15x
Entry 3
My dearest everlastings,
You must know you haven't broken me. Sea hag does you proud. Or, Scarlet Davis. Not yet, not yet. She must've reported what happened. My secret message. Chewed up, then swallowed down. My fit. That paper tasted better than any of the watery slop you've flung my way. I'd like you to know the whole message detailed what's now my memorized escape plan. I've got someone on the inside. An everlasting shit bucket, all my own. So it's not long now. I'm a survivor. I can do more with a stubby pencil than you can do with a pistol. Proved that. But you nasty everlastings never stay dead.
Still, just you wait. He's not coming.
Scar tells me you'd like to put my last episode behind us. That's what she said after I was dug up and drug from your coffin hole. Yanked back through your sterile asylum halls and tossed back into my cage. I don't know how many hours you left me out there, but I don't mind the dark. You can bury me away for as long as you'd like in that dump six feet under. The dark there is like the ink of this pen, thick. Smells like earth and rot. There's no shame in that kind of dark.
You won't break me until you've killed me. I'm being patient with
Who is Knox?
Can Death fight?
Your writing is shit. Jagged cursive. Even your writing growls with your sea hag voice. No one should ever write like you. I'll spell it out, since you're so illegible. Just so you other everlasting fucks can actually decipher what she means. She wants to know about Knox, and she wants to know if Death can fight. I'd like to point out the idiocy of these questions for your records, since all of you know he can already fight—or you would've caught him
Weaknesses?
No
x
We were forever from here
I can't do this
anything's
x
Death is Knox.
I'm here to tell you how and why.
It happened our first night together after he found me. We spent the afternoon scrounging for food. Describing it would only bore you. We saw some undead, let's say we just avoided them. More boring. Then we went house shopping for the best house we could find. Down rows and rows, streets and streets. I have a thing for Victorians. Houses with histories. Owen used to call them haunted. I used to call him a scaredy cat. But I always insisted on houses with two floors.
So we checked the house I chose and made sure it was clean. The wood floors creaked. There were cobwebs in every corner. Forgotten family photos, most everything else washed out and looted. Houses have turned into shells. Knock, knock—occupied, unoccupied? We're hermit crabs now, us humans.
We went upstairs. I can't sleep on first floors. I know it's stupid. But when my parents died, I got caught between the living room and kitchen. Couldn't get out the front door or the back. I don't mind jumping from windows. Trying my luck. I won't write about it. It's all just—basic facts. But the best thing about this house I found that night were the lights. They all still worked. The water was ice cold, but flowed. This was about nine months from the start of the Fall and things were starting to fail, utilities sporadic. You'd look out across a city and it would dim and brighten, dim and brighten. Fade. Blacken.
Confession. Sometimes I think—that's such a short period of time. Only nine months. I'll get shaken. I mean, just think about it. It's a shock, how the world's so fragile. How our lives are so fragile. One month, you're at a cousin's wedding stuffing your face with cake balls. Then the next month, you're slinking through the dark with your Dad, town tornado sirens screaming, clutching your shovel stained with gooey brain. Basic facts.
I didn't talk to him. I just assigned him a room down the hall, then took Puck with me into mine. She came gladly, crashing on the bed and sprawling the whole space. She'd stayed close ever since Knoxgrove, unlike our first few nights together. I think she was mourning Owen. Didn't want to believe she was stuck with me until she was, and feeling sure there was no turning back. Feeling sure he wasn't coming back.
Well, so I left my light on. I left the light on in the hallway too. Even the light on in the bathroom, after I cleaned myself up. I'd locked the door. Took my colt with me. The water, sea hag, was just like your ice baths you used to plunge me in before this journal business. I used it to wash my stubby hair. You wouldn't have recognized me, back then. I kept my hair buzzed short. Tried to look like a boy. But after I cleaned, and I couldn't justify scrubbing the dirt from my face, or checking my gear, or popping open another can of peaches, I knew it was impossible to keep ignoring him.
So then I got paranoid, sitting on the edge of that dusty bed. Rigid. Thinking: he's a stranger. I got scared. Thinking: I'm crazy for believing him. I could hear Owen's pacing. Then he looked up at me, frowning, angry. He started yelling. Bet you'd like this sea, hag. This is for you. He spouted sense. "This guy," he seethed. "You actually believed him when he said he was Death? Oda? Are you insane? You're letting him wear my clothes? You're letting him follow you around? Oda? Oda? Snap out of it! Why!"
Why? I doubted. Now I had an infinite amount of time to think about anything I wanted without being interrupted. So my doubt seeped deeper into my gut. That's one of the worst parts about being alone. No one left to talk to. Puck was still crashed, but she would've said the same thing as Owen. I knew. So that shook me. Imagining my brother there. Insisting I was stupid. Screaming at me. Like I said, sea hag, you would've liked seeing me in that room, nerves wracked.
By the time I picked up my colt, I was half-convinced the man down the hall wasn't really Death, but just one of those creepy cultists on some sort of special ops to kidnap and sacrifice me—then I felt crazy for feeling a humanized Death was any better. Owen followed me out the door.
"Just go in there," he strained. "Just go right in there—and end him! You're a girl, you're sixteen—this guy's going to rape you, Oda!"
Oh. By the way, everlasting shit buckets of failure. I'm only telling you this, the real truth, because I want to make sure you punish me for it this time. So do, please. I've decided it's what I want. I'm not afraid, anymore. I want you all to know how close I came to doing what you only dream of doing. I'd like to show you just how easy it was for me in absolute stunning contrast to how difficult it's been for all of you over the past full year—hunting him down. Trying to do him in.
So imagine this stark, laid bare. Because when I bursted into that room, I didn't waste any time hesitating. I just raised up my colt, and I fucking aimed it straight at his head, real close. I even leaned. Get this. I could've popped him right in the head. I could've splattered his brain out on the bedroom wall, his blood sprayed out on this nice hung painting of a tranquil waterfall. Blam! Taken care of, thank you thank you, goodnight.
But guess the fuck what? You're right. Confession. I did hesitate. Again.
Let that sink in real deep.
Let it sink.
Let it sink.
Again.
The girl that shot her own brother point blank before he turned undead, well she didn't shoot Death. Confession. Twice, she didn't shoot death. Twice. And that girl won't give you the satisfaction of knowing what stopped her. Because she hopes you rot on this spinning hell rock. She hopes you decay alive in your own personal coffin holes. Each and every one of you I'm so, so angry Knox I'm so angry
Please.
How and why. So there he was, and I found him lying on the room's bed, as if he'd fallen asleep staring at the ceiling. Arms sprawled out, on his back. Legs dangling off the end. I'd woken him up by bursting through the door, but instead of starting or cursing, he only turned his head and looked with his wide unassuming eyes. Just stared with his grim calm stare. The only light was the light leaking from the hallway.
"Well, now," he'd said, almost like he was bored. "Here I am again, Oda Bray. Wondering if you will, or if you won't."
My hand shook. Aching from my grip. Just like now. Because my pen's just another gun. Only this time I'm pulling the trigger every word I write…
I told him I doubted him.
He told me he didn't blame me.
I told him I wanted proof he was really Death.
He told me he had none. Could give none.
It went on like that, him just lying there. Me drooping my aim.
Until I managed, finally—cold. "Death. You're really Death." I swung back into my belief. But this time, when it struck me in the gut, it struck so deep I knew not even Owen could pry it out. My aim dropped entirely. "Okay, well— Fine. Death. So where the fuck have you been?" I spat that. Hissed it out. Smoldered, scolded. "Why aren't you off fixing your mess, you piece of shit? Why're you hanging around, sulking, following me?"
"Piece of shit," he said.
"Yeah," I said. Lifted my chin and everything. "Piece of shit."
I caught his stare and he held mine. Back then I wasn't sure he was fully human, so I felt convinced he was trying to peer into my soul. Maybe he would corrupt it or collect it. Or I felt he could be looking straight at a marker on my face, telling him the exact day, hour, and minute I'd croak. But now we all know the truth.
He was only seeing me, and nothing else.
"Oda Bray," he said, calm. "If I could fix my mess, would you help me fix it?"
I remember my skin crawled. But Owen was there again. This time he was only watching.
And guess what, sea hag? "Yes," I told him. "Yes, I'd help you fix it." Endlessly.
But he only turned his head, only stared up at the ceiling. He didn't say anything more, just left me feeling heated. Flushed.
We'd said something more than what we'd said. But I wasn't sure what. That happens a lot with us. Happened.
Anyway, so by then I was making ready to leave. Gathering my wits.
But then just before I left, I said: "Death." Not a question, only a test.
His head tilted. He acknowledged it like a name.
I risked a grin, then stifled it quick. I was right. So, "Oh no," I said. "There's no way we're calling you Death."
He'd said without looking: "You can call me whatever you'd like, Oda Bray."
So that's all how.
And this is all why.
I remember his tone—bored like when I'd burst into the room. Bored like he wasn't taking me seriously anymore. It was different, earlier out on the streets. Back when he didn't have time to think. When he was only letting his instincts take over and was glad to for my leading. But in that room, he'd given me power over him without even thinking, like it was just a trite stupid thing I'd brought up. Childish. So I knew deep down, he'd thought long and hard on me while he'd been lying in that room. And it pinched, it really did, knowing in the end he'd chosen to underestimate me over treating me instead like he had that afternoon. Like someone he thought wise instead of what I really was. A young mourning nobody.
So I'd said flat: "Mort, then. Mort Morton."
That got him looking. This time with an undercurrent of concern. "No."
"But, Mort Morton," I mocked. "You've just said I can call you whatever I like."
He finally sat up, turned. I remember he still had mud smudged on his face. "Not that, Oda Bray," he said, low.
The mud made him look wild, in the shadows.
"Dis," I said, trying it out.
"No."
"Um."
His face crumpled into a variation of "are you fucking kidding me, Oda Bray?"
"No, I'm thinking," I said, "give me a second, god."
"What?"
Then I had it. "Knoxgrove. Knox."
"Knox," he'd echoed.
We paused, letting the name unfurl between us.
Letting what we didn't say, say something.
So why Knox?
Because I knew even in that room, I couldn't untangle that cemetery from him. I'd always see it in his eyes. The rolling fog. My brother's grave. Black flame and charred grass. Burning skin and his, milk white. Corpse-like. Lightening. His panic...
No, I won't go further than this. I won't. Even after the last things he said to me—there are lines. There are lines, and mark my fucking words, sea hag, you'll never get weaknesses from me. Not one. Because being human is weak enough—and you still haven't hunted him down.
Punish me. I'm through.
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.
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