Death

Chapter 4

It had been a month ever since I had seen Jack. The kid with that important research, I believe his name was Clint, he had been absent for a couple of weeks now, he isn't the only one though, there was a whole hell of a lot of missing children posters around my town. I looked in the windows of closed down buildings as I walked by them after school, there was never really anything in them now, maybe a few rats, but that was it. Until, I looked into the back room of a shutdown bakery, it had a shadow in it. How was someone in there? I tried the door, locked. I picked up a small twig and picked at the lock; when I got it open, I felt a chill go down my spine. I looked into the dark room in the back, I noticed a faint, red, shimmering object, almost like an eyeball glaring at me, then I realized, it WAS an eyeball! I walked into the room, I had never been in there before, it was covered in cobwebs.

"Hello, Death." A male voice said behind me, I turned around, he was thin, tall, his hair was dark, and it swooped down a bit, he had a prickly beard. He wore a grey suit, his hands in his pockets. He looked slightly like he was in pain, but he stood there, giving me a slight half smile.

"Who the hell are you? How do you know who I am?" I asked. He started to take his hands out of his pockets, except, they weren't exactly hands of a normal person, they were transparent like a ghost's, but they were tinted red.

"You know all those deaths that you can't control? I started them. Well, technically YOU started them, you started me too. You created me when you saved that kid." He explained.

"I'm going to ask this one more time. Who the hell are you?!" I restated, he smirked.

"I'm Purgatory." He answered with a laugh.

"Does that mean I created Heaven and Hell too?" I asked.

"Jared, unless you've seen angels and demons running about, I wouldn't worry about that. Even if that were the case, I'm much, much more powerful than they are." He answered as he sat on a crate. "You see, people think of Purgatory as a waiting place to prove if you're worthy of Heaven or Hell. Well, they're wrong! It is ten times worse than the devil himself! For each soul I take inside me, I get more and more powerful,You may have more souls than me now, but in about a year or so, I could just gobble you right up! Then, I would be in charge of the deaths in the world, not you!" He yelled, his deep voice echoed in the small storage room.

"If I have more souls than you, couldn't I just kill you though?" I asked.

"You have a slight problem there, Jared." He stood up, and he started to unbutton his suit, revealing a portal in his chest, leading to a forest. It looked completely empty, completely lifeless. "All the souls I have taken are in here, if you kill me, they go away."

"What do you mean 'Go away'?" I asked.

"It means that it will be as if they never existed in the first place, no one will remember them, except you." He explained. "I have Jack too, in fact, he is my core soul. The first one I took."

"So, that forest is Purgatory?" I asked, he nodded. "But it seems so peaceful. How is it more dangerous than Hell itself?" 

"They are sleeping. They will wake up in a few minutes though. Including your buddy Jack. I have a feeling you don't want to see what happens when they do wake up though. Do you?" He explained. I shook my head. "Well, that's too bad, Jared, cause you're gonna!" He snapped his fingers, the door slammed shut and locked.

A few minutes later, I heard a noise coming from the portal, it was sort of like a fakey horror movie scream. A couple seconds later, the forest was on fire, and there were several more screams. A few people that looked incredibly anorexic crawled out from the depths of the forest. The trees started to set on fire. I looked closer at one of the people, it was Jack. They all looked like they were running towards me. They were all up close to the end of the portal, but they couldn't seem to get out. They were all trying to claw their way out, their skinny arms were reaching towards my face. There was something I was absolutely sure of though. That thing that was in that portal definitely wasn't Jack anymore.