Two hollow circles beam at me in a faint red glow. *Eyes* shining like a cat's yet beating down from a man's face.
'Derek? How!'
It sure looks like him but he's unimaginably more nightmarish, as if that's even possible. It's so dark but his irises glimmer clearly as if back lit, absorbing all light and reflecting it out of the depths. I shrivel, feeling the color drain from my face as reality crumbles to pieces.
His lips stretch back, exposing a dazzling row of beastly teeth. A cross between human and animal – the front two look normal but each that follows is progressively sharper. Those canines are like *daggers*.
Breath is stuck in my lungs, frozen in time, like I've been thrown into the oxygen sucking vacuum of space. Resentment intensifies in the glowing eyes but I can't bring myself to move other than violently quiver in place.
"That holy water was real cute," he says, the melted side of his face moving all wrong, "Allow me to return the favor."
With a crunch I'm flying backwards, whizzing past the barrage of trunks until finally smashing into one. I crash down, nauseated, resisting the urge to throw up. The forest view sways as if loose in a raging tide. I come to, wincing with every shaky breath. I'm hardly able to locate where the pain is coming from, it's like I was kicked by two horses simultaneously from both sides.
A sharp puff has blood spattering out, bitter and metallic. It's hard to breathe and may be more severe than a few broken ribs. I blink rapidly, trying to find a focal point as I take those short excruciating pants. Each intake has fire ricocheting from my center.
Then my vision goes haywire and those menacing red eyes are everywhere, dotting my sight like a strobe. He's got me. I can't do anything. The ground disappears beneath as cold hands squeeze my throat and lift me high. My legs twitch and seize from air deprivation. My arms on autopilot, trying to pull myself up. I can feel myself passing out as the dark circles close in.
The pounding agony in my head and a rough gasp of air force a return to confused consciousness. Muffled blood sloshes in my ears, overtaking all other sounds. Ragged breaths slither through my pipes as I comprehend my rag-doll sprawl on a weedy floor.
It takes another moment to notice the red eyed demon knelt over me, holding up my bloody wrist. He's completely mesmerized by it. Glass shards jut out of my palm in pinkish crystals. Sparkling quartz in the thin moonlight submerged in gushing crimson, sticky and miserable. He squeezes my wrist until it throbs and blood overflows.
I watch helplessly as dark liquid trickles over, rolling down my arm. He bends his face to it, closing those terrible eyes and parting his mouth. A tongue lolls out, licking the trail from elbow to palm.
'An actual demon.'
His eyes drink me in as I fade in and out. I watch him lift away, head tilted as if to take in the taste. Even licking his lips as if my blood is something to be savored. Then the moment is gone with a red stained hiss and those imminent teeth strike down. I hardly have time to squeal, his fangs slice open my arm like a razor.
My breath quickens with every pulse. The pace accelerating with each pull and swallow. He's dragging me from inside out, sucking me in. My inhales are irregular, short like a hyperventilation but the out breaths are too feeble.
He wrenches himself off my wrist and sighs with visible intoxication. His motions are a blur. All a fuzz of blending shapes. My vision is focusing and unfocusing like putting on and taking off prescription eyeglasses over and over.
My arm thumps to the ground, eyelids fluttering to stay present. Derek has vanished. Where'd he go now, was he ever really here? My head is spinning.
Struggling to get proper air, I muster a deep breath, hear a crackle as my lungs expand. A pang of stark agony ripples through, stealing thought and breath for several seconds. It's cold, getting colder, I can barely feel my arm. It might fall off and die.
If I weren't so mangled, I would have leapt out of my skin noticing Derek occupying my opposite side. He hovers low, face too close to mine. I'm lost in his hellish crimson orbs drawing me in like a vortex. I inhale a drawn out wheeze for far too long before my ribs stunt the action.
His attention is fixed on my neck, fingers coaxing my head to the side with a push. I tremble, feeling tears escape, rolling down my dirty face.
Those demon teeth plunge in.
My scream is a gurgle as the awful jaws clamp. I feel myself start to drown in the labored breathing, lungs filling. Panicked but too exhausted to fight back. Bubbly, wet, I'm sinking into dread. My head melting as if it's becoming a part of the ground, my soul is being torn from my neck.
'I'm going to die...'
"No," I say but my lips barely move and no words come out, only choked gurgles.
The blues and blacks of the wilderness enclose me. I stare hopelessly into the fuzzy pitched wood. My cheek flattens against the dirt.
And in the dark, a peculiar shape emerges in a clearing. I take a horrible heave as I make out a hooded figure among the distant pines. A cape flowing in the gentle wind. The Grim Reaper is coming for me.
'NO! I can't die! Not here, not–' My aching fingers dig into the soil. I can't speak, it's all jumbled shrieking in my cloudy brain.
I feel the pressure from my neck release. Derek seems to be shouting though it's impossible to make it out as if we're submerged under water.
My eyes feel like boulders as I struggle to glance up. Neck bones brittle as I turn to eye my future murderer. My ears start to clear with the scraping movement of my head.
"You're no Reaper...get out of here! She's mine!" he barks at my hallucination, staring straight at it. Does he see that thing too?
The Grim Reaper doesn't leave and I begin to despair. It's looming, anticipating. An omen of my demise.
Derek settles back into killing me again. I say a prayer of gibberish as the words aren't really making sense right now, jerking myself back awake every time unconsciousness threatens to overtake. The only thing really making sense right now is the fear. It's waiting for me to fall asleep and I'll never wake up. Then Death itself will reap me.
I gag as that Grim Reaper goes from stone to rocketing toward us. The speed is unreal, his feet don't appear to touch the ground. It glides like a horrifying apparition of the night.
A feral growl from my side lifts the hair on the back of my neck. Derek is on his feet, defensively crouched.
The Reaper leaps over my body and dives at Derek. Knocking him, slamming his chest. Sneakers skid over stones. Derek slides yards away yet retains balance.
It went after him and not me? I don't understand, my mind is a fog. They seem to be moving too fast, blurry as paint in water.
Derek recovers and swats as Death advances. Fingers like claws as they rip into the cloaked arm. Alien swift, almost teleportation, that dark figure evades to reappear at Derek's flank. Arms rush forward and around to seize his aggressing limb.
A guttural howl surges through the night. Bones crunching. An accompanying scream. I hear the muffled stretch of muscle tearing apart. A limb flies off in a shower of red. Filthy rain patters the earth. Derek's severed arm slaps the ground and rolls to a thudding stop.
Enraged, the howl turns into a roar. Another smear of motion and a wet tear of fabric ripples through my ears. My eyes refocus as I glimpse the Reaper with fresh slices glistening across his gut.
A hiss slithers out of the hood. Only a creature that crawled out of hell could make a sound like that. The noise wraps around me, dragging me down and down into an endless abyss…
I jerk awake once again to see a cobra-quick hand snapping up Derek's remaining arm. Limb popping, fracturing, unnaturally bent. I'd flinch away if I had the strength.
Death sweeps him like a dance partner. Flipping him, sending his body skipping through the weeds. Shoulder blades plowing the gasping dirt in a dry puff. The monster's hollow snarl fills the woods. Circling to finish.
Circling...circling away.
I inhale myself back to life. Wretch up the pain but it doesn't dull. I push through the hurt. If I fall asleep I won't be waking up.
Derek twists back on his feet. He's crouching low. Solo hand to the ground as he hobbles back. His ruby eyes gleam, following the Grim Reaper and shimmering warning. The cloak ripples in heedless pursuit, no escape. It's phantom drift ramping into a charge.
Derek comes to a splintering halt as if backed into a corner. He rears suddenly, lunging forward. Mouth wide, a fanged display aiming for Death's throat. Taloned hands whip out, the Reaper catches him midair. Head fastened in a magnetic vice. Fangs snap at the cape clasp.
The thing screams, a haunting cry like no earthy animal. I watch the glint of its wicked jaws. They slash forward. Sink into Derek's throat. Crushing it in ghoulish slurping. A nauseating noise like a rotten watermelon smashing against the floor for that beast to gobble down.
The hood takes a vicious yank, ripping sinew free. Derek's face is a perfect nightmare as the light fades from his burning eyes. The head flops, barely attached as his body clings to a paling existence.
A chunk of flesh carelessly spits from the darkened cowl then it leans back in to greedily lap at the mutilated neck. The sight makes me want to shriek.
Then I almost do. Without warning Death stops gorging to stare straight into my soul. I can see clearly into the hood, a skeleton face with blade like teeth, black sockets plunging into mine.
Frozen in horror I can only blink, but I must be losing it. The Reaper is back to ingesting Derek's remains, the face entirely concealed by the hefty cloak.
The image of that bleach bone face sears with permanence. Whether real or imagined it jolts me with a surge of cognizance. I'm more scared than ever to die.
But what if I'm already dead – is *this* hell? I don't think I did anything deserving of hell.
The hood pulls up, gasping for air. Its hand cocks then plunges into the corpse. It sounds absolutely revolting like a fist being shoved into a jar full to the brim with jam, sucking on the way out as it retrieves a hunk of meat...Derek's heart. I don't want that to be the last thing I hear.
I'm not dead, I won't die here. I will myself to move, to roll, to crawl away. Anything.
Torment. It's all I can process, blinding to the senses and I nearly black out. Another breath rattles in my chest, I lie in the anguish. My eye leaks a hot tear across my cheek. I'm only prolonging the inevitable.
'So much for dying peacefully. My last moments will be spent witnessing a corpse being butchered.'
Like a heathen ritual, the cloaked monster holds the heart above its head. I watch dully as he crushes it, letting the blackened blood sprinkle down, lowering the heart to his covered face – his mouth.
It's freezing now and I can't tell if I'm shaking. My lungs are drowning with each breath. I'm barely clinging to life, this is true agony. If I stop fighting the pain will end but so will I. I'm afraid to let go, it wasn't supposed to end here.
I lose sight of the Reaper, though he has to be close by. Derek's ravaged carcass had been flung unceremoniously on the ground.
A lung full of blood throws me into an unbearable coughing fit. My body has had it, it's begging me to give up. I stiffen as my lungs cry for air while my ribs cry for morphine. I somehow manage to pull in enough oxygen to prevent blacking out forever.
The rippling cloak catches my wavering eye. Death is standing over me, peering down, the oversized hood still obscuring his features. I can't see anything except two icy ethereal rings. Two glowing eyes fixed on my face.
My time's up.
Impulsively, I beg to be spared but only sticky unintelligible gunk spews out. I grab hold of the edge of the cloak in desperation and it's solid, not a spirit's cape. The eerie blue circles shift inside the oval of black to examine my anemic grip then rise back to my face.
There's a long pause and then an impassive angel voice actually answers my incomprehensible plea. An unexpectedly feminine voice.
"The wounds are severe, you've lost too much blood," she says, "It is in your air passage. You will not live."
'This is it then?'
I feel a wash of genuine despair as my vitals begin to shut down.
'I can hang on just a little longer. What will I...I...what?'
I can hardly form a cognitive thought. Gripping the robes even tighter, I strain to think, to say anything. I peer into those frosty eyes, it's all I can do.
"But," I swallow down the blood and rasp, "I crossed over..."
The Reaper doesn't react, just stares. I wonder if I even said anything at all.
'But I followed my hunch, damn it! My hunch wouldn't lead me to my death, would it? Would it!'
"The barrier," I moan, "I crossed it…"
The hood tilts slightly.
Suddenly, a calm creeps in. It all melts away and I no longer feel the fear.
'So be it.'
Maybe the Grim Reaper will take me away, but I'm going to live the rest of my life, even if it's just for a few more seconds.
I hold that haunting gaze for what feels like harrowing hours. The Grim Reaper stands like a gravestone statue before me, only the cape twirling loose in the breeze and my stiff fingers never releasing the edge.
I hold on as long as I can, unblinking, until death stakes its claim.