Life... What is life?
What is this long-ass time we spend on this accursed earth even about?
...
Futility.
Yes... life is nothing but futility and misery. Life is regret—a bullshit game where a poor bastard is dragged into it without consent and is forced to play. A race against time, filled with endless quests. Each quest providing some kind of reward that attempts to make the tragedy of finality a little more bearable.
A cruel and heartless joke! I am, of course, talking about that thing: Hope... A highly infectious poison that mainly affects the mind and the eyes. How so? Because it blinds you to the truth, makes you cling to some delusion of a better tomorrow.
'A better tomorrow.'
'A... better tomorrow...'
"WHAT A BULLSHIT LINE!" I snarl with venom. "I'd love to rebuild the face of the fucker who spat out that crap!"
If you fight your way to a livable outcome, life'll kick you back down where you fucking belong. You then keep crawling and squirming to survive another day, to go onwards. One more week becomes another month which before you know it—you celebrate a new damn birthday, all by yourself, of course.
...
“Heh...” A humorless chuckle escapes me. Bitter. Cold. Nasty.
Thirty-seven years of laughing off thoughts like these, and now? Now they hit me dead on. No dodging. No running.
Dead on... fair and square.
'Fair'...
“Fair!?” I spit the word like bile, my voice rising with fury. “What a load of bullshit!” My throat burns as I yell. “How the fuck is cheating fair? Investing my money, my time, my fucking life—and worst of all, my very self!—into someone, only to be rewarded with a GODDAMN FUCKIN’ BACKSTAB!”
The last word tears from me, raw and guttural, burning my soul-a wildfire of betrayal and rage. "SHUT THE FUCK UP! KILL YOURSELF OR DON'T, PICK ONE ALREADY, BUT SHUT! THE! FUCK! UUUP!" This ugly voice seems to come from a thin wall. I would, naturally, in all my anger and misery, spat at least some curses back at the fucker, but a wild cough envelops the leftover noise leaving a red liquid on my palm as a reminder of how I'm runnin' out of time.
Her face... It flashes in my mind. Her laughter. Her lies. Her with him... in the bed I bought for us.
When I say it out loud like that it sounds nothing more than PATHETIC! The word hangs in my mind, mocking me. I say it again, and again, the sound bitter and hollow. It feels fitting, sitting here in this room at the rooftop of a beaten-down, godforsaken 0-star hostel.
Lucky me! I managed to find the worst place to rot away my final days, not only fitting but also charming! In price I mean, borderline free.
Bedridden, weak—a husk of the man I used to be. My hands shake as I clench them tight, nails digging into my palms, drawing streaks of liquid crimson that smells like rust. It stings, but I welcome the pain. It’s the only thing that feels real anymore.
The bed beneath me feels like a prison, holding me in place, trapping what’s left of me.
All I can do now is wait.
Wait for the only kindness this world could ever offer me.
The Reaper’s mercy.
...
Huh!? What kind of sickness, you ask?
Don’t waste your breath worrying about that. I don’t have the money for a check-up, shit's expensive-so I don't know even if I wanted to, let alone tell. Could be the worst sickness in the world—not like diseases compete for rankings. Hell, it could be a whole damn collection of them. A parting gift from fate, laughing in my face like I’m some idiot it’s been toying with for years.
Or maybe it’s something even worse: the slow decay of time itself. My body breaking down under the weight of stress and years of mental absence, wearing me away piece by piece. Now, that would be a cruel twist.
As long as it’s not that last option, I’ll happily take whatever comes. I’ll take death with open arms.
A rough cough rips through me again, shaking my ribs like a punch to the gut. My muscles—what’s left of them after months of wasting away without sustenance—scream in protest. It hurts, but pain’s nothing but a good ol' friend now.
Sitting here... Not like I’ve got anywhere else to go. I can’t leave this room. All I do is wait. Just sit and watch the clock tick down, hoping it’ll strike the hour of my demise like some twisted holiday.
Like... Christmas morning.
Yeah, that’s it. I’m a kid again, sleeping through the night and waiting for a new toy to spawn under the branches of the tree. Except this time, I’m not hoping for toys. I’m hoping for an end. Will Santa listen if I add 'proper' in my Christmas Letter?
A proper end...
A proper death...
...
Have I... always seen things this way?
Is it the winter outside making me feel like this? Or have I been carrying these thoughts with me all along, hiding them in some corner of my soul? While I'm at it, what the fuck is a soul anyway? I already know the answer, but it doesn't matter now.
I let the question linger, turning it over in my head as my eyes drift toward the window. The glass is tiny, warped with age, and barely enough to glimpse at the world outside. Still, I stare. I sit there, staring at the frost-covered pane, still stuck in bed. Still bedridden. All I did was turn my head.
The view doesn’t surprise me. It’s cold out there—bleak and gray.
But, it’s cold in here, too.
This room is the cheapest in town. Of course it’d be cold. Drafts seep through the holes in the walls, bringing the winter right into my personal hell. No privacy... It’s like the world is doing everything it can to remind me I’ve got nothing left—not even the luxury of warmth.
And then, without warning, the cold air shifted into cold air.
Yes, I know how that sounds. Cold is cold, right? But it made sense at the time—still does, in a strange way. The freezing air didn’t warm up or change temperature, yet somehow, it felt different. Like the frost itself had taken on a new form. The biting, needle-sharp sting that had been clawing at my skin and bones was gone. In its place was something... numbing. A cold that seeped deeper, not painful anymore, just empty.
That’s when it happened.
It appeared.
The one I’d been praying to, my newfound deity, the figure I had offered my fractured faith to after the Gods abandoned me: The Reaper.
The sight of it was both familiar and alien, as if plucked straight out of the fever dreams of those who’ve claimed to witness death firsthand. A skeletal figure cloaked in endless black, its void-like aura swallowing the dim light around it. It floated, weightless and silent, the hem of his robe trailing off into nothingness. Did it have legs? I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t bound by the rules of human anatomy or reason.
And of course, it carried something. But it wasn’t the signature scythe you’d expect—no, nothing so simple.
It held a book.
Not just any book.
This was no grimoire of dark-death magic, not a cursed tome, nor a catalog with the sins of humanity.
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No, it was worse. So much worse.
It was a Book of Contracts.
The Reaper’s empty eyes—hollow, yet expressive in a way that sent a chill racing down my spine—locked onto mine. They bore into me, offering something I hadn’t expected: pity.
I couldn’t explain how, but I knew it was there. Some deep, unspoken sorrow welled in those empty sockets, as if the Reaper had seen my future and mourned it already. I swear, for the briefest moment, I thought I saw tears—tears of crimson—pooling where its eyes should have been.
It knew.
It knew exactly what was coming.
An eternity that would strip away my humanity, piece by piece.
And yet, it said nothing.
It simply held the book out, its presence as silent as death itself.
Death? Oh yes! How I want it! After a significant sigh I let this question flow in the air "Will I get to know the sight of heaven, Mr. Reaper?" Was I too direct? I abandon the question and brace myself for what's to come, the book shines in the darkest red I've ever seen in my existence.
Scenes?
Scenes...
Scenes begin to burn in my very mind, like I've inhaled some kind of soul, from a twisted creature undiscovered on earth-or perhaps the aura of a cursed item... Perhaps the aura of a certain Book of Contracts...
As for the scenes, so vivid they burned themselves into mine self, more real than reality itself. A poison that sank into my soul, growing more potent with every passing moment I resisted, from the pity I saw in its hollow gaze, flashes of horror came unbidden, vivid and cruel. One moment, the Reaper raised a scythe—its blade glinting with otherworldly despair—and slashed my throat open, over and over for an extremely long second.
But there was no scythe in that room.
The reaper didn't bring the popular item with him after all.
So it wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be real, I mean-the pain wasn't there!
And yet, the scars that appeared on my neck—some fresh and thin, red as raw wounds, while others bore the faint, pale marks of time's slow repair—mocked the reality I thought I understood.
Then, it changed.
The Reaper sighed—no, wept,—its hollow sockets overflowing with a river of tears. Why? Was it for me? Was it mourning the life I was about to lose? Or were those tears dredged from the depths of its own story, a passage of its cursed existence that I should’ve been smart enough to avoid?
I should’ve distanced myself. I knew I should have.
But then came the next vision.
Its skeletal jaw unhinged, opening impossibly wide, swallowing me whole in a single, merciless bite. I was crushed inside its ribcage, bones like iron bars locking me in, squeezing until I shattered. No—worse. It wasn’t my body that broke. It was my soul.
A pain unlike anything I’d ever known was revealed to me then. Physical, mortal agony, the kind I’d grown familiar with in life, was nothing. Nothing compared to the agony of the soul—the kind of torment that strips away what makes you, you.
The Reaper was more than just a collector of lives. And I was about to learn that story.
And then, the final image.
The worst one of all.
It wasn’t an act of violence or a grand display of terror. It was simple. Singular.
A tear.
One tear, falling slow and deliberate from the Reaper’s hollow eye.
It was shed for me.
I knew it, without a shred of doubt. It was for me.
Horrifying.
There’s no other word for it.
It knew what was to come.
It knew from the beginning, and I could see it—plain as day—in its final expression: an uncanny mix of annoyance and sorrow. A look that felt impossibly layered, as though I were some foolish ex, poised to backstab the only one who’d ever dared breathe life into my hollow existence.
Was I projecting? Or just painfully aware of the truth?
Either way, that expression betrayed something far more profound—a depth of understanding, an ability to see the world differently from any human or creature that wasn’t bound to the title of Reaper.
It knew everything.
And yet, he moved with mechanical precision, bound to his role like a marionette to unseen strings, a slave to the formalities of this accursed role.
...
Then, it happened.
The silence shattered—not with noise, but with more silence.
I know how that sounds, absurd and contradictory. Something only a madman would describe. Maybe I do need help—what kind of person talks about silence breaking with silence?
But I swear, it made sense.
This wasn’t normal silence. It was like the cold that had shifted from pain to numbness, stripping away all sensation. In this void of sound, the Reaper spoke to me. Not in words, but in something... clearer.
Crystal clear.
And in that clarity, it revealed its truth: The Reaper began as a human.
That revelation struck me harder than I could process, but there was no time to dwell. The silence carried on, thick and suffocating, as it offered me a choice. The choice.
All I had to do was sign the contract he had pulled from the tome with its bony hands.
The gesture was almost too elegant, almost mocking. It tore the page free with a sophisticated air, like a lover carefully pouring wine on a first date. However, the first motion after the page was liberated from the book was accompanied by hesitation. A gesture that sent the page my way. The scrap of parchment floated toward me on a cloud of inky void, deliberate and slow, a deliberate cruelty to its timing.
Again, this wasn’t a grimoire of forbidden spells, nor a catalog of humanity’s sins. It was something far worse.
This bundle of pages, tied into what's called a 'Book of Contracts', was an archive of despair—half of them, a collection of pacts made and fulfilled-each a reminder of the humanity robbed from its signers. A list of souls condemned to a fate worse than death, their names etched into eternity with ink that bled sorrow.
... And the other half? Empty pages of contracts yet to be made, just like the one he ripped for me.
The contract finally arrived, moving so agonizingly slow it felt like time itself had stretched. But it reached me, nonetheless.
My hands trembled as I grabbed it, the weight of the parchment heavier than it had any right to be.
And then I saw it.
A glimpse of how Reapers are made.
Powerless, futile souls like mine. Lives consumed by misfortune, crushed under the weight of a cruel existence. The broken were the only ones allowed to hold the Reaper’s scythe. And yet, there was another type—a rarer kind: those that fall under the description of 'God complex', prideful and twisted, willing to wield this power to fulfill their arrogant desires.
Strangely, these narcissists often proved better at the job. Efficient. Unrelenting. Purposeful.
But most pages were filled with the names of the unfortunate. For them, the offer was insidious. A way to start again—from any point they wished. Immortality. Endless resets.
The promise was irresistible.
And the curse?
Agony.
The contract was a beautiful lie, veiling a life of torment.
There I was, clutching the contract in my trembling hands. A piece of parchment so simple, yet so heavy with consequence.
It was blank, almost unnervingly so. Only three things adorned its surface: a title, a signature line, and a name.
Kaarla Yusef.
The Reaper’s name.
A shock ran through me. I’d been calling her him or it this whole time, hadn’t I? Some guilt welled up—a strange thing to feel toward someone, something, so far removed from humanity yet more human than all of us.
So, Kaarla had been like me once. Unfortunate. Broken. Was the river of tears for her own lover, or perhaps for her family?
I see, so she’d been offered this same contract. She’d signed it. She’d become this... Was that all there was to our fates? Was despair inevitable for the unlucky?
My eyes returned to the parchment, the words that pulsed in my mind, carving its promise into my thoughts.
“After accepting, I will gain control of life as I see fit. Pursue any outcome I desire. An eternity awaits—unending, unrestricted, free. But after despair consumes me and I begin craving the embrace of death, wishing for erasure from existence itself, I will inherit the scythe and the book instead. I... will become the next Reaper.”
"WHAT!?"
How can an empty paper hold so much terror!? This information struck me like a sledgehammer. My throat went dry. My heart plummeted, sinking like lead into the depths of my gut. My mind reeled, drowning in dread and disbelief.
"HOW?"
How did this contract already know?
How could it promise me boundless chances to happiness, absolute freedom—and in the same breath, assume that my innevitable wish would be annihilation?
No... It wasn’t just an assumption. It was certainty!
It was as if the parchment whispered an awful truth: The future is that horrifying.
Decades. Centuries. Eons. All stretched out before me in an endless, unrelenting march. I get to control them as I wish, so what was awaiting in the future? A paradise that would slowly rot into a hell of my own making? Can't be that, as I get an endless 'redo buttons'.
Must've been something far worse...
The realization was unbearable. If it doesn't take away my free will, then... "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE FUTURE!?"
This offer was poisoned. A honeyed trap that promised heaven and guaranteed damnation.
Every fiber of my being screamed at me to refuse. To throw the parchment away, to escape before this wretched pact could entangle me. I can still claim myself a small cloud in heaven, that much I know-guaranteedly!
Only an idiot would sign something like this!
...
And yet...
I was signing my name.
My hand moved, the pen scratching against the paper in a surreal, detached haze.
I wasn’t stopping.
Why wasn’t I stopping? "IT'S GUARANTEED AGONY, YOU IDIOT!"
Alfieri...
"STOP YOU FOOL!"
"WHY ARE YOU SIGNING IT!?"
All of these screams were consumed by the silent void, yet their intent was clearly delivered through the harming-cold air.
Her face flashed in my mind again.
Her. Laughing. Smiling. With him. In the bed that I had paid for. I could stop her from leaving—or leave her first. Or... I could ruin her life and get my revenge...
My parents’ faces followed, lined with worry and disappointment. The ones I had abandoned for her.
And then, the memory of my brother’s funeral, and me not being present. The hollow ache of guilt from a death I could have easily prevented, if only I’d been there. But I wasn’t.
They all haunted me, their faces etched into my mind like scars on my soul.
I couldn’t escape them. I couldn’t make things right—not in this life.
But... maybe...
...maybe in the next.
The pen pressed harder.
If my existence was nothing but terror and futility, maybe I could use it to fix the lives I had ruined. It's not like I'd enjoy that shitty cloud in heaven if I get to keep these memories... They deserved better, didn’t they? They deserved happiness, even if I didn’t.
The ink bled into the paper.
Vicente...
"Oh..."
"I signed it."
...
The ink... into the parchment... my name... in dark crimson. Alfieri Vicente. A sound left my sore throat, a "Heh!", and by reflex I raised my head from the paper towards the Reaper-expecting her to accompay my chuckle but the image I glimpsed upon was...
...
The silence finally broke, this time for real and with actual noise. The void now gone, embraced one singular word, a "Sorry" drowned in weeps. An apology from someone who went this far just so...
In that moment, I realized the truth.
The Reaper—Kaarla Yusef—wanted to die.