RIGO

Three

It was stupid. I was stupid.

How do I get in touch with Death... or some sort of soul-taker man? There was no way to know what he was. He was just a cloaked man who did something supernatural to a dead body. He could be evil. He could be another serial killer who had the man who tried to kill me under his control. Maybe the man was the victim and the cloaked man had some sort of sick perversion. Maybe the guy was a witch, doing spells he wasn't supposed to. Maybe I'm thinking too much about this.

I shouldn't meet with him, even if I could. I needed to have some sort of knowledge first. Of course, I began googling things.

The man had first said I was a Seer, which I found out was a person who could see the future? Or see the spiritual realm? There were so many lore out there from different religions and different cultures that I had no idea what was the truth.

Maybe it had something, anything to do with the strange things I've been seeing. First, it was the man rushing at me, and then it was the girl having a heart attack in the quad on campus. It was strange because the girl in my head looked slightly different than she did at that exact moment. It's not like I knew her and could imagine her in different clothes...

Thinking about this, I got up to tidy my room up a bit. I was anxious and cleaning would probably calm me down. As I picked up some books off my desk, I heard a crash outside. Maybe it was the living room or kitchen. It didn't matter. I was supposed to be home alone.

I slowly placed whatever was in my hands down on my bed. With my heart racing, I edged towards my bedroom door. There was no more noise. But what I heard earlier wasn't a farce. It was loud and real and very much in my home.

I opened the door quietly and twisted the knob back into its original place as to not make noise with the knobs turning. It was still quiet. I edged out of my room and walked down the hallway, holding my breath. I let it out slowly, trying to calm my beating heart. Be still. Be still.

While walking down the hallway, I realized I forgot to grab something as a weapon. I peaked around the living room from around the corner and looked around. No one was in the living room. My heart picked up. That means they were in the kitchen.

I heard a creak and jumped into the air a bit. Without making any noise, I picked up a book that was lying on a shelf. It wasn't much but it as something. I glanced over to the front door and saw it ajar. My heart picked up. Even though I knew there was someone in the house, this just confirmed it. It wasn't just in my head. A part of me was relieved it wasn't in my head. I wasn't completely hearing and seeing things. A bigger part of me couldn't think. I was suddenly transported to that night when the man attacked me. My heart was beating just as fast, if not faster.

I started to step towards the kitchen. I neared the open doorway of the kitchen, which I guess I wasn't quite enough. By the time I stepped into view of the inside of the kitchen, the man was already facing me. He was exactly as I saw him about a week earlier. It was Saturday about exactly the same time I saw him last Saturday night. He was holding a kitchen knife and he suddenly ran at me.

I didn't have time to think before slamming the book I held in his face. I didn't have time to deflect the knife so while he tried to block the book that was flying his way, he sliced my bruised knuckles from last weak, which hurt more than it would if my knuckles weren't already half butchered.

The book fell out of my grasp but the man was still holding his knife. He made a swipe at me and it sliced the side of my chin. I ducked but ended up just falling backward and out of his reach when he tried to stab me again. I scrambled back and out of the kitchen. I realized this was a bad idea because there were things I could use to deflect him in the kitchen. There was nothing in the hallway.

I couldn't get up, turn around, and run so I just kept scrambling back while he kept swiping at me. Finally, he had enough and brought the knife straight towards my stomach, hoping to stab rather than swipe. I shifted to the side, the knife slicing my side and going straight through the wood floor. The man tried tugging it out but couldn't. While he did this, I got up and ran. Instead of trying to go for the door, I grabbed a lamp from the living room, turning around hoping to run at him, only to find out he was already behind me and I smashed the lamp on the side of his head. It shattered the lamp, and probably his head. The man fell to the ground, bleeding out. In shock, I dropped the top of the lamp and it fell on the man's head. Blood was pooling around and the man's fingers were twitching before finally coming to a rest.

I breathed heavy and stumbled to the kitchen to get paper towels for my wound. I was bleeding out bad from my side. My chin was bleeding too, just not as heavy. I grabbed the paper towel roll and turned around to go back to the living room. I came to the living room, only to squeak slightly as I find a hooded man standing over the body of the dead man, pulling light into a vial again. The man capped the vial and it seems he looked up at me, but I couldn't really tell as I couldn't see his face.

"Second kill in three days, is it?" The man's voice let out a melody of words, calling out to my soul.

"Actually," I say, "it's Saturday of the next week. I reckon it's been more than a week by now." I stand in the doorway still clutching at my wound, the blood soaking through the towels.

"Has it?" The man hummed. I could feel his eyes stretch down my form to land on my bloody side. "Did you set up this kill?"

Is he asking me whether I was a serial killer? He was out of his goddamn mind.

"No!" I say while gasping in disbelief. "Why would you even assume that?"

"You're a Seer, are you not? Most Seers tend to be killers," the man, or spirit, or whatever he was, said nonchalantly as if it took so much of his effort to even keep track of the conversation he was having with me.

"There are others like me?" I ask, interested. I step forward, wanting to be near him but not wanting to be weird.

"You don't know anything, do you?" He asks with a smirk. I can't see it, but I can sense it.

"You're asking me? You didn't even know a week had passed," I snap back, offended.

"Time is a human invention. I stopped trying to keep track of it a long time ago..." He chuckles at his own joke.

"How do you collect souls on time then?" I ask.

"I don't. Because there is no such thing as time. I have already collected some souls that probably haven't died in your time yet... and I have yet to collect some souls that have already passed, hundreds and thousands of years ago. But to all of you, it seems as if I come collect your souls right as you die," the man explained but I had a feeling he was just humoring me. He probably thought I was stupid.

"So you time travel?"

"If that's how your human mind can grasp it, then yes." The man didn't look annoyed yet, so it made me get the courage to keep going.

"There are others like me?"

"Plenty like you. You thought you were unique?" He said as if he was mocking me. I felt something churn in me, hurt.

"I can see you because I'm a Seer."

"Was that a question?" The man, Death, seemed to roll his eyes. It's as if I could sense his facial expression. Or maybe, like he said, that's how my human brain interpreted it.

"You need to help me out here..." It was almost as if I was begging him. "I don't know anything."

"Don't beg," he snapped. "It's unbecoming of you."

I just stood rigidly still after he snapped. In that exact moment, his voice was not like a siren's. It was of one trying to instill fear. It was of storm and war and... death. It was chaos. It didn't call out to me. It pushed me away.

I didn't say anything after that. I didn't want to. If he didn't want to help me, after being terrified of going insane, after seeing things that... that haven't occurred yet, after being afraid that I'll be pulled into a different reality any second to see things that humans don't see, with no one to help me through it, then I didn't want his help.

The silence rang on. I finally broke.

"I want you to leave, Mr. Death."

The man just smiles. "You're kind of cute, you know?" And in the blink of an eye, he disappears.