15Scythe
by waldwig
Entry 1
My name is Oda Bray. It's really Odetta, but no one calls me that. I'm eighteen, almost nineteen. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska. I used to have a mother…a father…a brother… You've told me to start this way, with basic facts. Who I was before the Fall.
But I don't want to start with basic facts.
I want to start by first telling you I'm not afraid of death. You've probably guessed that already, but I just want to say it plainly, for everyone's sake, you everlasting fucks. Second thing I want to state for the record: I've guessed why you're still keeping me alive. If I'm right I'd just like to get this in writing. I told you so. Your plan won't work. If you think he cares about me or he's going to come rescue me like I'm his damsel in distress, you're dead wrong. Dead, fucking, wrong. So wrong it's almost funny. I'd laugh, but my jaw's still sore from yesterday.
Third thing, he can't come back anymore. The world's tumbled too far from where it fell.
He can't come back anymore. I'll underline boldly, it hoping you can finally get it through your blown out brains.
I've told you he can't come back dozens of times while you've tied me up and beat me and tried to pry away what I know. But he told me that himself. I wasn't even sure I knew at the time, what he meant. But I know now and you still won't listen. I've been screaming about it for days, drooling with blood.
So wait, okay, fourth thing. Here's my brilliant deduction. If he can't come back—then what's the fucking point of catching him or killing him? Let him live out the rest of his days in this shit hole just like the rest of us. That's torture enough, isn't it? While you're at it, you could let me go—but you're all too stupid. You think you're part of the "chosen" to carry out this stupid calling because you're immortal now. The ones of us that can't die. Chosen? Try blind stupid luck. I think you're all full of fucking shit. That's what's replaced your insides—
Okay. You've looked at what I've written and I think you're surprised I didn't write repetitious phrases like death be not proud or something over and over again out of sheer defiance. But you're telling me to get on with it. You're saying I'm stalling. Fifth thing, that Donne guy was right. Death is proud. There. I've already given you something. He's proud. He won't come for me.
But look, this is what I'm really trying to get at here... I'm not one of you. Maybe you'll listen this time if I write it out instead of gasp it out between plunges into icy cold tubs thinking if you kill me I'll just come back. He told me I'm not one of you. So when I die I know I'll die—nothing will happen. Sure, my corpse will come back to life while my soul unravels and fades. Just like everyone else who isn't part of your everlasting chosen bullshit. But I'm not afraid of that. I'm not even afraid of what happens when I don't exist. Because that's thing, isn't it, shit buckets? I won't remember because I can't. I won't feel pain, because I can't. I've thought about it for a long time now. Ever since he told me. I've started to see it as a relief. From all this. From you. That's best, I think.
It's the waiting I can't stand anymore.
Confession one. For a long time I was one of those Peter Pan people. "Death is but the next great adventure" or whatever. But then the Fall happened. I know death isn't an adventure anymore. It's just a shove into the gnawing abyss. Or in your case—it's the same place you've always been.
This spinning rock of rotting corpses.
So you've given me this journal that used to belong to someone else. I can tell because the first set of pages are ripped out. Maybe it was yours, once. The pages are unlined. It looks more like a journal you'd give someone as a gift, the cover hard, thick with brown leather wrap. Like something you'd get from a book store. Something special. Maybe you just found it in someone's house while you were on a raid. I find that easier to imagine than imagining it used to be yours.
I haven't written anything in years, maybe not since junior high. I can't even remember the last time I wrote using paper and pen—maybe long before that. You've given me a pen that's actually one of those really nice ones. I lifted a pen like this from Walmart once when I was in grade school. It came in black ink, and green ink, and red ink. This one's black. It's the kind you can write with on airplanes and the kind
You've just told me to stop stalling, stop stalling, stop stalling… Okay. You've made one of your lackey everlasters hold their gun up to my head. Fine. You should know one more thing about me before I start spilling. I'm good at getting by. I'm good at surviving. Which I guess should be as obvious to you as what this journal looks and fells like. Because I'm still alive and I'm whole. Maybe you're wondering why I'm still writing if I'm not afraid of death. But writing, having this journal and pen… Well I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing how they make me feel, even if I am stalling, stalling, stalling… Fine.
For today I've got to tell you where I met him. How I met him.
Well that's easy. Knoxgrove Cemetery, somewhere up near Seattle, Washington. I don't know, look it up yourself. Confession two. I was there when he became like us. But before you storm into my cell room later screaming about what I've just written, because I can just see it now—your snarling face with the staples down one side where your skull was cracked—throttling me because you think I had some part in all this—I didn't, actually. I mean, I wasn't part of what happened to him—I was just there. Caught up in it. One of those wrong time, wrong places sort of things. But I'd been thinking about him a lot that night.
First, I should tell you about my little brother. He was only fifteen when he died. Younger still, when our parents died. His name was Owen. Our parents died early on, at the beginning of the Fall. That's how I knew even before I was told that I wasn't going to be an everlasting fuck just like you and yours. Death's always been in my cards. Death was in Owen's too. We were caught up in a pack of roaming undead. One moment he was beside me, shooting them down with his smug grin, the next he was flat on his back, his head bashed in until his skull was cracked. I had to shoot him afterwards. But I'm not writing about that.
So Owen's why I was there, at Knoxgrove. I'd buried him. I should've left right afterwards, but I told myself I was too exhausted. It was hard work, not like in the movies. It took me all afternoon and into the night. I mean, even though I'm older, Owen was taller and bigger. It took me half the day just to drag him using our tent tarp. Took me longer to find a shovel among the graves, then even longer to bury him. My arms felt like numbing lead when I was through with it all. So I stayed. I became Owen's body guard, even though it didn't need guarding. One day turned into two. Then three.
I don't know why I stayed so long. Maybe not knowing where to go next.
Everything went down on the third night. I'd set up camp on Owen's grave, over the backside of his tombstone. My tarp taut over so I had this sort of lean-to where I could pocket myself when it rained. I was never dry, back then. Owen and I were supposed to leave Washington, but I couldn't imagine leaving without him. I should probably add, you're thinking right if you picked up on it. I did bury him in someone else's plot. Whoever she was, she came back undead when the Fall started. The ground was softer and her grave already collapsed. So he's buried under Ida Mueller, June 3rd 1945 to November 14th 2016. "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past." I liked the epitaph. I thought Owen might've liked it too.
My hand's cramping. Thought you might like to know since you're so invested in causing me pain. But I'll get on with it.
So there I was, tucked under my tarp, trying to stay warm with my measly fire already nothing but ashes, when I started hearing voices. The rain was just rain. There wasn't any wind, just spots of thunder rolling far off and an occasional sprig of lightening, but it wasn't what I would've called a real storm. Still, I thought I was hearing things for awhile—so naturally I couldn't sleep. I had my colt revolver with me, but I'd left my brother's rifle. I couldn't carry it with his body, so I'd told myself I would go back for it after I was done burying him. That never really panned out. So imagine what I was thinking right then, when the chanting started. A lot about dying. A lot about how there was no one left to bury me once I was gone. But then I thought about how I wouldn't care because I wouldn't know any different.
Burying people's not really for the person being buried, you know. It's for the people doing the burying.
Anyway, so by the time the chanting started, I was shivering in the dark under my tarp with Puck, convinced I was losing my grip on all reality. Oh—I forgot. Puck was Owen's dog. By was, I mean I guess she's mine now. But I'll talk about her later, though I doubt you'll give an endless shit. So I was sitting there. Okay. Then I imagined Owen, hissing in my ear: are you kidding me, Oda? You're going to die trembling in the dark, sobbing with snot running down your nose, scared out of your mind? I knew he was right. It wasn't like either of us to not put up a fight. He had, before he died.
So I gathered up all those shredded bits of my courage from the grass and mud, then decided to investigate.
I told Puck to stay, but she came anyway because back then she never listened to me. I remember I was more afraid for her than I was for myself. Mostly because if she didn't listen, she might end up dead. Then I really would've had no one. But there was nothing I could do. So she disappeared into the rainy dark, big surprise, leaving me ducking behind tombstones and unable to see for shit.
Before you think there's going to be some grand detailed description of what really happened—think again. All I know is I almost ran straight into them at one point. The people—or cult, or whatever—that made him like us. But they didn't see me, even though I was standing out in the open gaping like a dithering idiot before I had the smarts to hide behind another undead tombstone.
Confession three. This is all I know. They were chanting in some language I didn't understand. They were all wearing robes with hoods drawn up, so seeing any of their faces was about as impossible as seeing what they were actually doing during their creepy ritual.
But robes—no fucking shit. I'm not lying. You probably know more about them than I do.
Anyway, there were less than twenty there, and they were all circled around this one grave plot, their backs turned. I watch them for a long time, listening to their strange chanting, then watched them raise up their arms, praising Satan or who the fuck really knows, when I finally saw a body on top of the grave. His body. Or what was about to become his body. Skin white as milk under a flash of lightening. I didn't know it was him at the time, but I knew something was very wrong after I saw what I saw. Actually I even remember I had this strange sort of intuitive moment. Where I knew whatever I was watching had to do with the Fall.
My heart thumped loud in my ears, my colt clutched close to my chest. Dumb hold, but I was too busy shaking scared by the time the black fire started eating up the grass and his body to think about it. Yeah, black fire. Black flames. Pluming from that body like smoke from its chest. I'm not lying. To prove it, I'll even admit this isn't my proudest moment. Confession four. It's actually my least proudest moment. Maybe it had to do with watching Owen die only a few days before. Or maybe I could blame it on Puck, on hearing her sudden wolfish howl. Her crying.
Or the socket shock I felt, my hairs standing on end as the fire grew and grew until it looked like it was singing even the cultists' robes and their outstretched arms. I could blame it on thinking I was about to get struck by lightening… Or the screaming that replaced the chanting. Broke it up. The robed bodies dropping to their knees, their outstretched arms and hands bubbling into blackened remains. I ran.
Confession five. I fucking ran.
I ran as fast as I could, gasping for air the whole way. I ran until I reached Ida Mueller's grave. I ran, slipping so hard in the grass I bit my tongue and tasted blood the whole rest of the night. Like I said, this wasn't my proudest set of moments, but I'd never seen anything like what I just saw. So I slipped back into the tarp hovel I'd made and did what Owen wouldn't have wanted me to do—which was lay there, in the dark without Puck, shivering and waiting to
x
I hereby swear that everything I have written so far is the complete truth, void of lies, and understand that my confessions and truths are invaluable to the cause of assuring everlasting life. I also understand that I must help the everlasting because they are the only ones left fit to carry on the human race, of which I am loyally sworn to by default, being one of the last whole humans myself. With my enthusiastic help and my knowledge of Death, I will aid in his capture and aid his destruction, or be deemed a true enemy of my own race, and killed.
Signature: Odetta Bray.
(C) Protected under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.