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Become the Villain
Emma Hamm
Become the Villain © 2019 Emma Hamm
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Become the Villain
She was a goddess of death. He was a boy with a dream. Together, they ended the world.
The world didn’t end with a bang, a loud crack, or even a whisper. It simply ended and then continued on with the pieces of what was left. Selene, the goddess of death responsible for ending the world, wanders the remains of Earth. She collects the souls of the dying all while thinking of him.
He was the one who wanted the world to end. He was the one who convinced her to join in his crusade. Reaper. The king of all gods, and the man she stripped of all his power, and left him to live out a normal life among the humans. Would he have killed her if he knew? Maybe.
But she wanted him to live a normal life. She wanted him to have a wife, a child, a home. All the things they’d whispered about while lingering in the shadows.
What will she do when, in a moment of chance, they see each other again? Will she give him back all his powers and continue what they started? Or will she side once again with the humans, giving them a chance to piece together what she stole?
1
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
~ Edgar Allan Poe
The moon peeked over the edge of the horizon. It kissed the last lingering rays of the sun, the only touch celestial lovers were ever afforded. On a rooftop above a desolate city, a strange woman sat swinging her legs over the open air while holding a cigarette to her lips.
"The world began because a great being found love in his heart," the woman muttered into the breeze. "Perhaps it shall end because another great being finds none at all."
Smoke curled on the horizon, streaming out of a broken window from a building that still smoldered. She watched with rapt attention as it coiled and tossed itself from breeze to breeze. It had been a long time since she’d felt that free.
Footsteps crunched behind her as someone made their way across the rooftop. She’d thought she was alone. But was she ever really alone?
The end of the cigarette flared bright red, then someone cleared his throat.
“Ex-excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt but… do you know how I got here?”
She glanced over her shoulder, turning only slightly to look at the man who shifted back and forth on his heels. He was a simple-looking person, someone who was as quiet and calm in life as he was in death. Not a single wound marred his flesh, but that wasn’t all that unusual in these times. People didn’t always die violently. Sometimes they just drifted away.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re dead,” she replied, turning away from him again.
“Oh.” His voice remained steady, and he didn’t shuffle his feet any faster, so perhaps he wasn’t all that startled by her revelation. “That explains a few things.”
“Sorry about it,” she added. “Death isn’t easy for everyone, but you seem to be taking it well enough.”
“It feels… right.” He cleared his throat. “No, that’s not the way to say it. But it does feel as though I knew it was coming. Do you know how I died?”
She lifted the cigarette to her lips again and drew in a deep inhale. Smoke streamed from her nostrils and between her teeth as she replied, “Not an oracle. I have no idea how you died.”
“Not even a hint?” His footsteps crunched again, then he awkwardly stood on the edge of the rooftop. Hesitating, he lowered himself onto the edge with the shaky fear of someone who didn’t like heights. “I always thought…”
“That death would be different? Most people do.”
The man reached for her hand. “My name is Ivan.”
She took the offered appendage and shook it firmly. “Selene.”
“Really? It’s not Gabriel or...”
They were always so surprised when she told them her name. She rolled her eyes and nodded. “Selene’s the name my parents gave me a long time ago, and it’s the name I’ve kept.”
“Oh.” Ivan blinked at her, then cleared his throat again. “So you aren’t an angel then?”
She snorted out a laugh. “No.”
This was the part she always hated. They asked if she was an angel; she said no. They then asked if she was a demon, and she said no. But of course, at some point they were going to see her face, and they wouldn’t believe a word she said after that.
Taking a deep breath, Selene turned completely toward him and let his eyes wander over the wreckage. The right side of her body was nearly corpse-like. Wrinkles folded the flesh over itself, scars from old wounds and unfortunate discoloration created a jagged line down the entire length of her body. The same portion of her head only grew white hair, while the rest was black as night.
Ivan blew out a slow breath. “Not an angel then.”
“Nope.” Selene dragged in another deep inhale then flicked the cigarette off the roof. It tumbled down twelve stories, and then she lost sight of it.
She leaned back on her hands. He’d think of something else to say next, although she was pretty sure she already knew what it would be. They all wanted to know the same damn thing when the time came for their death.
“Is this…” He waited until she looked over at him before he pointed up. “Or…” he pointed down.
“Neither. No religion really got it right. It’s not lights-out like the atheists think, but it’s also not a heaven or a hell.” Selene touched a hand to her chest. “I’m a death goddess. There’s a lot of us. We’re pretty easy to spot once you’re dead. Someone who has recently passed on always finds one of us, and we take care of your soul.”
“Take care of me?” His back straightened, and she knew he’d already gotten the wrong idea. “So, this is a good afterlife then?”
“Not necessarily. It depends on the death god. Some of us are the punishing types, some of us don’t really care, and then there are gods like me.” A cloud passed overhead, blocking out the last bit of the sun. She waited for it to move before she continued. “I think people are good and bad. It’s the intent behind your actions that determines how your afterlife should go.”
Ivan drew his brows down in concentration, and he listened to her like life’s answers were in her words. They weren’t, but he didn’t need to know that. Not just yet.
She waited for him to speak, staring up at the clouds and keeping the scarred side of her face away from him.
“A serial killer might think he’s doing the right thing,” he finally said. “Is he to be forgiven for killing people?”
“Even a serial killer knows what they’re doing is wrong. That’s why they do it. The thrill of something forbidden and something that no one could possibly understand. It’s not that they think they’re doing a good thing. It’s that they don’t care if it’s good or not.” She met his gaze to drive home her next words. “Trust me. I have a few of them.”
“You have a few… serial killers?”
“Just like you,” she replied.
“Souls that found me and are now my responsibility to take care of. You’ll understand once I collect you.”
He scooted a foot away from her. Crumbling paint and shards of concrete roof showered down from where his legs scraped against them. “Do you know what kind of afterlife I’m going to have?”
“I do.”
“Can you tell me?”
Selene didn’t want to feel pity for the man. He was dead. He didn’t need pity from the living anymore. And though she was a goddess of death, she was still very much alive.
But she remembered a time when she’d been like him. Just discovering her powers, nothing more than a child really, and how afraid she’d been. And then the world had fallen apart around her ears, and she’d realized that it didn’t matter if she was alive or if she was dead. The world continued spinning no matter what.
He hadn’t realized that yet. He hadn’t reached the stage in his existence when he understood that the universe didn’t give two shits about his soul, and that he was going to live with what choices he’d made for the rest of his life.
Selene looked toward him fully again, ignoring the way he flinched when her scarred face came back into view. She reached out and touched a single finger to the back of his hand and absorbed all the memories that he had in his soul.
“You were a good man,” she said. “Not a great one by any means, but you spent most of your life taking care of your family and those around you. You were slightly racist. Slightly sexist. Though you did feel as though your family were leeches at times, most of the time you loved them just as much as they loved you.”
“That’s right,” he whispered reverently. “I had a family.”
She patted his hand, then lifted her own away. “You’re what I call a medium person. You were neither remarkably good nor remarkably bad. You will go through this next stage of your life the way that you always thought you would. I’ve found that good people, those who know they were truly good, give themselves a gift of an afterlife. And those who were bad, punish themselves far worse than I ever could. I think you will likely relive your life over again, fixing all the things you regret.”
“Is that a bad way to spend an eternity?”
Selene smiled at him, the wrinkles on the right side of her face pulling tightly against the movement. “Whoever said death was an eternity?”
She reached for him again with all the power she had been gifted as a goddess of death. She grabbed his wrist and drew his soul into herself where she would deposit him back into a container. There, his soul would rest for a time.
Every soul needed moments to heal. He would have to find himself again, and understand all the things that made him tick.
She liked souls like this. They were the ones who always figured out how to be better in the next life. Sometimes they made great strides; sometimes they didn’t. But they always were a little bit better when they came back. Others didn’t see the faults, and their next lives were infinitely more difficult because of their inability to understand where they’d gone wrong the first time.
If there was anything she’d learned about humans, it was that they were remarkably resilient. They learned or they didn’t, but they always managed to bounce back from good or evil. No matter what happened.
“So much for a relaxing evening,” she muttered.
Souls always found her. They found every death god that was in the area of their death. She wasn’t seated on a hospital, so Selene didn’t know how he’d managed to find her all the way up here. But that’s how life was for a death goddess. She wasn’t ever off the clock.
With a slow sigh, she tilted her body off the edge of the building and plummeted toward the ground. If someone had looked up from the street, they would have seen her. She wasn’t invisible by any means, but she also didn’t care if someone saw her strange movements. The world was a different place than it had been so long ago.
Humans saw remarkable things every day. They saw machines making their food and stealing their jobs. They saw crime on the streets every single day, and no one tried to stop it from happening. They saw burning buildings and the end of the world come with a quiet peep that threw nuclear war to the wind.
Who knew the end of the world would come with a whisper instead of a scream?
Selene landed on the cracked pavement with a solid thump. The power of her fall moved through her legs which did not shatter as a human’s might. Her body wasn’t that of a normal mortal, for all that she looked like one of their own.
Reaching behind her head, she pulled the hood of her black hoodie up and over her face. People stared when she walked down the street, and she wasn’t really in the mood for that kind of attention. She had a new soul, and it still didn’t feel as though her work was complete. Not just yet.
It took nothing to merge into the crowded stream of people that surged through every street of the city. The river of people ignored her, and for a moment, she could pretend that she was just like them.
The streets were lit by neon lights from storefronts with broken windows. People milled in and out of the shops that were still open. Most were not the same as they were before. She hadn’t seen clothing stores in a few years. Grocery stores were still around, but they only sold canned goods now. If someone was looking for fresh food, they needed to buy it from a vendor cooking at each of the corners.
Even the people weren’t what she remembered from so long ago. Their faces were lined with hardship and difficulties rather than just stress and worry. They wore clothing with frayed edges, holes, and patches worked through the threads.
The asphalt under her feet was cracked and crumbling, some pieces entirely gone. Even the skyscrapers were missing their tops. But, no one ever said it would be easy to be the ones left after the world ended.
A food cart with glowing lights bracketed the corner of the street. Golden light spilled onto the cracked asphalt and the scent of steamed rice filled the air. Selene grabbed onto one of the poles holding up the fabric ceiling and pulled herself out of the crowded stream of people.
“Hi, Marla,” she said, fishing for a few coins that she knew should be somewhere in the recesses of her jacket. “Can I have a couple silvers worth?”
“I don’t take money from you.” Marla was a beautiful woman in her day, but time had caught up with her. Wrinkles made her face look more like a wizened apple than a fresh granny smith. She squinted up at Selene with foggy eyes, white hair framing her face like a curtain and her pinched gaze seeing far too much. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“You look upset.”
“Just take the money and give me some rice, Marla,” Selene scolded. “You aren’t supposed to ask questions.”
“And you’re supposed to be taking care of yourself a little more.” Marla clucked but scooped out a heaping paper bowl of rice and handed it over. “Fine. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to.”
“I don’t.” Selene tapped the metal grill with the coins and left them on the top. “Thanks.”
She didn’t go far. Marla made her feel safe, and that was an odd feeling for a death goddess. Selene sat herself down on the step right next to the grill and scooped some of the rice out with her fingers.
Peppercorn and chive burst on her tongue as she surveyed the crowd. People kept their heads ducked down, eyes flicking over other people in fear of an attack. Neighbors were dangerous these days.
Marla set a strip of meat on the grill and heat blasted Selene’s back. “Girl. You aren’t an animal. Use a fork.”
“And you have a whole sleeve of those handy?” Not much of the old days were left, and Selene had less than most.
A metal fork thrust in front of her, held out by a wrinkled hand nearly as ugly as her own. Selene took the offered utensil with a grunt. “You do have a sleeve of them handy.”
“Only for paying customers.”
Considering it was a metal fork, Selene highly doubted that. She’d seen Marla use a few utensils tha
t she kept tucked in her belt for her own use. The woman was taking care of her far too much lately. Which was precisely why every other death god in the area knew that Selene had claimed Marla’s soul. The old woman would be taken care of in the next stage of her life, regardless of the murderous things she’d done.
Digging into the fried rice, Selene nudged a suspicious looking chunk of meat to the side. “Marla? Did you use beef in this?”
“No.”
“Pork?”
“No.”
She flicked the chunk of white meat onto the ground. She didn’t want to know what that was, but she had a feeling it was rat. Not particularly a flavor she cared to taste.
The crowd shifted in front of her, parting like a wave around a single figure who stalked through the humans. They probably couldn’t see him—very few could—but Tricksters always tried to hide themselves in plain sight. The humans might have seen him as a normal man, a figure from their nightmares, or simply a dark shadow they should avoid at all cost.
Selene wasn’t particularly fond of Jack. He was a difficult person to deal with and liked to ask for favors he’d never return. Especially from death goddesses who wandered the streets rather than feasting off of hospitals.
She dug into the rice a little more vigorously.
Jack’s lean body paused in front of her, the crowd weaving around him in an intricate knot of people and hidden gods. He looked over at her, yellow gaze finding hers, then smiled to reveal all the sharp teeth filling his mouth. All his features were longer than they should. Sharp nose, elongated face, a white mohawk on his head making his face seem even longer.
Shadows and Sorcery: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 110
