Death to Life

Chapter 1

<For all my followers, please please read this and let me know what you think! I have a lot of it written already but I stopped writing it for a while. I'd love to finish the story, but I need some input/feedback. Thanks so much!If this seems interesting to you, I'll keep adding more chapters.>

Only a moment passed between my life and my death. After a quick flash of darkness, I opened my eyes to see a stark white room, the only bit of color being the brown of the bench I was lying on. The bench looked exactly like the bench I had been sitting on in the realm of the living, the one overlooking my uncle's backyard where I had been watching his golden retriever puppies frolic. I remembered this, I remembered passing out, I remembered the blackness, and then I remembered nothing else.
But even as I recall these things, they begin to fade from my memory. All I'm left with is the realization that death isn't as dark as I thought it would be. Instead of darkness, there is only white light surrounding me. I stand up and look around, making a slow circle of the room. By the time I get the full way around, the bench is no longer there. In its place is a mirror. I approach it tentatively, not knowing how I look in death.
I'm plain. Plainer than I was in life. My eyes are grey and sunken, my skin starkly white. My hair is the same bland grey as my eyes, hanging in gentle strands around my face, in a style that can only be described as nondescript. I'm not the girl I was, I'm merely the picture of a corpse in every badly written vampire novel. The longer I stare, the worse it seems. I want to scream, and tear at my hair and beg it to turn back to its long golden curls, to gouge my eyes until they become the vibrant green I've always taken for granted, but I cannot move my hands. They, like the rest of me, have become a snapshot, a picture of the barest remnant of what might be called a soul. I am nothing but a grey ghost, with nothing to set me apart from the rest of the dead except the dying blood in my fingertips. As soon as I finish what has surely been almost an out-of-body scan of myself, I realize what has happened. There is blood in my fingertips, and it's not draining out of me, but rather flowing into me. My fingers begin moving of their own accord, lifting upward as if playing imaginary piano keys. Just as they reach the top of my head, the rest of me begins moving all at once. I am spinning around, I am floating, I am flying through a landscape of millions of colors, all of which are far brighter and more intense than anything in the living world. The colors rush over me and through me, and I feel myself come to life among the world of the dead.
As quickly as it began, it ends, and I am left kneeling on steps before a throne. In front of the throne stands a tall woman whose bearing leaves no doubt to her regal standing. Her long white dress flows in a train, stopping only inches in front of my hands. She doesn't speak, but I still know what I need to do. I reach my hand out, and clasp the end of her train, but instead of fabric I am met with this queen's long gentle fingers. She takes my hand in hers and stands, pulling me up from my knees.
"Child, how does it feel to know you are one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met?"
I glance at her to see if she's kidding, but her face is angled away from me just enough so that I cannot see her expressions. "Me? Are you sure you have the right person?"
"Yes, child. I picked you, out of all the humans on earth."
"For what?" Without meaning to, the slightest bit of sarcasm has crept into my voice. Did this lady ever think I maybe didn't want to be picked? That maybe I wanted to stay alive and enjoy life with my uncle and his puppies and my boyfriend and my best friend and homemade cookies?
"I did think of that yes, child. I know you had a life up there, and it was good. That's part of what makes you so extraordinary. You're able to see the good in everyone." Her whispery voice is putting me on edge. I'm sure not seeing the good in her.
She turns to face me. Her face is the loveliest I have ever seen, motherly and cold, distant and intent all at the same time. Her eyes alone hold mysteries I can't even imagine.
I shake my head to try and remove myself from her spell. She's revealing herself to me, getting in my head, but I'm not having it. She sighs and looks at me for just a second longer, looking at me in a way that says she knows everything about me. She laughs. "Of course I do, child. I know everything about everyone. And that's once again why I chose you."
"Chose. Me. For What?" I spit the words at her, not content with her half-truths and evasions. She simply laughs.
"Oh child, I thought you were brighter than that. That's why I chose you to die."