My Soul to Reap (Archived)

Don't Fear The Reaper

    Everything around me was black. I wasn't actually sure how it happened. One moment I had been able to see and then the next I was here, wherever here was. It felt like a void, like nothing was around me at all. Logically I knew there was still a fight going on, but the only thing I could hear was a faint whistling and an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. And then I understood. I was falling.

Somewhere above me something gleamed, catching in a light that wasn't actually there. I felt like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Except there had been no white rabbit for me. The blackness stretched out around me, an now that I knew I was falling I could feel the fabric of my dress getting pulled up around me. I must have been on my back, because there was no other way I could be looking straight up. If I was even looking up at all. For all I knew that was an illusion, and I was really looking down. I didn't feel any of the panic I should have. I didn't feel anything at all, like my mind was a blank slate ready to be written on.

After a while, something else became visible. It wasn't quite a light, more like points of white stretching across the darkness. I must have been moving quickly, because as soon as I'd formed those thought I saw what they were. Strings, like a misshaped spiders web. They each shone with their own light,crossing each other a random times but always on a straight path. In seconds they were right below me, and I was sure the tension they held would tear me apart. But instead I landed, suspended in the darkness, like on a soft bed. I laid still, unsure what else to do.

I ran a hand carefully along one of the strings. It wasn't quite white, in fact, none of them were. They each glittered with their own combination of colours, like opals. That's what I would have thought they were, if it weren't for the fact they felt much too soft to be stones. I followed the thread around my body, sitting up and watching as it extended into the darkness beside me. None of them moved, there was no reverberation from when I landed. I stared curiously at the thread, somehow knowing that it should mean something to me.

I laid back down, staring above me and hoping to see something. The strange lights were still there, clustered unevenly together. They must have been falling too, I thought. Unless they were on a ceiling, too far away to see. I reached out my hands at either side of me, feeling compelled to run my hands along the threads. They hummed under my touch, like they were coming alive. The lights got bigger, seemed closer. I still couldn't tell what they were. Around me the threads started to move, and I tried to sit up. But I found they'd trapped my hands, and that they had gone still. I couldn't move.

I began to panic, a feeling I should have had from the start. No amount of pulling or struggling helped, and the threads felt like they were going to cut my wrists. I looked up helplessly, finally able to make out the lights. They weren't light at all, just reflecting the light of the threads. Small shards of something golden orange. They looked sharp, and I doubted they would be as forgiving as the strings I was lying on.

The first piece landed on my stomach, piercing through the fabric. It lodged there, and even though there was no blood it hurt worse than anything that I'd ever felt. And the others rained down soon after. A scream ripped through my throat as my body was struck with what felt like knives, burying themselves into my flesh. I struggled against the threads and felt warm blood trickle down my wrists, dropping into the abyss below. One grazed by cheek and continued falling, while another pierced my leg.

It only lasted seconds but the assault was excruciating. There was a small break, a split second without pain, before I saw one final shard falling. It landed in my eye and I screamed, trying to move my hands to get it out. But I wasn't able to, and I could only scream until I was hoarse. I looked to the side, turning my head and with my good eye trying to see if I was moving the threads at all. All I could see was the same unmoving threads, the one I had been following earlier deepening in colour like it was sucking up my blood.