Eternal Emily

The sequel to Death's Emily, it has the same theme.

Chuckling, that’s all she heard as death’s cold pale hands lifted her from the dark asphalt and walked away from the crash. In the distance, with her now lifeless eyes, she could see people running from around to check on her, but her body was no longer there to see. With only hate and anger could she look at her good friend walking away from the crash as if nothing had ever happened. It was definite, no room for argument. She was betrayed, she was deceived, and most of all…she was hurt.

“Do not fret, my dear Emily, you are mine.”

His low cold voice sent shivers of fear and excitement down her spine. For a man who was dead, a man seen as the dreaded grim reaper, his voice was smooth and arousing. Something she simply didn’t want to cope with. No one noticed them, not a soul saw them as he walked and walked well into the night. The lights of the city and scent of fast food faded with time, and slowly, her eyes started to close.

It took all of her might to keep them open, but there was some sort of spell being cast. His smooth low voice was chanting softly words she couldn’t distinguish. The chants were helping her, almost as if these words were the reason for her sense of peace and security. Soon, it became too much. With one last glance at his beautiful face, her head rested against him and darkness consumed her…

“Emily…”

His whisper reached inside her and awakened her from her peaceful slumber. Her eyes fluttered open…but he wasn’t there. She shot up, realizing that she was resting on the black sheets of silk and satin in a large canopy bed. The entire room was decorated in black and dark maroon. Disturbed by the extravagant settings, she shifted and silently stood from the bed. Looking down, she almost screamed, but quickly clasped a hand over her mouth as she stared down at herself. Instead of her usual clothes, she was wearing some sort of princess-style white nightgown.

“Do you like it?”

Her head shot up, meeting the cold intense gaze of death. Leaning against the post farthest from her side of the bed, he had a charming arousing smirk plastered on his lips directed solely on her. Moving slowly towards her, she looked him up and down, finding how strange it was to see him in a black Armani suit and long black cloak. Reaching out a hand to cup her cheek, his other arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her against him. No words were to be exchanged. With half-lidded eyes, he leaned forward and pressed a chilled chaste kiss against her lips. She wouldn’t respond.

He drew back slowly, then surprised her as he spontaneously lifted her and settled himself on the bed with her sitting on his lap. Ever so tightly, he embraced her possessively and protectively. His body was tight against hers when he leaned in and whispered in a dark menacing tone, “You belong to me. Don’t you ever forget that…my precious Emily.”

Taking a hold of her lithe arms, he harshly threw her to the bed and stood up. His gaze was as cold and impassive as before. Not with any words, not with any harmful actions, he gave a look that told her he was leaving. Without another glance, he disappeared. Confused and still hurt, she didn’t know how to recover. Sleep was the only answer that she could find, but she knew that sleep was always a temporary solution. It would only be a means of escape, an escape she needed nonetheless…

Nightmares haunted her, both her reality and her fantasy. There was nothing she could dream without her thoughts returning to him or the nightmares. They say that with separation the heart grows fonder, but instead, she found herself becoming colder and colder. Her dreams of all the people who have ever suppressed her and ever done her wrong, except for death were becoming insufferable within the realm of her dreams. Not much better, death had a crazy way of loving her. One moment, he was the kind comforting man that she would do anything for and the next, he was a cruel tyrant that scared her so much, she just wanted to keep her distance and crawl into a corner. Nothing could console her…nothing.

Her heart pounded for him, pounded for the stunningly beautiful grim reaper and her heart wept for her, wept for the fading girl who was hurt and betrayed. She thought that she had a friend to trust and she thought he loved her. Was she just some sort of toy for him? A f*****g puppet for his bitter amusement? Thinking about him, her heart was breaking at the thought that maybe he never really loved her. On the other hand, hadn’t he claimed her? Hadn’t he said she was his? All those women out there, all those radiant beauties far greater than her were much more deserving of his attention than the pathetic lowlife s**t she was. Knowing that she sparked their wicked jealous, knowing that he spent his time with no other and refused all others, sent her heart soaring. That’s what he did, yet if that was the case…why must he hurt her and tarnish her wings?

In reality, she was a broken girl of compassion bound in chains of love by death and in her nightmares, she was the unwanted b***h that everyone turned their backs on and would hurt without hesitation. All she wanted, all she needed, all she asked…was for someone reach out to her and give her the answers she needed to hear. If no one could do that, at least let there be someone who could save her. Yes, save her from not just hell, but from herself as well.

Days passed into weeks and weeks into months. Her nightmares became worse and death became more protective. He’d break her, but he’d never hurt her. He’d strike her, but he’d never harm her. He’d kill her and he didn’t even have to try. The only thing he had to do was erase those that had done her wrong. Her mother, her fake friends, the other women of his harem, and all those that ever spoke wrong of her. Plagues, famines, and droughts rocked the mortal realm and she was reduced to watching from a glass mirror on her floor as so many died, some who had nothing to do with her. Every death, every scream, every fallen tear was her fault. The visions taunted her and screamed at her, echoing their anger and pain at her heart, the one who holds the blame for what has been done.

When she broke away from it, only silence greeted her and she’d cry herself to sleep. The touch of death was always comforting, yet she knew the darkness and treachery behind the ice that ran in those frozen veins. She needed someone, anyone. Once, there could always be a light in her eyes, but now, a lifeless smile was all that could be seen. Never in her body was there any energy, not for anger and not for joy. Where had Emily gone? Where did her heart and soul go? Death wanted her soul, her heart, not a lifeless vessel. Each night, he lost his sanity staring at her, angered that it was not his Emily in front of him and confused of why she was forever out of his grasp . It was so obvious. Death itself was killing the one and only thing it ever wanted, her. What if…death wasn’t supposed to love?

“Emily.”

Hearing the familiar voice calling her, she tried as best she could to ignore it. No matter what, it wasn’t possible. They weren’t there. She was imagining it…but she hoped she wasn’t. With all of her heart, she hoped that it was her friend calling her and that her friend was right there at the end of her bed as she suspected. Right now, she really didn’t care that the voice calling her was the voice of the friend that betrayed her. The pounding of her desperate heart roared in her ears, insisting for her to see, to give just one chance.

“Emily.”

Gathering her courage, though it was painful, she pushed back the covers and sat up to face the voice. Tears rushed to her eyes instantly. It was her friend, her good friend that had warned her of the danger. Wait, warned her? Yes, this friend that had deceived her had warned her and had gone against death’s wishes in trying to warn her. At this realization, her energy returned and she bolted out of her bed. She embraced her friend, saying that she was sorry for hating her, for being angry with her. Against her words, her friend apologized for deceiving her, for handing her to death. All was forgiven…and ended.

All of a sudden, her friend fell limp in her arms and she knelt to support her. Glancing down at her friends face, she screamed, crying to the gods that this was too much. Her friend’s eyes were open, yet distant and impassive. The veins of her friend’s face were prominent, resembling ruptured red veins as if something too big to pass through them had squeezed her veins to the surface of her skin. A trail of blood fell from her friend’s mouth and her chest neither rose nor fell. She embraced her friend with all her strength and cried into her hair, yelling desperately at her, “How dare you…How dare you leave me! Please, you can’t leave me! I remembered, I remembered. Please…please, don’t leave me alone…”

“Good riddance.”

Horrified, her gaze shot up to stare into death’s molten dark brown eyes. How could he do this? How could he kill her friend?! Wait, was that what he’d been doing? Not only was he killing the ones who had done her wrongs…he was killing all those close to her. Every person in the world that she ever smiled at, that she ever met. He was and is killing them until the last person falls.

With a beautiful smile on his lips, she was even more shaken as her mind finally registered the truth she had realized long before, “This man is death its truest form…”

Too shaken for any words, she backed away when he stepped closer to her. She shook uncontrollably, trying to comprehend how she had loved this man, this monster…but she did love him. Without needing an answer, she knew that she loved him, that she still did, and probably always would. Traumatized by the wreckage of her heart, she screamed and shrieked at him when he extended a hand to her. That didn’t stop him. Instead, he gripped her and tore her arms away from her friend’s lifeless corpse. He held onto her wrists, snarling at her not to act like this. Everything was for her. This man of death loved her and wanted her all for his own. Still, was it worth it? Making her all his only to lose her beyond his reach and power? Whatever was left in her, it was only the remnants of the girl that he had fallen in love with, bits and pieces of a fading soul.

Unable to take that he was the one to break her, he desperately crashed his lips to hers, begging for her to accept him and return to him. This kiss was his apology. Every single emotion he felt, every now painful recollection of her he had was released in his kiss. She would not respond truthfully though.

His love reached her and only called back enough for him to tell that the girl before him was Emily. Overjoyed that for a moment, she returned, he embraced her as he told her not to go, not to leave him again. For the moment, she would comply, but how long that lasted, not even death would know.

Death kept her innocent, pure. To drown her in his love, he would break her and lose all that was left. He had to content himself with the last traces of his love. She knew what he felt because his emotions rushed through her. Hearing his thoughts and knowing his feelings, she also knew that he would be saddened when her time came. Even if she loved him, that wouldn’t deter her. Her time was coming and because death loved her, he couldn’t tell that it was.

As she knew him, he was too possessive and protective to allow his love much dominance over him. Once again he left her, playing into his instinct to claim her and take another life for her. All she had to do was give him a face, a vision as he embraced her in her bed. Just imagine the wrongs and the person and he left her to deliver death again. Moving slowly, she pulled a bundled cloth from under her pillow and got off her bed to walk to look through the glass mirror. Gazing into its revealing surface, silent bitter tears fell from her loving eyes as turned to direct her attention to the bundle in her hand. Unwrapping the cloth, she pulled out a dagger and took a single step from the mirror. Forcing herself to fully turn away from the mirror, she held the dagger above her head, gazing at its beckoning blade with crystal tears spilling down her cheeks. With one last whisper, she plunged the dagger into her heart and fell back, shattering the mirror at her back.

“I love death…”

 

A few hours later, he returned and trembled with restrained tears as he laid eyes on her dead body. In the middle of her room, on top of a shattered glass mirror with a dagger in her heart and the glass doors to the balcony wide open to welcome her soul into the winds, he found her body truly lifeless now, a smile on her cold lips. Trembling, he fell at her side and embraced her, hiding his face in her hair. Every ounce of anger in his immortal life left him, leaving him only with pain and sadness. With choking sobs, he asked a distant Emily, “I am so sorry that a man like me loved you. Even if you should have died years ago, at least…you would’ve died without this pain. Why-Why did you have to smile at me?”

One memory drifted to his mind. Years ago, he stumbled upon a little girl who was going to die because she got stuck in a meat locker neglected and too cold to preserve anything. She shivered and sobbed, hoping desperately for someone to save her. His presence was felt in the meat locker, yet she had stayed alive. The girl should’ve died in that meat locker, even if only ten minutes, except as she was dying, she had done something. For the first time in his life, someone saw him without fear or regret or sadness from the very first moment they saw him. Instead, she had smiled and reached her arms out to him as she said, “You must be cold too. I’ll give you warmth.” Even to this day, she still didn’t know the depth of her words, but when she had said them as if she was meant to say them right then at that very moment, he could for once truly feel the heart frozen in his chest. A single beat and a frozen string was plucked into a vibrant warm tune. Ever since, he had to protect her, he loved her and he saved her from her death, just to see her smile every day and glow with love and compassion.

Emily, that was his Emily…his precious Emily. Now, she was dead and gone from his grasp. Death can’t stop the cycle of life. He can’t keep a soul from being reborn. It was impossible. What a fool he was.

“Why did you have to smile at me?”

As if answering him, a gentle breeze blew into the room and enveloped him, whispering to him in an all-too-familiar voice, “Because I waited too long for you to see…”

Emily…

“I wanted to save you…”

Tears brimming at the corners of his eyes, he turned his gaze down to her lifeless face. Then he noticed something. A shard of the shattered mirror had droplets of her blood and glowed a heavenly blue light. Feeling that there was something in it, he pressed her body tight against his, afraid that he’d lose the last he would ever have of her, and reached out to touch it. The moment his fingers touched the broken shard, the gentle whisper of a beloved voice reached him and his heart.

“I love death…”

Tears finally fell from his eyes, clear crystals streaking down his dead-white cheeks as he replied to a drifting soul, “And I love Emily.”

 

Yes, the little girl who smiled…

the girl who loved…

the girl named Emily…

His eternal Emily…

Reviews

[Kestrova]

I have to say, the title really intrigued me and at first I hesitated, but after reading this, I found it to be great! I loved this and the idea behind it is so rarely executed in such a well-written way. Fantastic story!