I'm very aware of how many times this idea has been played with, fortunately we all have varying ideas on the concept of death and the afterlife both romanticized and factual, this story with reflect many of my own ideas and personal experiences.

Do I believe in ghosts? Yes, I do. I've had many odd encounters with spirits throughout my life anywhere from sights, sounds, smells and presences. This story will also reflect on that.

I also don't own Tite Kubo's Bleach

That said, please enjoy my story

~dangerfield


Danse Macabre

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He who doesn't fear death dies only once.
Giovanni Falcone

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[he died on a Thursday]

With the IV relentlessly pushing pointless vitality into the crook of his arm he knew he was stumbling on the remains of a lost cause.

Yes, he knew. Why couldn't they?

Midnight's cold light had crept in like a thief into his room from the cracked blinds, painting the linolium floors an icy blue. It was certainty. Tonight was his night.

Despite this, he did not wish to go, did not want to go. How can life,

just seventeen short years of it

abandon him the way it was now? He loved life, took it for granted at times, yes, but loved it. And , now...

Here it was leaving him weary, immoble; his body his own crumbling prison.

He fought that weariness. a fruitless battle. losing to himself and his mortality.

He coughed and felt a thick coppery warmth at the back of his throat...

Cancer, he concluded after some deliberation, just did not favor some.

He eased himself back into his cushions, resignation growing with every passing second with that heaviness hot on its heels, that single thought filling his mind with a dull ringing

that he must die.

It just wan't fair... It just wasn't...

[his eyes are closed but the blackness behind them is slowly becoming thicker. a new kind of darkness.]

and he was...

[the steady beeping of the machine at his bedsde is becoming less so]

... he was scared, terrified. Not of dying, but of after. Would it just be a complete fade to black? would he cease to exist? just a name and a memory and a single paragraph in the Sunday obituaries?

Like any sane human being he feared it.

The very idea gripped his failing heart in a overpowering vicegrip

Tonight is my night

[the thin, green-glowing jagged line studdered at his words. this was the truth.]

but I won't be a memory

[the line plummeted and went flat. a single keening note was his final salute.]

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

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Sun, Oct. 15

Sunday Newspapers

Obituaries

Kurosaki Ichigo, 17, Loving son and brother.

Valiently fought, right to the very end.

Born July 15- Died October 13

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather

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