Dark Tales: 13 New Authors, One Twisted Anthology

by Vincent V. Cava (Editor)

  Otto scoffed at the very mention of the word ‘death.’ “That’s your story then? Grim Reaper? So what, have you come to kill me, to harvest my soul and bring it to the depths of the underworld? Have at it, boss, I don’t have much going for me here on Earth.”

  “Tsk tsk tsk,” The figure approached, clicking its tongue. For some reason the sound shook Otto to his very core. “This is my fault. First impressions are the most important and I clearly dropped the ball. I need more pizazz, I think if I grab your attention right from the start- yeah, yeah! Kids these days like fireworks and explosions and action, all that wisdom mumbo jumbo is better suited for the geezers of times long past, yeah? Alright, here, take this and light it in like, ten seconds! Trust me!” In a puff of smoke the figure was gone and Otto found himself holding a cigarette and a lighter. A cold shiver ran down his spine as Otto could no longer deny the strangeness of the situation he was in- last he checked, not even desperate junkies could just evaporate into smoke like that.

  He diligently waited for exactly ten seconds, counting quietly under his breath so as not to look absurd to whatever third party may be eavesdropping; he silently prayed for it to be a hidden camera show waiting for the most opportune time to rush out from the bushes and embarrass him on live television. As his deadline fast approached there were no signs of movement from rogue camera men, only the sounds of birds chirping and the accelerating pounding of his own heart echoing in his ears. Otto shook his head and pressed the cigarette up to his lips. He flicked on the lighter but instead of a small spark, an uncontrollable inferno sprayed out, flames grabbing hold of the shrubbery and trees around him and surrounding him in a ring of fire. The birds keeping him company disappeared in feathery flares with a tweet. He dropped the lighter but the fire kept rushing out, and within a moment’s notice a skeletal arm of ivory-white bones pushed its way out of the lighter along with the flames. Otto immediately decided enough was enough, turned tail and ran, only to be stopped by the burning shrubbery no matter which direction he turned to- and the flames were receding inward, herding him closer to the skeletal being emerging from the lighter, now an entire upper torso with flailing arms.

  Where the figure had once worn baggy but trendy clothing was now a ripped and frayed robe, swaying weightlessly in the torrent of swirling air caught in the enclosing flames. Its face was still hidden in the black shadows under the hood but Otto had no desire to see what lay beneath that darkness if this is what this being was capable of.

  “You have the nerve to call me a child? I, who watch over your world, who hold the very fate of your existence in the palm of my hand? I have seen the rise and fall of countless empires, brought the mightiest warriors to their knees and ended civilizations with a flick of my wrist! Otto O'Hare, you are nothing to me!”

  The voice must have come from Hell itself as it carried with it the sounds of all those poor souls he had collected in the past- a symphony of the damned tinged with the suffering only a thousand years of unrelenting torment can bring. As he spoke, the figure’s extended arm found its way onto Otto’s neck, gripping tightly and dragging him close, forcing him to gaze into the shadows of the hood where nothing was visible save for the faint glimmer of two burning coals where eyes should be. Otto was completely paralyzed with fear, lost in this demonic presence’s grip even after he had been released.

  “Not too bad, eh?” The now confirmed Grim Reaper chuckled. “I usually don’t like to start off with all that fancy stuff because it tends to distract from the real message of- hey, hello? You ok? Oh, right.” The Reaper snapped its fingers and the wall of flames disappeared instantly, the flora returned to its previously untouched state.

  In a puff of smoke, he was once again dressed in a baggy hoody and loose jeans. “Gotta stay under the radar, you understand.” The Reaper gestured kindly with a gloved hand towards Otto but was still met with horrified silence. “Oh come on, man, I’ll be the first to admit that I might have overdone it with all the special effects but you were asking for it. And it’s not like I’m here to kill you or anything. In fact, I lied earlier. Right now, you are everything to me.”

  “W-why?” Otto choked out.

  “You said it yourself, my friend. We are living in a world without death. Where once I held the seat right at the front of everyone’s minds I am no longer cared about, thought of, or most importantly: feared. And the consequences of that, you see, are very dire. That sun shining oh-so-beautifully above our heads, that's not just solar energy, it's soul-ar energy. Get it?”

  The Reaper couldn't help but chuckle, but Otto's blank silence gave no indication of responding to humor. “Not a pun fan, huh? Let's leave it at this: The world you humans evolved in depended on the energy released upon your deaths and now you've all decided you're too good to die. If you and I don't make a few changes to this system, the sun is going burn out and take us all with it. That includes me, and I've grown much too fond of being immortal to go back now.”

  “And you need…. Me? Why? Why me?”

  “There you go, nearly complete sentences! You’re speaking at almost a 3 year old’s level. I need you, because this lack of death means a lack of power for myself to cause more death, which means less people die, which means I get weaker and well, yeah, it’s a vicious cycle that I’m getting real sick of. And since you bear the honor of the worst sinner in the entire world, you are my emissary into this realm, which in this case mostly means you’re my lackey and I have some serious bidding that needs doing.”

  “How can I possibly be the worst sinner? Ok, I’ll admit that you’re a convincing death incarnate, and I’ll believe that there is some deterioration of cosmic forces way beyond my control or comprehension but I’m going to stop you right there on this one, I am not a sinner! I donate to children's charities every Christmas, for god's sake.”

  Death cleared its throat and retrieved a scroll from the front pocket of its hoody and rolled it open. “Ahem, let’s see here, Otto O’Hare: in the third grade you pulled Meaghan McHowitz’s pigtails because you liked her, even though she already had a boyfriend. How many sins can you count there?”

  “But-“ Otto tried to defend himself but was cut off again.

  “Or here’s a gem for you; when you were 26 you ran over a squirrel with your car when you had plenty of room to swerve into a ditch in order to spare its life. It had 8 children to support, and they all grew up fatherless in the squirrel ghetto selling acorns on the street to make ends meet for their sick mother.

  Despite what everyone believes, performing the good deed of thoughtlessly letting go of some money once a year to whatever charity knocks on your door first does not negate your depraved history of assaulting children and murdering small animals. Need I say more?” Death rolled the scroll back up.

  Otto hung his head and sighed. “And that makes me the worst sinner on Earth?”

  Death laughed wryly. “Honestly, you were tied with a war-mongering heathen in Timbuktu who has a nasty tendency to pinch those whom he truly hates, but he has some serious body odor issues and I have what you’d call a sensitive nose, so I made sure you sealed the deal by smoking- or at least trying to, anyway- that cigarette. It’s sad, isn’t it? Back in my golden years I had armies of soldiers fighting for my favor, killing and maiming and slaughtering but now mankind is all happy-go-lucky and I’m stuck choosing between arm pinchers and pigtail pullers. And here come the tears….”

  Perhaps it was the revelation that he was the worst sinner on Earth, or maybe the task at hand proved to be emotionally overwhelming, but Otto had, in fact, broken down into tears as he dropped to his knees.

  The Reaper rested his hands on his own head and exhaled slowly. “I should have gone with the heathen,” he mumbled before redirecting his attention to Otto and doubling his efforts. “Listen, buddy, it's not so bad. Don't think of it as being a damned soul only further corrupting yourself by delving into the fun and exciting world of murder and fear-mongering, think of it as saving the world by killi
ng people and making the ones left alive so afraid they revert back into the violent barbarians we all know and love. Repressing those feelings for so long cannot be healthy. You're like a hero and a therapist!”

  The Reaper's sentiments proved to only further depress Otto as he curled up into a ball and rocked back and forth, drawing the attention of a handsome twenty-something couple walking down the isolated path. They were holding hands and giggling, loving both each other and the perfect world in which they live. With a snap of his fingers, the Reaper shouted “Brilliant!” and vanished, leaving no signs of ever having existed. The couple noticed Otto in hysterics and jogged over, looking to help.

  “You ok, friend?” The man asked as his girlfriend gently wiped Otto's tears away with a rolled up tissue.

  “I just saw death...” Otto whispered halfheartedly, still unable to come to terms with his conversation with the Reaper. He was met with gasps of disbelief. “Don't you see it, too?”

  “If somebody got hurt, you need to show us where,” The woman chimed in. “If we hurry we can save them, I'm a nurse, I'll call an ambulance right now.” Her boyfriend helped Otto to his feet and he noticed a name tag on his shirt: Harry. Harry's companion raised her cell phone to her ear. “Yes, I need to report an emergency...”

  Otto found himself filled with indescribable rage, his mind replaying every unpleasant moment of his past. From every bully pushing him around to Edmund Fortnight stealing his spotlight just a few moments ago, the movie of Otto's life was played to the soundtrack to a racing heart and heavy breathing. Sweat began pouring down his reddened face and his hair matted to his forehead. The couple was too involved in the phone call to notice Otto's sudden change in temperament. He began to speak, but had no memory of the words ever passing through his mind or acknowledging their right to leave his mouth.

  “Drop. The. Phone.” The sentence was broken by his own sharp breaths. Otto's shaking body could barely manage to stand, but with a supernatural strength he seemed to tower over the young woman and her boyfriend.

  Harry was bigger and he approached Otto, their faces so close their noses nearly touched, and he had to tilt his head down to meet Otto's eyes. “I think you need to just calm down right now,” he spoke with perfect prose, perfect control of his body and showing no sign of succumbing to fear. A flawless specimen of what mankind had become.

  I want to see you break. As quickly as the words entered Otto's mind he realized they had slipped out, though where they were originating was still beyond Otto's understanding. Harry responded by gripping Otto's shirt in his meaty fists and pulling until Otto was touching the ground with nothing but the very tips of his sneakers. “Call the police, too,” Harry told his girlfriend calmly. He held Otto for a moment as if deciding how to handle the situation, still raising him into the air.

  At this point, Otto couldn't see through a harsh red haze clouding his vision, couldn't hear through the heartbeat which might pop his eardrums at any moment, couldn't breathe despite his lungs working overtime. Otto had no semblance of humanity left to preserve, and with an animalistic cry he wrapped his slender fingers around Harry's throat and began squeezing with a strength he never knew he had. The shock of Otto's assault led Harry to release him and the ensuing struggle found the formerly helpless Otto on top of the other human being, squeezing the life out of him with his bare hands.

  Otto went from blind rage to sudden clarity: he knew the woman was hitting him with everything she could muster, he knew she was screaming at the top of her lungs, and somehow he knew that nobody involved had ever been as scared as they were in this moment. Otto knew all these things because the red haze had faded and his breathing and heart rate returned to normal, or as normal as could be expected while committing murder.

  When the last drops of spittle flew from Harry's mouth and misted Otto's face, bones buried within Harry's thick neck started popping and the struggle ended with Harry in a twisted position, the perfect specimen reduced to a drooling husk, forever marred by a terrified grimace and wide, bulging eyes. Harry's last breath had left him, and Otto stood and stumbled backwards, right into Harry's screaming girlfriend. Never before had Otto heard such a blood-curdling sound and the knowledge that he was the culprit made him sick to his stomach. Unable to stand seeing her lover in such a state, she put all of her weight into pushing Otto onto the ground before running towards the city, crying for help from anyone who might be around to hear.

  Were it not for the reappearance of the Reaper, Otto never would have lifted his face from the hard dirt next to Harry's corpse. But with a chuckle, the Reaper lifted Otto back onto his feet and patted his back proudly.

  “That was a freebie,” the Reaper said. “I can't do the whole possession trick very often, but there you go.”

  “Possession?” Otto could barely form the word, but his mind buzzed with its meaning.

  “Yeah, just a little trick to help you get started. Now you already have blood on your hands. You're welcome, by the way. Do you know how hard it is to strangle a guy that size? You need to start carrying a gun or a broadsword or something. Efficiency is key, although I don't mind having a little fun and doing it mono-a-mono sometimes, you know?”

  Otto knew the shadow-clad figure was grinning like a fool beneath the darkness of the hood. “No, no I'm not going to do this. I'm not a bad person, I'm not a murderer.”

  “But you are,” the Reaper retorted. Otto glanced at Harry's body from the corner of his eye, a misshapen heap of flesh that plagued him with vivid memories of the not-so-distant past.

  Otto could hear sirens approaching, whether it was the ambulance or the police didn't matter- he had to get away, so he turned from the Reaper and dashed as fast as he could. To his surprise, he found himself running right towards the ghostly figure. He changed direction but again found himself faced with the approaching embodiment of death, clad once again in the classic robe that used to haunt the world with promises of death and despair.

  “You don't understand, Otto.” The Reaper's words echoed with the sound of a thousand voices, peppered with screams of agony. He raised his arm purposefully and an ossified finger escaped the darkness of the robe, which flowed violently despite there being no wind. Otto's eyes followed the gesture back to Harry's corpse, where the scene was now surrounded by police officers and emergency technicians, all trying to comfort the hysterical woman clutching at her dead boyfriend while dealing with their own horror.

  “The first murder in Brockville in over one hundred years...” Otto trailed off. Now that the Reaper was out of his streetwalker outfit and donning his ancient robes, the ethereal being made no witty remarks, no jokes. Now he was painfully silent, forcing Otto to interpret the scene before him. The woman would surely be able to identify him, a manhunt would ensue; his whole life would be spent running futilely, or behind bars, or worse... He looked to the Reaper, who seemed to be reveling in Otto's despair. His finger ominously pointed again, this time to a fallen branch at the base of one of the trees. Otto nodded, more to himself than the Reaper. A simple acceptance of his fate. He strained to lift the heavy hunk of wood, which he now wielded as a club as he approached the scene of the crime.

  Through the trees, the sun was losing strength and quickly setting. The sky was painted with blues, fading into pinks and purples and from the right angle photographers have praised Brockville for hosting one of the most beautiful sunsets to be found. Normally this would be a sight he lived for but now, feeling neither fear nor remorse, Otto beat a helpless woman to death. He dodged bullets from unpracticed officers of the law before turning his attention to them. Through the whole experience, the only thing Otto felt were the eyes of the Reaper burning into him, unblinking with silent amusement as he was inescapably branded a killer.

  ***

  Edmund had, in fact, been hailed as a hero when carts pulled by event staff and vans driven by generous attendees began handing out free beer, as much as one would ever care to drink. This was another trick of the Unit
ed World Government, an ancient trick they had picked from the Roman Empire: keep the people fulfilled by providing beer, entertainment and a hero and they'll never care to ask questions. For as old as he was, Edmund could drink with the best of them and only encouraged those who fell behind to drink faster. As the sun settled on the horizon and the street lights began illuminating the festivities the block party was dancing on the line between good fun and riot. All it needed was a spark.

  That spark came when Otto stumbled out of the woods, covered in the blood of his victims. The sight before him filled him with zealous righteousness- people falling over, rocking out to music so loud it could be felt, throwing up and falling over and passing out – these people were the sinners, not him. He was the hero who would save them from themselves. Otto never stopped to question whether these thoughts were his own or another ploy of the Reaper and he raised two pistols he had stolen from the police officers and opened fire into the packed crowd.