Arms of ice wrapped around my body, pulling under into their prison. Cold stabbed me from each corner as it gnawed through my clothes and seemed to rip the flesh from my bones and suck my marrow dry.
Is this what death feels like?
I kicked against each swipe of a hand only to hit the water - you can't harm the dead. My heart sped up to a crescendo as it played its own dramatic opera in my chest. My chest burned to a boil with the urge to breathe throttling my head. Grasping at the water did nothing, something was pulling me deeper into the seas with each meter being a shade darker. It talons sunk into my flesh thus sending the ghouls into a wilder frenzy. I shoved against the hold but all that did was expend my strength.
The pain...no creature should ever have to experience such. A scream tore free from my throat and a deep inhale had me choking around the water's body. Ghouls saw my moment of weakness as an opportunity to enter my body. Their hollow eyes glared into mine as dozens forced their way into me. The foul taste of rotting flesh, salt and anger slobbered into over my tongue as my throat seized in retaliation.
Please let me die!
With each ghoul infiltrating my body, their story wracked my body.
A mother lost her sons and husband to the Red War, forced onto the streets of Bellam to whore herself.
Young children tortured for years before having their barely alive bodies thrown over the bridge's stomach.
A man haunted by his wicked past forced to jump, to end it all.
An abused boy.
A neglected child.
Please, please, please kill me!
With a flash of light, my body no longer was tormented in the seas but laid comatose on the ground.
Despite being freed from their assault, I still felt it. I felt every emotion with each labored breath. I felt each beating with each blink. I felt the despair of having no one to live or turn to, just a meat body to walk this cruel world in.
For the first time in half a century, I cried and not for myself but for the pain of those who had to live through the worst of Kalzaar.
Soft footsteps shuffled to my fetal position, stopping just a few feet away.
"I never saw a crocodile cry before." She whispered.
YOU ARE READING
Thanatos: Reaper of Souls
Short StoryWe all like to think that we were meant to live but most of us were born to die. - Konstantine Konstantine Petrova was not meant to exist, a bad omen. When his existence is brought to Thanatos' attention, it becomes his mission to kill the boy in or...
