1 Interlude

In the darkness of the night I can feel both of her hands reaching for me. She comes forward slowly, each step resounding on contact with the hard concrete. The echoes made by her footsteps in this back alley seems to be louder than normal, so I unwillingly focus on it.

Once and the windows of the near blocks tremble in an attempt to reflect and multiply the sound. A second time and the ground underneath my feet seems to carry its vibrations. A third step and the air seems to carry over a sweet fragrance. A fourth and a faint breathing sound tickles my left ear, almost like a relieved sigh... a fifth step and it feels as chains coil around my body, binding it to the same vibrating concrete.

A pair of small arms touch my back through the t-shirt I am wearing. Slowly, like taking their time, they feel up the skin from my neck to waist with her nails and then suddenly stop.

Under the pale light of a moon born in the night sky of May, a shadow takes shape in front of me. Standing beside my own, this one seems comparably smaller and slimmer, as long hair dances on it carried by the warm breeze of the summer. From the sweet fragrance, the small hands, short frame and long hair I can only guess it might be a girl.

I wish I could turn around and confirm it, but my body seems to be paralyzed and has become unresponsive. I can only let my eyes wonder aimlessly on the lifeless and empty wall I am facing, guarded by two external staircases climbing the two blocks I'm between, as they're crying a metallic sound when hit by the same warm wind.

The lamppost by the entrance of the alley allows more shape to 'her' shadow, almost giving it a life of its own. I watch it move closely, anticipating...

Seemingly reaching for her pockets she brings out two objects, which shadows aren't clear enough for me to figure out yet, but in exchange the gentle and almost silent sound of flowing sand reaches my eardrums.

Her small arms reach around mine and rest on top of my elbows, almost joining under my chest. The fog of the night slowly lifts and gives way to shapes my eyes can discern. And more voices...

[I have finally found you! ...and barely in time from the looks of it. Don't worry, we're nearly there.]

Unlike the sound of 'her' footsteps before, her voice pushed through the short distance aided by the warm breeze, without any reverberation. It somehow reminded me of the sound made by a piano under the careful touch of a talented artist, melodic and filled to the brim with feelings.

'Nostalgic' is however the word reverberating inside my head. 'Her' perfume, 'her' small build with thin arms and almost pale skin, 'her' melodic voice...all of it feel like forgotten memories to which I don't have access anymore. Strangely though, everything about it is familiar to me just like you could recognize a roommate by them walking around the house, or a song you love by its intro.

A slight vibration turns my unfocused gaze towards her left hand, interrupting my thoughts. My eyes wander on her fair skin, follow onto her delicate wrist, then onward to her slender fingers that hold in place on top of her palm a strangely shaped object.

With a top and bottom platforms made out of a wooden frame and pillars of the same material joining the corners of the two, a glass container seems to have been enshrined in its middle. Encased by this hourglass, the sand kept falling, shifting ever so slightly in the lower half, the sound made by it reminding me of the desert dunes caressed ever so gently by the scorching winds.

'Unrest' is the feeling currently crawling inside my gut, after looking so closely at it. After all, the upper half is almost empty, but the flow of it doesn't seem to slow down or stop whatsoever...instead it seems to get even faster.

'Fright' is the feeling that propagates towards my heart, with the falling of every single grain of sand.

A slight movement of her right hand, once again diverts my attention.

The shadows of the night - playful as they are - keep the object barely hidden just outside my view, then almost like noticing my curiosity, her left hand skillfully leads my own left with the palm upwards, fully open.

Like on an exposition of an important and valuable artifact, she carefully places the hourglass in my hand which now became the scene and gently closes my fingers to hold it in position akin to a cage.

I realized that by my sense of touch, as my eyes were fully focused on discovering through the lifting fog a brown sheath laying between her fingers, possibly made of wood as well. Simplistic yet beautiful...

The sheath is no longer than maybe 30 centimeters with a full white hilt that at first glance appears to be made of pure ivory defiled by a single small drawing on it. I say 'drawing' but on a more careful look, you could see it more as a symbol of a winged creature being carved into the hilt, while thin vein-like red channels started flowing from it and towards the sheath. With lazy movements, her now free left hand grabs hold of the sheath, while the right hand pulls back the hilt slightly.

A sharp metallic sound, unfitting for something made out of wood fills the space around us and echoes violently after hitting the walls of the surrounding blocks. A black blade is revealed, while its edges grind against the sheath and creating that sharp and continuously reverberating sound. However, it attracts me...this blade.

The same veins from the hilt, like flowing rivers through a newly created continent ravaging everything on their path, make their way to the tip of the blade. A breathtaking sight, yet a different feeling makes its way inside my heart.

'Terror'... I can feel it making its way through my brain by climbing up my spine, with every centimeter of the blade being revealed, or every time I'm being hit again and again by the sound of the it grinding against the sheath... until the piece of brown wood is carelessly dropped on the floor and the now fully revealed blade glimmering under the pale light of the moon, gives a foreboding feeling.

Fright becomes awe and awe becomes sadness, every one of these fast changing feelings shaking my already wavering self. An instant becomes a second, a second becomes a minute, minutes become hours and hours become days, until I realized that I have lost track of time. It made me wonder for how long have I been here.

How many years have passed since I walked in this back alley, or have I just entered?

The stopped time was re-awoken by a vibration made by the flowing sand and it became unhinged once more.

My eyes move away from the black blade, then onto the brown sheath now resting on the ground and then finally to the wooden frame hourglass. I watch through the glass wall of the upper half and I let my eyes focus on the remaining amount. It appears as if I could even count them if I wanted to. Sudden pressure on my left shoulder makes me realize that 'her' head was resting on it, also watching the sight made by the remaining grains.

[Only a few left my love. It will be over soon enough.]

The breath on my neck felt cold and made my already heavy body quiver. Also, with every grain of sand joining the huge pile underneath, it seems to only add to the said weight, while I seem to be mentally trapped at the bottom of it making breathing almost impossible. However... her melodic voice is strangely comforting.

Her breathing becomes estranged for a second and then moves on the back of my head and lowers to the middle of my back.

She steadily exhales towards my t-shirt, warming it slightly, but only for a moment as it becomes colder with the distance between us shrinking at a fast pace.

Her lips touch my skin through the thin fabric and a stream of emotions void of any warmth makes its way towards my heart, engulfing and drowning my own while replacing them, as the world around me losses all color, leaving only gray behind.

I could almost envision a tropical typhoon raging above a small campfire that is my self. The rain pours again and again, ever so violent in its attempt to extinguish it, leaving behind nothing but the ashes of my former self, drowning it in a pool made of everything discarded.

All that's left now, is an empty husk.

With my sense of self being killed slowly but certainly, my surroundings become similar to a painting dyed in monochrome. Gray walls, gray moon, gray concrete and myself... filled with gray feelings... Until a drop of white paint falls in the middle of my forehead, erasing and resetting the flow of time once more.

It is something warm and wet making its way through my cold skin and piercing my empty lungs, giving way to air with a loud gasp. Her forehead between my shoulder blades and the wet point that I can feel on my back seem to be on the same level with her eyes, meaning that she's crying.

I wonder, would have it affected me before, since right now I feel nothing, not even curiosity?

Should I force myself to be? I know I cannot... Not while this cold touch of her froze solid this empty husk and her warm tears try helplessly to thaw it back to life...only to suddenly stop.

She raises her head having her hair caress my back, while the empty left hand moves under my own, with her fingers searching my chest for the dying heart. Her index finger touches the area above it briefly and an electric spark seems to kick-start the beating of it once more.

I should move...but I cannot.

The rational thing to do, would be to run from her, but I lost the will to do it. With a body that doesn't seem to belong to me anymore, I give up any attempt at escape.

My eyes become weary and they close beyond my control, cowardly, while my mind already recreated over and over again, what will happen next. Like a safety button being pressed, the imminent event is being ignored and forgotten, while darkness surrounds my consciousness.

A loud noise follows, similar to two objects colliding. It is almost like two rocks clashed against one another and the sound of it shakes away the enshrouding darkness. My eyes reopen and glance at the hourglass.

I let myself get hypnotized by the flow of sand once more, looking closer and closer....and closer until the small grains are resized into the big rocks I just heard. In this glass palace, their number is so few that I can actually count them. So I do just that.

"One, two, three...four...five, six...seven, eight, nine...ten!"

[Only ten left, my love! It's almost time!]

I was snapped back to reality by the words she uttered once more. Ten grains left... It made me wonder for a second why did she counted them as well, but I couldn't bring myself to ask.

Silence took over and everything remained still for a second, until a grain out of the ten remaining was caught suspended on its way down. Then time resumed and unlike the loud sound before, this time when it hit the pile under, I could hear the first droplet of rain ever, touching the surface of a lake... or maybe, the sound made by a drop of water falling in the sink after you forgot to close the faucet properly.

Her body with small girly frame was pushed against my back, while her left hand was holding tightly my waist. There was no doubt on my mind regarding what was going to happen next, but I didn't feel anything about it. Not anymore... Or so I thought, until that very first grain hit the pile and every feeling I once had resurfaced like a geyser and a multitude of questions and thoughts with it, making my body shudder violently.

Calming down a bit while dry heaving, I wondered regarding the place I'm in and how I got here. About the warmth of the summer night and the pleasant breeze. Regarding the two strange objects, you wouldn't expect to see a woman carry with her. But mostly, I wondered about her. Who she is, why is she here with me and how does she know me...

Before I could ponder some more, the second grain fell.

With it, the steaming hot geyser froze solid once more and my recently animated husk, became empty and still again. I feel tired and above all else, I feel cold in her embrace that doesn't seem to warm me in the slightest... the cold only gets worse.

It feels however...comfortable being held in her small arms and the same familiar feeling shifts between the icy layers of my heart.

"Do I know you? Who are you?"

My thoughts remained unvoiced since it felt impossible to speak, being frozen inside. If before I could hear her melodic voice but couldn't tell what feelings it carried, this time I could hear a tinge of sadness.

[Don't look so lost...I will stay with you until the end this time.]

Then maybe it is not so bad. Instead of randomly and aimlessly searching for something through the course of an entire meaningless lifetime, wouldn't it be better if I found what I'd be searching for right here? Even if that it might not be the case, SHE, feels right!

For the first time, I noticed her red lips slightly opened, as her head was tilted and looking at me from my shoulder. Mesmerized by the absolute red color in my grey and white universe, I felt calm and for the first time in this state, longing.

"I wonder what her eyes look like..."

A loud static sound, like electric current, reverberated through the surrounding air and then my eyes once again fell on the hourglass. In the bottom half, three additional grains just fell, still rolling downhill.

Since that made about half of the original amount, I had realized that half of my remaining time was gone. There was no panic, confusion or anxiety. I just calmly stood there and watched as the domino effect of the newly fallen sand, was creating an avalanche in the lower half of the hourglass.

The sixth grain irreversibly fell and with it, I realized that I was lacking any sort of realization of my whole life's worth, or an epiphany regarding the meaning of it, if not... at least my own. Yet... with all that, there was no change in my heart. Frozen entirely, even the lack of resolve didn't change anything, as I patiently waited and waited...and waited for the last grain to fall.

The next one brought about my past memories, the only thing I had left as mementos from my former self. It was like watching a movie that starts with you crawling about under the caring gaze of your parents, moving to all the times spent until 3am playing games with your friends and sometimes even later; the girls I liked as a child and as I grew and them with me, the 'like' became 'lust' so that it can later on evolve into 'love'. I watched the parties and after-parties that rendered me so helplessly drunk, that I was barely able to walk straight; the exams I've passed through college and the ones I almost failed, every single person I've met among all the places I've visited for almost 25 years now.

Everything flashed before my eyes, like it does in some of the cheesiest movies I've watched.

"This reminds me...in a couple of minutes I'll be 25."

Looking back objectively at my life, it was a good one. I didn't grew up in poverty, but we weren't rich either, thing that allowed me understand and appreciate the worth of things. I was not a genius, but I was really far from being stupid. I had friends that came and went, but like my mother advised me when I was young, I managed to find a handful of those people which I can rather call 'family' instead.

I searched through different places, different environments and different groups of people for someone to share my feelings with and found some. Some didn't last longer than a night, while others stood by me for whole years, even if in the end I didn't manage to find what I was looking for.

Not bad, but not a really good either. That is what to me, 'life' meant. Different experiences, in different circumstances, helping you grow both mentally and emotionally.

Clinging greedily to it, even if is not rational, is something that I cannot do. I am after all, satisfied with the life I had.

[Your eyes seem clearer. Did something change?]

I wonder... Maybe it was like this from the beginning and I just ignored it, blinded by greed and lust for more. Maybe deep inside, somewhere hidden under the frozen layers of my heart, I don't want to die yet. It is logical after all, being only 25...well, almost 25.

But the situation wouldn't allow any change, even if I would give way to such a feeling. My body still doesn't answer back to me and my will that is voided of emotions, seems a rather pathetic attempt at being human.

So, I just did what I decided in the beginning and accepted it. The fact that I was about to die.

When I did, I raised my eyes from the brown sheath sleeping on the cold concrete floor and looked in front of me. Meeting my eyes with her own, she stared back with a slight smile on her face. The smell of spring burned through the ice and let a smile grow on mine as well.

I didn't notice since I was distracted, but she moved in front of me. I was consumed in an instant by the ocean her blue eyes were and found myself unable to look away.

I wondered if the sky I've seen so often during my life, was ever so blue. It looked as if the color of the world itself was a failed attempt at reproducing it.

Words? Why waste time on such futile things when such a beautiful new world was right in front of me? A search? Yes...for 25 years, if I had indeed searched for something, it was most likely this.

I closed my eyes, in the attempt to burn on my retina and memory the image of the blue eyes and red lips that brought such intense colors in my grey and white universe.

There was only silence and those two colors...One second, one minute, one hour...who knows how much time I stayed like that.

All I know is that I once again heard the faint droplet of water hitting the sink and was forced to reopen my eyes, as ripples of gray threatened to ruin the two colors.

When I did, silver hair danced in the wind under the glow of a gray moon, belonging to 'her' as well. I noticed that I was no longer holding the hourglass and almost like in a surreal painting, a vivid statue of a goddess exuding divine beauty, was sitting under the moon in an enshrined back alley, holding a black dagger in her right hand and a wooden hourglass in her left.

I wanted to stare at this painting forever and let myself drown in its colors like a maddened painter, however, with a slight saddened glance I saw that the upper half of the hourglass was empty.

The alarm I forgot I set up for midnight on my phone echoed through the night and a stream of messages followed, differentiated by ringtones.

[Happy birthday!]

Yes...It felt as if hearing it from a thousand, no, a million other people at once wouldn't matter as much as hearing it from her.

With a sound of glass shattering, both the hourglass that met the concrete floor and my frozen heart meeting the spring again, I met her warm smile with one of my own, not forced, but this time fully my own.

On her smiling face, two tears run parallel to each other on her fair cheeks, by her red lips and fall to the ground, like small crystals reflecting moonlight.

She grips the dagger with both hands and takes a step closer to me.

I can feel her breath on my lips as her eyes look deeply into mine, searching for permission. That's why I decide to close my eyes, while the smile I had remains on my face. In my mind, she is smiling from the bottom of her heart, with her blue eyes and red lips.

For a second, the wind blows by violently, but the sound of it disappears. There is only a sacred silence, that not even a God would dare to break. That's when, amidst that silence, three words followed and my body moved a bit on the feeling of impact.

[Sorry. Time's up!]

I violently stood up from my bed, realizing that I've just had a really weird and less than common dream.

I reached towards the phone near my pillow to check for the time, but it wasn't there, so I turned around to find it. That was the point where I realized that I was no longer in my room, rather, this whole place was only four walls, completed with a floor and ceiling and myself on a bed in the middle of it.

Nothing else, no sound, a faint light but nowhere to come from, no doors or windows either.

I am confused and a bit rattled by the previous dream I had, making the bed slightly uncomfortable.

[It does seem indeed that you are awake. Hello, you can call me Reaper and you just reached the afterlife. Welcome to the 'Auction House' lost soul!]