Death's Apprentice

11

The cold mocking eyes of a child's drawing stared at me, the yellow sending a chill down my spine. While it was recognizable as a person, the lines were shaky and so many were half erased that I couldn't tell if it was meant to be angel or demon or mortal.

"Stop moving," Death pulled the last of the bandages off. "We need to fix these."

"You could have done it while I was out."

"Souls aren't going to reap themselves, kid. I called Lilith and asked her to put the bandages on you. It might have actually been Lucifer, but I'm fifty percent sure it wasn't."

"Wha-" As I started talking, wisps of light came out of my mouth. They gathered together in Death's palm to form a flickering flame. It reflected in his eyes as he studied it.

"Hold this." He pushed it into my hands, leaving me to stare at it, and walked out of the room. Wind blew as he returned and he dropped a pile of books on the floor. He flipped through book after book, giving each one a second before tossing it over his shoulder.

Bound in cracked leather and covered in a red substance, which I hoped was Kool-Aid, the last book in the pile was the largest, combining the size of an oversized atlas with the thickness of a dictionary. Smoke and ash billowed from its pages as Death opened the cover and flipped through the massive book.

"So are you going to explain what this is or are you going to try to tell me I don't need to know?"

"That's your soul core, soul heart, vessel of your immortal being, sprout of life, flame of existence, record of your deeds."

"You know none of that explains anything, right?"

"You know how your heart pumps blood through your body when your alive? That little fire does something similar. It pours energy into the rest of your soul. If anything happens to this thing, you cease to exist."

My mouth went dry. "Why is it outside my body?"

"Kinda hard to look at it without pulling it out, unless you'd rather have had me destroy the rest of you to get to it?" He kept flipping through his book before carefully placing it aside, still open. He took the fire from my hands and sat it on the book, before slamming the book shut.

I jumped, heart racing. When I didn't immediately disappear, I looked at Death. He rolled his eyes and held his hand over the book. A green glow emitted from it and a new, smaller book appeared ontop. Death picked it up and tucked it inside his cloak.

"I should have done that earlier." He waved his hand, sending the books flying back to wherever he had gotten them.

"What exactly did you do?"

"I now officially own your soul. Though this is really a technicality since you're already my apprentice. Now let's see what we can do about those cuts."

I sighed. He wasn't giving me a straight answer and while I was curious why, I was scared I wouldn't like the answer. Death pulled off one of his gloves and held his hand an inch above my skin, causing the cuts to quickly mend.

"Before you ask, because I know you're going to, death aura. Normally it kills people, but you're already dead so it heals you."

"So if I'm dead, and if I eat poison..."

"You'll get sick and you'll hate yourself for the next week. Just ask any of the people who gave pets poison. Are you hungry?"

"Are you going to poison me?"

"I told you, it would be a waste of good poison. I was thinking more along the lines of mac and cheese."

I nodded and laid down. "I'm going to lay here and try to take a ten minute nap."