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NO SPOILERS.

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           I guess you could say it all started when my first grade class went to the zoo.

            When my fear of swimming began.

            I couldn't recall much from my childhood. I had a few memories and all, and if my parents brought something up about the past,  I could vaguely recall it, but if I just sat down and tried to remember anything at all about my childhood, I would reach this imaginary wall, then begin to get an unbearable headache until I stopped trying. Everything past around age nine or ten was a complete and utter blur. And as crazy as it obviously sounded, it had always felt as if I wasn't allowed to access my own memories.

            One day, out of determination, I lay down in bed, shut my eyes, and tried to reach that wall in my mind again. I pushed through the headache. Pushed at the wall. It was no use. I gave up. However, I found myself unable to open my eyes, trapped in front of the imaginary black wall in my mind. I was twelve years old.

             Mom found me unconscious in the middle of my bed room floor.

             Nothing strange turned up when they checked my brain out at the hospital. I told them about everything. The wall. The memories. They didn't think I was crazy because I wasn't. I just had an overactive imagination...

            What I could distinctly remember from my childhood, cruel as it may be, were all scarring events. One of those events was my first trip to the zoo. A school field trip that I had brought Mr. Wiggles on. Marcy and I had grown up close, but we hadn't been in the same school until middle school. I didn't have many friends until her, so my "buddy" for the field trip was a smelly, nasty little kid that picked his nose. His name was George. The class had crowded around the seal exhibit, getting yelled at for standing on the ledge in front of small glass wall, and shoving each other to get a better look; whereas I stood like a loner in the back, patiently waiting for everyone to move and watching the seal trainer throw fish into the water. Tourists moved in, snapping pictures of the seal waving at the crowd, receiving a fish. I took my turn and stood up on the ledge when the trainer stepped out of the exhibit and the seal dove back into the water.

            The seal cut quickly through the water beneath my eyes, twirling and spinning and playing. I wanted to get its attention, so I started to wave Mr. Wiggles over the water.

            "Why don't you just give it that ugly thing?" George sneered from behind me. Before I could react, he shook my hand hard until Mr. Wiggles fell into the water. He landed on a small ledge between the glass wall and the water, dangling over the seal's line of sight.

            "NO!" I started to panic, reaching towards Mr. Wiggles. It was then that the seal came up out of the water, splashing it over the ledge, and causing me to lose my balaance as my hand slipped. I bonked my head on something when I fell over the wall, before plummeting into the warm water. I heard people screaming above me, knocking on the glass from the first floor of the zoo where the seal's tank was visible. Unable to swim, I instantly lost all of my breath in a silent scream and sunk straight to the bottom. I started to flail my arms out, at first keeping my mouth shut, but  then panicked, and grew so terrified that I opened my mouth and swallowed tons of water. The seal circled around me like a massive shadowy beast, making high pitched noises that sounded like screams. I must have fallen unconscious from lack of oxygen when hands gripped me by the shoulders, tugging me up from the bottom of the exhibit. They performed CPR on me. When I woke up, Mr. Wiggles was at my side and soaked. My mom sued the school and made me switch to Marcy's school, and after the horrifying event,  I never went on another school field trip, or swam in a pool again,

            Now, at nearly eighteen years old, as  the man who called himself "Death" dragged me towards Thomas Gregory's indoor pool, growling and hissing out curses, the horror of that childhood school field trip came back to me in full. I was screaming, clawing at the ground, kicking out. A trail of blood from thin scrapes on my knees painted the cement. The louder I shrieked, the more helpless I felt. It was as if the entire pool room was sound proof.

            "How dare you insult me after everything I've done for you!" the hooded man hissed. "I'd have your head on a platter with some pretty garnish if you weren't so special to me." The way he said "special" sounded like I was a big juicy Big Mac at McDonalds. "Freaking humans!"

            "Get your hands off of me, psycho!" I roared. "What are you--" He pinned my belly to the diving board, straddling my back as he tried to get my hands behind my back, bouncing his body up and down and making the diving board shake, "--doing?! Stop bouncing the diving board! Get your hands.... off of me!" With every bounce, my face got closer to the water, and the fear in my gut thickened.

             I screamed again. I couldn't help it.

            "What a lovely noise!" Death laughed out maniacally. "I like when people scream. Gives me chills. Especially when I'm the only one who can hear it. Everyone in this house is currently under my control, human or not, and therefore, nobody can hear your cries. I have this trick though, that I could have used had we been in a room full of people. I could mute your voice if I wanted to. You would open your mouth and nothing would come out. Not even a squeak. I'm a very talented person...and I'm not talking tying a cherry stem around my mouth -- which I can do very well, among many other things, but that's beside the point." Death shook the diving board again with his big body. "Gosh, isn't this fun?"

            "This is insane! You've got me on the edge of a diving board like I'm walking the freaking plank!" I squeezed my eyes shut as the diving board's jerky movements threatened to toss me into the water. "You're insane--!"

            Death growled at my ear, "In a world of madness that shouldn't come as a surprise to you." He then pressed his mouth roughly against my ear, that deep, slightly accented voice of his like velvet against my skin.  "You'll come to realize how crazy you are yourself. I'll make sure of it."

            I stilled beneath him, terror widening my eyes. "Who the hell are you? This isn't funny anymore! Why are you doing this to me? Why me?"

            "Why you? What a great question. One I'm not ready to answer. Why not you? I told you who I am. You just refuse to believe me." Death sighed, digging his fingers into my wrists, pressing them harder against my back as I thrashed beneath him. "Nobody seems to believe me when I tell them who I am. People who are about to die, that is.  It's like, what's the point of even wearing this cloak if nobody gets nme, you know? This thing doesn't compliment my remarkable curves and physique at all. It's truly a shame--"

            "Are you serious right now--?"

            He smothered me with his glove. "Don't cut me off or I'll cut you in half, bitch," Death snapped, voice dropping to an emotionless, frightening coldness. "As I was saying...we could have had hot sex in the pool, and perhaps it would have been a great ice breaker. Definitely pleasurable... Sometimes I lose my temper, though, and that would have definitely ended messily... It always does. But now?" He barked out a laugh that morphed into an animalistic hiss. "Now,  I don't want anything to do with your long legs and that tight gothic dress. I find myself loathing your clever, disrespectful little mouth. I'm going to teach you a lesson, and I'm going to do it my way. The fun way. Let's see how tough you really are, human. Let's see you swim. What do you say? Actually, you don't have to say anything. I'll decide for you. Get up."

            "I can't," I got out hoarsely, tears filling my eyes. I felt like I was admitting defeat to my inner demons, giving in to my enemy. He lifted my body with ease, dropping me at the edge of the body board, holding me hostage against him. I screamed, thinking I was going to fall into the water at any minute.  "I can't! Please, don't! I can't!"

            There was a mocking tone to his voice. "You can't what?"

            "I CAN'T SWIM!"

            "Mmm. That's what I wanted to hear." Now his wide chest was flat against my back, thick muscles shifting with every breath. "Are you scared?" he wondered.

            I stared down at the water, blinking back tears. I couldn't speak.

            My captor shook me again, my heels almost slipping off the diving board. "Answer me!"

            My teeth rattled with panic. "Whether you're real or not, I won't  let you get any sort of complacency from my fear!" I lied through tight teeth. I became too aware of his hand grasping mine tightly behind my back, feeling their warm, secure grip shift. "You're just stronger than me, but if you wanted to kill me, you would have done so already. Your game means nothing to me. If you're going to throw me in the water, do it. Just do it."

            "Did you get that all from the Disney channel or something? Talk about ruining a guy's vicious mood with a life lesson. I think I'm tearing up a little of boredom." Death shifted his grip on me in his arms again, wrapping one big hand around the back of my neck like a vise and leaning me forward, so that my vision dangled further over the water off of the diving board. I stared at the horrified version of myself in the water, blue eyes wide with panic, too afraid to move a muscle.

            One moment I was staring at the water, the next, I was submerged. Clawing at the water around me. Helplessly and silently screaming. Panic overtook me. I went into survival mode, straining my legs to push up from the floor of the pool. I couldn't. My feet were anchored to the ground, gothic dress swirling around me as the pool water spun and clashed painfully against my skin like in an angry ocean. I couldn't breathe. My brain screamed for oxygen. I was dying...

            "Ta-da." Death yanked me back against him, releasing my hands from his grasp, sliding his warm leather gloves along my chilled, trembling arms. I gasped loudly, fighting to catch my breath. We were both still on the diving board. Him imprisoning me in his arms. Me instinctively trying to grip his clothing--anything to keep me from falling forward into the water. We had never moved. My skin was dry to the bone. I hadn't even touched the pool in front of me, yet I felt its contents as if I had plunged into it. Lost my breath in it. I panted. I was utterly confused.

            It had all been in my head.

            "I could do a lot worse to you than that." Death's hot, minty breath fanned the side of my neck. "But next time, it might not be in your head. Next time, I might really drown you." His grip tightened. "Don't piss me off, Faith Williams."

            I had never been so terrified in my life. "You're a monster," I rasped out, still breathing hard. "You're a monster."

            "She finally gets it." It was as if he  knew I wouldn't try and physically fight him. His strength was eminent, it was pointless to waste my energy any longer against him. "Faith Williams...you truly are a conundrum, aren't you? Answer me this, from The Hobbit: 'What cannot be seen, it cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills, and empty holes it fills. It comes first and follows after, ends life, kills laughter.' The answer...is an incessant drumming in your chest, a place for evil to have its fest... Do you know what it is?" Warm lips brushed slightly against my ear. "It's darkness. Darkness is the answer. Darkness haunts my every dead moment. As well as something else... That verve and fervor within your chest. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. It quickens with every word you have against my existence." He tapped his fingers against my neck, where my pulse hammered. "You feel it, don't you? The darkness. It reveals that I am in fact the horrible truth in this world: everybody's life is in the palm of a psychopath's hand."

            "I don't feel it," I stated, fighting the urge to tilt my head into the leather glove cupping the side of my face from behind. "I don't see the darkness, I just see a nightmare. A really vivid, bizarre nightmare. I don't want to see it anymore. I want to wake up. I don't know what you just did to me, but I don't want it to happen again."

            "Be a good little Catholic girl, and it won't have to happen again." The villain slid a finger down my spine. Chills overtook me. "You're very awake, cupcake."

            "I can't be." I shook my head, digging my nails into my palm as I felt the urge to turn around and slug the man behind me in the face. Every word from his mouth was mocking and condescending. I had never had a dream of a person so vivid and frustrating in my life. " None of this can be real. The demons... They don't exist. You... You don't exist."

            "You're not a dumb girl, so stop acting like one. I'm standing right in front of you, Faith. I'm in the flesh. Here, for you. You are mine."

             "I'm not your possession."

            His laugh was rough and unnerving. "Oh, you definitely are."

            "No I'm not!" I squeezed my eyes shut, trembling with emotion. "You're not real!"

            The monster lost control in an instant, the temperature in the room plummeting impossibly fast until I was overcome with violent chills. "Stop saying that!" Death roared, pressing himself harder against my back, roughly grabbing my chin in his hands as he caged me against him. The more I struggled, the more he squeezed. I felt like the prey of an anaconda. " You've seen it in my eyes, the amount of time within them. You know that I am real. You know what I am, and you sure as hell know what I had to do to get to you. Whose head I had to rip off."

            An angel. My guardian angel's killer.

            I bit back my emotions. "I've never seen your eyes. I don't know what you're talking about." I daringly turned my face towards the masked villain. Death stepped away from me, turning his shadowy face away.

            "You really are a good painter."

            I turned sharply towards him, following the hooded man with my eyes as he stalked away from me. How does he know about my painting?

            "Ceaselessly painting the same image, the image which haunts your dreams and your every breath... Is it becoming clear, who truly came to your door two weeks ago?"

            "You were the cat," I stated, starting to understand. To my incredulity, my body defied my mind and I began to follow him curiously around the pool, keeping my distance. "Those eyes...are yours? That's impossible. It was a cat."

            "Nothing is impossible." Death turned sharply around, looming over me, swinging his thick black cloak around him. "But then again, I'm just a figure of your imagination," he growled out bitterly.

            "But you said..." I cleared my throat, refusing to flinch away from the gigantic monster in front of me as he leaned in closer. "You said that only someone at the brink of death can see what you look like. I wasn't at the brink of death when I saw you...the cat, as you say, on my porch. Explain that. It just doesn't make sense."

            The monster laughed quietly in my face, the sound a low rumble. "Questions, questions, questions. So many questions! That'll get you in trouble with me. Actually, it just might get you at the bottom of that pool." He inclined his head towards Thomas Gregory's pool, and for an instant, I imagined myself in the water again and I couldn't breathe.  

            I looked away from the pool, gasping.

            "Got you again!" Death poked me on the nose. "Too easy to manipulate. Far too easy. You'll be fun to play with. Very fun." I could feel Death smirking that unfriendly smirk as he looked back at me. "Aw, what's wrong? Sad? If I didn't know any better, cupcake, I'd say you think I'm real now."

            I eyed him skeptically, crossing my arms over my chest. "What do you want with me?" I replied, a bit boldly.

            He mimicked my position, thick arms bulging underneath his cloak.

            Damn was he ripped.

            Not that I was looking...

            "I want more than you could ever imagine. I want everything, all at once, but I want it willingly and enthusiastically. What I want is your faithfulness, Faith." Death stalked away from me, muttering something foreign under his breath. It sounded like he was cursing. "That was corny. Fucking puns, ruining my immorality!" He then spun back around a good ten feet away, shifting his cloak around his massive body. His head was tilted down like he was going to charge again, face an endless black hole, showing no signs of skin or features. "I want a contract from you. I want your pretty little human signature, with your pretty little hearts over your I's, mounted over my fireplace with the rest of them. It's an evil thing. We like to brag about our toys. So what do you say, princess?"

            "How'd you know about the hearts?"

            Death tilted his head to the side, a monstrous noise rumbling in his chest. "Answer my question," he drawled out.

            I didn't say anything for a while, staring at the creature across the room with his hidden, piercing eyes. I smiled politely. "You're not getting anything from me."

            "No?" Death turned his shadowy face towards the pool, then back at me. "Even after you've witnessed what I can do to you?" He pointed towards the pool as a reminder. "I'll do it again. Don't test me."

            We walked towards each other and stopped a few feet away. Then we started to circle. An even match? More like a hungry lion stalking its prey. Prey that wasn't giving in so easily.

            I ceased any sort of movement, letting the monster circle me in slow, calculated strides, leaning in far too closely whenever he rounded my face. "I'm not an idiot. I'm not signing anything from the Grim Reaper," I said.

            "I always get what I want."

            "Not this time," I snapped.

            "Every time," he countered. "Every time, for much longer than you can comprehend, I have gotten what I wanted. Whether someone gets hurt in the process, is up to you. You will make your decision now. Your mother might have struck the deal, but I want to see your agreement in writing. I want you to physically say that you are mine."

            "I really think you should try therapy."

            Death stopped stalking around me, growing absolutely still. As if my response had been the last one he had expected, a low snarl came from his direction. That black hole where a face should have been came closer than ever to my own, and the invisible, haunting eyes of a killer peered deep within me. His voice was deadpanned and empty. "You have no idea what I am capable of."

            One moment, I was staring at a hooded man. The next, his body exploded in a black mist, and I was staring at nothing.  

            I pulled at my hair. I fell to the ground, sobbing. Every emotion I had held in, every ounce of dread in my gut came pouring out. I knew Death was real. Good God, I knew he was real from the moment I saw him, yet I had tried to convince myself otherwise. "Fudge!" I tore through a back door in the pool room, stumbling on freshly mowed grass. As if just realizing what I had just done, and whom I had just spoken to, I ran faster than I had ever run in my entire life away from that house.

            Right when I caught sight of my car,a shadow jumped out of the bushes and crashed into me. We both screamed. Then I realized who it was. The drunken giggle gave it away. Marcy's giggle.

             "This party is rad!" she slurred. "I met the hottest guy!"

            I clutched Marcy to my chest. She smelled like vodka and mistakes. "Oh, thank God! You're alive! We have to go, don't ask questions! We have to go!" I yanked her reluctant feet towards my vehicle, throwing her into the passenger seat. Getting behind the wheel, I peeled out of the spot, burning rubber, never looking back at Thomas Gregory's mansion.

             The freaking Grim Reaper was after me.

            Things only got worse that night.

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