Darkly and Eternally Yours

Chapter 11

.... I am what you human's call, the Grim Reaper."

"What?" I didn't know whether I should laugh or be concerned. He was death? The Grim Reaper? That's even more delusional than what's been happening to me for the past few days. But, Adrian looked so intent, it was ridiculous.

"You do believe in God, don't you?" He asked, slightly tilting his head to the side.

"Of course." I replied.

"Then you should know that there is someone in charge of taking your soul from this world to the other world, for judgment. And that someone is me, I know it's hard to believe, but this is what I do." He said, persuasively. What. The. Hell. Did the Grim Reaper even exist? He was a fictional character. Trying to convince me that the Grimm Reaper was real, and it was him was like a mother trying to convince her seventeen-year-old daughter that the tooth fairy exists, and she was the tooth fairy. I was NOT taking bullshit.

"You're messing with me right? Look can you just be honest with me? No matter how gruesome the truth is, tell me." I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest. Still, trying to look for even the slightest bit of humor in his eyes, or voice. There was none.

"This IS as gruesome as it gets. I killed Mrs. Maury, I made the car crash happen, I killed your father with that gun, I took every soul away in this world as death. I take people's lives. It was me who took your father away from you when you were a kid!" He exclaimed, exasperated. He started pacing around the kitchen, "I took billions of people's souls, when their time on Earth ended, it has been me causing each and EVERYONE'S death, around you, away from you, EVERYWHERE." He said, pausing his movements, to study my expression. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. How did he know how my father died? What was he saying? What the hell? He seemed really serious, this was starting to creep me out, but I was still not gonna budge, I mean COME ON! Grim Reaper?

"And what? Next thing I know, you're gonna tell me that Lucifer the Devil, is your best friend." I said, rolling my eyes. He did hit a few buttons in my mind but I shoved them away, Come on, Kiara, this isn't real.

"So you don't believe me?" He asked, standing right in front of me, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

"Would you have? If you were in my place?" I asked back, raising my own eyebrow back at him.

He smirked, "Hmm...What would I have thought?" He mockingly asked himself, smirk still in place.

"I think I wouldn't have believed myself either, unless I saw it with my own eyes." He said a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

"Exactly, there's no proof." I shrugged, He gave me a long hard look, it made me feel like he was staring straight at my soul, like he knew the ins and outs, the dirty secrets held within. The fact that he was so serious about this, was kind of intimidating, I tasted curiosity in my mouth, but I wasn't ready to believe him just like that.

"Who said there's no proof?" Adrian smiled darkly and before I knew it, black smoke, as black as charcoal, just like the one I saw at the funeral enveloped us, trapping us. My eyes widened, what the hell was happening? I looked at Adrian, but his eyes were glued to the floor, concentrating hard on something. His face was so intense, like whatever he was concentrating on was destroying his brain cells. It felt like we were swirling, we were weightless, my mind felt slightly dizzy, but suddenly the black smoke started clearing out, revealing the surroundings. I stopped feeling dizzy as I slowly realized that we weren't in Adrian's kitchen anymore.

The place smelled like antiseptic, you could hear constant beeping simultaneously from various machines, the walls were so white, it hurt to look at them. There was a single white bed, in the middle of the room with an elderly woman in it. She looked like she was in a critical condition, tubes surrounding her wrinkled face, machines beeping around her, keeping her alive.

I looked back at where Adrian was standing; he wasn't wearing his normal clothes anymore. He was in that same black cloak that I had seen him wearing in the funeral and the crash.

"Adrian?" The cloak concealed his entire face, not a sliver of skin or any sign of humanity displayed.

He didn't reply, he started walking towards the old lady's bed. "This lady, Patricia Moore lived a pitiful life. She devoted her life to her children and before that to her father. She had to practically worship the ground her father walked on and obeyed everything he said, everything he did. She was married off to her husband when she was sixteen. The first few years of her marriage were practically heaven. She had a caring husband, they had two healthy kids. She didn't work, she was a housewife, their family income only came from her husband. Majority of her life was spent with her kids, the husband had no time. Unfortunately, for this woman, her husband died early, when the kids were only about three to five years old. He died of a brain stroke. I felt awfully dreadful and villainous when I took his soul away, knowing he had a little family to take care of; there were souls depending on him, caring for him. But, I had no choice, his time was up. I had to take him away." Adrian said, rotating all around the bed while he talked.

"Patricia was left alone, with two children and no incoming supply of money and so she did what she thought was the only option, she seduced a rich man and married him, for the sake of her children's future. All that man wanted was s*x from her. s*x, s*x and s*x. That was how her life was, agonizing, flavorless s*x, until her kids finally graduated. She divorced him after that, and asked her children to take her in, she had nowhere to go. But her kids were selfish, they didn't want her in their lives, they saw her as a slut, a disgrace of a mother. And dropped her off at a nursing home, alone. And now here she lay, in the mercy of my hands, sick and abandoned." He said, looking over her bed.

I didn't know what to say, I just stared at her. I didn't know what was happening around me, I considered pinching myself and convince myself that this was a dream. How was I here, what was even happening? How is Adrian...

I was so speechless; I asked Adrian the first question in my mind. "How do you know all of this?" I asked, trying to keep my legs firm to the ground.

"Before a person dies, a skin to skin contact with them, shows me everything they've done, every decision they made, the pain, the grievances, happiness, the sins they committed, the good deeds, they're all there, like a documentary," He said, his hand tucking out of the long black sleeve as he placed his hand on hers.

"When is she going to..." I drifted off, walking over to her bedside, my heart soaked in sympathy for this poor old woman. Granted, I didn't know her, but knowing the injustice that life had served her disheartened me, heavily.

"Tomorrow night." He replied. I stroked her hair, she had been through so much, I was still rattled and uncertain about everything but for the most part, I was grief-stricken for the woman. I didn't want her to end her life so miserable.

"Adrian, don't do it, her kids can be convinced to take her back, and she could still have a happy ending." I claimed, pleading him with my eyes. I couldn't see his face under the cloak, but I knew he smirked, "I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't." He said.

"It can, WE can make it work." I reasoned.

"We can't, this isn't my choice or yours, I know you're thinking 'what if she didn't die tomorrow, maybe her children would have come back for her' There are plenty of what ifs in this world, what if the train didn't hit the lady? Maybe she would have seen another day in her life, or what if the cars didn't hit Mrs. Maury? Life is full of what ifs and we can't anchor ourselves to it, we always make a decision, you can't cheat fate, even if that's death. When your time's up you die, exactly the way your fate, God has planned for you. That's always how it had been and always how it will be."

"So you'll kill her?" I asked, appalled. Could he really be that heartless? Was this all a joke? The more I stared at the lady, the more it dawned in me that this was real, this isn't a fairy tale, the grim reaper is not a myth, they are non-fictional, and he exists. I furrowed my eyebrows, a dull ache inside my skull, this was all was too much for me to take in.

"How do you know what happened to my dad?" I asked, my voice cautious, I tried to make sure it didn't come out weak.

"I was there that night, your father's time had come, it was time for him to leave, and he died how God intended for him to." He said somberness in his tone.

A tear escaped my eye, that monstrous night, the night that I had lost him, right before my eyes, the flash backs... I gripped the steel handle of the bed, tighter, willing the flash backs to stop. No no no. This isn't happening, please; tell me it's all a lie. Please.

I felt anger course through me, from Adrian's confession, here he was the man who took my father away from me, the only person who ever really loved me. Here he was, death, how I've loathed death, how I lost everything because of death, how much time I've spent crying over death. And here, death was standing in front of me. My body blazed in fury, in heartbreak.

"Did it feel good? To see me cry that night? All alone, desperately trying to shake him awake, screaming his name till I lost my voice? Did you smile even once, when you saw me in his funeral? As broken as a puppet? Did you enjoy it?" I asked, my tears vigorously streaming down, my voice coated with venom and disgust.

"I never felt happy about this, any of this. I never chose this life. You think I enjoy it? Do you really think I enjoy taking lives away from their loved ones and watch them grieve after that? I never wanted to do this. But I had no choice." He snapped. I could see I had hit a weak spot in him but I didn't care.

"I wish I could apologize to every single human on this Earth, But I can't, this is who I am." He said, and I could see his grey eyes from inside the cloak, they were cold, but at the same time vulnerable.

My mind went around in circles, suddenly everything was adding up,

"You said you handle your dad's business, what business is it?" I asked, taking a sip of the coke the waiter left at our table. "It's, uhh... just you know... trading."

Or when he said,

"No, your time on Earth is not up."

Or when he saw my dad's picture,

He was frozen in place, his body stiff with the look of terror still in his face. "I am so sorry."

The tattoo,

"Is it a tattoo?" I asked. "Yeah, it is, it's just a symbol." he replied looking uncomfortable. I inspected it coming closer, surprisingly, Adrian let me. It was peculiar, the shape was like flames but it had a pointed angle that made it look like a person wearing a cloak.

The black smoke, the disappearance, how he never denied it, when I accused him of being guilty it all came crashing back. The first time that I laid eyes on him in the bar, he was different, 'distinctive' was the word I used, mysterious until now as he stood in front of me, studying my expression.

I didn't know how to feel, what to do, what to say, I felt betrayed, I felt stupid, it felt like my entire world had been flipped upside down. I swallowed the bitter taste in my throat, and suddenly heard a movement outside the room, the door opened, revealing a nurse coming in.

"Don't worry, she can't see us, or hear us." He said, walking away from the bed.

"I wanna go home." I blurted out. I couldn't stay here in this sick, twisted place. I couldn't look at him, I wanted to scream at him, tell him he was demonic, sinister for taking my father, all these people away. I wanted to strike him, hurt him, and make him feel all that pain that he had caused. I wanted to scream at myself for being so oblivious; I wanted to break down on the floor. Why couldn't he just rip my heart out and crush it? It would've hurt so much lesser.

Here I was, falling everyday deeper and deeper into this deep crevasse of love for him. For death, for the Grim Reaper.

Adrian didn't say anything, the black smoke returned. I was too deep in the ocean of my emotions and thoughts, swimming around like sea creatures, to care about anything going on around me.

"Kiara." Adrian called, as he stood in front of me, the hood of his cloak down, revealing his face. I couldn't look at him, it hurt too much.

"I'm...really sorry." He apologized, his voice as melancholy as it could ever get, coated in regret and hurt. He opened his mouth again to say something but he stopped himself. Just when I gathered the courage and raised my head, to properly look at him, he was gone like a ghost. I was in front of the door to my house. I looked around the surroundings; this really was my house right? I quickly opened the door and was so relieved to see the familiar surroundings of my home again.

I was even more ecstatic when I saw Dianna curled up in the couch, reading a fashion magazine. It felt like I hadn't seen her in years. I dashed towards her, like a child meeting their parents for the first time, and hugged her so tight, she could barely breath.

"Hey, easy there, coffee's gonna spill." She exclaimed, but I didn't care, I burst into tears, I couldn't control it anymore. It was too overwhelming.

Dianna hugged me back, "Hey, hey, hey... its okay, I've got you." She assured holding me against her, brushing her fingers through my hair, to soothe me as I sobbed into her shoulder. I couldn't utter coherent words, and I was glad, she didn't ask me to talk. I just kept crying, I was a mess. Why? Why was it always me? I was falling in love, what the hell happened?