Reaper

I couldn't take it anymore.

That was what passed through my mind as I headed out this hell hole as class was going on. I just, I couldn't. No matter how many times I told myself that I had to go on, that I couldn't let the trio drag me down, I couldn't do it anymore. Even waking up in the morning and convincing myself to get out of the bed was hard enough. I couldn't dress myself for school, smile at my father like nothing was wrong, try to reassure his feelings of being useless every time he expressed concern about it, about me, when I was the one suffering and go out of the house, burying my fear deep inside. Walking to Winslow. Entering the school. Enduring the stares, the giggles, the pushing, the feeling that everybody in the world thought I was worthless and feeling, truly feeling, like I really was.

It was suffocating.

I would rather die that continue like this. It wasn't the first time that suicide had passed through my mind, but this was the first time I didn't find myself repulsed by the idea and refused to even consider it out of some misguided sense of morality. Why shouldn't I do it? Unlike the locker, my suicide wouldn't be just a stain on a no existent reputation, something that they could just sweep under the rug.

The records of everything that had happened to me. All the vicious emails they had send me, with the ones who had been send from school computers clearly marked. I had everything I needed to take Winslow down with me, and my suicide would be trigger, the spark that would start everything. All it would take would be a note, and releasing it all to the internet. That I had killed myself over those things would silence most of the people who would learn of such an event and dismiss it all as an attention seeking brat making up a bunch of lies. And Dad… Dad would dedicate the rest of his life to make them pay.

That was what made me stop my train of thought. Dad. I loved him. I didn't want to make him suffer. And losing his daughter not too long after losing his wife would completely destroy him. Leaving him like that, just to make those people suffer... I didn't think it was worth it. No. I wouldn't kill myself. I would release that information into the internet today, allow it to spread. But I wouldn't kill myself.

I was startled out my thoughts. I… No, it seemed unbelievable, but I was seeing it with my own eyes. Something had fell from the sky, out of nowhere. A notebook. I approached it, slightly nervous. The beating of my heart thundered on my ears. I meant, no matter how you looked at it, that wasn't normal. Even so, I couldn't think what sort of power would be involved in this situation. Just a notebook. What would be the hidden truth behind this?

I keeled in front of it, and picked it up. It was a simple, thin black notebook. On the cover, it read 'DEATH NOTE'. I chuckled. It wasn't funny at all. With trembling hands, I opened it. Rules of the Death Note. Below it was written 'how to use it'. The first page was clearly marked. Then.

'The human whose name is written in this note shall die'

I closed the notebook, feeling the beating of my heart spiking to the point that it almost hurt. With just a name, a person would die if their name was written on this note. Just like that. How absurd. And yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that it was impossible. Because, I couldn't say that it was impossible. Simple as that.

I lived in a world where superpowers were a common thing. A world which was connected to an alternate earth. The range of possibility was too wide for me to just dismiss what I had in my hands as some elaborate prank or something. Still, why could something like this be dropped here? Right. It wasn't impossible, but this propably was nothing.

Still, I slipped the notebook into my backpack.

My father was still working at this hour, but I had my own keys. Of course. Anyways, I headed straight into my room, turned on the lights and locked the door behind me. Then, I threw my backpack on the top of my bed. I opened it, took the notebook, and stared. My heart had calmed down on my way back, but now I was breathing heavily again.

I sat down in my study desk, and put the notebook on the top of it. Then, I opened it and carefully read the rules. I grabbed a pencil. The tip of it brushed against the pristine white paper as my hand shook. After the locker incident, I had thought my life was over. It could have easily be; with all that waste, I could have suffocated. I continued on as normal, boring, worthless Taylor Hebert, as if the locker incident had never happened. It was maddening. That nothing would change. That nobody cared. That I couldn't do anything.

But if this was real, I could do something for once. Change things. But, I would have to kill somebody. The rules made it clear. I couldn't use the note to control a person without them dying in the process. This notebook was the tool of a reaper, something made only to kill. I stared at the empty page.

I thought about it. There was no escape from the Bahuman Containment Centre. It was something that would cut the person from life, from the world. It was no different from killing them, really. And that was a decision accepted worldwide, even with the threat of the Endbringers to make everybody else more amicable, so to say. So were was the crime in that? Were was the crime in using this power to keep the criminals in line?

I was ready to write… but I didn't know what name to write. I thought back to yesterday's news, that murder case. A man had been arrested because he had strangled his pregnant lover to dead to shut her up, and the whole gist had been discovered. There was enough proof to say that they were right, that he had done it for sure. The man's name was Mike Harwell. I had seen his face, too. I remembered it with enough detail for it to work. Or so I thought.

A man like him. The crime he didn't think he had to worry about anymore revealed, and his life destroyed. It wouldn't be strange for somebody in such a situation to have a heart attack and die. The PRT wouldn't have any reason to suspect his dead would have to do with Parahuman powers, and since the news of the murder were so recent, I was sure his dead would be reported first thing in the morning.

I wrote his name.

The dead would happen in forty seconds. Just forty seconds. That was what the rules said. But it felt like an eternity. I wouldn't see anything even if it worked, but still, I held my breath until those seconds passed. Nothing changed. At least, nothing I could perceive. Of course.

As soon as I woke up, I headed to the living room, sat down in the sofa in front of the television, turned it on and put a random news channel. It didn't take long to show up.

"Mike Harwell died at 11: 44 PM of a heart attack." the time matched. I had wrote the name at 11: 43: 20. His time of death was exactly forty seconds after I wrote his name. The reporter kept on talking, but her words just washed over me. This was it. The Death Note was real.

Which meant that I, with my own hands, had killed a person. I felt sick, but it was only for a brief moment. I heard my teeth gritting. A person? I didn't see a person over there. All I saw was a cheating, conniving, murder who had got what was coming to him. Somebody who hadn't thought twice about fucking some other woman behind his wife's back. Then, when he got his lover pregnant he fucking strangled her to dead and buried her body in a ditch, like she was a piece of garbage. Like he had any right to do that, to step over people. Like he could get away with it.

Like Sophia.

And Emma.

And Madison.

"Good riddance." I said.