Give 'em Hell

Prologue

I watched her drown from my place on the pier. We were both there, standing side by side and watching as her older brothers wondered away down the beach. They didn't want to bring her. They had made it very clear that morning, but they'd been forced to bring her along anyway. So they left her alone on the pier and we were to watch along with everyone else that lined the sky. We watched as she leaned forward, surveying the water. Her large, brown eyes stared down into the glistening sea before she decided that it was safe to dip a finger in. She leaned further forward, one arm wrapped around a part of a wooden pole as she dipped lower, reaching slowly to just disturb the flat surface.

Even though we'd watched the same death happen several times before, Ezra still held his breath and looked on ahead at the vast ocean instead of looking directly at the girl. I could feel the tug of the ocean as if it were going to reach up and swallow the girl whole and I watched as she tipped further and further towards it. Then, we both watched as her weight tipped forward and as her nails dug into the pier, the one arm that barely hugged the pier unable to hold her weight. She couldn't swim. We knew she couldn't swim. So we watched her drown.

We watched her arms flail and her hands reach up only to grab nothing but air. We watched her mouth and then her lungs fill with salt water. We watched her innocent eyes gleam with fear. We heard her scream, and then we heard her gurgle when she could no longer find the breath she needed.

That day on the pier, we watched that girl drown. We watched Roslyn drown. "Why?" you ask. So she could become something much more important than an abandoned 10-year-old on a pier. She died to join us in the afterlife. A little girl who will grow to become one of the most powerful beings known to mankind. She will be Rosen, a reaper of souls.

Her earthen family weeps for their loss. They mourn to the point of disdain. We no longer feel any remorse. They allowed her to die.

"Maybe she would have lived a little longer if they hadn't thrown her away as if she were a torn dishrag." I once heard Ezra mutter when we found ourselves waiting for her return.

Naturally, God returns her to us on the third day.

She rises up from the deepest, darkest depths of the sea and yet she is completely dry. She is no longer a little girl. She is a 5'4 woman dressed in black. Her face cannot be seen underneath a dark cloak that bellows in the wind as she rises and her legs are clad in a pair of black leather pants. She dons a scythe that glistens.

She is a black mass rising from the ocean. She is hollowed and beautiful.

Tonight her only test will be to take her 'sick with grief' mother.

Ezra will accompany her on this journey. I will fall back. It is not her father's time.

She stands on that same pier at midnight, watching over the sea as it crashes down upon the beach.

She raises her hands and stretches out her arms, and the sea goes deathly quiet, the waves no longer reaching the shore.

She says nothing as Ezra appears beside her. She only slightly turns her head in acknowledgement before turning away from the ocean and heading up the beach. There is a flash of bright white light and they're standing before a house. The house looks as though no one cares for it. There are leaves covering the yard and vines growing up the sides of the house. The paint is chipping and the shingles are falling out of place.

Rosen only glances at these changes and walks straight for one of the windows. Her body leaves a white glow on the wall, but Ezra can no longer see her. He waits patiently on the outside. He knows she has done her work when the air chills around him. Ezra moves towards the garden. He watches as the flowers shrivel and die, becoming black dust mixed with soil. They've found her. They've found death.

She brings her mother to Ezra, or what was her mother. The woman is a bright, white light in Rosen's seemingly soot stained hands. Ezra takes the beaming light and stares up into the heavens, watching as the light beamed into the dark sky overhead. When the light was gone, darkness retook the world and Rosen disappeared into the night.

Ezra, however, returned to me.