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Funny Things

INSTEAD OF THE blinding glow in which I had expected to be greeted with when I faced death, I was instead met with an overwhelming total darkness. There wasn't a single soul in sight, and when I dared to take in a much-needed breath of air, I felt as if my lungs were suffocating me as punishment. I was in a void, without a single piece of furniture or a single element of nature. 

I was alone.

My body's immediate reaction was to let my heart race, to force my heart to pump blood through my veins in extreme speeds. The world was silent, and whenever I tried to scream, it felt as though my lungs were being compressed even further than before.

"Relax, angel," a voice soothingly said. "You'll be safe. You're with me now. Just follow my voice, Addison. Follow my voice and head towards the light."

Though that source of light was non-existent, I followed after it, trailing foolishly into the world of the blind. As the darkness was unforgiving, I found myself tripping over imaginary stones, flying across steps and bumping into walls. When I finally found a small spark of light, I allowed a small soundless sigh of relief.

Shining like fireflies glinting against the night, the light was a mere festival sparkler, glinting against the black background. There wasn't a handle to the sparkler, yet it was shining and sparkling like a single firework in the night. My mind blanked for a second, all that is to my knowledge was to follow the light. Other than that, my mind had a blank space. Memories of my life from before were all wiped away, all erased into a clean slate. All of which I could remember was meeting my end and a pair of silver gray eyes melting into my own gaze.

"Follow my voice and head towards the light."

My fingers reached out, grazing against the heat of the light as feeling rushed through my fingertips. The light trailed down my fingers, flowing as if relocated in my bloodstream before visiting every muscle and every fiber in my body. When the glow hit my heart, I was jolted awake, body swerving forward so quickly before I was stopped by a pair of hands held against my shoulder.

All at once, the scene in front of me changed. I was no longer in a black pit of nothingness. Instead, my eyes trailed after the familiar furniture placed in my room back in Hell's castle. A fine layer of dust had settled against most of the surfaces, and with heaving shoulders and heavy breaths, I examined the rest of the room.

"You're okay, Addison. You're alright." The familiar voice in which I had heard from before said again.

One by one, images of my past began to filter into my mind. Memories of my childhood, images of every single birthday I've ever had, and the clear significant moment in which pain had shot through me when I had jumped in front of a poisoned arrow to save Dimitri's life. All of it slammed into me, jamming themselves forcefully into the nerves located in my mind.

"Oh god," I muttered, hands reaching up to touch my face frantically. "I'm dead!"

"I see you're awake," another crudely unamused voice sounded from a distance away. When I turned to the direction in which the voice had come from, I was greeted by the blank and stoic face of Fabian.

He was slouched against an armchair, an arm hanging lazily against the armrest while his left leg dangled from the other. Left arm raised higher up to rest against the backrest, Fabian's eyes were closed shut though he looked furthest away from asleep.

"I was starting to enjoy the peace and silence," he commented.

"Ignore him, Andy." This time, Dimitri was the one that had spoken.

Relief caressed every single corner of his features. With eye bags hanging slightly -- and so out of place -- from his youthful features, Dimitri allowed a grin to slip onto his features before he leaned closer towards me, pressing his lips gently against my forehead.

When his lips made contact with my skin, I frowned slightly. From that touch, I did not feel the usual effects in which Dimitri had over me. There was no coldness to his touch, nor was there any warmth. In fact, I could barely even feel anything at all. It resembled the sensation in which one would have when touching a leg that had gone numb from sitting on it for too long.

Just barely.

"What happened to me?" I asked when Dimitri withdrew. "I didn't feel that. Why didn't I feel that?"

The spirit of death paused, his tongue gently running against his bottom lip as silence filled the room. There was obvious tension, and Dimitri made the mistake of allowing his eyes to flicker towards Fabian for a split second.

"Fabian, what happened?"

He sighed once, running his hand through his midnight dark hair. "You fucking died, Pilediah. What did you expect?"

"Then how am I here?" I asked, not wanting to back down, refusing to see the truth. "Lucius told me that I... that I was special. And that when I die, I get reincarnated immediately. I'm not supposed to wake up like this. I should be a baby somewhere in a loving mother's arms. So what happened?"

"You were shot by a poisoned arrow," Dimitri started slowly. He spoke as if he were speaking to a child with little knowledge of the English language. "The poison can be used to kill off immortal beings, much less a human."

"Yeah, I know that. Lucius told me when he had kidnapped me, which by the way, you did not rescue me from." Finding myself in a rather petty state, I folded my arms across my chest after pushing myself further up into a comfortable sitting position. "In fact, you sent Fabian."

"You didn't tell her?" Dimitri turned to ask Fabian, a confused and slightly irritated look appearing on his features.

Fabian shrugged once, the corners of his lips dropping down mockingly into a frown. "Not my fault that she didn't remember. I already told her why you couldn't set foot into Heaven."

"Well, that's not the point now. The point is that I know the arrow was poisoned and I willingly jumped in front of it to save you. I know what I did and I accept the consequences that came along with it. But this wasn't the consequence in which I thought would be a package deal."

Sliding off to the side of the bed, I threw my legs over the edge as the blanket fell to a side. My eyes immediately fell to my feet, to which were colored a disgustingly pale shade of greenish yellow that resembled my skin tone back in the boathouse when Dimitri had first kissed me.

"I couldn't just let you die, Andy," Dimitri pleaded. Immediately, he teleported to my side, a single finger rested beneath my chin to tilt my face so that my eyes met his. A shockingly bright shade of gray that sparkled silver greeted me. The eyes of Death greeted me. "Fabian and I brought you back."

"I'm see-through," I deadpanned.

"There are limitations to our powers, Pilediah." Fabian waved nonchalantly before jumping off of the armchair. He walked slowly as if teasing the suspense in the air before dropping onto the bed. "We brought you back as a ghost."

"But your spirit is special, Addison," Dimitri continued. "You cannot stay as a spirit for too long. From the start, you were meant to be shipped into the reincarnation system continuously. So we could only delay your reincarnation by a few days."

"Five days, to be exact." Fabian nodded once, turning so that his eyes met mine. "Five days before you turn into a little baby again and all hope of Hell surviving this war are lost. Seriously, what were you thinking? If you died for real and end up reincarnated, Lucius wins immediately. Hell can be taken over with just a snap of his fingers. Our powers will become too weak to protect this realm." For further effect, Fabian clicked his fingers together before sprawling across the duvet lazily.

For a minute, I stayed silent. My eyes trailed away from Dimitri's concerned ones, landing on the ground as my jaw dropped slightly open. Evidently, my heart still thundered in my chest. I could feel the blood roaring loud and alive in my ears as the coursed through the natural routes designed in my body. However, to have a beating heart while I was dead was something in which I was very much used to.

"Addison?" Dimitri's voice was soft, eerily pleasant as he placed a hand on my knee. "I know this is a lot to take in, but we will find a way through this. There are magic spells placed all over the castle, and each brick of this place was cemented using sorcery back in the olden days. There will be a way to bring you back to life."

With hair covering my face like curtains, I shook my head gently, forcing my eyes shut in despair.

"I need some time alone to process this. This... this is too much."

"Oh so spirits coming after you, angels being worse than demons and talking to the four horsemen of the apocalypse is not?" Fabian snorted.

"Fabian." There was a hint of a warning hinting against Dimitri's voice, but I took no attention.

"In case you hadn't noticed, Fabian, I spent an entire year in need of therapy because of the party in which the four of you thought would be fun to pull on me. I nearly died, and even until now, I still don't have an answer as to why you guys pulled that horrible trick on me. Dimitri," I turned to face him, memories beginning to fill my mind as I grew livid. "You fucking set a killer clown to come after me! What was that for? And then, it is because of you did I get into such a mess!" And with that, I turned back to Fabian. "Because you messed around with Ida and allowed Lucius to know of her identity--"

"Do not talk about Ida that way," Fabian threatened, eyebrows furrowed deeply as his eyes held the look of a killer. Yet, I was still filled with anger, emotions too busy spilling forth from my mouth to care.

"--had she been killed in the first place! You were the one that had caused her death, not Dimitri!"

The room grew silent, both Dimitri and Fabian too filled with shock to properly form words. Dimitri was the one that broke the silence first, the look on his face evidently displaying incredulity.

"You told Addison about Ida? You've not talked about her to others in years."

"That's because I don't have others to talk to," Fabian snarled. "Listen, Pilediah, I don't care if you're already dead. I will send you down to the pits of Hell to be placed alongside Lucifer if you ever speak of Ida ever again--"

I interrupted him. "And yet you'll be sending your precious Ida down to bunk with Lucifer as well. How does that feel? To send the woman you loved, or well, love, down to Hell because I, unfortunately, look just like her."

At a loss for words once more, Fabian abruptly stood up from his spot next to me, his fists clenched as he turned away towards the door.

"Fabian, calm down," Dimitri called after him. "Fabian, where are you going?"

"To kill some hundred thousand people," he replied.

"And that's all I wanted since the start. Amazing how you could've avoided that conversation, huh?" I yelled at him, a hint of a smirk playing on my lips as Dimitri turned to face me with a disappointing look. "What? He started it."

"That was low for you to speak to him so harshly about someone he loved and lost." He leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest and expression stern as if he were reprimanding a disobedient child. "You were the love of his life a few hundred or thousand years back."

"Funny how I don't remember that, huh? I mean, I always pictured that if I had past lives I would remember them after I died. Isn't it hilarious how things aren't always how it seemed to be?"

"Addison--"

"And you know what, Dimitri? It's also funny how I don't remember being your best friend when I was younger and still alive. Shame I have forgotten both events, right? If not things would be much easier for us." I was on a roll, equipped with a tongue sharper than butcher knives as Dimitri clenched his jaw tightly. I could feel annoyance starting to swim in his irises, but I was too overwhelmed with anger to even bother. Death does funny things to people in the afterlife.

"You've got what you wanted. I'm leaving now, alright. I'll return later with some food and drinks. There's someone eager to meet you." With that, he stood up, stretching to his full height as I stared down at his polished black leather shoes, refusing to meet his eyes. "I can only hope that you won't push her away too."

Just like that, Dimitri walked out of the room, allowing the door to slam shut behind him as silence followed soon thereafter. I was left alone once more, and though I had thought to myself that I never wanted to be in that void again, the words were withdrawn the very second both Dimitri and Fabian disappeared from my side.

What I would give to be away from such guilt.

Hello earthlings. I hope that Chapter One had been worth the wait for you guys. Unfortunately, this version on Wattpad will only be updated almost once every month, so that's a hell of a time. If you want, you can always wait for the next update here or you can head over to Radish Fiction to read the next chapter. (Over there, Chapter Five drops tomorrow.)

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Until next time. ♥