broken.

"It's been seven days" he thinks dully. Nye predicts a full recovery, something of a miracle, one moment her heart had stopped, the next she was back. Almost. The initial shock and immediate pain induced a coma, no one knows how long she will be asleep. Days, moths, forever? He had tried everything, holding her pale hand, talking to her for hours on end, telling her again and again how he loved her. They had all tried, Ghastly, Skulduggery, echo Gordon had been smuggled in at one point as things looked desperate. Fletcher visited too, but the day Valkarie had been brought in he had disappeared, no calls, the only evidence that he came here was the bouquets of flowers that appeared in the dead of night by Valkarie's side.