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table. The cover is pulled back and there in the crystal light is my mortal form. Cold. Hard. Dead. Mother breaks down, her sobs scream out into the air like knife blades piercing the thin barrier between our two worlds. I scream, the pain too much. I see my own creator standing there, her face lined with anguish. The look in her eyes, oh the look in her eyes. So much for her to take in. The pain she must be feeling. Her hand clutches her chest. No parent should ever have to see the body of their child like this. Dead before their eyes like a delayed abortion.

  The noise, the anger, the sadness, the disbelief all rip through me. Cutting fresh scars into my soul. No escape, forced to bear witness to my mother’s fate with no way of comforting her over the grief I have caused. My screams continue to erupt from my phantom mouth, the ghostly tears, sobs and upset echoing through my form. ‘Let me out,’ I scream. ‘Let me off this pain.’ The dead have no escape.

  Mother is led from the room. The lights switch off. It’s black again. I feel the air change, I know the scene has done so as well.

  Vision clears, refocuses at its own will. I’m sat in a room, a room without walls or doors. A chasm of darkness stretching on for infinity. With each passing moment my eyes are adjusting to the eternal night. The vision of the dead being born into my soul.

  The shadow sits opposite me. The clouds of insects that give it shape moving like smoke, noiselessly flying without break. ‘Have you learnt? Do you understand? Or is your mind still lost to the corrupting anger you brought with you?’

  ‘Anger? Of course I feel anger. Why do I keep seeing all I do? Why are you forcing it upon me?’

  ‘That word again. “Why?”. I can tell you the answer but you won’t like the answer I will give.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You see and feel all this pain and somehow, somewhere in that mind of yours you are convinced others are to blame. Every choice has a consequence we must all face. This pain and anguish you see is all because of you. It is the consequence of your act.’

  ‘I escaped that life, its pain. I don’t need to see it, or face it. That part is dead.’

  ‘Is it? How selfish you are. How little you understand but that is not all necessarily your fault. The world you left behind will continue. You chose to leave early so your act has altered it, lives need to be readjusted, souls repaired. Do you think that you can shatter so much and be freed from all the blame? Your mortal life may have ended but your unprepared soul now faces an eternity of life, of contemplation, repentance, yearning. From here you will watch the world come and go, your loved ones age and die, and you will feel the pain at not being able to share in it.

  ‘I said earlier about two promises, the mortal helping the immortal and vice versa. The moral life helps build your soul for this eternity. Throughout your mortal existence your soul grows, learns to appreciate pain, loss, love and wonder. It has a natural, predetermined time before it is ready to move on. Death’s promise is the one of soul freedom, no matter what or when. You chose to use that promise early, before your time was due, so now you must continue to learn unprotected and alone. Each new pain you were still to experience will be done so but you’ll have nowhere to run, no one to turn to. You broke fate’s plan and this is the price you pay for changing everyone’s destiny.’

  The tears fall from my eyes, I’m lost. ‘So this will never fade?’

  ‘In time it will. You’ll reach the point where your soul was destined to move on. In each life we are expected to experience certain qualities, until that point there can be no going forward. Some lives are short, some long, you had many years left ahead of you, planned out and structured. Your time here will be long. You’ll see the damage you caused, its repair, destinies rewritten. You’ll see yourself forgotten by those who cared for you. Your pain will be tenfold but when salvation comes you’ll finally be rewarded. My time with you is over. From now you are alone.’

  The figure stops his monologue abruptly. Rises to his feet and glides away slowly. I watch, speechless, alone, dead. I finally understand. For every action there is reaction, for every choice a consequence. I remain seated. Focused would be the word I’d use. I guess this will be my redemption.

  Laura Edwardson watched the gathering around her grave, the hollowed ground into which her mortal body was lowered. This was the first step in her journey. Once hidden from sight beneath the earth, the visits would grow less. Fewer and fewer until the days where the grass will grow and the final offerings of flowers will have withered away to dust.

  So many people had turned up to the ceremony, so many forgotten aspects of her life in attendance. She’d cried with them. You don’t realise or appreciate what you have until it’s gone. So many lives affected by her one choice, so many fates changed, futures altered.

  If only, she thought. If only I’d valued what I had. If only I’d understood more; told the people who meant something what they meant to me; told the people who I loved that I loved them. If only.

  Alone she turns and walks away from her past. There is no ‘if only’, no maybes or ‘I wonder’. There is only the facing up to the paths we have chosen. The only regret you should ever feel is when you knowingly gave up before your time, that you stepped off your path and cheated yourself of your fate. That is pain eternal.

  The sun sets on her mortal wounds, her life is only just beginning. She opens her eyes to the pain and welcomes in her redemption.

  George:

  These Final Moments

  Describe the pain, I wish I could, the uncertainty, the fear of the approaching darkness and not being able to prevent it. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. I wasn’t meant to go this way. This wasn’t what I had planned.

  I knew this was coming the moment he slammed my head against the wall. That moment he broke the kiss, looked me in the eye and then SLAM. The bastard looked me in the fucking eye. It wasn’t just one slam. I lost count in the end. Too stunned to fight back, too scared to scream. My body gradually went limp and my brain cut me out of reality.

  Then it switched back on. Just the mind, a mind trapped inside a broken body. Locked within the lightless cage that has carried me for all these years. Everything gone, all use over. I can feel the wetness in my pants, the shameful sign of true fear. All dignity gone, no one would want to rub their hands over my naked flesh now, and even if they did, the opportunity is gone.

  Pain. This fucking pain, soul deep and incapable of escape with a scream. My body frantically panting and whimpering in the arms of someone. Who? Him. He’s holding me as if he cares, as though he has innocently stumbled across me. Who would do that? I wasn’t meant to die in the hands of some sick fucker. I was meant to be in the arms of someone I loved, someone who loved me in return.

  Anger. So much fucking anger. Anger at this pain, anger at the humiliation. Pure fucking hatred for this fucking bastard who can’t just leave me for dead but wants me to actually die in this motherfucking arms. I bet he can’t even remember my name. Without a name what legacy can you leave? I guess mine will be a bloody corpse.

  Muster all the physical energy left inside this body. Force my eyes to see. My final vision, give my rage something to maintain its life with. See the alleyway, the piles of discarded rubbish lining its sides, the overfilled bins. See the filth and rot. The end of everything. Feel the hand of my bastard killer stroking its way through my hair. Hear the murmur of his words. I hear my form let out a whimper. I let it. I’m not in control anymore.

  It’s getting colder. The edges of my forced vision darkening. Pinpointing. I see before me, approaching down the alley, a shadow. Tendrils of smoke rising from its base as it moves. ‘Sleep,’ I hear it say. ‘The time for sleep has arrived.’

  I let myself return to my internal dark. The volume of the world around me fading to zero. One final gurgle. A dying shudder and then my legacy. The once good looking body leaving in a bloodied heap.


  Fuck, I was meant to leave a beautiful corpse.

  Rachel:

  The Estate

  So, this is it. Life. My life. Looking out at the portion of the world I have to inhabit. I wish I could say I liked what I see; truth is I’d only be lying if I did. Dirt, dirt is all I see. The dregs of humanity. Maybe that’s a little harsh, tarnishing a majority by the sins of a minority, but that’s the way it works. Negative actions always out-powering the good and positives. Some people are caring and considerate, some want to change, some are beyond repair. That’s what I’ve learnt, witnessed with my own eyes. Each time like a dream, wondering if what my eyes have seen actually happened, could actually happen. Here you see mankind as it truly is, its true core, its fundamental heart. Little more than the wild animals that roam the plains of some far away land. Civilised apes trying their hardest to hide their corrupted bestial side. We’re hunters, predators trying for dominance either through intelligence or simple brute force. Our history is tainted with pain, our past written in blood. Death is death, destruction is destruction no matter how hard we use morals to justify our reasons or beliefs.

  So back to reality I guess. Me looking at my world. This is where I live, a city inside a city. Grey blocks