Death's Apprentice

When she opened her eyes, she was in the waiting room, kids running around and screaming.

“So many of them! What’s happening down there??” A middle aged black woman in a white dress asked.

“Appears to be a school shooting…” an older man in a cap and white polo commented, looking at some papers behind a desk. Then, Lily’s teacher seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” young Miss Rose asked, her brown pixie cut bouncing as she turned around every which way.

It was happening again. But things seemed slightly different. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but something was still off. While everyone ran around every which way, Lily crept over to the black board. She glanced at it and felt her blood run cold. She knew she couldn’t read, but somehow she knew what the words on the board said. Scrawled in jagged white letters...

I know you’re here Lily Hoagen…

She had to find Arno.

She had to find her Guardian.

Lily ran over to the elevator that she knew was there and slammed her hand on the button. She ran in as Marissa noticed her.

“Uh-little girl! Stay here! Don’t go in there!” she called, running after her.

“Sorry Miss Marissa! But I have to find my Guardian!” she yelled. The doors closed on the woman’s confused face.

The little girl could feel her heart racing incredibly fast. She thought it would thump out of her chest it was beating so fast. She prepared herself to enter into the large room of the reapers realm. But when the doors to the elevator opened, she was soon faced with something she was not expecting.

The white walls that she was used to seeing in the reaper realm were now splattered with what looked like black ink. The glass balls used as portals were a little cracked and overgrown with thick black goop. She looked on in horror at the dark entities roaming around the room. Reapers walked around with them-and Lily could tell that some of them were slowly turning into the shadows that lived with them now.

The little girl ducked behind a glass ball before anyone saw her and eyed the hallway that she knew had the bigger portal to the other realms. She tried to figure out how she could make it over there without being noticed, and soon realized that it was probably going to be impossible. So she decided to make a break for it.

Lily took a deep breath and then ran as fast as her little legs could carry her towards the hallway. She could hear someone yell, and a dark entity screeched. She meandered around dark holes and cracks in the floor and then jumped over a black puddle. She could see the portal ahead…

With an ear splitting scream, she was cut off unexpectedly by three of the dark creatures, their skin dripping like they were something from the depths of the black lagoon.

“Impresssssive…” a voice behind her slurred. Lily turned around to see Helen standing there, swaying slightly. She wore a black cloak that dragged on the floor, the hood concealing part of her face.

“Um...Hi Miss Helen…”

“I….dunno… how you broke through my little… time trap… but I’min...chargessss…

Something was different about her. Helen reached out to her and grabbed her arm, and for a moment, she could see a death vision of the woman on her sick bed. When she pulled out of it, Lily looked down to see the appendage of something black and cold gripping her arm. She screamed and broke away, backing up against the wall.

“You’re turning into one of the dark enties!!” she cried, pointing.

“They aren’t… bad lil’Lily… Wecan worrrrk… togethhher…”

“No!!”

They started to come closer, and at that moment, Lily could see no escape. They surrounded her-many cold slimy hands closing in. She caught more glimpses of death visions-of someone choking, getting hit by a car, and falling through the air.

“STOP!!”

There was a burst of white light, and she was suddenly free. Taking this opportunity, she zoomed through the hole between two of the dark entities and ran towards the portal.

“GET BACK HERE LILY HOAGEN.” Helen’s slurred voice boomed from behind her.

But the dark smoke of the portal was already taking the little girl to the Insanities.

The Insanities were very different than the last time Lily had visited. They seemed to be in order, but the lights still flickered, and she could still see cracks in the wall. She figured this must be due to the shadows that seemed to be so numerous now. She looked down the hallway and at all the doors that lined them. How in the world was she going to find Arno in here?

She crept along as quietly as she could, trying to peer through the windows to get glimpses of the occupants. She still couldn’t find him. She wandered the corridors for a while, and eventually came to a bigger room that she had not seen before. Looking around, she guessed that it was the place where occupants who successfully let go of things took time adjusting before jumping back on their feet. Some of them twitched and some of them stood off to the side keeping to themselves, and others mingled and talked amongst themselves or with workers. She could tell the occupants from the workers because the occupants wore gray jumpsuit looking things. She quickly jumped behind a little cart with wheels to avoid being seen.

“Hey Lily. How’s it going?”

If she wasn’t crouched down, she would have jumped ten feet into the air. She whirled around, expecting to see someone coming after her, but leaning against the wall in a gray jumpsuit, was Byron.

“Byron?!” she whispered in surprise. “Did Helen throw you in here too?”

The man chuckled a little. “No… She really did a horrible job on that time alteration thing. Everything is all flip flopped and some of us still have our memories. My timeline is all out of order.”

“But what does that have to do with being in the Insanities?”

“You still able to see how people died with a handshake?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he held out his hand to her. Lily took it and suddenly saw a slightly younger version of Byron walking through a gas station in a hoodie. He twitched and looked around nervously as he approached the counter, then pulled out a gun.

“Give me your cash man! Don’t wanna hurt you-just give me the money.” The man stared at the barrel of the gun and then slowly reached down behind the counter and started pulling out the money.

“You’re going too slow old man! Hurry up!”

He began to panic when he heard the sirens.

“Hurry up!!!”

“Please-I’m trying-”

Byron pulled the trigger in his haste, hitting the old man in the shoulder and knocking him backward. Byron grabbed the bag and ran outside to be met with flashing red and blue lights. He fired the gun at the cars and took off. Gunfire filled the air, and a bullet made its way into his leg and then his back. He hit the ground hard, his bag of money spilling on the ground…

Lily blinked. “You-you did a bad thing.”

“Yes. I did. That’s why I came to the Insanities when I died.”

“You started out in here? Then how did you become a reaper?”

“That’s what this place is supposed to be used for. For mercy and change.” He looked up at that moment to stare across the room. Lily looked over the cart to see what he was looking at, to see Daya talking to an older man.

“She helped you-didn’t she?”

“Most everyone lost their memory of what the Inbetween is supposed to be like… But I didn’t. Love can’t be altered by time.”

Lily looked from Byron to Daya.

“Can things be fixed to how it was?” she asked.

“I think so. But we’re going to need your Guardian to do that-aren’t we?”

Lily looked up at him hopefully. “Do you know where he is?”

“Yes. But we need to hurry. I think someone might be looking for you…” he told her, slightly nodding his head toward a door across the way. The hooded figure of Helen came through, looking around, followed by some reapers/dark entities.

“Come on! This way!” he whispered. The two of them ducked down a hallway. Lily ran after him as fast as she could, her little legs struggling to keep up with his long quick paced strides. He led her to the end of a hallway, where there was a hatch and a ladder leading down into the floor. She could hear an echoed screech from somewhere in the Insanities. She followed him down into the darkness, despite the fear she felt.

The two of them went deeper and deeper, and the little girl could feel herself getting very tired with all this running around, but she pushed on-knowing that Arno needed her. She plopped down off the ladder and looked down the dark hallway, where pipes jutted out of the walls, and a lone metal door stood at the end.

“One of the only locked doors in this whole place.” Byron commented. “You should have seen him when they first brought him here. Put up a good fight. Must have taken at least ten reapers to contain him.”

“Arno was fighting them?”

“Yeah. And he wouldn’t stay in the room either like the other occupants. It had no effect on him. They eventually ended up tweaking it and putting a lock on it. Your Guardian is in there.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

Byron silently pulled at the bar blocking the door and turned a wheel, unlocking some mechanisms.

“No. You’re the one he’s close to. I’ll keep watch.”

The door slowly creaked open, and Lily hesitantly stepped inside.

She was standing in a war stricken town, the buildings around her crumbling and broken. The wind blew through the skeletal trees and dust blew across the street.

“Arno?” she called, a lone voice in a wasteland.

“ARNO!!”

Silence.

She started walking. Along the way, she could see little personal items on the ground. A torn teddy bear, a broken pair of glasses, a shoe… She suddenly started to realize that her surroundings looked very familiar to the place she had seen when she had visited the Fates. She saw a familiar looking building and ran to it. Carefully, she stepped into the dilapidated house and then poked her head around the corner.

Sitting on the ground, his head in his hands, was her Guardian. She was about to go to him when a raspy cool voice filled the air.

“Oh boo hoo… Poor Arno… You deserve this. You can sit here and rot!! Failure… Demon… Murderer… You never killed anyone… but you watched them being taken away… Nothing you did even helped… Millions still DIED… Worthless pile of rubbish…And wasn’t there supposed to be something else? Someone you were supposed to save? You don’t remember do you? All you feel left from it is the pain… The pain of failing like you always do...”

Lily could hear Arno give a choked sob as he clenched his hair and leaned forward. His shoulders shook.

“Failure...Failure...FAILURE!!”

“Arno?”

The voice drifted away in a whisper, and her Guardian’s head lifted up slowly.

“W-Who’s there?” he asked shakily. He turned around to see the little girl standing a few feet away, in her little blonde pigtails and pink and blue dress.

“Who are you?”

Lily didn’t know what to say. She felt tears coming to her eyes. She just wanted to see him smile again-and to laugh, but instead he looked ragged and tired. And sad…

He didn’t remember her. How long had he been in here? She suddenly felt horrible for taking so long to come back into the Inbetween-where she could have helped set things right sooner.

“It’s me… Lily. I came to save you…”

Arno turned his back on her. “Well you came here for nothing little girl. I don’t deserve to be saved… I’m a failure.”

“No you’re not!!” Lily cried angrily. “Helen did this to you!! You aren’t supposed to be here!! You’re supposed to be my Guardian!!”

Arno did not say anything. He put his head down as the whisperings of the word “failure” started up again.

“Arno!!”

“Go away…”

“Please…” Lily fell to the ground and began to cry.

“I can’t do this without you…” she sobbed. “I’m scared, and tired, and I miss my Mommy and Daddy… I can’t do it-I can’t!!” She sat there for a moment, thinking and simply wanting to go home to eat the snickerdoodles that her sister had made.

“Do you remember the princess Arno?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“You told me a story once. About an enchanted princess. There were two brothers who wanted to help. One was mean and one was nice. The mean brother was mean to the ants and the ducks and the bees, so he couldn’t do the challenges. But when the nice brother came he helped them. And because he helped them, they helped him do the challenges and save the princess. Sometimes the challenges are hard, but the people you help will always be there to help you back. Remember when you saved me? When you saved Eva? Or the people in the Insanities?”

The little girl stood up and wiped the tears from her face, feeling much older than five for once. It was all clear to her now-why things had to be hard and why things had to happen the way they did. Seeing the different realms made her realize that they were all connected-and they had to learn and grow no matter where they went.

“You have to remember…”

She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

That’s when the music started.

Arno lifted his head up, a bit confused. “What... is that?”

It was very soft at first, but it was starting to get louder. Lily recognized it.

“It’s the dancing music!!” she exclaimed. “Do you remember?? Fish had music!!”

The sound of a little girl making airplane noises also filled the air, and then laughter. Slowly, he turned to look at her.

“...L-Lily?”

Lily threw her arms around his neck with relief, feeling overwhelmed. Slowly, as if he was coming out of a haze, he hugged her back, holding her tighter and tighter. She never wanted to let go, finally feeling like she was no longer alone.

“I love you Arno.”

“I love you too Lily…”

She could hear him sniffling.

“Are you still sad? Are you crying?”

“No… I’m just so happy to see you…”

The broken war stricken world around them faded away, leaving them in an empty white room, a lone light bulb flickering above them.