Redead

I lived once. When, I do not know, I only know that I lived. I may have been a benevolent person, one who had compassion on anyone in need and sought to help them however I could, or I may have been malevolent, putting people in need because of my own pride and greed, spitting on the beggars rather than giving them a meal. I have no way of knowing for sure which of these I was, but I suspect the latter solely because of what I am now. I cannot believe that any truly benevolent being would become what I have. It would be the cruelest act of this world if it were so. To reward one who sought only to care for others in this way…nothing with any part of a heart could stand to do it. I could stand it now. What heart have I to care?

What happened at the end of my life, I know more about, but still know very little. I can vaguely recall dying, and getting lost. It seems I could not find my way to somewhere, and thus I remained trapped. I was not alive, but I was no longer fully dead. I merely was. I searched for whatever it was I was looking for, I am not sure if even then I knew, but I do not believe I ever found it. Instead, I came across something utterly different, and unfortunately, I believe I mistook it for what I was searching for. That was the mistake that eventually lead to this.

Whatever it was, it promised to bring me back, and allow me a second life. Whether it warned of the possible consequences of engaging in such an act, I will never know, but I do know that I now face them. My second life is a complete blur in my mind. There are traces in my memory that seem to point to my second life being nothing like my first. Everything in these memories seems, wrong, in a way, as if that life was one spent in a place of pure evil, but again, I can never be sure of this. I have only this foggiest of memories and my speculations, and an eternity to sort them out.

After, or in the midst perhaps, of my second life, the most wretched of events transpired. I was killed again, but this time I was not lost; I was returned to the land of the living. But I was not the same, my body was tainted, saturated with loathsome, vile things no human could ever comprehend. I could not see it, but I knew my soulless face was something that should never exist or be shown in that world. It was the spawn of sheer wickedness and terror. So I sought out a mask to cover it. A plain, wooden mask, just enough to hide my face from life, for I knew that any who saw it would never, could never, truly live life again. I was more abominable than the depths of Hell itself.

And so I existed–damned to eternal, lugubrious agony with no hope of redemption, no hope of the slightest release from this relentless torture. Nothing could compare to the anguish of this existence; Hell seemed desirable, but there was no way out.

Then an idea, tinged with the faintest glimmers of Hope, reached my empty mind. Maybe, maybe I could suck life from another, and, condemning them to this same fate, be released into the inviting realm of true Death. Believing this was my only chance, I attempted to reach some sort of civilization, but the presence of so many lives made it impossible for me to approach. With such a burning hatred for the living, I would never be able to get near enough for my purposes. Even standing alone in an open field was nearly unbearable, and thus I made my way to the only place that seemed the most welcoming, the place I wished I had remained in when I first reached it, the grave.

As I waited amidst the catacombs, I found others like myself. We never spoke; we never communicated; we only accepted each other’s company with a slight decrease in hatred. Here we remain, ever waiting for the most unfortunate of the living to pass us by, their ears being filled with the reverberations of the only sound we were capable of, a scream. A scream sodden with pain and suffering; a scream that tore into one’s soul with rancor and enmity, forever scarring the few who escaped it.

Their terror renders them paralyzed, as we slowly turn and approach them. We reach them, latch on, and begin sucking the life from their bodies. They struggle to free themselves, writhing against our clutches, but we never relent, not until long after the faintest traces of life have been long absent from their body do release them.

This is how we subsist, and will continue to subsist until eternity ends. We are they who have gone beyond death into the tainted life, and returned, bringing with us in the form of our bodies the taint in which we dwelled. We have been rekilled, and will never truly die. We are Redead.