Pulse

A gift for you!

Hi all and happy holidays! 

I just wanted to add this real quick to thank everyone for the outpour of love and support I've received recently (we're over 90k reads now, that's INSANE for me). I love that my story has touched so many lives and I hope to continue to do that for all of you. Anyway, as a little thank you, I wrote a sort of prequel-y short story from when Cian first became an angel of death (it's kind of sad, sorry about that). If we hit 100k, I'll write another for you guys!

Thank you so much! Enjoy the holiday season and happy new year :)

Cian

It was only an hour, but it felt like a century.

Everything moved in slow motion, people's voices transforming into warbled, incomprehensible sounds whenever they opened their mouths. I stood by the cathedral's entrance, my hands tightly clasped in front of me, my head down. Hand after hand brushed my shoulder. I'm so sorry or He was truly a great boy or You must be so devastated. Was that all they had to say? Was that it?

I recognized the hand that took mine next; it was my mother's, fine-boned and trembling. As she leaned close to me, brushing my hair behind my ear, I smelled bitter cigarette smoke and wine on her breath. I couldn't remember if she had smoked before the accident three days ago. I couldn't remember much of anything that had happened before three days ago.

"It's time," she said, and I looked up at her, then past her, towards the mahogany casket on the altar. From my vantage point, I could just see the edge of Vinny's golden hair, a paler, whiter blond than it had been in life.

I shook my head. "I can't."

Mom's grip tightened. "CJ."

"I can't. Not when—Eden isn't even here," I said. My voice sounded raw, like most of it had been scraped away. "Where is she? Why can't I talk to her? I just want to talk to her."

A chord rang out from the piano. The black-clad congregation rose in an eerie silence as the pianist started to play a slow, doleful song; I fought the urge to plug my ears, a shiver going down my spine. It was cold in here. When had it gotten so cold in here?

My mother was still holding my hand, and now my father approached, his face a sickening calm. I expected sorrow, regret—anything—but his expression was stone. Why was I the only one whose throat felt so tight? It was almost like it was wrong to mourn.

"Cian," Dad said, nodding his head toward the casket. "Let's go, son."

The piano ballad seemed to swell the closer we drew toward the altar. I was moving through water, as if something else besides my own volition was dragging me forwards. My head spun. Seeing was believing; once I saw him, cold and still, nothing else mattered.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, a group of men and women clothed in ornate white and gold suits had spontaneously appeared in my bedroom. They were angels, they said, and I would be, too.

I had told them I didn't care. I didn't care what they did to me; I just wanted my little brother back. Could they give Vinny back to me, please? To that, they were silent.

We reached the casket.

I didn't want to believe it was him, but I was so sure it could be no one else that the tears fell down my face almost immediately. I had only been two years old, but regardless I remembered the first time I saw Vinny, when he was small and red-faced, a breathing wrinkle cradled against my mom's chest that everyone said was my brother.

I'll protect you, I remembered thinking. I won't ever let you get hurt.

I looked at him here, now, his face still, lips a false pink, blue veins vacant of any oxygen snaking beneath the heavy foundation. I stroked his hair, touched his motionless hands.