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Chapter 8: Love Macabre
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The Reaper's Pet Chapter 9: The Deal
“As a child, Oriana was no stranger to death,” Septimus suddenly starts narrating in my head yet also from somewhere {inside} the father’s bedroom. The words sound disembodied and the fact that the personification of death is talking about himself as a separate phenomenon isn’t lost on me. I catch the faint smell of his cigarette like the fading echo of an echo. “There had been far too many partings around her, as always there are around each and every fleshie. First, there was Granny’s stroke. Next, Uncle Tony’s lung cancer. Then her mother’s traffic accident. It was difficult enough watching the people who make up your world leave one by one, the constant fear of being left all by yourself, but it was even more difficult not understanding what was going on and not being able to talk about it with anyone. It was all the grownups' fault thinking they could hide death by not mentioning it, when death was in every drop of water they drank, every breath of air they took, every wisp of
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 10: The Embattled King
“Does she remember…” I blurt out. Completely spellbound by the story, I forget who I’m speaking to; at the same time there’s a kind of millisecond delay because of the time-travelesque illusion and it feels like I’m being slammed back into Death’s office. “… the promise that she made?” “What do you think? Humans are Janus-faced creatures. At times of need they shall call upon the names of all the saints and then take back what they promised as soon as they are out of harm’s way. Even more so with Death. Naturally no one remembers me. I am the Ever Uninvited Guest; the one thing no mortal thinks of unless it is absolutely certain and can no longer be postponed. Never mind that I am the most constant friend you have, second only to your shadow.” Septimus puts out his cigarette in the most unlikely ash tray. Another skeletal arm, this one sort of elongated, bursts upward out of the floor and opens its bone fingers like petals. The osseous ash tray then slips away in the same manner it h
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 11: The Cry of the Cat
“Spinstra instructed me that, because it is a mortal condition then it should be treated following the ways of mortals. And so I have labored to understand a little of your world – the world of livestock and insects, can you imagine? Like a monk I pored over tome after tome in huge mausoleums of human vanity – {libraries}, I believe they were called – until I came upon the most promising solution to my troubles.” An unmistakably human sigh. “Instead of keeping this feeling secret, I must confess it to the very source of it. Only then will I be released and cured of this insanity.” At first, nothing makes sense. Then it comes to me with the flung weight of a bullet train. “What are you saying? You want to... propose to Rina?” “Yes. This you will help me do,” he speaks matter-of-factly. “Since the only way to conquer love is to yield to it, I shall allow myself to be swallowed by it whole. Is that not what your philosophers say? I have to face my fear of rejection and walk through
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 12: The Reluctant Reaper
Why is this happening to me? I know now that there is life after death and I’ve accepted, at least to some extent, that I’m in Hell for being sinful and taking my own life. But of all the seven billion people in the world, or the hundreds of billion who have died from the beginning of time till now, why do I have to be Death’s plaything? I feel as miniscule as a dustmote when I ponder these statistics. I guess I’m still in shock. I keep yo-yoing from feeling resigned to my new home – a vast, extremely cruel penal colony where humankind is judged and punished like clockwork – to harboring the false hope of somehow escaping my tormentors and getting back to the world of the living. And my body! It takes a great deal of positivity to hold back despair at the sight and feel of my fangs, claws, thorny fur and ball-shaped tail. I sleep fitfully, tormented by vivid, psychotic nightmares that I know are but shadows of the real horrors that will greet me once I succumb to consciousness. Oh m
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 13: Love After Death
The Lachesis monitors have a mind of their own. If I’m not careful, they’ll steal, twist and corrupt my own memories. As Septimus demonstrated, the monitors zoom in on any person anywhere in the world, on ground level and at real time, but they can also show scenes from both the past and the future, proving conclusively that human lives are all predestined. {Hundreds of billions of people have walked this earth since the dawn of time. At present alone there are eight billion people on the planet. And inside the human DNA, billions of gene pairs construct themselves to create two eyes, a nose, a heart, two legs...} {I am unique. I am not insignificant. There’s a genetic symphony inside me, a clockwork that sets off its designs at such precise timing, including the very senescence of cells. I am a book capable of writing its own stories. I have the capacity to love and I, too, shall be loved. There is a corner in this universe where I am wanted, where I am needed, where I belong, and
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 14: A Vision of Balloons
The question on the mind of every other child in the children’s home was what made a psychic like me different and how to get their hands on the stuff. Many started faking visions of ghosts and conversations with dead relatives or even possession by the devil (the more creative and ADD ones). But they had it all wrong because people like me didn’t only see the spirits of departed people or otherworldly entities. In my case, what I saw was balloons. And not your regular birthday-party type either; no, these balloons were sort of ethereal. Ghost-balloons. They were beautiful yet eerily alien, like jellyfish floating in air, invisible to everyone but to me. There was one for every living, breathing creature on earth, including animals, insects and even plants, though always proportionate to their size. The balloons all looked identical except for the size of their heads and the length of their stems. With perfect clarity, I walked in this astral world. I even thought at first that everyo
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 15: The Nonperson
The senior nuns at the children’s home said they discovered me inside a cardboard box on the porch. Oldest sob story in the book. Except when you were the main character of that story, it was a whole lot tougher to accept. There were nights when lying in bed at night the loneliness would come so fiercely I wondered if I wouldn’t be doing the world a favor if I ceased to exist, and I’d stifle my crying with the pillow. Or sometimes at my hideout on the roof of Nuestra Señora de la Buen Viaje, a voice would urge me to jump off the tiles onto the courtyard four stories below. As in any other institution, there was a great deal of brainwashing involved in the business of children’s homes. All the other orphans spoke of a “forever family” like it was the most natural thing in the world, like there was nothing wrong with every one of them in the first place. They would pose to have their pictures taken like right-as-rain puppies with their eyes eating up half their faces. I imagined if I ch
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 16: The Raven Man
Day by day, my abilities grew. Being one of a kind, I felt as though I had been cast down a dried-up well where I was to spend the rest of my life in solitary confinement. Looking back, I can’t help but marvel at myself for surviving the isolation with a maturity and courage rare among children. On the other hand, it also feels as though most of my childhood passed me by while I was in some sort of trance. On my own, I learned how to control my talents and to avoid exerting myself. I became wary of very old items that had passed through too many hands as these could be damaging to both mind and spirit. During the couple of times I had to learn the hard way, I was invariably left drained. I also learned to stay away from objects that belonged to those who had already crossed over. In the same way I chose to keep silent about the balloons and their morbid significance, I knew there were things humans weren’t supposed to meddle with. Because of my extreme unconventionality, the supervis
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- The Reaper's Pet Epilogue: The Bureau of Transmigration
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 39: Unholy Alliance
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 38: The Massacre
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 37: World's End
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 36: The Mutiny of the Ravens
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 35: Master Hand
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 34: The Monster
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 33: Hell-breaker
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 32: The Jam Session
