"our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them" - george eliot

Fifty years ago, on a cool October evening, the small town of Fleet, Massachusetts was broken apart by the tragic and unprecedented death of twenty-year-old Harry Styles.

Harry was a model citizen; he held a job at the local grocery store for the past two years, had been a prominent volunteer in the community, and was a weekly presence in the local church. Despite being twenty years of age, he still lived at home with both of his parents, and always left time to have at least one family dinner with them a week.

So it was quite the shock to all three thousand residents of Fleet when Harry arrived home from work on his last day of life, kissed his mother and father on their cheeks, then went upstairs to his room and slit his wrists in a bathtub full of water. By the time his body was found, his skin was already ice cold and blue.

"Never saw it coming," the townspeople said, their words hidden behind cupped hands and folded newspapers. "He was so happy. Never saw him frown."

What they also never saw were the countless hours of therapy, dozens of hospitalizations, long nights full of panic, and an endless cycle of medications. What they never saw was his deep sadness, kept neatly buried behind painted pretty things. Harry did his best to pretend he was alright, but in the end he was just another victim to an incurable pain.

He'd been dead inside far long before his body was.

Once the initial shock wore off, his body was buried in the local cemetery. Hundreds of people attended, all with the same thought on their minds - if only Harry could've seen how loved he really was, maybe it would have saved him.

The problem was, Harry knew how loved he was. But a hundred rose petals won't make a thorn any less sharp; no amount of love can repair a damaged soul if it doesn't want to be saved.

His casket was a simple mahogany brown and his headstone was engraved with his favorite quote from his favorite author, C.S. Lewis:

"god doesn't want something from us; he simply wants us"

During the first month that Harry was gone, his parents had been diligent about visiting the cemetery once a week to bring him fresh flowers and clean up the space around the marker. Sometimes the unforgiving winter winds blew stray leaves or dirt on top of the headstone, but his parents did their best to ensure his stayed trim and clean.

But as winter wound on and the air became frigid, it became harder for his parents to visit as often as they used to. Eventually the flowers on his grave wilted and dried, and his beautiful headstone was lost to overgrown grass. By the time spring rolled around and the snow melted, Fleet seemed to have forgotten all about Harry Styles and the promise he'd once held for the world. His parents didn't visit him again, nobody did, and as the years wore on his grave only deteriorated with time.

But Harry himself never noticed any of these details. He never knew he had a headstone with his favorite quote carved on it, never knew about the flowers his parents used to bring him, and certainly never knew about the disarray his burial site eventually fell into. No, Harry's soul was quite occupied in the afterlife and had been since the moment his last breath fell from his pale lips.

* * *

Upon waking up in limbo, Harry is greeted by a raging headache and a boy in a blue sweater leaning over him. It takes him a long moment to realize he's somehow been laid out flat on the ground. He fights to sit up and stars explode across his vision.

"Hi, Harry," the boy beams. He thrusts his hand out in a vigorous attempt at a handshake. "I'm Niall. And you're dead."

Harry feels his eyes widen. "Excuse me?"

Niall cracks a mile-wide smile. "Sorry. He's told me I need to work on my delivery."

Harry's head is throbbing, like someone's just cracked his skull with a hammer. He wobbles to his feet and rubs his forehead. The pain in his mind makes it difficult to absorb Niall's words.

"Don't worry, the headache goes away after a few minutes," Niall says placidly. "That's just your soul adjusting to the change in dimensions."

"Dimensions?" Harry echoes. He takes a moment to examine his surroundings - all around him is a blank white space, with no light nor no shadow. "Where am I?"

"Purgatory." A voice that doesn't belong to Niall answers Harry's question; when he turns, he sees a man in a black shirt and black pants watching him with a curious expression.

"Purgatory?" Harry asks dubiously. He glances back at Niall, who merely gives him an eager nod. "Like from the Inferno?"

The man in the black shirt shrugs complacently. "Dante was mostly right, but he was only human. Couldn't guess every secret of this realm correctly. But if that is the easiest comparison for you to make, then yes, this place is very similar. It is also known simply as the Judgement."

Niall's keen attitude and the man's dizzying words have Harry's head swimming even more than the pounding in his skull. "I don't understand. Am I really dead?"

"As a doornail!" Niall chirps. The man throws Niall a cross glare and he quickly falls silent.

"Mister Horan, I do believe you're needed in Nepal now," the man says with quiet authority. "There's a man very close to transitioning."

Niall nods obediently and flashes Harry another chipper smile. Then he disappears.

Harry rubs his eyes in confusion. One minute Niall was there, the next he was gone. No puff of smoke, no warning either. Just simply vanished.

"Now, Harry, I know you have many questions but there are other matters at hand. Ones of universal importance," the man says. "Let's take a walk."

Without giving Harry a moment to either refuse or accept, the man turns and begins walking in the opposite direction, further into the endless white expanse surrounding them. Harry hesitates briefly before trailing behind the stranger. If he's already dead, what has he got to lose?

"Are you going to explain to me what's going on?" Harry presses.

"You're dead," the stranger answers. "When humans die and transition to our realm, they are brought to the Judgement. I'm sure you can guess what happens then."

Harry swallows the lump in his throat. "I've got an idea."

A silence passes. His ears strain to listen to their surroundings, but he can't hear anything. Not the fall of their footsteps on the ground, not even his own pulse. This makes him more nervous; he feels like prey without any sort of indication of danger.

"Who was that?" Harry asks, gesturing back to where Niall once was.

"Niall is a reaper," the man says. "He's the one who brought you here."

"I don't remember that," Harry admits quietly.

"Some souls remember transitioning, others do not," he shrugs. "It's mostly up to chance and how strongly attached you were to the human world. The closer you feel to that life, the more you remember."

A melancholy sensation settles into Harry's chest. He always considered himself well-woven into his community - close with his parents, a volunteer for many events, and a member of the church. He rarely missed a service.

But even so, he never felt he could share the deep misery sitting at his core. Some part of him always had to be guarded and perfectly presented so to ward off suspicion. Nobody could know his inner struggle, and therefore nobody could know the real Harry.

The man nods, almost glumly. "Yes, I know all about the things you dealt with. You chose a rather thoughtless way to end your problems, in my opinion, but some souls are just unable to handle the grief of living."

A jolt of cold runs through Harry's veins. He turns in confusion to gaze at the man. "You . . . you can read my thoughts?"

His words invoke a leering smile, the likes of which make Harry's stomach twist with a primal sort of fear. The stranger stops walking and turns slightly to peer over his own shoulder. "I can do much more than that, Harry."

His footsteps falter as the severity of the situation suddenly reaches him. Within his ribcage, his heart begins to flutter - even in death, the terror of a nearby predator is inescapable.

"Who are you?" he asks cautiously.

The sick smile grows bigger. His fear grows into raw, unabated terror as the man is, without warning, ripped apart and transformed into a massive collection of shifting black mist. Harry yells in fear and scrambles backwards, fighting to get away, but trips over his own feet before collapsing onto the ground. When he looks back, he sees the Mist growing bigger.

"I am the one they call Azrael, the Angel of Death." A voice speaks, greater than mountains and deeper than the ocean, and Harry feels his very core begin to rattle with fear. His tongue is frozen in a block of ice; he wants so badly to scream, to beg for help, but no sound comes out.

"You have committed a great violence against God for taking your own life," the Mist tells Harry. "Cruelty against the beauty of life is among the most despicable of sins."

"Please," Harry cries weakly, "I - I didn't know!"

The Mist shifts, seeming to pay no mind to Harry's begging. "Your Judgement has come. A soul this tainted only belongs in one place. As punishment for your selfish transgressions, you will be sent to the bowels of Hell and cursed to roam the woods forever - never to find light nor peace again."

An eternity of aimless wandering - his soul would be as restless here as it was on Earth. Harry can't imagine a more unbearable way to spend the afterlife.

"Please!" he begs again, dropping to his knees before the Mist."Isn't there something else I can do instead? P-Please, I'll do anything!"

Upon hearing his desperate pleas, the Mist begins to surge and swell in size, writhing before him in the most terrifying way imaginable. Harry falls back onto his hands, doing his best to cower away from the blackness until It speaks again. "There is another way to repay your debts. If you so choose to, I will allow you to follow me and help other souls cross into this realm as you yourself have crossed."

"You mean, b-be a reaper?" Harry stutters. "Like Niall?"

"You are a helper to the lost souls," the Mist contends, still moving in an agitated fashion. "Choose your fate wisely, as you will not be given another chance."

The prospect is less than appealing, but given the circumstances, Harry can't see another way out of literal eternal damnation.

"Okay," he says, his voice shaking in fear. "I will be a reaper."

Within the blink of an eye, Harry abruptly finds himself back on earth in the same physical body he once occupied for twenty years. Gone is the blank white world of the Judgement and the frightening misty creature; now, he stands in the midst of a crowded street.

To his dismay, nobody seems to notice his sudden presence. Hundreds of people jostle about on the street, weaving their way past one another, but no eyes fall upon Harry. At one point, a woman barrels straight through his chest and exits out his back without faltering at all, and he knows by the sinking feeling in his gut that he is invisible.

"You have to remain unseen," a unexpected voice whispers, striking his ears with the force of a gong although no one seems to be speaking. "Reapers are invisible to souls unless they are about to cross."

A beat of uncertainty passes while Harry does his best to take in his surroundings. The colorful billboards and advertisements on every building are written in a strange language, and only after a moment does he finally realize that he's in a busy city somewhere in Japan.

"Look there," the invisible voice commands. Harry looks where told and sees an older woman stumbling about, clutching her chest and futilely crying out for help to those around her.

"Why do they ignore her?" Harry asks, feeling his heart thump painfully in sympathy for the woman; clearly she's distraught and in need of help. But as soon as the words leave his lips, he knows the answer.

The woman is already dead. Her body must still be in one of the nearby buildings, growing cold while her soul is left to wander unaccompanied.

"Go to her. Tell her you are taking her to Purgatory for judgement."

His feet begin to move before his brain can comprehend the command. From his tongue spills a Japanese greeting, despite the fact that he'd never heard nor spoke a word of it during his human life. The woman runs to him, her face awash with relief at finally being acknowledged, until Harry's words finally sink in and she realizes the terrible truth of why he's there.

Tears roll down her pale cheeks as she pleads with him the same way he'd pled with Death. His heart aches to tell her something comforting, anything to ease her pain, but all he can do is offer her a way to Purgatory. Distraught, she follows Harry to the empty expanse again, but instead of seeing the Mist waiting for him, a boy in a white sweater and white pants is there.

The boy in white offers Harry and the woman a warm smile as they approach. He says a few gentle words in Japanese to the woman before turning his attention to Harry, who is merely looking on in confusion.

"Hello," he says, in a voice much calmer than Niall's. "I'm Liam. I'll be taking over from here."

Harry frowns slightly. "Who are you?" The steady beating of his heart tells him Liam isn't to be feared in the same way Death is.

Liam smiles pleasantly. "I'm an angel. She's going to Heaven, and I'm the one who'll be taking her there."

Before Harry is given the chance to ask any of the burning questions that bubble up on his tongue, a window of ethereal white light appears where Liam was standing. He watches in awe as the woman fearlessly steps through the portal and is swallowed by the light.

Falling prey to his curiosity, Harry tries to follow her through the window, only to be thrust back on his ass by an otherworldly force.

"Ouch!" he cries, clutching the hand that had just begun to touch the light. The portal disappears with the woman but Harry is left with a powerful stinging sensation that slowly travels up his right arm before ending in his shoulder. Behind him he hears cold, amused laughter, and when he turns his stomach clenches in fear.

The Mist is with him again, swirling closer while the voice continues to laugh. Harry groans in pain and tries to shake off the numbness in his arm.

"You are death now," the Invisible sneers. "You cannot touch the light. You belong to the darkness. You are the darkness."

oooooh hope you enjoyed this short! i'm very happy with it!

this is a story i've had brewing for a while now, and i'd love to eventually turn it into a full short story if that's something you all would be interested in. so give it a vote, if you so please, and let me know your thoughts! enjoy :) xx