The Reaper's Token

Violet's Diary Gives Me Nightmares

My nightmare opened inside of Good Life. It was eerily quiet and empty, not that we usually had a large crowd in Produce, but still - something wasn't right. The entire store seemed vacant - it utterly lacked customers, voices, squeaky cartwheels, cash registers clanging, or footsteps.

I turned around to face the counters and not another living soul was in sight. For a brief moment, I believed that everything about being dead must have been some messed-up hallucination or dream. I briefly believed that I had never left the store and had never gotten shot.

I thought maybe all I had to do was walk out of those sliding glass doors and I would actually be able to go home. Smiling, I turned around to collect a few oranges. It was an incredible feeling ... and short-lived. An old man, tall and hunched over in a cloak, stood between me and the fruit.

"Ah... can I help you?" I asked.

"Perhaps." The old man rasped.

His eyes looked at me knowingly as he leaned on a withered, gnarled stick.

"The Eventide is near..." He whispered.

My heart sunk into my stomach as I recollected the conversation from the air vent. Death was real again.

"Our time grows short. You have two days before the final tide. Then the prophecy will reach its fulfillment."

A violent wind curled around us as if a heavy storm was washing into Good Mart.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Time is against us." The old man called out to me as lightning flashed and thunder rolled. "The dead have waited ages upon ages for this chance... to Turn the Tide." Another bright crack of lightning and thunder boomed and shook the building. A hiss of rasping words surrounded me as they all mixed together to create one voice.

"Promised to a traitors keep,

To this, the Blade of Life must drink.

Carried beyond doors of death,

Life's token hangs by mere breath.

If the servant can free the slave

Then the debt of Life will be re-payed."

Between forces of Life and Death, they shall reap,

Sacrifice, Victory, or Eternal Sleep.

The rasping tone echoed in my mind as the storm ripped and whirled me up and away from Good Mart and the cryptic old man in the produce section. Suddenly the scene of my dream changed, and I was looking out onto a playground shrouded in mist.

I watched two kids playing on monkey bars. The girl made her way quickly and easily across the yellow bars, but as she tried to make it to the landing, she began struggling. She wasn't tall enough to reach the platform; it was too far away and too high up to dropdown.

"Help me," she said to the other child.

The other child crouched on top of the monkey bars. As he reached for her hands, his expression slowly changed. Instead of reaching for her wrists or hands, he began to peel her fingers off the bars one by one.

"Xavier, stop!" She yelled.

Her wide green eyes looked up in horror as she fought to hold on to the bars.

"Xavier! Nooo!!!" She screamed.

An eager, almost gleeful look had spread across his evil face, and a shudder wracked my body.