The Death Clock: chapter 13

 

Isaac

13

I saw Dr. Bram on the floor. He was staring at something behind me. I could feel its imposing presence. I turned, water flying off of my shirtless body and soaked hair. I saw it.

A giant clock. I thought for a moment it was the Death Clock but then I saw how different it looked. The thing was beautiful. It was both futuristic and primitive at once. Both complex and simple.

The two arrows began to turn, sliding without resistance. They moved once all the way around then stopped, both arrows under the numeral for one. One target, if that clock was like the Death Clock, and the other arrow pointed to a skeleton with a scythe.

As I stared the picture of the Reaper began to move. Its head turned to look outwards. It began to shuffle forward, getting bigger and bigger. The hand without the scythe reached outwards and actually came off the clock face, becoming a real bone hand, and grabbed the arrow. It pulled itself out of the face of the clock, the scythe hand grabbing the outer edge of the clock.

Its hands came out first. The hands seemed to be real bone, even the scythe with bloodstains looked real. Then the thing pulled forward, its shoulders coming out. They were covered in a black mantle. Then the head came out, the white skull grinning as it looked around the room. It pulled its upper body out. The a leg appeared, stepping down to the floor. It fully emerged from the clock, a living skeleton with a scythe. A Grim Reaper.

The bones creaked as the head turned on the vertebrae, looking around the room. It turned its head to look at me. In the shadowy recesses of its eye sockets, I saw a dark recognition. The recognition of prey.

The Reaper cleared the distance between us in a single step, its black cape billowing behind it as it moved. It towered above me, staring into my eyes. As its jawbone moved, air moving through its bones, it spoke, in a voice like wind sweeping over a graveyard.

"Die. Master says die."

I saw its hand move towards me, its long fingers spread to grab me. I couldn’t move; I was frozen in fear. Its hand kept reaching, moving slowly towards my chest. I expected it to grab me but it kept coming closer until its fingertips touched my bare chest.

Instead of stopping, it kept moving. It bony digits going into my skin without cutting me, it just fazed through and into my body. I could feel its hand in my body, moving towards my heart. I felt it reach deeper, actually into my heart. I could feel its fingers close around something inside my heart before it pulled it out.

When its bone hand became visible, I saw a large, writhing black mass clutched between its fingers. Without knowing how I knew it, I knew that the mass was the virus. A reaper had pulled the virus from my body.

It swung the scyth in a circle along its side and then brought it point first into the center of the virus. There was a loud hissing sound and then the mass evaporated.

Its work done, the skeleton slowly hovered off the ground and floated backwards, still faceing me, and melted back into the clockface. It had just touched the clock when it pointed the scyth at me, arm extending fully and holding the scyth by the very end, so that the tip of it touched my head. I suddenly felt relief as the scyth killed the remains of the virus.

Me and Dr. Bram fainted, him hitting the floor right before I did.