A month ago.
He sat in French class not paying attention. Madame Lilk was repeating herself anyways. Conjugating French verbs wasn't difficult. Looking outside, he started to glaze over until a dark object fell from the sky. He leaned closer to the window to get a better view.
"Monsieur Adams, fait attention! Conjugate faire first person plural." It was a stupid question for a stupid class. This was French 5 and she was still teaching this.
"Faisons, Madame Lilk." He mindlessly gave her the correct answer. She narrowed her eyes at him. It wasn't the first time he started daydreaming in her far to easy class.
A loud bell rang to dismiss them.
Liam Adams casually walked through the mass of students trying to get home. He went to the object that fell. Picking it up, he saw that it was a normal notebook except the cover read: Cahier de Mort (Notebook of Death). Annoyed that it was in French, he flipped to the first page... La personne dont le nom est écrit dans cette note doit mourir (The human's whose name is written in this note shall die). What? He thought, This must be something from the emos. What a sick joke. He knew this notebook shouldn't be on school grounds, so he brought it with him home.
On his short walk home, he thought about the notebook in his backpack. If it worked...
Liam took a key out of his pocket and opened the door to his house and walked to his room. After closing and locking his bedroom door, he unzipped his backpack to further scan the notebook. It was a joke because nothing like this could exist.
But what if it did?
There was a flat screen on the wall, so he turned onto a local news channel. There was some guy who had a gun pointed to a child holding him hostage. He was standing in the middle of a street -wait- that street is close by! He took out a pen and wrote his name. OK. So the notebook's a fake. He read the front page of the notebook which said that the death would take sixty seconds to work.
The man collapsed.
This must be the work of some... some devil.
"Like my notebook, kid?" An unearthly voice spoke behind him.
Liam spun around and fell from shock. His eyes widen to take in the image of a monster.
"Did I scare you?" The monster smirked.
"N-no." He caught his breath, "In fact, I had a feeling you would appear."
"Really?" The reaper gazed at Adams and confirmed that he wasn't lying, "That's interesting."
"Are you here to take the notebook?"
"No."
"What's the catch?"
"Well, when the user dies, he doesn't go to Heaven or Hell."
Liam stated the obvious, "And you're a reaper?"
"Yeah." The monster looked around the immaculate bedroom. The room was too clean for a teenager.
"Do you have a name?"
"Hades. Got any tomatoes?"
"Tomatoes?"
"Yeah. I haven't had a good one in a while."