Grim Reaper on Speed Dial

Six Was The One To Be Afraid Of

Osin P.O.V (7 years ago)

Da hands me Winnifred who's crying non-stop. If she doesn't shut up I don't know what lengths I'll be pushed to but the second she settles in my arms she quiets. Ma smiles at me like we're sharing a secret and I find myself smiling back, it's the first time I've smiled since we got here, we've been in Cicadia a week and they've already forced us into tiny rooms and c**k and bull rules. Half of my head is freezing in this stupid place and my neck itches where my collar chafes it. Ma's hair is all gone, and so is Da's. I don't like it. Da works with Faolans muscles as they're hurting him, Ma is painting some sort of Icey landscape. Winnifred stares up at me, barely a month old but the little thing is staring at me like I'm doing something wrong and she's going to scold me. I adjust my hold but she still doesn't stop staring at me.

"Maaa! She's gonna eat my soul!" I say trying to set her back in her arms. She takes Winnie laughing.

"Ai she's just hungry"

"Fer my soul, You sure she's yours?" I ask curiously poking her nose. Ma snorts.

"You accusing me of something?"

"Oh, I'd like to hear this" Da chimes in amused.

"Osin you'll start a war now" Faolan groans.

"No it's just she's creepy, you sure she's not a wee little-"

"I'm sure child, now hush before you make her wail like one. She just needs milk" Ma cuts me off with a smile. I huff and go over to Faolan and start tracing his scars. He looks at me still scared. We almost didn't make it into Cicadia. I feel mischief rising in my veins.

"Faolan are you still afraid of clowns?" I ask. He shudders in affirmation. "And the soulless?" He glares at me.

"What's your point, you finally admitting to being one?" he asks.

"Never, But I am admitting to being better than Batman the defeater of clowns, I am Lucifer! I am the commander of demons and clowns. They fear me! I can defeat all of them, I will defeat all of them. "

"But isn't Lucifer a boy?" Faolan retorts. I scoff. I pause.

"I am an archangel I can be what I want ya lump."

"But isn't Lucifer evil?" Faolan asks. I groan.

"I am your big sister I can defeat all evil because I'm just amazing like that. ACCEPT MY AWESOMENESS MORTAL!" I crow and jump on the bed. Da laughs and sets a hand on my shoulder, effectively telling me to shut up and calm down at the same time but it doesn't discourage me. I go on all fours and stalk Faolan then when his head pops up out of under his blanket I grin widely and say "Boo" "Freaking Cheshire cat" he grumbles, which only makes me smile more.

Osin P.O.V

Everything around me is grey. I'm in the middle of some sort of mega-storm. Debris screams past me and I quickly see that it's not debris, it's bodies. Sometimes just pieces of them. Part of the storm is cloud, some is rain, some is sand, some is hail, etc. I can't decipher it, everything hurts. Scraping against me, chafing my skin and ripping at it. Soon I'll be in pieces like the others. So this is the Abyss. The great afterlife for the soulless is a giant f*****g garbage disposal. Tears are ripped from my eyes, and I'm not sure if it's from force or pain. I can barely feel anything anymore. I've gone numb, mostly. Winnifred cried, Faolan cried. Da stood rigid. Others cried. Others stood rigid. I saw through the mask at the last second of the Reaper Guardian who sent me here.

Osin P.O.V (6 years ago)

Da won't speak to me. Winnifred is afraid of me. Faolan draws furiously. I wouldn't go say goodbye to Ma. Not my fault I didn't think she'd die. I only accepted it when I heard the tone, then I came in for a few seconds. I was met by glares and tears. Even the doctors working on her were in shock. She'd died laughing. I pushed past them and pulled the plug on that annoying as all hell machine and walked right back out. I ran to the store section of Cicadia and searched until I found the body shop. I ordered the man there to give me a red ear cuff right before the top curve of my ear.

"You got the credits for that?" He asked. I nodded stubbornly. Odd jobs paid off, I had been saving to buy Ma more art supplies. He gave me the piercing and I gave him the credits and walked out. I told Da when I got home that I'd either sell myself around or join the soldiers, those were the two highest paying jobs, and without Ma, we needed the money. I told him this so coldly I think that's why he flinched, not at what I said. Now he sits on the couch with Faolan curled into his side silently. I sit by the bookshelf, reading, waiting for a response. Will hovers in the far corner of the room, her glance nervously flickering between Da, Faolan, and I. I didn't attend the funeral, nor did I watch them carve Ma's name in the stone in the main hall. Da and Faolan stare off into nothing and finally, the silence is too heavy.

"I'll just join the service then" I snarl. The only reason whoring was a choice is that it's not official, I could get another job too, plus I'd get to see my family more. The people that join the service don't tend to have much at home. I regret the words as soon as they fly from my mouth but I don't understand why they're all so screwed over in the head. Ma is dead, and we need to keep afloat. We still get to live, I don't understand why they're all acting like they don't want to. I loved Ma as much as any of them, and I storm out without another word. I walk to the main hall and walk straight towards the soldier door on the left of the stage, opposite if the Reaper Guardian door. There are a bunch of people crowded around the main stage in silence, I don't understand until I see my boyfriend Chriss up there on his knees with three Reaper Guardians around him, one behind with a scythe, and two on either side of him. I freeze. I don't understand, I saw him yesterday, how could something have taken part of his soul since then? He couldn't have killed anyone in that time, not even an accident. Not Chriss.

"This is a mistake" I hiss out from the silence. The Reaper Guardian holding the scythes' head snaps towards me. I start stalking towards the stage feeling my blood go cold and anger burst out from some dam inside me. Someone grabs my arms to stop me, someone much stronger than me. I whip around and backhand them. The male soldier holds on fast, and I sock him in the nose and kick him in the jewels at the same time. I turn just in time to hear a thunk, then a thud. I screech in rage and thrash against the man holding me. Everyone else is quiet or crying softly. I can barely see through my tears as they haul his body off the main stage and off to wherever they take the dead up in their little hole. I bet they eat him after they take his soul to the abyss. I don't understand this pain. My mother. My family. Chriss. Feral sounds come from me and I faintly register my collar buzzing me and I hear the soldier yelling at me to stop or he'll throw me in the pit. Only one of the Reaper Guardians stay, the one holding the scythe. It still looks at me emotionlessly. I can't see through that pitch black mask and ornate armor.

"Give him back to me!" I cry out to it, and the thing stiffens then walks off. When the door to the Reaper Guardian section finally closes I wilt and go quiet.

Osin P.O.V

I saw through the mask of the Reaper Guardian that killed me. I saw a face. A human face, a familiar face. Why can't I put it together? I knew the person, I know I did. What is wrong with me?

Osin P.O.V (the last day she was alive)

I got stationed in the pit. Today would have been the day I got to visit Da, Will, and Faolan but soldiers working the pit don't get visiting days. I still remember the days I would have gotten to visit though, it helps me keep track of the rest of the days. The pit has three different sections, one for the soldiers like me to sleep, one for the people who dig new rooms for Arcadia, and one for the demon prisoners the Reapers don't kill but I don't know what they do to them. All I know is that I get sent in there to punish them if they do wrong occasionally, though I'm not allowed to know what they did wrong. I'm in that section today, and everything is dark. Covered in soot, no one's morale is exactly high, and everything here either bleeds black or is bled out except the soldiers. The demons and occasional daemons that get spared usually wish they hadn't, and I know a lot of that is my fault. I'm stationed at the whipping post today. I have learned to keep cold and distant from these creatures in here for the most part still, I nearly pass out when I see Chriss walk in. He freezes when he walks in the room, the Reaper escorting him has to shove him forward so the door to the cold grey room can close. It does so with a conversation silencing hiss.

"Osin" Chriss mutters and the Reap cuffs him upside the head for that. He moves forawd slowly to the post, and I try to fall back on ym training. Go cold, go automatic, go on auto pilot, compartmentalize you dumb freak!

"Prisoner, take your post" I order sternly, not trusting my voice to issue a command any longer than that.

"Have you no love for me now?" He asks. He's just trying to manipulate me, I never told him I loved him. I saw him die, I saw him die. nothing survives a Reaper Guardians scythe, nothing. "you don't trust that it's me, that's fair. I'm not, completly. I'm an echo. I held onto your love in the end and now I change for however you remember me. "

"Nothing survives the Reapers scythe," I say out loud now, more for myself than anyone else.

"Your mother didn't choose to hold on, she's not here" he says. Chriss starts walking towards me and the Reaper Guardian behind him seems wary but doesn't move to stop him. He looks so real, I can feel his breath now, it smells like him. His eyes that hold mine are the same.

"It's me Lucifer" he says and then tears rush to my eyes. All of a sudden then the Reaper Guardian takes out it's scythe and I don't have time to take a breath before it swings and impales Chriss. He dissentegrates smiling and all the breath leaves my body in a stale cry that doesn't sound like it's from me. The world has slid out of focus, but then for the first time in my entire life I hear the Reap talk, and it snaps everything back painfully fast.

"You have interfered with the order, and now must come with me" I know what this means. I'm going to die. It's going to kill me. Winnifred and Faolan and Da will be forced to watch. I am too tired and breathless to fight like I did when they took Chriss. I simply cry and beg like a child. I cry for my Ma, for my Da, for Winnifred, for Faolan, for the Reaper Guardian. I cry for myself until tears and snot cover my entire face, but then we near the exit and I wipe everything away in an instant. Faolan, Winnifred, and especially Da will not see me cry. Everything happens in hyper focus and seemingly overwhekming quality. My stomach feels like I've jumped off of a cliff. I see everything in crazy detail but I'm not really absorbing anything. I keep snapping my head around wildly, a voice in my head telling me to escape but I'm so overwhelmed that I can barely hear that voice much less actually do anything. I am vagualy aware of being dragged by my right arm by the Reaper Guardians left arm, and another one dearming me then grabbing my left arm as they drag me onto the main stage where people have already gathered, I don't know how the message got sent so quickly. I see Faolan and Da at once, Winnifred comes in later, screaming and crying like I was when they took Chriss. I see myself in her so fiercly for a moment I almost think this is one of those weird dreams where I'm somone else watching me live my life. I don't know what my face does, I feel sharp pains in my knees when I'm forced down, then a white fire in my chest. I blink once or twice, feeling the pain but not really caring. Something inside me broke already. My body doesn't even try to alarm me about the scythe impaling me. And then darkness takes over.