Reaper

Prologue

I was born dying. I know what you are thinking. We are all born to die. Your cells start dying the moment you are born. You will die one day. Whether it is the next day, or a hundred years from now, you will die. It is life.

But that is not what I mean. My father and mother were near divorced before I was conceived. It is said my birth saved their marriage, but sometimes I think it just ruined their lives further. They could have spent the few years they lived past my birth apart and happy. They might have even lived longer without having to worry about their medical bills and mine. But I was born, and they did die when I was five.

I barely remember them. I know I got my dark hair from my father. I remember his coal black hair sweeping his shoulders and his green eyes showing false joy as he looked upon my youthful face. He did love me, I know that. He remained with my mother so I would not come from a broken home and that I could have a happy childhood. He just blamed himself for what was wrong with me and my mother. My mother was fair haired and blue eyed. I got her eyes and skin color. She was hit the hardest of us all. Most days she was bed ridden and couldn’t move a muscle. She did all she could to make me a normal child, but I wasn’t normal. Nothing could change that.

Perhaps now you wish I would tell you what was wrong with my family. I have probably already tried your patience, so I will get on with my story. My parents married when they were 18, barely out of highschool and full of hopes and dreams for the future. Nicholas and Megan Cooper. Prom King and Queen. The Varsity Football Player and his Cheerleader girlfriend. The perfect couple.

But soon after their marriage, they encountered problems. They found out to late they had married too soon and were not as in love as they thought. A year later then divorced. Nicholas started living with a new girl, whose name I was never told. She was a loose type from what my grandmother has told me. Slept with far too many men. My father just kept getting into worse relationships it seemed.

But Nicholas met Megan again. She was going to a community college and they saw each other at a local café. They decided to have a last minute fling before they separated again. And they did.

A month later, Megan called Nicholas and told him she was pregnant with his child. Nicholas was honorable, and remarried her quickly. It was said his ex-girlfriend committed suicide soon after that. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. But I do know she left a lasting impression on my family.

She had a rare disease called Adulescens caedo. Meaning it took young bodies and slowly or quickly started destroying the cells that made up the organs, killing the person. It is an STD also. She gave it to my father, who gave it to my mother, who gave it to me.

My father felt guilty about this. He had cut both mine and Megan’s life short because he couldn’t control himself. He had doomed his own family.

My mother was the first to die. Although not the first affected, it hit her too strongly. A few months later, my father followed. I remember the funerals. Some thought it was wrong to have a five year old girl there. But Grandmother Sandra was not one to be questioned. She did what she knew was right and proper, and for that I thank her.

It was sad, seeing my parents still in their twenties laying in boxes, looking solemn. But what I think I most remember was that soon I would be joining them. Soon I would be dead, even though I was only five, I already knew that I would die before I barely lived.

Now is a time I should introduce myself. My name is Persephone Robin Cooper. My mother had an odd sense of humor in naming me. Robin had been her mother’s name, but it was Persephone that struck me and others. In Greek Mythology, she was the Goddess of Death. The wife to Hades, stolen at her peak of life to the underworld. It reminded me that I was not going to have happy golden memories like my grandmother, who raised me after my parents death.

But I could not just allow death to idly take me. How could this rare disease that only about ten people in the world have kill me! Few people have ever even heard of it! How could it be!

Then I started reading about the mystical arts. About witches, sorcerers, and the sort. But also about demons. And their curses.

This greatly intrigued me. Demons could curse people with horrible things. This disease seemed like it. Maybe it was a demon curse, and if it was a curse, it could be broken. That was the thinking of my youthful mind.

So at eight, I dedicated myself to the Mystical Arts. My grandmother found me a tutor and master of them, Ay Stevens, an old woman with no family and desperate for a heir, even a dying one.

But the more I trained, the more I learned that my family was not cursed. And the more death became real. But my true story has yet to began. The story about the truth of death and my future will unfold as the rest of my story is told.