NOTE: This story was for a Secret Santa on The Muse Bunny a while back for a girl that loves Death Note. I don't like Death Note and know nothing about it, so don't try and start a conversation with me about it. Also, this is a random OC, since I certainly can't write in-character for any of the Death Note ones. Heh.
The winter chill is too much to bear.
I stand on the sidewalk with my scarf pulled tight around my neck and my hands curled up inside my mittens to stay at least a slight bit warm. My dark hair whirls about my head in the brisk, freezing wind, as dark clouds gather overhead with the definite promise of snow. I long to be back inside my living room with flames licking at the edges of the fireplace and a woolen blanket resting on my shoulders, but to do that I need to first arrive at home.
And my bus is twenty minutes late.
I pace alongside the edge of the road, hoping that the exercise will stop my legs from freezing over. It is on my third time past that I notice a small, black book lying under the shade of a nearby tree. I bend down, my heavy coat crinkling as I do so, to pick up the little notebook, the wind blowing it open as it lies in my hands. I glance at the first page, hoping to see the name of its owner so as to return it, but instead I find the page to be entirely covered in names. Name after name after name. Looking closer, I realize some of them are followed by an event. They vary wildly, from "falls off cliff" to "gets stabbed in heart." The one thing they have in common, though, as differing they may be, is that every single one describes a way that someone could die.
An involuntary chill goes up and down my spine. I have no doubt that the people written in this book are all dead at whatever fate the book has prescribed them. Was someone keeping a list of their friends' causes of death? Or is something more sinister afoot here? Is the person who had so tediously copied down these names… the one killing them?
I slam the book shut as hard as I can. Something is definitely wrong here. The little black book is giving me a creepy, ominous feeling that I can't explain for the life of me. The wind whistles around my ears, and I have to keep my hands firmly on either side of the cover to make sure it won't blow open again. I squeeze as hard as I can, telling myself over and over that I will report this book to the police as soon as my bus arrives, and until then I can keep it tightly closed and hope that no one comes back for it.
But then, I have a pen in my pants pocket. I wonder what would happen if I wrote my name.
As if in a trance, as if I'm being controlled by some menacing being from above, I release my grip and let the wind turn the pages. As if on cue, the wind picks up, howling louder than ever and brushing the book's innards forwards until it reaches a clean, blank page. I hold it open with one mitten as I pull out my pen with another. I bite off the cap and spit it into the woods, then brace myself for what will come. But this is stupid, really. All I'm doing is writing my name in a book I found. It's not like anything's going to happen. Suddenly a wave of guilt washes over me at what I'm about to do. I shouldn't be doing this; I shouldn't mess with any of the evidence before the book gets to the police. They need to investigate all they can, analyze and find patterns its pages until the culprit is behind bars. Once it's in the law's hands, though, the game is all be over. There will be no chance of writing down my name then. I can't for the life of me figure out why I even want to in the first place. After all, it's not like anything will happen if I do. But it would be fun. It would make me a kind of legacy. "I'm the guy who wrote my name in the little black death note and lived," I could brag to men at a bar someday, and they would all gasp and ask for my autograph. But that's a stupid thought. Really.
Where the hell is my bus? It better be coming soon, before I do something I regret.
It's so damn cold…
I put my pen to the page, and with ink I'm surprised hasn't frozen solid in this chill, I sign my name in big, loopy letters. Well, there goes my sanity. At least now I can say I did it.
At first, nothing happens save the thrill I feel whenever I do something terribly, terribly wrong. I get a little swooping sensation in my stomach. My hands start sweating inside my mittens. And for the first time in hours, I suddenly don't feel cold any longer. In fact, I feel a burning blaze inside of me, as if I'd been outside too long on a hot summer's day. I feel powerful, as if I can take on the world and win.
Then, without any sort of warning, there comes a sharp pain in my chest, so strong that it knocks me to the ground, my head landing on the hard concrete with a crash that makes the street before me spin. What's going on? This shouldn't be happening. This is a coincidence. I'm having heart failure. I'm having a heart attack. This is exactly how my uncle described what a heart attack was like. I can't seem to stay conscious. Everything's going fuzzy. This has nothing to do with the book… does it…?
But before I can think another word, my head sags to the ground and everything tumbles into the black void before me. My pen has rolled across the road and into a sewer by now, but the little book is still in my hand, observing my every move. I swear to God, if that little book had a face and eyes and emotions, I swear it would have been sneering at me, saying "Hahaha, I told you so."
But I don't know what happened after I wrote my name in that book. All I remember was plunging to the ground, spiraling into the quiet blackness which from I would never awake.
This world is so damn cold…