Death’s Daughter
She runs as fast as she can, shadows biting at her heels like hounds, growling and snarling. A shadow strikes out with claws, causing her to jump right, tilting on the narrow stone. Thousands of stone paths lay before her as she maneuvers across them, jumping up and over, frantically searching for any resemblance of color in this long white hallway.
“Valencia,” the shadows whisper.
She stumbles, her yellow rain boots sliding across the path, falling right off the edge. Valencia screams between her teeth as she barely catches the edge of the pathway, her fingers digging into stone, breaking nails. Her boots skimming a world as black and slippery as oil, tendrils of it running up her boot, and wrapping around her ankle. Valencia buries her hands in the stone clawing for a stronger grip, a way out.
Teeth made of shadows dig into each of her red coat sleeves, pulling her from the edge. The world beneath her holding tight to her boot, but the shadows refuse to release. With a sharp pull she is back on the pathway, short one yellow boot.
The shadow hounds still hold her sleeves, dragging her back towards the world she came from. With a cry she grabs both of the shadows in her hands, they immediately disappear to their master with a yowl.
Pulling herself from the ground, she continues to run down the white hallway, keeping to the thin pathways. Ignoring the portals to worlds as dark as the one she came from, looking for something that might nurture the ember in her heart- hope.
“Little one, it’s time to stop playing,” the darkness calls behind her.
Valencia only runs harder, leaping over portals. One world with snow that falls black, she nearly collides into another at her side, this one lit with stars that shine as bright as teeth. The little ember dying in her chest with each dark world she passes.
“Valencia,” the dark echoes again, she swears she can hear the whisper of his robes on the pathway.
Throwing her head back for a glance, she screams, “Leave me alone!”
“Oh, daughter.”
Words lodge in her throat, not even sure what to scream back at him. Father holding too much in one word. Father; abuser; caretaker; master; devourer.
She feels the whisper of his fingers down her neck, a tease, a promise. Valencia hurtles forward, leaping for any world not colored black. Glancing down she sees a small shred of a world shaded in gray and white. Without another thought she launches herself from the pathway, fingers ghosting across her coat.
Then she’s falling, arms reaching for a sky she cannot hold. Her head is thrown back to see the portals of worlds around her, the ones twisted in shades of monsters and daemons. She only has a moment’s thought to wonder why this world is among them, before she’s ripping into the gray and white world, its portal shredding like paper.
Like a fallen star Valencia streaks across a white sky, catching a glimpse of the place she was, a hooded figure waiting on the other side. Tumbling to the ground, Valencia does not think twice before leaping into action. Running from the portal, running from him.
She flies past crumbling gray buildings, cracking white walkways, past the shaded parts of this world. All without noticing her new shadow creeping around the corners, slithering after her. Valencia does not realize she is a streak of color across a sky in a world devoid of it.
Glancing left she looks into a shattered window to see she does not belong here. Not with her midnight hair, her bright blue pants and a single yellow rain boot next to a green sock. Not in this world where every building, every object is shaded, void less of color.
Her eyes move to the silhouette of a man, cast in shadows, watching her with hungry eyes. Valencia turns to run, but it ends in a cry, as a hand wraps in her hair, another latching on to her wrist, yanking her back.
“Hello poppet,” the chest rumbles behind her. The hand in her hair tilting her head back, exposing a pale throat. The man behind her running his nose across the side of her neck. “If I took a bite would my mouth explode with taste? Would I see the bright vividness of your blood? Would I quench this hunger deep inside me? Tell me poppet, are you the answer to everything?” He sings, dragging a tongue across her neck, nipping at a piece of her ear.
Snarling, Valencia throws her head back, smashing into the face behind her, the sound of crunching bones in her ear. The hand in her hair is released, and she turns to run, only to be pulled back by the hand on her wrist.
Disgust riddles her features as she sees the man before her. Molten gray skin dripping down his face, a toothless mouth gaping, and milk white eyes staring down at her.
The man gives her a wide grin, “Will I taste fear on your skin, poppet?”
Valencia laughs, “No, but I’ll taste it on yours.”
With her free hand, Valencia thrusts her hand through his molten skin, breaking bone and swimming through gore. Clutching his heart in her hand, she extracts his still beating heart from his chest. It pulses in her palm, and Valencia bites into it like a ripe peach.
Lost in the feel of the skin between her teeth, the blood gushing down her throat, she did not notice him before it was too late.
“Valencia.”
She whips around, hair dripped in gore spinning with her, spraying blood on to his black robes. “No,” she breathes, dropping the heart from her hand, taking a step back.
“Oh, little one. What have you done?”
Valencia takes another step back, frantically searching for anything. Tearing at her own chest as if to take away the fear wrapped around her. Take the fear the man in black robes ignites in her.
“Did you really think you could run from me, daughter? Look at the mess you have created without me,” a bone white hand gesturing towards the collapsed body. “Did you really think you could run away from yourself? It’s time to grow up, to accept what you are.”
Like any other child when being scolded, Valencia drops her head, and wraps her hands behind her back, drawing shapes in the blood with the tip of her toe. “I thought I could be better,” she whispers.
“Then me?” His robes bellow with him, as he gestures towards himself.
With eyes still downcast, Valencia nods.
“Take this as a lesson, daughter. You will never be better than me,” he nearly snarls. “There will never be a better for us.”
“Then what is there for us?” She cries, throwing her head up, tears dripping down her blood-stained cheeks, red drops falling off her chin.
“We will be Gods. You will be extraordinary.”
The ember in her chest rumbles, just a bit. “Extraordinary?”
“My daughter, you will sit on a throne of bones. You are already a world walker. You will devour these worlds.”
Valencia glances down again, lip between her teeth. “I don’t want to be a devourer,” she mutters, more bloody tears dripping down.
“Look at the death you created. Did you not enjoy the taste of his blood? His fear? Deny me, daughter, deny me.”
Valencia could not, so she kept her head down, drawing more shapes in the drying blood.
“You will never be the creature you desire to be, accept the monster you are.”
Silence echoes between them. Except for the sound of Valencia’s yellow rain boat scraping blood from the cobblestone, and the body’s dying breath.
In one fluid movement, he has her petite chin gripped in his bone white hand, forcing her to look into the face beneath the hood. “You will be my predecessor. You will be legendary, daughter.” Her father releases her face and takes a step back, black robes billowing in a non-existent wind. He lays out his hand towards her, “It is time to go home, little one.”
Father rings in her head again and all the words associated with it, monster, patriarch, death. And in the end, like every other child, Father is just another word for God.
She glances to the body, licks the blood from her lips, and takes Death’s hand. He flashes her his teeth, an attempt at a smile and pats her little hand in his. Together they walk from this gray and white world, Death’s robes whispering softly on the cobblestone, until Death and his daughter simply disappear.
Author Bio: Savannah Dial is a third year Literature and Writing student at California State University of San Marcos. She has been writing stories since the age of thirteen, and seven years later she has no plans to stop. She’s written millions of words by now, and will write a million’s more. As one of her tattoos says, a representation of who she is, “Daughter of the Words.” Savannah spends most of her time doing homework, reading, writing, and paying attention to her needy cat Squirrel.