Life After Death

Chapter 48

Hands were on my shoulders, shaking me profusely. Causing my entire body to convulse. I pushed at whoever had their hands on me and blinked. I stopped shaking. I stopped screaming. I stopped breathing. Just for a minute. Just long enough to take in my surroundings.

Soon, I was heaving. I wished nothing more than to cry. I needed that. I really did. But nothing but broken, strangled sobs escaped my mouth.

I then felt someone poking me on the cheek. I blinked an eye open to find Meg hovering over me.

"Oh, you're alive," she said, and barked out a short laughter. "Well, sort of, anyway."

I grumbled a string of profanities and rubbed my eyes. "Hey, can I get something to drink?"

I felt horrible. Something was horribly wrong here. I could feel it.

"You can ask Moira. I don't work here anymore. My weapon is finally fixed up." Meg grinned from ear-to-ear. "I even feel better. Anyway, I came to say goodbye."

I sat up straight. "How nice of you." Trying to contain myself.

"Well, don't get used to it. I mainly came over here to make sure that you don't have any wild ideas to somehow, magically, find the Grim Reaper Dispatch."

I stopped and then it all hit me like a freight train. The past couple of days or weeks or months (I wasn't sure how time worked when you died). All of this felt too familiar. Way too familiar.

"Wait, say that again?" I called out to Meg. Jumping out of the booth. Feeling like I had been hit in the chest with a boulder. I drew in a laboured breath.

"What? I mainly came over here to make sure that you don't have any wild ideas to somehow, magically, find the Grim Reaper Dispatch?" Meg frowned, looking over her shoulder at me.

I had the weird sense of deja vu. And then another freight train hit me - or no, a tsunami.

This had happened.

I remembered everything. "You... you're a Hunter and you're going back. You don't want me hanging out with Roman because you're 'protecting him'. You - I - I've lived through this before..."

"Okay, now you're talking crazy," Meg said, shaking her head.

But I knew I wasn't. I knew that as soon as I woke up. The convulsions. The shaking. The sobbing. It was because...

Memories came flooding back to me at full force. Going outside to find Alexandru instead of Roman. Being captured. Receiving my soul power. Meeting Sylvia and Danny. Finding out the truth about Kassima. Coming to terms with the End. Seeing my friend's die right in front of me at the snap of strong fingers. Screaming. The rip in the atmosphere. I had been the start of it all. Roman had told me that I would bring about the End of the world. He was right. He was more than right. But if it was the End, how did I end up here?

I looked around the pizzeria for lost souls - Pizza Palace. It has become some sort of haven for lost souls. A place they could call home without feeling the loss and confusion. They could just... be.

Meg was still looking at me funny. I remembered that I had my power. I could show her what I meant. I could prevent it all from happening. Lucifer was wrong - the little virgin always wins in the end. In the end, it is "all rainbows, sunshine and unicorn shit". I am going to show him that, I told myself.

"I have lived through all of this before, Meg. If you don't believe me - gimme your hand," I told her. She gave me a disbelieving look. But did so nonetheless. I think a large part of her believed me.

As soon as our hands touched, I gasped. Her entire life flashed before my eyes like a picture show.

The day she rode a bicycle. Her first kiss. When she lost her virginity to her best guy friend. Falling for in love for the first time - with a girl in her Latin class. Meeting Roman. Sharing important moments with her friends and family. Losing her father in war. Dying at the age of nineteen. Meeting Roman in the afterlife. Becoming a Hunter. Getting rid of demons and ghosts and the monsters under the beds of little boys and girls.

Meg gasped and ripped her hand from mine. She looked at me wildly. "You - you... you're the one. Roman was right!" She gripped my wrist. "Follow me." She dragged me into the kitchen - I knew it existed! "Moira!"

"Okay, what a happening?" Suddenly the pizzeria's kitchen contorted into a small living room area, with  an L-shaped sofa and a mahogany coffee table in the centre. There was a flatscreen television playing reruns of Friends and Moira was on the sofa wrapped in a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate engrossed in the series. "What the fu -"

"Meredith! Hi!" Moira said over at me in her usual nasally voice. "Meg, I was just about to come out to see you go."

"Sure you were..." Meg eyed her. "Anyway, this is besides everything! Meredith - she has the third eye."

"Okay, you're the second person to say that. What does that mean?" I asked, prying my wrist from Meg's grasp and rubbing it.

"You have the third eye. It's like a really rare soul power," Meg explained. "You see what others can't."

"Okay, that makes sense. I guess," I sighed and ran a hand over my face. "I need to stop this..." I said after a long moment of silence deciphering whether I should inform them about the End.

"Stop what?" Moira asked, pausing the TV.

"The End," Meg answered. "I talked to Roman about it. I thought he was talking shit but apparently not. The End is near. And she brings it."

"What?" Moira gasped, placing a hand over her chest.

"It's true," I said in a hushed voice. "I did bring the End. Only thing is that I ended up here. I don't know what happened."

"Well, you do have the third eye. They can do unimaginable things. This must be one of them," Meg said.

"So you're saying I restarted it?" She nodded in response. "So I can prevent it?" Another nod.

"You know this kind of power would come in handy as a Hunter," Meg said.

"Are you asking me to become a Hunter?"

"Sure, you're annoying and sometimes overbearing but with that power we could do a lot of good." Meg seemingly pondered on the outcomes.

"Okay, I'll be a Hunter. But can I like recruit another member?" I asked.

"Sure. I guess that's okay. Who though?"

"A friend I met on the material realm - Topher," I smiled at the mention of his name.

"Okay, where can we find him?"

I took in a sharp breath.

"What?"

"He's with Kassima," I said, horror evident in my voice. "And she's the reason the End really happens - the bitch sacrificed her little sister." A shiver rocks through me.

"Then that's where we'll have to go -"

"Wait, we first have to get Roman." I told her before she could do something abruptly.

"Okay, and how are we going to do that?"

"Well, we first have to deal with Alexandru..."

"Who the fuck is that?"

"Roman's father."