Chapter 5: Death Is The Key

I awoke back in the void. This time, though, I couldn't move and had to look up at everyone passing by with blank faces on. I began to wonder just where it was that they were truly going. What was their ultimate end goal? Why were they here? One of them, a man, looked down at me for a moment before standing over me. His blank expression as he looked down at me sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

"Um…can I help you?" I asked him.

He just kept looking down at me. He didn't even acknowledge my question. He then reached a hand towards my face.

"Hmm…nope. Not perfect." he said in a monotonous voice as his hand drew closer.

"Hey, what the hell you-" I began to protest before his fingers sank into my right eye socket.

I let out an agonized cry as he ripped my right eye out. The captain had taken my left, and now this psycho took my right, leaving me blind. I wanted to thrash around in pain, but Primera caused me to break my neck in the fall. All I could do was lay there as I was forced to take it without the courtesy of mercy. I felt him drop my eyeball on my face. It rolled down the side of my right cheek and made a wet plopping noise once it landed on the ground.

"Even the dead have need of eyes." He said in his monotonous voice.

"Motherfucker! Why?! What have I ever done to you?! ARRRGH! If you're gonna do something, then help me, goddammit! Don't just simply take my other eye!" I cried in pain as I lay there.

The sound of him walking off told me I had no friends here. Existence here was only pain and suffering. It felt like an eternity as I lay there motionless and crying out in pain. I thought back to how Primera's face had looked upon realizing what she had done to me. Her tears told me she was truly remorseful about what she had done. This guy, however, had just walked off and left me to suffer. I tried thinking of a way to distract myself from the pain, but only one came to mind.

"Ooh…death…..ooh…death…." I started to sing.

That's when I heard the most ominous sound I ever heard in my life. Every single person passing by stopped, causing everything to become dead silent. It was utterly terrifying. Honestly, I liked it better when they just kept walking by as they ignored me due to it making this void sound lively if you could even call this place alive. Then came the second most ominous sound I ever heard.

"Won't you spare me over till another year." They all replied in unison.

Good lord was that horrifying. They actually responded to my singing, but not in the way I wanted them to. I wanted to stop there, but something in me told me to keep going.

"What is this that I can't see with icy hands taking hold of me?" I sang in a pained voice.

"Well, I am death, none can excel. I'll open the door to heaven or hell." They responded in their monotonous voice.

"Ooh, death…ooh, death…..won't you spare me over till another…year." I replied.

It was all too terrifying. Here I was in what could best be described as a purgatory of some kind where everyone ignored me, and now I got them to sing an old American folk song. It felt like they were all mocking me by responding in a monotone voice to my singing which I only did to help calm me down.

"Oh, death, someone will pray. Please wait to call me another day. I let the children pray and the preacher preach. But time and mercy are out of your reach." They sang back. "I am death, I have come for your soul. I'll leave your body here and leave it cold."

I swallowed hard. Not once in my life had I heard something so cold and empty. Not even the Sino-American war struck fear into me the way this did. It's like the grim reaper themself was singing back to me, and I didn't like it. It was a literal melody of death. It was my fault that it was happening, but I had to see it through.

"Oh, death…if this is true, give me a chance to reason with you? My wealth is all at your command if you will move your icy hand." I sang, trying to calm my nerves.

"No wealth, no land, no silver, no gold…nothing satisfies me except your soul. I'll drop the flesh off your frame. The dirt and worms both staked their claims." They sang back in response to my plea.

"Oh, death…oh, death…I beg you please, give me time to change your mind!" I cried out in fear.

Then they said the one part of the song that put the fear of God in me.

"I'll lock your jaw so you can't talk…I'll fix your feet so you can't walk. I'll dim your eyes so you can't see, this very hour come and go with me." They sang in unison.

"Oh, death…oh, death…Please hear my plea, give me time to fix my crimes! In time I think that you will see there's a place better than hell for me!" I sang as I heard them all approaching me.

Their footsteps drew closer as anxiety washed over me like an ocean. Just were they really planning to do to me? If that one guy could rip my eye out, I knew I was in for worse once the others had encircled me. I then felt something grab hold of my ankles before yanking me away.

"Too late, too late for you it is. I'll drag you away, your poor soul shall burn in hell!" I heard the familiar female voice from every "revival" sing.

I awoke back in the shower being bombarded by hot water and an Angry Orchard sitting on the soap shelf. I was trembling and found myself losing all strength in my legs. My body slowly slid down the side of the shower until I was sitting on the shower floor. I was naked, afraid, and above all I was stuck restarting over from my "checkpoint" again.

"Is…Is there any way out of this? I want to go home! I want to sleep in my own bed again! I want….I…want…" I said softly as I began to have a small breakdown.

"Oh, death….ooh, death…won't you spare me over till another year…." I mumbled softly as I sat there.

I couldn't muster the strength to stand for what felt like ten minutes. Eventually I stood up and polished off the bottle of hard cider before stepping out of the shower and getting dressed. It was then that Saint Michael made himself known again. Everything went grey and I could hear his footsteps behind me.

"Young man, are you alright?" he asked in a concerned tone.

"Honestly I don't know anymore…" I replied in a befuddled voice. "You're also living inside me…what, is that three times now? Am I dead and this is all just my own purgatory?"

"Relax, Joshua. You aren't officially dead, not yet at least. The second the book opened it sucked you all into a fabricated world. I just wish I knew who's it really was." Michael replied in a calm voice.

Michael looked at me with sympathetic eyes. He could tell this was all beginning to take a toll on me and we had only just begun. At least he had given me some insight as to what was going on. His mentioning that this was all just a fabrication didn't put me at ease, though. The buildings and streets looked all too much like the ones from my world, meaning I was more than likely responsible for all this madness.

"The buildings and streets are just like the ones from mine…..am I to blame for all this?" I asked him worriedly.

Michael let out a sigh. "I wouldn't say you are the sole blame for all this. There's another presence here, one that is targeting you specifically. I think it shaped this world around you, but it still based it off yours."

His words didn't bring me all that much relief, rather they just confirmed I was part of this mess more than I wanted to be. The other presence, on the other hand, was probably our ticket out of here, I just had to find it. I tend to pride myself on correcting mistakes however I can when I wronged someone, so I owed it to everyone else to see this through to the end. My previous "deaths" had done their damage, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

"That's a little reassuring. Got any ideas on how to deal with that black sludge?" I asked him curiously.

He began rubbing his chin. "You can't just let that problem sit, knowing what it can really do. I have an idea: tear that portion of wall down again, but this time stand far back before using your magic on it. Have two of your comrades stretch a blanket in front of the doorway and then fire off a bolt of light at it. The sludge that sprays out should get caught by the blanket."

"That way no one gets covered in sludge. After that I'd suggest going to the rescue point." He added with a smile.

I thought about what he said for a moment. It was better than anything I could think of. It wouldn't hurt to at least try it and see how things go from there.

"That…just might work. Thanks, Saint Michael!" I replied with a grin.

He smiled as everything went back to normal. A confident grin spread across my face before I went and checked under the bed. Sure enough, the shotgun was still there with both the bayonet and .357 magnum adapter. I hauled all three over to the workbench and cleaned them thoroughly with Hoppe's no.9 before sticking the adapter in my backpack. I liked the option the adapter gave me seeing as I had no 12ga shells yet to unleash some "american justice" on whatever threat came my way. I had some adapters of my own for my custom shotgun, and I fell in love with the concept ever since I used an eighteen-inch adapter in 30-30 winchester to bag me a deer once when I was twenty. My grandpa was skeptical of it at first, but quickly changed his tune once I brought the deer back to the cabin. Adapters may be a novel idea, but they get the job done.

I gave the shotgun one last check, pressing the button to hinge the barrel open and checking the bore, and seeing if the bayonet held firmly in place once attached. Everything worked as it should, so I went and checked my gear. I made sure I still had everything that I needed in my bag before putting "Maria" back on my hip and taped the FN M1905 onto my right leg. I then heard someone lazily walking down the basement steps.

"Joshua? You still down here?" Elt's voice called out.

I emerged from the guest room with a concerned look on my face, but I had an idea as to what was going on.

"Something wrong?" I asked him.

"Yeah…this weird, black blob seeped through the wall next to the window in the room I'm in. It smells worse than horse droppings. We don't know what to do." He replied with a tired frown.

"Sounds serious…alright, let me take a look." I said before following him upstairs.

Once he and I got upstairs, we found Wilmarina, Primera, and Mersé standing outside their room. Primera was wearing her hair long instead of being done up in twin tails and even Mersé had her hair down. Primera gave me a nasty glare as Elt and I came up the steps, but it didn't faze me. I peeked in once the two of us got to the top, and noticed the blob was slightly bigger than last time. The drywall had some dark spots of rot around the blob and the room smelled worse than raw sewage.

"Alright, Mr. Know-it-all, just what the hell is that thing?!" Primera asked me as I peeked in.

"Hmm….gonna need two people to stretch a blanket across this doorway before I pop that thing with a bolt of light magic. Though we should open some windows first, this stench is a menace." Mumbled, ignoring Primera's question.

Primera didn't like that I ignored her, but I really had no idea as to what the blob truly was unless I got a "sample" of it under a microscope. She grabbed me by the collar and pressed me up against the wall with her teeth clenched.

"Uh-uh! You didn't answer my question, which means that you don't know what it is, and you just want to blast it? What if it turns into something else once it feels threatened?" She questioned as she pressed me up against the wall.

"Now is not the time for this, Primera. It's a blob, and a stinky one at that. All I ask is that you please let me do my job." I replied calmly as I looked her in the eyes.

Primera clenched her teeth but let go of my collar. That's when I walked into the room and grabbed a blanket off one of the beds. I then went and opened a window in the room the radio was in before heading back to the blob room and opening the window in there. The blob quivered as I opened the window and sat out a small bit of sludge onto the floor before three little tentacles poked out from it. A fourth tentacle with what looked like a glowing yellow pustule emerged in between the three tentacles and began scanning the room. I heard Primera gag as she noticed what the blob was doing before I noticed the blob was quivering much faster. I quickly covered myself with the blanket Just as the blob popped itself and black sludge went everywhere. The force of the blob popping was enough to knock me off my feet and the back of my head met the leg post of the bunk next to me.

"Son of a…." I groaned as I rubbed the back of my head.

"Oh, good job! The four of us still need to get our sleep! Got any other bright ideas, Mr. know-it-all?!" Primera shouted in annoyance.

As I was rubbing the back of my head and pulled the blanket off me, I noticed something sitting at my feet covered in sludge. It was small and metal in shape, and once I dug it out of the sludge, I found I was holding a small old key. I walked past everyone and immediately made my way to the bathroom and washed the key off but had no idea what it was to. The key was an old brass skeleton key like you'd see in the 1800's. The teeth were shaped like the T-block piece from Tetris and the key had a hollow hole in the end of it.

"Are you even listening! Hey, I'm talking to you!" Primera bellowed as she walked into the bathroom while I was examining the key.

As I thought about it for a minute, the key would be perfect for a desk drawer. Perhaps the radio desk had a locked drawer? I didn't give the desk a good look over as I had been focused on the radio earlier. I then felt Primera slap me as I was looking at the key.

"What is wrong with you?! Can't you see the damage you've done?" she asked as she grew red in the face.

"Alright….I guess it's time for the adult talk…" I said calmly as I brushed past her and closed the bathroom door.

I wasn't sure If I was insane by telling her about my previous "deaths", but Part of me felt I had to if I didn't want to go mad from bottling it up until it was too late. At best she'd just laugh at me. At worst she might kill me again. I decided to take a huge gamble and take the risk. What's life if you don't throw the dice anyway? If she did try to kill me and I killed her in self-defense, I could always "reset" and learn from my mistakes.

"Do you think I want any of this?" I asked her as I turned around.

"You have no idea what I've already had to go through since a short while ago, and that's probably a good thing. I'm not going to sugarcoat this….I've died three times since we've been here." I explained to her with a serious look on my face.

Primera gave me a skeptical look. I expected as much from her just as much as I expected it from the others if I told them the same thing. It really was just like Re:Zero, only I didn't have much to lose if I told them. Primera furrowed her brow, not believing a word I had said.

"…what the hell are you going on about?" She asked me.

"Once to a group of those freaks out there after going to get some supplies alone. Once to the blob after it shot a tentacle through my left eye," I answered bluntly, "And the most recent time was because of you. You pushed me down the stairs causing me to lose motor function to everything below the neck. You got really upset once the reality of your actions set in. You even started crying."

Telling her how she started crying caused a brief look of realization to spread over her face before it swapped back to anger. She probably thought I was making fun of her. It made me wonder how she'd react if I told her that Mersé had to finish me off because of her.

"The captain even had to finish me off. I doubt that was good for her psyche….Don't even get me started on where I end up everytime before reviving, it ain't a place for kids." I said with a deadpan face as I looked her straight in the eyes.

"What the hell are you? Are you some kind of zombie? Or maybe your world's version of a lich?"

"Well, I am almost always tired so maybe zombie truly fits, but I am one hundred percent human." I replied bluntly.

A scowl spread across her face. She clearly thought my answer to be bullshit. She turned around and grabbed the doorknob and it creaked as she turned it.

"….you have ten minutes to figure out what that key goes to and find us some new beds." She said to me with venom in her voice before she opened the door.

Primera closed the door behind her, leaving me to stand there in annoyed silence while holding a key. All I wanted was to get as far away from Lescatie once Wilmarina told me what her father did. Now here I am stuck in a literal fight for survival with a group of people who could turn on me at any point. Death wasn't an escape anymore, but a minor setback no matter what happened to me. This safehouse was only the tutorial level, but I already didn't want to play anymore. All I could think about was going back to my cabin with its fresh air and solitude. The only clue I had was what Michael had told me.

"So, what do you go to…." I mumbled to myself as I looked at the key held it between my left index finger and thumb.