Five
Sebastian
Waking up after falling to my curse was a bitch. There was no other word for it. It was brutal, and it sucked.
More like it sucked the life out of me because waking up was fighting to open my eyes. It was fighting an invisible battle. Imagine how dying felt if you were bleeding out and slowly fading away, and everything was just a haze because nothing was hurting, but you had no strength to open your eyes. Or, the way humans fell asleep behind the wheel after working a double, they knew, and they told themselves to stay awake and keep their eyes open, but they just couldn’t. So, they ended up killing themselves or someone else because of it.
That was me. Only so much worse.
I was a true immortal. I’d experienced the pain of dying. More than once. Only I kept coming back to life. My family wasn’t like others. We lived and lived and lived. We could be killed, but we would get right back up after our body rejuvenated.
Vampires weren’t immortal. Sure, they could live forever, but they only got one death. One stab in the heart was all it took. They didn’t come back. So, no, they weren’t immortal. At least not like a true immortal.
Back to my point, I’d rather know death a hundred times over than have no control over my energy or my lack of it. I fell asleep wherever and whenever. The same thing for waking up.
That was one of the reasons I never slept when I was awake.
Even when I did start to rouse from my slumber, it took hours to actually wake up. A lot of times I was stuck hearing people talking around me until I could finally pry my eyes open, and even then, I had this bone-deep tiredness that would weigh on me, trying to coax me back into sleep.
I didn’t know how long I slept this time, but I recognized my old room when I finally opened my eyes. It was quiet, but there was a good chance I’d go downstairs, and someone would be there. If not my parents, at least Kitty.
Thinking of Kitty, I stumbled out of bed and decided I’d go in search of her in the one place I knew she’d be. She’d be able to tell me how long I’d been sleeping. Kitty was the only one that still lived with our parents although she was well over a hundred years old like the rest of us.
It could be a pain working for your parents in a Reaper business, but it wasn’t all bad. Our family was well known in the Underworld. Well hated by some. Well loved by the rest.
I was the oldest and could still remember life without the Sloth sin. An existence before the Devil cursed all of us as kids. All the energy I had. All the possibilities and fun was at my fingertips. I could still remember his heavy finger pressed on my forehead touching my soul. And I remembered falling to the ground and then…nothing.
I slept for six months when he first placed the curse on me. When I woke, my parents cried and held me then told me my fate along with the fates of my siblings.
Barron was angry, always angry, when he used to be a prankster full of smiles and life. He still had a sense of humor, but it rarely showed.
August was full of greed, who was once a pleasant and easygoing kid, couldn’t stand to share. He just wanted, wanted, wanted. Nothing pleased him. Nothing was ever enough.
Maureen was suddenly prideful, our eldest sister who once loved all of her siblings more than anything else was suddenly self-absorbed. Like Barron, it made her bitter; it made her angry, but it also made her cocky and tough.
Joy was envious of everyone and everything. It made her dark and gloomy, quiet and closed off. It made her greenliterally,but it didn’t take away her need to love.
Maybe Prudence’s curse was the worst because she was just a kid when her body started having sexual desires. We didn’t know what Prudence did, and we definitely weren’t ever going to ask her how she lived with the sin of lust. We just loved her and looked out for her like we all did each other.
Lastly, Kara who we called Kitty. She was our youngest sister. She couldn’t stop eating. She ate, and ate, and ate, but she was never full. As a kid, she slept on the floor of the kitchen that Mom would have to restock every morning because she would binge-eat all day and night. She’d sleep and eat, that was her life. And it still was.
Despite all that, we still lived. We still did Reaper work, even on the days our sins consumed us, we survived and persevered, and we sure the hell looked out for each other. Why?
Because our last name was fucking Reaper.
We didn’t play nice with the Devil. Ever.
Not that we always played nice with each other either, but we were family. We were bonded by blood as well as love, despite how corrupted each of us could be.
Even so, I’d been living with the sloth sin for over a century, and I knew my sin was getting worse. Passing out and staying asleep was happening more often. I was constantly tired, even getting lazier. I hadn’t told them yet, and I didn’t plan on it, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they realized themselves… because I thought there would come a time when I didn’t wake from the slumber the curse held me in.
I knew I was right to look in the kitchen for Kitty when I heard her loud snorts drifting from the doorway as I stepped into it. She was sitting on the counter eating a beef jerky and at least ten bags of empty chip bags were surrounding her on the floor. She lifted her eyes from the phone and met my eyes. “You’re awake,” she chirped, glancing back down at the phone and giggling at whatever video she was watching.
“How long did I sleep this time?” I asked her, rubbing my eyes as I leaned on the counter she sat on.
“Not too bad this time, only two days.”
Sadly, she was right. Two days wasn’t bad, but the fact that I was losing my life to sleep didn’t get any less shitty.
