I looked down at my hands. What had I done? What have I become? My hands were stained. They were deep in sin and discharge. With every breath, I felt myself sinking. Deeper, deeper, deeper. There was no changing the past. I was the person I now was. A shadow draped over my sad, crouch figure. A nimble hand grabbed my chin gingerly pulling my face into the light. I looked up finding a male figure silhouetted in the light, making him hard to see. He pulled my face into the light. I don’t know why, but the light was painful. It burned my face. Searing my skin. I turned away from him tears streaming down my face.

“My child,” he said, so softly it made me want to hold on to his every word. “My child you need not worry. You’ve have done the right thing. It was his time my daughter. You must learn as I did. Death is inevitable and we are the ones that carry out that sentence.”

I turned away from the man.  I could not bare to look at my father in my current state. How could he stand it? This life? This way? I could not. No, I would not live like this. I turned back to him. I saw him smile. He reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me to my feet.

“Now my child. My sweet Rose,” he said, “Let’s go our work here is done.”

I mustered up my courage and spoke this was my last chance, “I can’t.”

“What was that Rose? You have to speak up my sweet. Your father’s ears are not what they use to be.”

I cleared my throat, angered at how he was so poised during a time like this, “I can’t.”

“You can’t do what?” He said raising an eyebrow at me. “You can’t accept your fate. You can’t live this life? You can’t stand to know that with every DEATH YOU GET CLOSER AND CLOSER TO BEING ME!! IS THAT IT!! Can you not stand the notion that you are me! You are my child, my trash, and my freaking problem!! So what is it!? What can’t you do!? TELL ME!! TELL ME!!” By that time he had backed me up to the corner of the small room and his hands were gripped tightly around my collar.

I gulped down my fears and regrets as more tears came pouring out. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He was right. From the very start. I was sick of it. I couldn’t stand the idea of myself ever being anything close to him. But alas, I was nearly his mirror image. I was closer to being Death than ever before. I hated it. Despised it. I despised myself.  I was a totally different person now. I was sick and twisted, just like the knots of darkness that swirled across my father’s arms in intricate patterns.

“I’m not like you,” I said, “I am me and you are you. You can’t change me to be like you. You can’t force me to be who you are. I may be the heir to your dark throne, but that does not mean I will sit in it.”

He growled at me his face twisting into that of a demon. His eyes turned a bloodshot red, his pale skin stretching and ripping revealing black smoky flesh, his teeth grew longer sharpening into sharp points.

“THIS IS WHAT YOU ASKED FOR!! THIS IS WHAT TRUE LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE!! THIS IS WHAT I LOOK LIKE, WHAT WE LOOK LIKE!!” He yelled as he grew longer his body losing form and turning into more of a mist like figure with vague impressions of a human body   

I gulped as I shrank back into the corner. I closed my eyes fighting the urge to turn myself. I wasn’t like him. I wasn’t a monster. I wouldn’t be like him. He swirled around me like a dark fog. Curling around my body clinging to me. You feel me, don’t you? I shook my head. I could not let him get to me. That’s how death works don't it. It gets in your head. Drives you to your knees, and bends you till your dead. It’s what I had done, only moments before my father had ridiculed me. Don’t resist me child… I am you… this is what you look like… this is who you are… you and I are the same thing… we are both DEATH…. NO.No. This is not true. This is not who I am, this is not me. I am not my father.

“NO!!”I yelled. “I AM NOT YOU!!!! I AM MYSELF AND YOU ARE DEATH!!! I DO NOT NEED TO BE YOU!!! I AM MY OWN PERSON!!”

With that a white light radiated off my body sending the dark cloud of my father back in waves of gray dust, his blackness losing its dark. The dark sand-like cloud surged towards me but was stopped by the sudden blast of light that radiated off my skin. It swirled around me forming layers over my skin. It started off as silver dust layering itself over my skin. Then hardened into what looked like an armor, blistering with rays of silver light that burned holes in my father’s figure. He screamed in agony, but all was tuned out, for all I heard was the soft hymn of my freedom. I opened my arms outward as a beautiful woman clad in white robes grabbed me like a mother would to her children. The woman pulled me upwards to my freedom.