The Star

CHAPTER 0.1

"You have an hour to decide your fate, lad. I will come back for your answer then," the Grimm Reaper tells me before melting into a blob of blackness and disappearing into the shadows beneath the vending machines. I walk to a machine as its lights blink on and off, a couple of packets of Cheetos fall down. When I try to push the flap my hand phases through the plastic and metal.
"First, my whole family dies and now I can't even have a snack?!", I shout even though I could care less about the powdered, cheap cheese dusted puffs (Is it just me or am I really hungry?). I try to kick the machines and the chairs and then the walls, but my foot passes through them, not helping me at all. I try to feel angry, try to feel frustrated, try to be sad, try to feel the loss I should be feeling, try to feel something, anything, but.....  I just feel empty.
A menacing blanket of silence, an almost irritating semblance of restlessness sets over me. I struggle to breathe because I obviously don't have lungs anymore... probably because I'm dead and I don't need oxygen anymore.
Closing my eyes I try to focus on the Grimm's ultimatum- become one his lackeys and my sister miraculously comes back to life or decide not to join him and pass on to afterlife where I may or may not have a chance to see my family ever again.
A man suddenly drops onto one of the chairs, a little way down the corridor, his head buried in his hands, sobbing.

"She wa-as s-oo-o you-ng... s-sh-he didn't deserve this...", he sobs.

"Mr.Munroe, please. I understand this is hard for you. We did everything we could to save your daughter, but the trauma from the head injury and the wou-", a young female blonde in a surgeon's scrubs tries to talk to him.

He immediately jumps up, grabbing the doctor's shoulder, "Don't you dare talk about what that bastard did to my daughter! That son of a bitch will pay!"

The man storms out, while the doctor tries to tell him not to do anything rash and leave things to the police.

Looks like I'm not the only one having a bad day.

I continue staring at the end of the hallway they exited from, realising that I had joked about them... I'm about to lose Mom and Dad. And Lara. That's more than just a bad day...
Have I lost all my feelings and emotions now that I'm dead? That doesn't sound right, it doesn't feel right, I still love them, I want them to survive, they have to survive. I- I... I ca-  Did that kid just walk out of that the wall!!??
I watch the bald boy with a tattoo on his forehead walk towards me (am I the only who thought of the Last Airbender?), breaking my train of thought almost as suddenly as he had  walked into the hallway through the wall.

"Hey! Can you see me? You don't look like a 45 year old woman, but who am I to judge?", the kid says slapping his palm on his face tattoo.
He pulls out a long, pure-black sword out of his head, the same way magicians pull out a perpetual string of colourful handkerchiefs from their mouth. There is something bizarrely weird and funny about how he seems to be coming at me with the sword. He suddenly dashes forward and arcs the broadsword in front of me. Instinctually I jump back, tripping and falling onto the floor. Well onto the floor would be the wrong way to put it.... it's more like, I fell half-through the sterile flooring of the hospital.
"Hey don't do the ostrich thing. I'm not going to hurt you.", I hear the muffled voice of the bald boy.
Yeah, obviously swinging giant swords at people doesn't hurt them. I try to squirm and squiggle myself through the floor, I can only imagine how it would look to see a dis-bodied leg shaking vigorously like a worm trying to sink into the floor.
Sigh... The weird is coming, isn't it?

I realise that I'm being irrational seeing that now I'm already dead and can't become..... well dead-er, I had no reason to run from this guy.

"I'm a little rusty with the passing on ritual for innocent souls thing, let me just explain it to you, okay? Look I even put away the giant sharp thingy! Well I guess you can't look if your head is under the ground...", he says confirming my suspicion, but well not completely. He did try to make me into two half-Damians (Is it just me or did dying make my humour go bad? At least my math skills are intact, two halves is one.)
I feel a strong grip around my ankle and with a single tug he pulls me out of the flooring and lets go.
I float in the air a little away from him, upside down, looking extremely surprised.
"I'm all for a fun conversation and unorthodox stuff to freshen up a relationship but I'm pretty sure you're very uncomfortable with your position...", he tells me with a big mischievous smile on his face.
Fortunately my earlier depressing (well, not really because no emotions, duh!) lack of emotions extended to not being scared mindless by a sword-toting, bald, crazy kid who I couldn't decide whether he belonged in an elementary school or in a biker gang.