16. I.
I.
MATTEO
Maybe we are not supposed to remember things from the afterlife, but maybe somehow we were given second chances.
Maybe Morena leaving me to die gave me the opportunity for something better.
Maybe all this time, I was only meant to show you that not everything is as it seems. Life has a beginning, yes, and maybe death has an ending too, but what if they collide twice?
What if death is sent to take souls, but it can also birth something that brings the ending for us all?
You see war, you see hunger, you see every living thing turning on each other, but why?
What was the cause? If you strip a man of his will and give him power, he will use that power to control you.
Control consumes, and when it does, it becomes an endless thirst for more and more until one day everything turns to nothing.
This is humanity. We were given something to create, but we turned it into something that can be used against us.
So when someone tells you that you are your worst enemy, believe it.
Nothing stops you from being a better person.
You wake up every day with that choice. At the end of the day, will you regret it or will you stand by it?
And who am I to tell you all that?
Just a man, a dying man, who lost sight and found it all over again.
But am I? Or am I something more?
I just know I am not a God, nor are you, so stop pretending.
I hung on chains, feeling the last thread of hope snap, when I heard footsteps. I begged it to be Morena coming to take me away, but ghosts do not wear heels. When the door swung open, Isabella stood in front of me.
“Matteo, 1 Dios mío, ?qué pasó?” she pleaded, trying to pull me from the wall. She could not lift me. Instead, she collapsed against me, hands trembling as she reached for my face, trying to bring me back to myself.
“Don’t leave me, amor, please,” she begged, but no sound came from me.
The air went cold again, and she appeared in the mirror.
Morena.
She stepped forward and shoved Isabella toward the wall, forcing her to face the glass.
As Isabella looked, Morena’s body began to twist, folding in on itself, bones cracking.
She crawled toward Isabella, and she had to scream.
Her jeans were wet. She had wet herself, begging and praying to God that this could not be real.
But it was real.
My skin went pale. My eyes weighted down slowly until they were nearly shut. Something shifted in the dark, a shadow moving where darkness had been. As my sight fell away, another scene opened.
A golden chair appeared. A black crow sat on it.
A light burned nearby. As I drew closer, chains lifted from the ground like braided hair.
The ground beneath me became living mud and began to swallow me whole.
I was dragged down until I was completely under, swallowed by darkness.
Earth filled my lungs. I could not breathe.
I could not see. Then I heard my own voice.
“The ending is just death,” I said.
Images slapped me like wind. I saw myself in 1996, but not the same. I saw another version of me, the one who had jumped to save Gabriella. In that version, he saved her, and I was the one who died. Then another image: I was twelve, standing before Death itself. It spoke to me.
“I will give you a choice. Live now and die later, or die now and live later.”
I was only a boy. I chose life. I lived, but I lived poorly. Now I was dead, and I did not want to live anymore.
I asked Death, “What do you want from me?”
Death answered, “When the time comes, I want you to be me. ”
The mud lifted me, and I stood. The world wavered and shifted around me—past, present, future folding into one.
I walked toward the chair. This time, a mask waited on it, and a scythe leaned against the back. I picked up the mask.
It was like a crow—black and leathered with two large mirrors for eyes, like the ones doctors wore during the plague. I pressed the mask to my face, took the scythe in my hands, and I was no longer Matteo. I was Death.
Feeling left me. A space sat where my heart had been.
In the mirror, Morena still tortured Isabella. I stepped out of the glass and pulled Morena back by her hair until her face met the cold surface. Isabella was already running, not even looking at my chained, dead body on the wall.
“I said, only rotten souls,“ I told Morena, and pushed her to the floor.
“She is rotten too,” she spat, clawing her way back toward the mirror.
“Who told you you could go, Morena?” I asked, seizing her hair and dragging her close. The edge of my mask rested at her throat.
“Are you jealous?” I asked, and I tilted her head to face my dead body.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No.”
I made a low sound and shoved her away from the mirror.
We stood in the basement then, both of us facing my dead body that hung, blinded by chains.
“I saw what you did to him,” I said. Morena pressed herself closer to the wall.
She swallowed a hard lump. Her eyes were small, filled with fear.
“Qué pasa?” I asked. “Scared?”
She shook her head.
“Then show me what you did to him,” I said.
“But...” Her voice crumpled. “He is dead.”
I laughed. “Show me.”
She came closer, chains clinking like distant bones, and lowered herself onto my cold, pale cock. She took my dead body in, then sank until the whole of me filled her. A low, satisfied sound escaped her.
“Too cold?” I asked, watching the little shivers run across her skin.
She shook her head and rode me, slow then faster, the chains hung at her wrists like a thread tethering her to some fragile life.
I slid the black robe free; it fell away and pooled on the floor, revealing the pale, impossible line of my body.
My hand found the crease of her ass and parted her cheeks, and I pushed in until she gasped.
I held her by the chains, felt the weight of them through her palms as if they were the last thing keeping her tethered, and she leaned her head against my shoulder, eyes closed.
“No,” I said, low. “I want you to watch.”
My claws bit into her shoulders, and I thrust, feeling her close around me. Her eyes opened; they mirrored the twin holes of my mask, and beneath that hollow reflection, she began to fracture from moans to gasps.
I moved her along my length until the wall steadied her back.
I lifted a leg and drove myself into the soft flesh of her thigh, deeper, until she tightened.
Her hands scraped the stones, the rasp clung to my ears.
I spun her, pulled the mask up just enough for my mouth to reach her wet pussy, then dropped to my knees.
Her legs were mine to hold; I tilted her hips and let the edge of my mask press against her, probing as my tongue drew slow circles around her clit.
“Death,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I will come.”
“You won’t,” I said. “Not until I say so.”
I held her steadier, worked harder, my tongue slickening her until the tremor began at the base of her spine. The tip of my mask nudged and withdrew, making her thighs shake.
I whispered against her clit. “Tell me, is it worse to be taken by the Death who remembers, or the man who forgot?”
She swallowed, eyes fluttering shut as I pushed into her. Then I let go of my mask, and it fell, clattering to the floor.
“Matteo,” she breathed, and my name hung between us.
I turned her, muffled her cry with my hand, and thrust harder until her scream echoed through my fingers.
The pressure built through me, so I lowered her until she knelt.
My fingers tangled in her hair, and I guided her head forward, pressing my cock into her mouth.
She choked and swallowed, and I came into her, filling her throat, until she gagged.
When it was done, I straightened, letting her slump back, chest rising and falling. I stepped away, the shadows pooling at my heels, and my voice cut through the dark.
“Bring me every single one who did you harm,” I said to her. “I will avenge you, Morena. I know you remember.”
1. Oh my God, what happened?