Leather Wings (BVB fan fiction)

Leather Wings - Ch.1

He's dead. Gone. Murdered. Bleeding. Not moving. Unseeing. Deceased.

If everything goes according to plan, he won't be like that for long...

"What do we do?" She asks and I look down at the boy on the ground.

"I don't know… What do people usually do when this happens?"

She shrugs. "Tell the family and stuff I guess… and bury them…"

I look back down at the boy. He's face down in the mud, blood seeping into the ground, turning it a dark red colour. I reach out with my foot and roll the boy over so that he's staring up at me with those gorgeous, blue, unseeing eyes. I imagine his eyes once sparkled. I imagine they always held a smile in them, permanently laughing at the world. I stare at his eyes. I feel as if he's going to wake up any second and laugh at the stupid expression on my face. He isn't. The boy is dead. I glance over at Sari. She seems as mesmerised by the boy as I am. He's pretty. We never could ignore pretty things.

"He looks… happy," Sari whispers.

I nod. His mouth is quirked up at the corners.  "So are we going to bury him?"

Sari skips back into the cabin and comes out carrying two shovels. We dig a human sized hole in the mud and together lift the boy off the ground. We shuffle to the edge of the hole and throw him in. He lands on the wet earth with a sickening thud. 

Though both mud and blood, cake his face and hair, the boy is beautiful and smiling. I feel bad for him. Whoever did this, must have despised him.

Sari peers into the hole. I know that she isn't comfortable with seeing the dead body. I know that she's just being strong. She always tries to be strong.

I've seen this before… Usually someone else cleans up the mess. Usually there is nothing violent about the death and when there is, there are onlookers. I stand in the background with my leathery wings tucked away, hidden in the skin of my back. I've never actually had to bury someone before…

"Now what do we do?" Sari asks me, flicking her crimson hair out of her eyes. The dark red irises flash in the sunlight and she tilts her head to the side, staring at me curiously.

What do we do now? I don't know… I'm sure I was told something about this in the beginning, but after so many years, I have forgotten. Perhaps it won't work. Perhaps the boy will just stay dead… "We should finish the ceremony as the humans do," I mumble.

Sari blinks at me. "I've never been to a funeral before," her voice is so soft and squeaky that I can barely hear the whisper.

I step in front of her. "I have."

I mutter a few words. Only a few, for that is all I can remember. I mutter the words that I heard when I first went to collect someone. I bend down, scoop up a handful of mud and let it fall onto the boy's lifeless body with a squelch. I say a few last words before nodding to Sari. We take our shovels in hand and put the earth back into its rightful place. This truly is composting at its best.

"Now what?" Sari says as she wipes non-existent sweat from her brow. She looks down at her usually neat fingernails in horror and begins the difficult task of getting the dirt out from under them. "It better not involve digging!" she screeches.

I laugh and shake my head. "Now we wait," I toss my shovel aside sit cross legged on the ground.

Sari groans. She walks over to the nearest tree and leans against it, refusing to sit in the mud.

I sigh and let my wings free. I'm going to need my energy. It wouldn't be very good if I fell asleep when the boy was ready. The dark, leathery, translucent wings unfold and I feel the power surge through my body.  I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees.

After about half an hour, Sari screams in frustration. She's fairly new to this. I'm not. I know now that the dead have minds of their own. They will emerge if and when they choose. Most of the time they are too frightened to be quick about it, but they dig their way out eventually.

"Relax Sari," I stretch out my wings and run a gloved hand through my hair.

"Why can't he just hurry up!!?"

"Shut up! You're going to scare him away!" I glare at her, letting my eyes brighten until the gold is shining and unnatural.

She snaps her mouth shut.

As the wait stretches on I remove my disguise bit by bit. I let my skin glaze over and my ears stretch into points. I hate looking like this, but it means that I will have the energy to stay awake.

Sari finally gives up and collapses into the mud, her disguise falling apart. Her hair flashes as her eyes start glowing and her skin starts shining and turning an ugly grey colour. She flops over and her grey, silky wings fan out above her, shading her from the sun's rays. She seems to have stopped caring about getting dirty…. When she notices me staring at her, she props herself up with her elbows. "I can always have a shower," she says, noticeably more cheerful now that she wasn't using energy to hide her true form. I roll my eyes and she grins at me, showing off her pointed teeth.

There is a yelp from behind me and whiz back around to face the grave. A boy is half sticking out of the mud, gawking at us. He's slightly see-through and hasn't disrupted the Earth though he has dug himself out of the ground. His eyes widen and I quickly gather up the disguise. I pull my wings back and get to my feet, grimacing at the damp, muddy patch on my backside. I reach out a hand to him and he just stares at me.

"Do you want to get out of there?" I ask, tapping my foot impatiently.

The boy nods, his black hair flying in front of his face.

I reach forward a bit more and he tries to grab my hand. His hand goes straight through mine. He isn't corporeal. "You really have to concentrate on this," I tell him. "I can't do all the work.

He stares down at his hand dumbly. I cough impatiently and he looks up at me. He takes a deep breath and grabs my wrist. As soon as we touch, his hand is solid. As he is slowly pulled from the grave, the colour comes back to him and I'm no longer able to see through him.

"W-w-what are you?" the boy stutters, his voice is surprisingly deep and I can tell he's holding back tears.

"There isn't time for us to explain kid," Saris says. She's back to her much less scary self.

"Okay… then can you tell me what I was doing in the ground?" his voice is weak.

"You died," I say. "Someone shot you in the back of the head."

The boy staggers back a bit and his eyes get impossibly wider. "Who are you?"

I ignore him. There will be plenty of time for that later. "What's your name kid?"

He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it, obviously thinking better of what he was going to say. "My name's Andy…" He looks at us cautiously. Well, he looks down at us actually… the kid is tall.

"Well Andy," I put a hand on his shoulder. "Welcome to the afterlife."