The Death Trials by Jonsie (rocket ebook reader txt) 📕

my pudding, where I even wrote my freakin’ name on, because you ate it?”
The fairy narrowed her eyes, slowly getting the hidden message in my message: I will kill you. You can mess with a lot of my things without me getting really mad- ask Caden. If not, he would be laying six feet under ground for a hell of a long time. But nobody- and I mean no man and no demon and not even an angel- messes with my pudding. So, the fairy did the only right thing: running away. Or flying away, if you can call the nervous flapping with the wings really flying. I watched her go. That would be my one good deed for the day: Not killing that little mischief. The light of her body dimmed away slowly as she made her way out the window. Fairy had blood that glowed which allowed them to see in the dark. But it also made them visible for all their natural and unnatural enemies. That had to suck, because fairies were small- most of the time. There were also big, human-like fairies but they were… not here. I was so glad about that.
Blindly I grabbed something out of the fridge before slamming the door shut and getting myself a spoon. Strawberry yogurt with chocolate pieces. At least it had some unhealthy calories and sugars in it.
It’s not that I was born grumpy- or with an addiction for chocolate pudding. In reality, I could be a perfectly well behaved girl with flowers and ribbons in my hair, skipping around, watching butterflies dance in the wind. Though, since my past is not what some might call normal or peaceful or…, well lovable, I decided to look exactly as my past was: black, moody and shitty. I guess I tried to get attention that way- at least that was the reason before I died- and then undied again. Now, I just thought it matched the image we tried to convey: stay out of our business or we will come to you and make you pay. Don’t forget: we know where your house lives.
Sluggish, I went over to the window shelf, slowly eating my midnight snack. It’s funny, how the institution tried to keep their reapers out of the normal world. Every time we look out of the window, we see nothing. Only the endless black which swallows our fairy tale friends up like a black hole and only the devil knows where it spits them out again. With reapers this little gateway doesn’t work. I once knew a female reaper who tried to escape that way- she haunts my hallway now. Speaking of which…
“Lyll? Would you kindly show up?”
I shoved another spoon full of yogurt in my mouth, pulling my gaze from the blackness. It would make you lose your mind if you stare into it too long.
Seconds passed without any sign of my dear – dead, friend. I waited. She always needed a while to appear in front of people, however this time she managed to manifest rather quickly. I shot her a proud smile.
“What’s up?”
She looked exactly the way she did before she died: brown, wavy hair pulled together in a ponytail, a short jeans skirt and a gray turtleneck. Her legs were covered in black tights and over-knee boots in the same color. All and all, she could be easy found in People magazine than in an organization for getting escaped souls back. I always envied her for her smooth skin, full lips and bright, green eyes with the slight shade of brown. Now, being a ghost and all, not so much. Still, there was her angelic voice which sounded like a sirens call. I always told myself that’s the reason why she had the urge to try out the black void: people who had too much goodness in their life had to pay for it either way. This had been her payment.
“Just need someone to talk to.”
Lyll- short for Lyllian- put her fist against her slim hip and turned her smile upside down.
“Great – you know, I do have things to do. People to haunt, nightmares to spread.”
If I think about it- I guess Lyll was the only ghost who could spread nightmares. Nasty habit. She tried it once with me… well, except it wasn’t really a nightmare for me. Not after I was in hell and I was about to go there again. Yay.
“Yeah, well, I have yogurts to eat, fat to gain.”
Thing about ghosts? They have to obey any order starting with would you kindly. I don’t use it often, because I don’t want to force Lyll to stay with me but I would use it nonetheless.
“So – would you ki-”
“Okay, okay. Don’t say it,” Lyll smiled a bit, swaying over to the window shelf and leaning against the wall, “I’ll stay. But there is a confession in your eyes your modesty doesn’t quite have the craft to cover.”
With all the spare time, Lyllian loves to read Shakespeare, so for her quoting Hamlet was an everyday thing. You just had to get used to it and – most importantly – understand it… which wasn’t the case with me.
“…What?”
Lyll giggled.
“You have to read more, Blake. It will help you seem more educated. Aaaanyway, what I wanted to tell you was that you are hiding something. What do you want to talk with me about?”
Sometimes best friends suck. This wasn’t one of those times. I loved Lyllian for being so understanding, even if she was a ghost floating around. Still, it was hard for me to tell her, I would visit the place I hated and feared the most. Biting on my lip, I set the cup of food down and started fiddling around with my hair. In the past, Lyll would always take my hands in a situation like this, now, it wasn’t possible anymore for her. So instead, she kept looking at me, not pressing me to tell anything. In words. Her gaze said everything.
“I’m going back to hell.”
“Yeah, as if. Okay, the real deal, please.”
“It’s real, alright.”
She stared at me for at least five minutes. Slowly she made felt uncomfortable with her beautiful eyes then she blinked. It was the only silent reaction I would get and so I mentally prepared myself for a big why what where when why?!- reaction. Instead, I got slapped. Well, not really because she couldn’t touch me, but the gesture was enough to make jump and stumble back. Lyll frowned and then sneered. She looked more supernaturally then ever.
“Are you brain damaged, Blake Ever Heart? Did you actually loose your mind?”
Still in shock, I was the one who could stare now. It wasn’t that I really had to say anything- Lyll talked with the intensity of two people.
“I mean because of that place you lost everything. Your family, your brother, your insanity! Like, almost your life- and you want to go back there? Did I miss something? Did hell become Disneyland? Or the world of puppies and puffy clouds? Do they have rainbows and unicorns now? My god, B!”
Seeing her mad made me slowly regret telling her. Not, that she wasn’t right but I mean, pluheeeaas! It was my life. And because of that, it shouldn’t been a surprise I started humming.
“It’s my life, it’s now or never…”
“Blake! Heavens, listen to me.”
I know Lyll would’ve shaken me if she could touch me. Too bad that she was dead.
“I’m listening. Lyll, I have to do it. Something very wrong is going on down there…”
“And that is your concern? Uhm, no. He is down there and from what I’ve heard he can take pretty good care of himself.”
Not answering, I made my way to the trash, dumping my half eaten snack in there. She had pushed a button there, a button that shouldn’t have been available. For anybody. Lyll watched me with bright eyes, pushing a strand of hair out of her face.
“I’m sorry, B. I didn’t want to… you know…”
“It’s okay.”
I waved her off, while pulling my cardigan tighter around me. Suddenly I felt cold and... alone. So very, very alone. My ghost friend frowned. Not saying much, she disappeared in mid air. If it was half past two a.m. she had guard duty- but I was too uninterested to look. With my chin pressed against my chest, I walked out of the kitchen towards my bedroom. It was time, to get some more sleep being full with empty calories and dark memories. The darkness filled the white hallways but the shadows avoided the dim light of the candles on the walls. Under one of those, in front of my room, stood a dark figure. Blond, messy hair and baby blue eyes.
“Watching out for me again, Elias?”
“I am your guardian, B.”
Reapers mostly worked in pairs. One male, one female, because male had a unique power, being able to pin point the location of other supernatural creatures and female reaper could capture their soul. Not that I have learned that skill yet. I was only in my second year of school here, which wasn’t any different from normal high school, only that bullies were much more extreme. Female reapers were immediately identified because of the-mostly- huge shadow following them every where they went, making sure that no one even touched them without they wanting it.
“You didn’t do a very good job at the maniac thing today, though.”
“Well, I had… problems.”
I raised my eyebrow.
“Problems named Gab and Riel?”
Both are the most intense super annoying twins you have ever met. Being immortal only added to their annoyance, because you always had in your mind, that you would be, in the worst-case scenario, stuck with them forever. And forever was a damn long time. We don’t know where they came from, but suddenly, they were and that day is the unofficial dooms day for our organization.
“This time, actually, no. Our deposit box didn’t… depose.”
“How can it not depose? Satan put it there himself. He wants his souls, Elias. That’s-”
“Not impossible. I saw it, B. The maniac soul was there, even after… well, shutting the lit. It looked awful.”
My partner frowned, shutting his eyes, before groaning.
“Really, really… disgusting.”
He shuddered visibly while a sigh escaped his thin lips. I observed him, thinking about how odd the odds were that Caden didn’t become my partner. I mean, you would’ve thought that, being that he was my – living – brff (best reaper friend forever- and that forever was real, not just said, but really meant), they might’ve paired us up. But Caden was to the time of my choice of partner already taken, Mr. Henry Adams shoved me towards Elias, who was in fact reaper number one oh two – one of the first reapers of our generation. It was an honor to work with him, even though sometimes I thought about him in… other ways. Like you think about Chace Crawford or Ed Westwick- you want to have them, possess them. Caden was just super hot. Elias was… rarw. Plainly rarw with a little hrrr on the side.
“How did it look?” I asked him, pulling the door to my room open and leaving it like that, so my partner could follow. Darkness surrounded as soon as Elias closed the door behind him. The only thing that made me sure he was there was his soothing voice.
“Broken. And smashed.”
Souls weren’t light balls or fireflies, buzzing around. Souls looked like your average imagination of a ghost, fully dressed but see through and… with an expression of tiredness in their eyes. If a soul looked broken and