Facing The Reaper

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The next day, I made the walk over to Conner's, he was sitting out on the front doorstep and playing fetch with his dog when I reached the end of his drive. I nodded my head in his direction, wondering how much I should tell him. Out of all my friends there wasn't a single on that I would say couldn't be trusted, but Conner was more like a brother to me then a friend, and so far he seemed to consider the things I told him like they held some truth. He may not fully believe me, but he hadn't run away screaming mad man yet either.

He had looked up and spotted me and was already standing to meet me by the time I reached him. He tilted his head to gesture for me to follow him inside the house.

"Hey mum, Jude's here. Were just heading upstairs." Conner yelled towards the kitchen. I could hear his mum shuffling around the kitchen and tidying up, listening to the sound of clanking pots and pans.

"Mourning Jude, don't mind me boys." Was all that was called back as I followed Conner upstairs to his room. An echo of laughter filled the house as we made it to Conner's room. We went inside and sat down, him at his desk and me on the edge oh his bed. I looked around the room slowly, Conner wasn't mad on football like the rest of our friends, he was however mad on boxing. He had all the rocky movies and film posters lining his walls, along with all the heavyweight boxing champions. After his dad had died in the army, his mum had silently done everything in her power to make sure no one had any interest in following in his footsteps. Conner saw threw this ploy, but luckily for both of then, he had no interest in joining the army and enjoyed the boxing sport anyway.

I sat looking at these posters now, just buying myself some time as I thought of what to say. Conner sat leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands lightly clasped together in front of him as he waited to hear me out. He didn't look eager for more information, instead he just sat there in his normal cool and collected way, like he was a councillor sitting here with a client.

The bedroom window was open behind me, letting in a gentle breeze that ruffled the top of my hair. I could hear the low humming of a bumble bee not that far away. I stopped looking around the room and focused on a green stain Conner had on his carpet from where he got one of his gooey alien toys stuck there when he was younger and tried to melt it off the carpet before his mum found out. His plan failed, and he had a burn mark on his left hand as evidence of that day.

"I saw it- her again yesterday. She found me at my house, and she defiantly saw me this time." I looked up at my friend, but he didn't say a word. Instead he gave a slow nod and waited for me to continue what had happened.

"She sat in my room and she spoke to me. I don't know why she was able to see and here me but neither did she, she said that something had gone wrong. That we weren't supposed to see each other because it wasn't my time to die yet."

"So, she didn't come there to kill you, she came there because she couldn't and wanted to figure out why? What else is it that she said to you?"

I relayed our whole conversation back to Conner, what was said, how calm she had been. The way she told me exactly what she was, and how we concluded my possible impending doom.

Conner leaned back into his desk chair then, he rested one foot onto his knee and pick up a pen to twirl it between his fingers. A trick he often did when he was processing information. I swear that boy had a poker face that could fool millions. He was staring at his ceiling as he thought through his response. He then dropped his pen and spun around on his desk chair to face his computer. He logged on and bought up the internet search engine onto the home screen.

I stood to walk over to him and looked over his shoulder seeing that grim reaper was in his search engine. Then, just as I had told the girl yesterday, all that showed up were images and icons of the hooded figure holding his scythe. No cats, no butterflies, and no girls with long black hair and piercing red eyes. I let out a slow and disdained breath of air.