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Chapter 25: The Change
Last Updated:
2023-11-03 11:37:53
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The Reaper's Pet Chapter 26: The Beginning
Rhaskos, that was my mortal name. My parents were from Dacia. It was a land in the midst of and surrounding the Carpathians, where Romania and Moldova now lie. But I was born in Puteoli in Campania and didn’t really know anything of my roots. Nor was I aware of how the whole world was changing in those times; every chess-piece, every square being ushered into place by a long arm and a whisper in the dark: {Imperium Romanum}. The port city of Puteoli was like a whole country unto itself, certainly world enough for a meager boy like me, what of all the merchants, ambassadors, sailors and soldiers from territories as distant and enchanted as Parthia and Aegyptus. On rare occasions but with increasing frequency now, it all comes back to me in a whiff and a faint echo: the smell of sulfur that pervaded the air from the Forum Vulcani and the sound of the whole world speaking all at once, with different lengths of tongue. Tragically, instead of being born properly into the light of day, I w
Last Updated : 2023-11-04The Reaper's Pet Chapter 27: Atropos Reborn
I watched my lifeless body being dragged with a hook. It was an eerie and disorienting sensation. I saw my troupe crying in the shadows. There was nothing they could have done. Even the tribe of chimpanzees fell quiet and somber in that moment, consoling each other inside their cages. Barrus the Indian elephant slipped his trunk between the bars and tried to reach me while the seals taken all the way from Ultima Thule in the frozen North wailed in hair-raising anguish. Petipor, my guardian and employer, walked with my body all the way into the mortuary and onto a pile of fresh corpses. He took out his aulos, the only one he had, and tucked it under my crossed arms because he knew it was my favorite. He bent down to whisper in my ear: “You’re free now, child.” He felt a shiver as he walked out and it must’ve been the premonition of his own end that passed by him because not long after that day, he absent-mindedly walked under a rickety platform that was supposed to carry a hippopotamos
Last Updated : 2023-11-04The Reaper's Pet Chapter 28: Long Live King Death
I couldn’t interfere with human affairs. Only in that final moment between life and death was I permitted to make my presence felt; when I severed the thread of life, the Umballicus, which anchored humans onto the land of the living. These were the first of the rules I had to abide by in my new role as the Atropos Wyrd, one of a triumvirate of Fate-dealers. In between my duties, I often watched Septima in my phantasmal form yet was unable to console her with the news that I had moved on to a better albeit stranger place. I yearned to tell her stories of all my travels and to instruct her how wide the world was – certainly much wider than she had thought or could ever comprehend. And when she was finally compelled to marry by her father, I was there, too, in the house where she had been raised and I looked on painfully at the sadness that hid behind her smiles. Still, she became a dutiful wife and a caring mother. And if the affection she eventually learned to feel for her husband was
Last Updated : 2023-11-05The Reaper's Pet Chapter 29: Sol
I take my leave. My mission to build a bridge between the two love birds is done and there’s little else I can contribute. Septimus seems to be doing just fine on his own too. More to the point, seeing the possibility of love in the shape of Rina and Chester sitting shoulder to shoulder on the sofa has torn open a wound in me that no amount of self-discipline can plug up. I feel like an old, mangy lion that remembers the smell of grass on the savannah but is forced to spend all the remaining days of its life inside a zoo. {I need you, Sol. Now more than ever.} I walk through the memory-riddled streets, taking in the dim lights and the muted sounds of the city that acts like a baby – little by little quieting down but still refusing to fall asleep. I put my fluid, chameleonic hands into the pockets of my immaterial hips and jeans, and hang my head. It seems as though I’ve retained the carriage’s unstable properties. I wander the avenues I used to take on my way to university. To be e
Last Updated : 2023-11-05The Reaper's Pet Chapter 30: Sound and Fury
I had never imagined I’d be serenading someone. In the rain, for starters. But I did. I sang as loud as I could so she would hear. The resonant sound of the guitar floated through the serendipitous background music of dripping rain. I sang the words of “Living Miracle” with the unique charm of my lighter weight voice plus a generous helping of the warm, smoky low register that I knew Sol loved. | {Beauty is skin-deep but not you} {I had to get under your skin just to see the real you} {In your face in your hair up the wall} {You scratched my itch but I didn’t scratch yours} {I went straight for the chalkboard} {I was ten nails in} {You still wouldn’t scream} {Irritation, aggravation, commiseration} {How my misery loved your company.} | It also helped that metal was all about melancholy. You could strip away all the backdrop, the lighting, the clothes, and you’d be left with the essential human experience that still needed to be shared. I saw, through all the rainwater d
Last Updated : 2023-11-06The Reaper's Pet Chapter 31: The Secret Weapon
They’ve talked for two hours straight, covered a broad range of topics and shared many a laugh. One of the few enjoyable and worthwhile conversations she’s ever had, Rina realizes. It feels like they’re old friends who got out of touch and just found each other again. They haven’t noticed where all the time went. For instance, right now they’re both giggling at something funny Chester has said but she can’t quite remember. Past a certain point, all the words and reactions from him have started to seem borrowed or made-up, devised to be mostly generic and occasionally impressive. This raises a flag in the back of her mind. He’s hiding something. Most of the time he gave the impression of someone polite, eager to hear what she had to say but contributing only what was necessary to keep her going. He’d be the best fortress of secrets a girl could confide to, no doubt, but everything’s just one-way. It builds the attraction but it’s a mask she has finally seen through. Now it’s time to
Last Updated : 2023-11-06The Reaper's Pet Chapter 32: The Jam Session
Although I’m away from the band rehearsal studio, I’m still psychically connected to Septimus. It’s like having a baby monitor in the back of your skull. There’s occasionally some signal interference but you’re lulled into a false sense of comfort. For instance, I’m aware that Septimus is playing the electric guitar and performing in front of the starstruck Rina. {“Holy shit”} is the thought that keeps recurring in her head. Holy shit is right because, even though I myself failed to see it, it’s possible that Septimus is a music prodigy; that or just a hardcore OG metalhead. The promised one song has stretched into an entire repertoire because of Rina’s endless cry of “Encore!” Septimus is going through my Eve Serrated covers setlist, which is the same playlist that served as the acoustic backdrop of our lessons in Soul City, plus a slew of other songs from bands I didn’t think he knew: Scorpions, Dio, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Metallica, Slayer… As it is with most cover band m
Last Updated : 2023-11-07The Reaper's Pet Chapter 33: Hell-breaker
{WHERE ARE YOU, WAMPUS?} There’s this strange feeling welling up inside Septimus’s chest. An ominous rhythm like a hundred war drums beating all together. He wants to thrust his hand inside his chest and pluck the feeling out, to stop the hurt. This pain is very curious. It borders the physical, something he can perhaps knead smaller with his hand. It makes it hard for him to breathe, makes him feel sick. He can’t understand it but he keeps recalling a scene he witnessed once on the Lachesis screens: a man getting drenched in the rain and shouting to the heavens while pounding his fist against his chest. Wampus has explained to him once that love in the human world makes someone a gentler, happier and better human being, but the sudden absence of it makes the same person feel small, turns him into something dark and nasty. Because love’s a drug and sooner or later its effects are going to wear out. Then you’ll be down on the cold, hard asphalt like an angel with sheared wings. You’
Last Updated : 2023-11-07
Latest chapter
The Reaper's Pet Epilogue: The Bureau of Transmigration
Everything fades into regular, high-pitched beeping. I open my eyes to the disorienting sight of tubes snaking from my body. {Where in God’s name am I?} I sit bolt upright and tear some of the tubes off my chest. This starts a rapid alarm from the machinery next to the bed I’m lying on. {Sol’s at the park,} I remember vaguely. {No, that can’t be right. Sol’s visiting me…} {…at the beach house…} All the memories of the past week come flooding back; a literal information overload. The surrealism of my experiences strains my grip on reality and triggers an alarm on the EKG monitor. But thankfully, incredibly, my brain succeeds in reducing everything to a manageable size. Nurses rush into the room with their mouths hanging open. “I know everything,” I whisper to myself. “I know who I am now.” **** The rebellion that spilled over to the surface world shall be known forevermore as the Battle of the Bolgias. A great number of Death’s loyal guards, the Helter-Skeltals, have shed ma
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 39: Unholy Alliance
{Special delivery, boss,} Ankou announces in his doll-like voice which always sounds like it’s coming from a phonograph record embedded in him. The only difference this time is his head with the Cheshire-cat grin has been torn off and is tucked under his arm. {Spank these foul creatures back to our hole sweet hell.} Without warning, Ankou’s voice is reduced to gurgling, as though the doll had suddenly been thrown into a fire. At Hell’s Helm, Spinstra has just sliced his throat. Ankou’s death-wagon springs out Septimus’s guitar case and the head reaper catches it in mid-air. Ankou then stomps on the accelerator to ram the Ravens’ front lines, disappearing into an uncertain fate but buying Septimus a little more time. Septimus lays the guitar case on the asphalt and opens it, revealing an orange Gretsch Chet Atkins whose front pickup has been replaced with a black Gibson P-90. He picks up the instrument and slings its strap over his shoulder, looking every bit the goth rock star m
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 38: The Massacre
The projected Transmigration Bureau agents charge and scatter the Ravens attacking close to the ground. Kera either slashes them apart with her overgrown talons or bites them in half with her fangs. Ankou throws a barrage of acidic blood-balls just like a rapid pitching machine. And Yama Ranger, on his creepy steed Nightmare, blasts away with his two six-shooters, a lever-action carbine in his third hand and his portal-opening lasso in his fourth. A second group of rescuers arrives at the scene. A few residents from the tenements round the corner and approach with caution not because of the invisible battle taking place right on top of them but at the sight of both Chester and Rina lying on the ground, the first bathed in his own blood and the second having fainted in terror. The gang leader responsible for everything stands transfixed above the bodies. The act of killing a man with his bare hands has finally registered with him and he flounders like a stage volunteer cut off from a h
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 37: World's End
At this point, I finally get either close enough to the scene or far enough outside Spinstra’s control. I manage to reestablish two-way psychic contact with Septimus. {Fight back,} I tell him. {Use your powers and defend yourself. You’re dying out there!} {Wampus, you came back for me...} Septimus’s voice is filled with genuine relief as though loyalty and friendship are such luxuries to him. And I’m ashamed to think his suspicions haven’t been entirely misplaced. The thought of abandoning him has in fact entered my mind. {There is nothing we can do,} Septimus sends back faintly. {The moment we crossed over to the mortal realm, we passed a point of no return. In the abattoir, everyone is bound to get eaten, even wolves in sheep’s clothing.} {Fight them! You’re the Grim Reaper for Christ’s sake. Show them who you are!} {It is over. I have already lingered too long on this side. Listen, Wampus, there is something I need to tell you before it is too late.} The leader’s on Chester
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 36: The Mutiny of the Ravens
“Come on,” one of the muggers coos in the local language, so close to Rina’s face her senses are invaded by the sight of rotten teeth and the smell of sour milk mixed with cigarette. “Give us what we want, doll, and we’ll be outta your hair.” “Yeah,” whispers another with pupils dilated by lust and methamphetamine. “We’ll be outta here before you know it. You won’t even notice we were here.” “You have my bag, my watch, my phone,” Rina says in English through her tears. She hates herself for being this afraid. She’s just so damn afraid. “Take all of them. Just please let me go.” “You know what else we want,” the nearest one coos again and a third leers. The one who has her, apparently the leader, starts groping her. “No, please don’t…” They’re all perfectly oblivious to the swarm of weird, shape-shifting Ravens overhead, so thick now that they blot out the night sky and the top of the two rundown tenements sandwiching the half-lit and desolate street. The birds of Hell are mak
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 35: Master Hand
{Who are you?} I ask. {Are you certain you do not know the answer to this question?} It’s true. I feel like I’ve known all along; this rumbly yet feminine voice with its many layers overlapping. Its owner is a shadow that has constantly loomed over us, moving the pieces across the board with her three pairs of hands. She was the one responsible from the start, orchestrating all the events with cold calculation. She had created the Lachesis computers in Death’s office and sent the Raven Man, none other than thinly disguised Kharon, to the young me at the children’s home. She convinced Septimus to adopt me as his tutor and gave me my second form as a Wampus Cat. She was there too on the banks of River Akheron the moment I arrived in the underworld. She probably even influenced Sol to be at the park this very night. Spinstra. The Fate Weaver. The last piece of the puzzle, the third of the Wyrd Ones. {… she will understand the implications,} Septimus continues orating on the other en
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 34: The Monster
Everything becomes so mesmerizing it’s hard to tell if they’re actually taking place. Chester rises in a fluid and graceful movement but, in reality, his body’s cutting through time like a hot knife sliding through butter. The whole place, the small universe of the band rehearsal studio – from the twitchy second hand of a wall clock to the dog-ears of facial tissues pressed in a holder as they’re cowed by the ceiling fan – all these freeze in mid-action. Or not so much freeze as slow down into a clotted tempo. Rina’s facing forward on the sofa now, stark naked and sitting primly like a very realistic wax sculpture except for her eyes, which glimmer with awareness and concentration. It’s like an isolated object (Chester) is moving at hyper-speed while leaving the rest of the room behind. Like a character in dreamland doing away with the line between point A and B while the sleeper’s mind fills in the gap. The effect is both spell-binding and dizzying. One moment Rina’s sitting on his
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 33: Hell-breaker
{WHERE ARE YOU, WAMPUS?} There’s this strange feeling welling up inside Septimus’s chest. An ominous rhythm like a hundred war drums beating all together. He wants to thrust his hand inside his chest and pluck the feeling out, to stop the hurt. This pain is very curious. It borders the physical, something he can perhaps knead smaller with his hand. It makes it hard for him to breathe, makes him feel sick. He can’t understand it but he keeps recalling a scene he witnessed once on the Lachesis screens: a man getting drenched in the rain and shouting to the heavens while pounding his fist against his chest. Wampus has explained to him once that love in the human world makes someone a gentler, happier and better human being, but the sudden absence of it makes the same person feel small, turns him into something dark and nasty. Because love’s a drug and sooner or later its effects are going to wear out. Then you’ll be down on the cold, hard asphalt like an angel with sheared wings. You’
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 32: The Jam Session
Although I’m away from the band rehearsal studio, I’m still psychically connected to Septimus. It’s like having a baby monitor in the back of your skull. There’s occasionally some signal interference but you’re lulled into a false sense of comfort. For instance, I’m aware that Septimus is playing the electric guitar and performing in front of the starstruck Rina. {“Holy shit”} is the thought that keeps recurring in her head. Holy shit is right because, even though I myself failed to see it, it’s possible that Septimus is a music prodigy; that or just a hardcore OG metalhead. The promised one song has stretched into an entire repertoire because of Rina’s endless cry of “Encore!” Septimus is going through my Eve Serrated covers setlist, which is the same playlist that served as the acoustic backdrop of our lessons in Soul City, plus a slew of other songs from bands I didn’t think he knew: Scorpions, Dio, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Metallica, Slayer… As it is with most cover band m
