Rue

Chapter 01

I shot up in cold sweat, panting. As I regained my breath, I analyzed my surroundings. I deemed the area to be the rooftop of some building.

"Where the hell am I?" I asked myself under my breath.

"The afterlife." A girl with pale pink hair pinned back, crouching by a line of bushes, answered. My eyes lowered from her visage to her tight grip on a sniper rifle. 

My eyes widened, "I can't be dead- this isn't right! I'm not even sure of who I am, how can this be fair!"

"Well, life isn't fair, newb." She replied, a hint of amusement evident in her voice.

Hearing this only encouraged my panic episode, and soon I began to feel my fingers quake violently.

At this, she managed to add, "you get it? Life isn't fair? Because we're over here just, ya' know... dead? Sigh, that God guy, ya' know, he's a funny one."

All I could do in response was to simply stare at her, she had the posture of an uptight commander. She would be hard to communicate with. And the fact that she was holding a murder weapon didn't seem to help out the tense conversation between us.  

"Now listen up, newbie, in the afterlife, we only have one enemy- her name, Sariel." She says after a while of my intense staring, and nudges the gun forward at something down below out in the field.

"Are you going to shoot someone?" I say, my fingers promptly making it's way into my hair, a habit I assume I always do when I have no control in a situation. 

"Yeah, now shut up, or you're going to mess up my shot, which I will return, by messing up you." She threatened, cocking her sniper rifle at me. Her focus quickly began wavering.

I crawled towards her, courage suddenly seeping into me, I waved my hands in her face frantically, "wait, wait- can I just try to talk to this person you're going to shoot?"

She responded, pulling the weapon onto her lap. "It's her, Sariel. And talking to her would be a death wish, dumbass newbie."

Her eyes suddenly light up after saying that and she quickly adds in, "But, that wouldn't matter since we're already dead - you get it? Because we're in the afterlife, ya' know."

I brought my face to my palms, groaning. She seemingly loves to word vomit awful death puns.  

Eventually, I stood up, brushing off the wrinkles on my pants. "You'll see, one conversation and everything will go all right. I'll convince this 'Sariel' of yours to stop doing whatever you don't like."

I walked down the steps and I could hear her yelling at me from the top of the stairs.

"Dumbass newbie, why the hell are you so stubborn!"

The words didn't really come out as a question, despite the structure of her sentence, it came out more like a statement rather than a question.

Once I reached down the stairs, in the expanse of the football field in the middle. I see a girl with silver curls that cascade down her back and grey misty eyes. 

"Hey, there." I greet with a tint of fear, approaching her.

She turns to me, her lips tucked firmly.

When I heard no reply after a while, I decide to talk some more.

"I just would like to notify you, that there's this crazy chick up the stairs with a sniper rifle trying to shoot you, so maybe, you should duck or something."

Continuing her intense staring into the fog, she kept her mouth shut.

"Just a suggestion, ya' know. Just take it into consideration."

Eventually she took a long look at me.

She averted her eyes from me and to the fog dancing around the grass that laid beneath us, instead. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me. And instead, why not you worry about yourself?"

The way she talked sent a chill down my spine. Her voice sounded cold and monotonous, void of emotions. 

"Can I ask you a question?"

She says nothing in response.

I dampen my lips with my tongue, before starting again, "do you know where I am, because, I only talked to that one chick trying to kill you, and she said that we're in the afterlife- in my opinion, that's one hell of a lame joke." At saying 'kill you' I formed my fingers into air quotations. 

Sariel turned back to me, her eyes training on my features, "it's true."

Aggravated, I start yelling, "don't tell me you're on this same lame joke too! What the hell is wrong with everyone here? Is someone here mentally stable enough to hold up a conversation without mentioning the 'afterlife'!"

"I apologize if this has caused you distress but this is simply the circle of life. All you can do now at this point is to accept this fate."

"If I'm truly dead, prove it to me, asshole!" I scream in rage, my face and her face up close, her cold breath fanning my face. She stares right back at me with the best poker face ever to be witnessed.

And suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I see a blade twinkle from underneath the sleeves of her shirt.

"What exactly are you - uh, trying do?" 

"Proving it to you." She simply says before stabbing me right on my side, she pulls the blade out quickly, immediately thrusting the weapon in the location of my heart.

And right before everything goes dark, she pulls out my heart with impeccable strength.

Pain overwhelms my whole body before the darkness takes over.

a.n. - well okay i thought this story was going to be deep dramatic and profound but after  rewriting this 1st chapter i bet this story is gonna be not as serious as i thought it was gonna be darn it. oh and this is lowkey based off angel beats! if you're curious. oh and this is actually a story that's been sitting in my drive for a long time and idk i think I'm going to work on this to help get over this 2 freaking year long writer's block (it was because of my writer's block and my last english teacher that stopped me from writing entirely). well i think that's all for chapter 1, man.