Heartless - Chapter 22：How I met Death

I hated being a keeper. I remember hate being the last emotion I had, hate along with the feeling of unfairness of why it had to be me. I was sure that there were others who would love to be a keeper. Feeling no emotions whatsoever, they would’ve enjoyed it. After all, some of them have been hurt to the point where emotions were nothing but a knife stabbing their heart.

Nevertheless, faith had chosen me. That was a fact I couldn’t change no matter how much I wanted to.

When the visions started to come, I was unable to do anything except cry. I was watching the horrific scenes from the eyes of Death. No matter what you wanted to do, you were unable to, you could only watch.

After a week of torture I tried to kill myself, that was how I first met Death.

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I had awoken in a quaint little house, a dusty little house. It was a familiar one, but why it felt familiar was something I couldn’t figure out. The answer was there, lingering in the back of my head getting farther the closer I tried to reach it.

But then I realized, I was dead, or so I thought. I should’ve been dead, I have killed myself with a knife through my heart. Yet I could hear my heart faintly beating like a steady drum, as if nothing ever happened.

I wanted to die, I really did. Why couldn’t I die? Why wont they let me leave the life of suffering, when your half dead and tired and when nothing went right? When the sun seemed bleak and grey and the day never seemed to end. Why? Why wont they let me go? Leave me in peace, grant me this one wish?

“So you’re awake,” a voice said to the side.

I didn’t respond then, the hope of death has vanished and the last rays of hope with it. The only thing it left behind was the feeling of misery and self pity a feeling I have never truly gotten to know until now.

“You can’t die,” the voice said in a voice so apathetic it wasn’t hard to figure out that that person really didn’t care about you. Like a money hungry boss talking to a poor employee asking about a pay raise.

“Why not?” I whispered ever so quietly.

“Death is not up to you, as a Keeper, the forest will determine your death,” the voice said.

“But I don’t want to be keeper!” I exclaimed in a powerful outburst of energy, the last bit of energy that I stored within myself.

“And you think faith cares?”

“No…..”

“Until when? When can I die?”

“When the last vampire dies, only then can you die. But you can’t kill them, you a keeper, not a killer.”

“If I do?”

“Then you’ll just like forever, because the forest is part of you. The last vampire will no doubt be the smartest and most powerful. With the blood of the forest within you, it won’t be hard for the vampire to sleep within your body and from their, it won’t be hard for it o jump to another host,” the voice had said, explaining everything to full detail so that I may understand that I can’t escape my faith.

I curled up into a ball, the last hope extinguishing from my eyes. Until the last vampire dies, from what I saw, it would take more than a millenium.

‘Just let me die, let me be. I don’t want to live,’ I thought in my head over and over no matter how useless such a thought was.

“You should cry, it might be the last time you do,” the voice said and the presence I didn’t notice left the room.

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If only I had listened to Death, for I never cried after that day. But all of that happened hundreds of years ago, it’s contents were all erased from the face of the Earth. That was fine, everything is. Whether or not anyone remembers doesn’t concern me, but I only have one wish.

A wish I have hidden in my heart.

A wish that I will never speak of.

A wish that will never come true for as long as I live.