It's strange... how a single answer can change your fate forever.
Ten years ago, I whispered it. "I wish to live".
The voice that had spoken to me vanished after that, like a dream dissolving at sunrise. I thought that was the end of it-just the desperate plea of a dying five-year-old clinging to life. But what i didn't know was that my words had sealed something.
A Pact. A Bond.
One I still don't understand.
One I will one day regret.
Ten years late, I'm fifteen. Still alive. Still here. And yet... this isn't the life I imagined.
Back then, I thought survival meant joy-friends to laugh with, memories to treasure. But reality is colder. Lonelier.
I have no friends. Not one. Nobody talks to me unless it's to whisper behind my back.
Some shove me in hallways, others laugh as I walk past.
I used to get bullied so often that the bruises didn't even hurt anymore.
Somehow, I had survived death... just to be invisible.
That night, the school had an event. I don't even remember what it was about. Music. Lights. Laughter from people didn't even know my name. By the time it ended, the halls were empty, and I started walking home.
The streets were unnervingly silent. The kind of silence that feels alive–like something is holding its breath, waiting. Midnight's chill wrapped around me, and my footsteps echoed too loudly in the dark.
Then I heard it.
A voice. Behind me.
I turned.
A man stood under a flickering street lamp. His face was shadowed, but I saw the glint of the knife in his hand. Recognition hit me like ice in my veins–
I'd seen his face on the news. A serial killer.
Wanted for slaughtering entire families.
My body moved before my mind could think–I ran.
The world became a blur of darkness and pounding footsteps. My lungs burned, my legs screamed, but he was closing in. Then–
Suddenly–something appeared in my hand.
A knife. Cold, heavy, real.
And then I heard it–the voice.
The same one from ten years ago.
"Life or Death?"
My chest tightened. I understood instantly.
I had two choices. Kill him... or die.
But i couldn't. My hands trembled so violently I could barely keep hold of the blade. My whole body screamed no.
That hesitation sealed my fate.
Pain exploded in my stomach as his knife sank deep. My knees buckled. I gasped for air, choking on my own breath, but he didn't stop.
Still conscious, I felt him grab me, dragging me along the ground. The asphalt scraped my palms raw, the cold night air biting into my wounds.
We reached an abandoned house. The moment we stepped inside, the smell hit me–gasoline, rust, and something worse. Something rotten.
Then I heard the sound.
Click.
A pause.
Vrrrrrrrrr-Kktt!
A chainsaw coughed, then roared to life.
The noise was deafening, shaking the walls,
rattling in my chest. He stepped closer, smiling like he was about to unwrap a gift.
"You hear that?" he shouted over the engine's scream. "It drowns everything... your breath, your voice, even your hope".
I tried to fight. I screamed. But the roar swallowed me whole.
Then the blade came down.
Hot, searing pain tore through me. My vision went white, the killer's laughter twisting in the air like something inhuman.
And just before I slipped away, I saw him–
a figure in the shadows.
Still. Silent. Watching.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in the house. I wasn't on the street.
I was back in the hospital room from ten years ago. The smell of antiseptic filled my lungs, the steady beep of a heart monitor beside me. My parents cries, the words overlapping each other, I returned to my past.
I sat frozen, terror crawling under my skin.
This wasn't possible. I had just–
"If you can't even save yourself", the voice whispered in my mind, colder than ever,
"then there is no meaning to give you a second chance".
The sound of it chilled me deeper than death. And somewhere in the darkness of my future, I knew... the man behind that voice was waiting for me.
–Sebas Dravenveil