Rebirth

Chapter Five

You could still smell the herbs from a few days ago. You were in your kitchen making yourself something to eat. It had been almost two days and there wasn't a single sign of Alastor or Eon. Your mind was busy with other thoughts anyways. Your father's surgery went well and he was on a slow recovery. Hopefully, it helped with his condition, but you doubt it would slow down his one-way ticket to the grave. You took a small bite of the PB&J that you made and suddenly you didn't feel so hungry anymore.
Instead, you wanted to break down and cry. You leaned on your counter, looking down at the sandwich as tears began to well in your eyes. So much shit has happened these past few days. You moved and now lived by yourself for the first time in your life, you were going to college at the same time while looking for a new job, and demon decided it was going to drop an entire shit load of problems that didn't even involve you. Just your soul. And on top of that, your father was dying. It broke your heart when you waited with your mother for him to get out of surgery. Your father was a strong and proud man and to see him wither away into a husk, a shadow of what he used to be... It was all too much. You couldn't take it anymore.
The sobs came quickly. You crouched on the floor behind the counter and held your knees as you cried away. You felt as though the entire world was against you. You were thankful for the few people you had.
You didn't want to feel bad anymore so you did your best to dry your tears. As you stood back up you saw something on your counter that wasn't there before, "Huh?" Next to your pathetic sandwich now laid a thick leather-bound book with a sticky note taped to the cover. You were ready to roll your eyes and dumb the book into the trash, you already knew it was from Alastor.
That's when you felt the hairs on the back of your neck start to rise while a familiar dry static energy began to fester within your home, "Go away!" You yelled, "I'm not your wife! I don't know you! And you don't know me!" You were talking to the air, but you knew Alastor was here. You could feel his energy. You could even feel his eyes on you, even if he wouldn't show himself and choose to hide, "Just because you could guess my favorite food and color doesn't mean I'm still your wife! So what if we have similar taste in stuff! I'm not her! You don't know anything about me. You don't know my family, my friends, you don't even know my birthday! You can't name a single thing about me other than what you can guess off the top of your head!"
You wanted to cry again and when a tear dripped down your cheek, you tell he was gone. The static fizzled away into still air and the feeling of eyes on your vanished as well. The book was still there though. You kept telling yourself to just throw it out but another part of you wanted to see just what kind of gift Alastor had left you.
You sniffled and ran the back of your hand over your eyes to clean away the tears. You pulled the book into view and read the note. At first you couldn't believe it, but... Alastor had very... very... pretty handwriting. It was perfect and drawn with pen and ink well.
The note said:
        I think I went about this all wrong, (Y/n). I should have given this to you in the beginning. I'm sincerely sorry. This used to belong to your former self. It's your diary. To unlock it, you must use your blood. Just a pinprick should work. I hope this helps and answers the questions you've been looking for.
       - A   :)
Was this for real? And he had to just add the smiley face? Ugh... You rolled your eyes and looked over the book. It didn't even have a lock on it, so why the hell was he talking about using your blood?  When you opened up the book, you couldn't believe your eyes. Every page was yellow and blank. Nothing was in the damn book! Was he just playing a sick joke on you?
There was only one way to find out. You flipped deep within the book and towards the middle. You took a kitchen knife from your silverware drawer. You cringed in pain as you pricked the tip of your finger and watched the blood pitter-patter onto the pages. Nothing happened at first and you were ready to burn the book and get some more herbs to make sure Alastor didn't come back.
But after a minute or so your blood soaked into the page and words began to appear. The looked like they were written in gold. The ink was metallic and shiny. You brushed a finger over the words and felt the little rise and fall of the ink and space between each letter. It took a second for the page to fill with words. Okay... maybe he wasn't lying and this was your past self's diary. You went ahead and began reading the passage you had randomly opened up too.
1939, December 29th:
     This castle I call my home is nothing but chains holding me down. I have spent the last... some 2,000 years at this post. I didn't know that serving as the Gatekeeper of Hell was a "forever" kind of deal. I guess that's what you get for letting Lucifer be your boss. I wish every day that I could leave this castle. But soon again I will! The seventh year of my new sentence is coming up and I will be free to roam for another 365 days. Then for the next 6 years, I will be trapped in this castle again.
     At least I have Alastor. This empty castle isn't so empty with him around. He fills the hallways with songs and music, with smells of food I never knew existed. He makes me laugh, something I haven't done in a long time. He makes me smile and when I cry he doesn't run in fear like everyone else in my afterlife.
     It's been six years since I made that life-changing deal with an even bigger Devil than Lucifer. It's been six years since Alastor manifested at the gates of Hell and offered me the salvation and freedom I craved. No, he wasn't the deal maker. The spirit that was attached to his soul was. Eon. I sold what was left of my soul to him just so I could see the world again.
     In just a few days I'll be able to walk out of this castle and go where ever I want again. The first thing I'm doing is marry Alastor at the top of a pile of corpses that belong to every enemy I've ever made. I can't wait to taste the blood and tears of them all. I will kill all of those fools who dared to call me a cry baby, to call me weak, to say my emotions meant nothing. Every time I shed a tear I turn into a monster and monster is what they will see. I will rip their heads from their necks. I will take their hearts and squeeze every drop of blood until there is nothing left. And I will do this with Alastor by my side, cheering me on as I finally get the justice and revenge I've so deserved.
The words started to fade slowly and disappear again. You couldn't believe what you were looking at. Once the passage was finally gone and the pages were blank again... You slammed the book closed. This was a dangerous thing. A tempting thing.
It called to you like a song in the night. You could feel your entire soul reach out and try and open the book back up and read every word. Something about this book filled you with fear, curiosity and something else you couldn't quite put together.
After several moments of fighting with your own thoughts, you decided that you'd read some more. You flipped the book back open. You choose a spot very close to the end and pricked your finger again. The blood splashed onto the page and soaked in much quicker than last time.
1996, February 4th:
     Today I laid waste to another sector of Hell. When I came to my castle home, Alastor was waiting for me. I know I write about him to much, but he is everything that matters to me. This entire book could easily be mistaken for a stalker. Good thing I cursed it to never open for anyone, not even Alastor. I love him, but even I must keep my secrets too. That and I don't want him to know how much I obsess over him.
     For starters, it's our anniversary. He always tells me, "I never wanted to get married! I never thought I would! Marriage was a waste of time in my opinion -Blah Blah Blah-" Same old stuff, then he'd leap into some musical number about how I changed that and how much he loves me and how happy he is to call me his wife. 56 years later and he's still the same dork he's always been. Sure, he likes to act tough, mean, scary and evil, but deep down inside that psychopath... is another even bigger and weirder psychopath. But that's what I love about him. He's such a strange creature. But I love him.
     I love that stupid little tail of his that wags when he sees me or how he'd flip his tail all the way up as he danced around the room. I love that he chooses to sleep just because it's a pastime I enjoy. Though he'll always remind me, "You know, we don't have to sleep, right?" Yeah, but I still liked to cling on to my humanity. And most of all... I love when he cries with me. It's so hard for me to fight my black tears and to not let them stain my face. For so long, I never saw an emotion escape him. He even thought it was weak of me to be so emotional and we got into many arguments about it. However, he saw that it was just my nature to be like this. Now that we've spent 5 decades together, he shares all my emotions. The high and especially the lows. He'll weep, shed tears, and tell me it's okay. He'd kiss every single black tear away even when I turned into a monster... I have to remember though, I don't turn into a monster. It's just my natural demonic form that I suppress and hide and hold back. Alastor says he loves it more than the my... human look I take on. Maybe one day I'll be strong enough to love myself the way he loves me.
     I know... I know... I need to shut up about this man. But I can't. He's a person deep down inside. A messed up one, but still a person. He knows my pain, he's seen my struggles. His life wasn't much different from mine. We were both... innocent for so long until a darkness we couldn't control grew from our pain and suffering. We joke about how we'd have gone to Heaven if only things were different... Is it bad for me to wish they were sometimes? What if we met when we were alive and still human? Would he still have become a cannibal? Would I still have committed suicide? If only we could have been there for each other sooner rather than later...
The words started to fade again just as you had finished the passage. This book... It was going to answer a lot of questions. You felt an unknown connection to it. You slowly closed the book, deciding that for you'd put it away for now. You weren't going to throw it away either.
Something about the way your past self wrote about Alastor, about how much she loved him, it slowly changed your opinion of him. It got you thinking about how Alastor must have felt to have lost you. He spent 22 years searching for you, looking all over the planet and heaven above just so he could be with you again. It was romantic in a twisted way. You still couldn't bring yourself to feel much for the demon other than anguish and pity. You felt sorry for him because you were not the same person. And you were beginning to learn that, yes, there were many things similar about you and your past self, such as your name and your looks, but you never had the same struggles.
You walked over to your bookshelf and squeezed the large leather book into a spot that barely fit. You had to get to your classes soon. You really didn't have the energy to do anything and you were incredibly depressed. Your heart thumped loudly in your chest as you looked at the spine of the diary. You wanted to reach out and grab and keep reading and the thought of leaving it at home oddly upset you more. You knew you couldn't bring it with you though. Not many people would be too pleased to see some girl cutting her finger dozens of times to read some magical book. You'd probably get thrown in some kind of crazy house.
So, with a sigh, you tore yourself away from the book's gaze and grabbed your bag. As you got to the door, you took one look back at the book. You stood there for a second longer than you should have then turned and gone out the door.
________________________________