Mark’s hands.
Mark’s voice.
Mark’s wedding vows.
The way he smiled at me once. The way he whispered my name in the dark, back when I thought love was real. The way hechanged.
No.
The way he never changed. He was always like this. I just refused to see it.
I chose him. I stood at that altar. I took his name. I built my life around him. And he murdered me for it.
A sharp, jagged realization blooms inside me like a deadly little flower. I wasted so much of my life trying to be his. Trying to be a wife. Trying to fit into the neat little mold of whatever the hell he wanted me to be. And now, in death? There’s nothing. Nohouse. No wedding rings. No “grow old together” fantasy. Just this. Just me.
“A tragic end.”
The voice cuts through the void, smooth as glass and twice as sharp. It’s not loud. It’s not soft. It’s just… there. Like a fact of the universe. It doesn’t feel warm. It doesn’t feel cruel. It just is.
And somehow, I know exactly who it belongs to.
Death.
“You were murdered, Skye Dilano,”it tells me.“And as such, you are being offered a choice”
A sensation unspools in my chest, something vast and unknowable. A doorway cracking open. A decision carving itself into the very fabric of my being.
“You may pass beyond the veil,”it continues as the warm light flickers again, inviting me to keep following it.“You may let go of this life and be granted another in time, free of the burdens you carried here.”
The void shifts. And then, I see it.
A second light.
Darker. Heavier. A weight made of shadow and duty and permanence. A path that does not lead away. A path that leads back.
“Pass on, and your story ends here.”The warm light flickers again.“Stay, and you will become something else entirely.”The darker light pulses.“A Grim Reaper.”
A Grim Reaper?”You will collect souls the way you were meant to be collected.You will remain in the world, unseen, and unshaken by its petty griefs. You will be neither alive nor dead.”A pause. A beat.“And when your murderer dies, you'll be given a chance to balance the scales.”
To balance the scales...
My stomach lurches. Suddenly, I'm aware of what that means.
I would wait. I would watch. I would see Mark live. I would see him move on. And then, when his time came—when fate or karma or someone else’s hands finally ended him—
I would be there.
And I would decide what happens next.
I would get my revenge.
My fingers twitch. Fingers. Hands. I realize Ihavehands again. I realize I amstanding.
Two paths before me. Two lights. Two fates.
The warmth calls to me. The darksingsto me.
And for the first time in my existence—in my life, and now in my death—
