Prologue

It wasn’t meant to happen the way it did. I didn’t intend for it to happen that way either.

None of us did.

As I step away from the scene that I caused, I can’t help but think, had I done the right thing? A pool of regret sits in my stomach.

I am Life & Death.

Now I have just killed the man that made me live, helped me breathe, gave me a beating heart.

At least I still have the others. They tell me I did the right thing.

What do you think?

First, here’s a little background.

That bundle left on the doorstep?

That thing floating down river?                     

 No. I was found falling, hurtling towards the concreted ground, as if I was dropped out of a plane

Words of ‘What’s that falling from the sky?’ dropped from onlookers’ tongues. Fingers pointed, but no one was going to really do anything, no one was willing to catch me. 

Except.

A man, who at the time would have been about 35, was walking, taking no interest in what the on-lookers were gossiping about on the road. He was instead, as he told me later, designing, programming and calculating exactly, a machine in which to travel through time, in his head. This 35-year-old man was a genius and almost at his house, when ‘Watch Out!’ a woman screams, he looks up, and he catches me.

Although by this time, I seem to be dead.

Shocked, he looks at me and realizes.

He told me he rushed back to his house and saved my life, helped me breathe and gave me a beating heart.

He said I am in no way in debt to him for what he did that day. He said I kept him from going insane. I guess that is why I’m practically swimming with regret now.

As a baby, I was kept a secret, no one else knew about me, and even now, 18 years later, there is still no record that I even exist. I wonder why he did that. I guess it’s because I could never really be ‘normal’. I think about the scars that stretch from my neck, running down the left side of my pale body until they web out down my right leg, winding down my back too, as they make their way down my body, stopping just above my knee, and the strange dark birthmark that brands my left palm. I stare at this in thought, wishing that it would answer my hundreds of questions that will now never be answered, all because of a second’s misjudgement.

He gave me the scars, they saved my life. And the strange birthmark and the unforgivable power that grows inside me, the burden, the thing that means I can never be ‘normal’. Ever.

I will let you know a secret.

I have the power to control Life and Death. Although it’s not that simple.

Death is my friend. He’s unseen, but I can assure you. He follows me wherever I go, and for some reason, he does what I tell him to do.

Henry the goldfish should have died 18 years ago. Ever since I was a baby, I have been keeping Henry alive. I have to remind Death on a regular basis to leave Henry alone. That’s the upside to this power. I don’t even have to feed Henry anymore. I still do though. Not feeding him is just cruel. 

Down Side.

The accidental death of William D. Henderson. I would be wrong if I said it wasn’t my fault, but I was just a baby, and by the amount of animals and this boy that I killed, I must have been an angry baby. I don’t recall any of it, but William was three at the time and no one could say how he died. No one, except the guy who witnessed it all. The genius that saved me.

Victor. I can’t believe I just said his name after all of this. Anyway, William was our next-door neighbour at the time and well I never got to meet his parents as they moved away soon after his death. That’s just one of the many sorrows I have caused.

Now you know me, roughly speaking, and I can get back to the story at hand. I’m going to get that answer.

    

Did I do the right thing, or not?

Reviews

[Hans von Lieven]

An intriguing start to what promises to be a bizarre story. Keep it up, I am curious how the tale develops.

Hans von Lieven