JackSGreyson Says

“What are you doing rummaging around my kitchen like a mouse? Stupid child,” she exhales, shaking her head. Still, she can’t help the small smile that curls the corner of her mouth.

“Just like my father?” the little fool asks, petulant and pouting, not even looking up from the floor. The apple in her hand, a lovely pale pink, is nothing at all like sin.

Nyx rolls her eyes. “No, dear, your father would never be allowed through the door of my house,” her words are harsh, but she tempers it with a gentle hand on her niece’s shoulder. “Now please sit and eat a proper meal. And don’t forget dessert–I pride myself on having a devil’s food cake to die for.”

It’s a terrible pun, both ways in fact, but it makes the girl smile.

///

This is The Best. Year. Ever.

No more homeschooling! Your mom is finally letting you go out to an actual real school with actual real people. You’ll get to meet normal kids and talk about normal things and have a normal life.

Sure, your dog isn’t like other dogs, and your family isn’t like other parents. And you’re not entirely sure how to explain Grimaldo, your mom’s demonic minion, but you’re sure you’ll figure out something.

That’s what school is for, after all, right?

But the best thing is: this is the year you met your cousin. And she’s going to live with you.

When you were younger and a normal human–or, at least, thought you were a normal human–you lived with your mom.

Your mom was actually a normal human, had normal human feelings and concerns: how to pay next month’s rent, trying to raise you all by herself, scheduling her two jobs and your childhood, and making sure the both of you were safe and fed and happy

It was a difficult life, but you were loved.

Now you live in a mansion at least five times the size of your mom’s apartment with your cousin, your aunt, the giant dog which may or may not have three heads, and your aunt’s demonic servant.

It’s awful.

You miss the life you had before. You miss your mom. It’s not as if you can never see her, though–one of the rare perks of being a psychopomp–but you know the first thing out of your mouth won’t be “I love you, I miss you,” but instead “What were you thinking?”

///

When people think of Death, well. Usually they don’t think of Death as a person. As time passes, and belief in the old with it, Death is more construct–intangible, maddening, unknowable–than a person.

For the few who think of Death as a person, beyond the fleeting euphemisms or poetry, they picture someone dark. Someone stoic and frightening, fierce yet implacable. The Grim Reaper, the harvester of human souls must be, after all, a dark serious figure.

No one thinks of the Angel of Death as a drunk, deadbeat dad.

And yet.

///

On the first day of school you are already exhausted, no doubt a blight upon the otherwise picturesque experience for your cousin.

The school you went to before, in the heart of Cadmium City was in a vastly different income level, and had rusting chain link fences all around it. Everything here looks like a movie. Inside, you marvel at the walls–which aren’t even cardboard!–and the neat tiles of floor before a scent catches you.

Not the industrial strength cleaner or the smell of hundreds of teenagers or even cafeteria smells. No, it smells like death. A lot of death.

In about four months from now.

Gods–if they do exist–damn it.

~
A/N: related to yesterday’s post