Chapter One

Raphael’s PoV

The day was a bright one. Sunny, cheerful, people walking around the campus laughing together, generally having good times. The sort of day on which, when I wasn’t twenty years old and taking plenty good care of myself at a university, my mother would tell me to go outside and play. Not that I’d been the sort of kid to really go outside a lot. My room even now was covered floor-to-ceiling in books back home. Thus, rather than being outdoors involved in one of the many picnics, Frisbee games, and other goings-on, I was inside with a group of people who were generally avoided.

At least by the suicidal people.

Not that we were anti-suicidal stereotypical goth-folk. It was more-or-less our shared hobby (yes, hobby) of, ‘ooh, look, it’s death!’. Strange, certainly, and the strangest bit was that outside of our little fascination we were…Well, perfectly normal. At least by most standards that people take into general consideration.

“So, I was reading this book last night--the one Raphael found and brought in last meeting—and it’s just completely brilliant.” Paris Celisca grinned at me from her place opposite in the circle of chairs. One hand flashed me a thumbs up while the other twirled fingers in her luxurious brunette hair. “I mean, I’ve never read anything like it. Later I’m going to tie him down and have my way with him until he gives me the info on where he found it.”

“Nice to know. Really more creepy than nice though, if you ask me. Which you didn’t, I’m aware.” Riley Corinthe rolled his hazel eyes, poking uninterestedly at a bit of remaining brownie on his plate. We always had snacks, and Riley never properly ate them. I always figured he’d missed the early life lesson on not playing with your food. “Can’t you just…please get on with it and tell us what makes it so great? Trust me, we’ll enjoy it a lot more than the disturbing visuals about you and pretty boy here. Besides, Paris, he’s far too asexual to involve himself with you and you know it.”

“I’m not asexual!” I argued indignantly. Not that I’d want to sleep with Paris though. And she did know that. She just liked to act like a whore where I was involved.

At the same time, our only other group member, Genevieve Straughburg, spoke out. “Ri, you know as well as I do that Paris likes to have her build up, no matter how awkward it is to us. And she likes to act like a whore when it comes to Raphael.”

See?

“Just put it out of your head.” She tossed her auburn pigtails, giggling a little. Amused by some of the simplest things. Why did I hang out with these people? Some questions just don’t have answers. “Now, Paris, honey, it would be nice if you’d tell us what makes this book so great before we burst or something otherwise problematic happens- Raphael kicking Riley’s face in, for example.”

“Hey, hey, hey! Wrong club!” Riley insisted. The only reason he bothered to react at all, I knew, was that he knew I’d probably do it if they put it in my head. His hazel eyes were widened in fear, as if he were truly concerned with the thought of physical harm. “We revolve around suicide, remember? The homicide groupies meet on Wednesday nights, not Saturday afternoons.”

“Bad joke.” He was informed by Paris. “Don’t do that ever again. Anyway, what happened was that all of these people were under the influence of this…I’m not done yet, so I really don’t know where the influence came from…” She chewed her lip in a way anyone who didn’t know her well would have called thoughtfully. I knew better. Her brown eyes may have been narrowed in concentration, but she was more than likely thinking about some cute boy, or better, some erotic suicide fantasy she’d come up with. “Regardless, they all end up committing suicide in totally creative ways. Like, there’s this one girl, who goes to a meat factory and just…puts herself in the meat grinder. Don’t ask for the details, just trust me when I say it is sheer genius.”

“Right.” I interrupted her excited babble firmly. She’d go on forever, offered the chance. I rather wasn’t in the mood for an excess of Paris rant. Not that being in the mood for it was particularly easy, or common or anything. “All of us know she gets this excitedly bouncy over practically everything even vaguely related to suicide.”

“Yes, and it’s odd, considering she looks like the topic would horrify her, doesn’t she?” Riley clicked with tongue with a shake of his head. “It’s almost sad, such a pretty young thing having a creepy hobby. Sometimes I feel you should be sitting in the flower arrangement club as their president, not ours, and Raphael should have your position.”

“He is the only one of us who looks remotely suicidal, I guess.” Genevieve sighed wistfully, bright blue eyes surveying me in an almost sad way. “If he tried it though, we know everyone would be shocked, pathetically emo appearances aside.”

Slapping my palm into my face, I groaned. “There’s something wrong with me. Otherwise I really don’t know why I’m still not only talking to all of you, but coming to these meetings and even being so kind as to provide snacks.”

“You love us.” Paris sounded confident in her own words, not put out in the least at my stopping her earlier. She rose to her feet and stepped behind me, the grin in her voice as much as I knew it was on her face. Her hands pressed down on my hair, soft and almost loving. Except it was mostly just disturbing. “Don’t lie, you know it’s true.”

“Maybe I would love you more if you stopped telling me I look emo.” I said dryly, flicking her hands away, so she instead ended up seated beside me. “Because I really, really disagree.”

Honestly, at least in my own opinion, I didn’t look at all like I was going to kiss life goodbye intentionally. Unless someone was being really stereotypical, at least, which granted, does happen in college. I’d turned tail and run when the frats had been doing their rounds, trying to get the people in my year. But the entire stereotype regarding me had to come from my hair, and that’s more than a little pathetic in my own opinion. So I had black hair, cut a little below my ears and it fell just over my right eye. I could still see, but with my hair like that I was either automatically emo, or automatically a skater. When you walk around wearing good slacks, white shirts, and simple jackets though, no one is going to call you a skater, so what was I? I was emo.

The college population really needed to get a lot more creative.

“Okay, here’s my question.” I continued when no one made any comment regarding my last words. This was a rarity, and I had to take advantage of it before it up and died on me—what a thing to think while hanging out in the school’s suicide club, huh? “Are any of us ever actually going to commit suicide? What exactly are we celebrating it for? It’s death, it’s ugly, and really why would anyone want to kill themselves? Have any of you actually thought about that?”

Every meeting I made an attempt to pose this question, and usually someone interrupted me midway through. This time, for once, they let me finish, and I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for that or not. Here I am: Raphael Gavell, the boy who raises not so nice questions for his friends, because like it or not I have to admit that I care about them. They’re definitely my friends. Maybe I’m an idiot for doing it, but if I don’t take the time to worry about them, no one else is going to do it for me.

Actually, that was probably a huge chunk of why I bothered sticking around with them. It was out of concern. Suicide certainly didn’t fascinate me the way it did them. If I wasn’t there to keep them in line, one of them might end up doing something stupid to themselves and then they wouldn’t be around to worry about anymore. Being annoyed was definitely much better than feeling responsible for an idiotic suicide.

Silence reigned in the club room for a moment and I glared at the three. Paris looked guiltily away from me when my eyes landed on her. Genevieve pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around herself. Riley was the only one with the confidence to meet my eye, and he looked surprised enough that I figured he was just trying to wrap his mind around what I’d said.

“How many of you have honestly considered killing yourself, just to see what it would be like?” My voice was ice. I felt like a terrible friend, but some things were necessary. “To see what the damn result would be?”

The group lack of response answered the question for me.

“You guys are idiots.” I informed them. I wasn’t trying to be nice here, if that weren’t obvious to them. They really were goddamned idiots. “What reasons could any of you have to kill yourself? The stress of college is nothing for any of you, or you wouldn’t be sitting in a meeting today. If you had concerns about a class you’d be studying. Instead you’re here, and I’m the only one smart enough to ask the right questions. How about you guys do some reconsidering for me, yeah?”

On my way out of the room I waited for one of them to say something. Not to me in particular. I didn’t care who spoke, or who they spoke to, only that they said something. But no one did, and that in itself was probably the miracle of the century. The thing was, I felt like I’d only informed them of something for a little while. Soon enough, when I’d been gone a little bit, I was willing to bet that they would go right back to discussing that stupid book I’d loaned to Paris. My mistake for facilitating the obsession so long.

If I was going to make them understand anything, measures far more desperate than the ones I’d taken just now were going to be needed.

“All right, kids, this is hopefully going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for you three. I’m going to explain something to you. The only reason I ever joined up with the suicide club is because I was worried about Genevieve. Her poetry scared the hell out of me, even though she was and is the most cheerful person I know. I’m not fascinated with suicide. You are, and it’s disturbing, and it’s a huge risk.”

After walking out on the meeting, I had formulated a new plan. It was pathetic, and I absolutely hated it, but I figured three people were worth one. An acquaintance of mine had been kind enough to loan me a video camera, and I’d asked him to please not watch the resulting film. I just wanted him to make three copies, and give one to each of the idiots I’d abandoned earlier.

“So to prove a point to all of you that suicide isn’t some noble, genius activity that people should take lightly, I’m going to do away with myself on camera for you. I’ll have you know I didn’t spend very long deciding which method to use.”

I was filming from my mattress. Anyone who walked in would find the scene odd. I’d set the camera up on the tripod a few feet away, and it was zoomed out enough that the video would show me, as well as the rope I’d hung from hook in the ceiling. There were a few of them up there. The people who had the dorm room a few years ago installed them, I supposed because their mattresses had been set up bunk bed style and they’d wanted to put curtains around the upper bunk. The rope, I had already formed into a noose, which was hanging above my head. Ominous, disturbing…maybe the idiots wouldn’t even need to watch the video.

God, I was glad I’d locked the door. The last thing I needed was for my roommate to come strolling in. When it was locked, he would knock. When I didn’t answer, he’d use his key.

Then maybe my stupid friends would finally get the picture.

“You all know I’m a bit of a neat freak, so the thought of getting blood everywhere didn’t interest me much. Besides, I didn’t want the room to be disgusting when Erik came in. Pills, I’m told, cause some seriously painful reactions and I wasn’t big on that. So the other basic was, well- you can see the noose, can’t you?”

Seta’s PoV

Something was wrong. I could detect that much at least. My sense of approaching death was on all the time, as humans died every minute of the day. Suicides happened pretty frequently too, so it wasn’t especially a surprise to me when I could feel the beginnings of a suicide movement somewhere in the Outer Realm, the other plane of existence that I wasn’t busy hovering on. But even though suicide was common enough, there was something incredibly off about this one.

Usually, there’s a metallic taste that I get in my mouth if some depressed, distraught, lonely human decides to end everything and I’m close enough to tell it’s going to happen. Instead I could taste something like…I was pretty sure it tasted like something less than metallic, and more like a soft snack. The human who was about to end their life- why in hell were they doing it, if not depression?

I had to assume, after all, based on the flavour, that sadness had nothing to do with it. Everything about it felt strange. I closed my eyes and focused on determining what exactly was going on.

My kind could easily learn anything we wanted about an impending death. Even now, as I tunneled my energy into this odd suicide-to-be, I could feel a human about to be hit by a truck, a small child about to slip and drown in the tub while her mother went to fetch a towel, and a drunkard about to unintentionally light himself ablaze.

So to prove a point to all of you that suicide isn’t…do away with myself on camera for you…

Wait, what? That was new- well, not the camera theory, that had been done plenty of time by people who were much more than twisted, but someone was just trying to prove a point that wasn’t like, a suicide bomber? I needed to determine more about this.

I clenched my fists at my sides, gritting my teeth and squeezing my gray eyes closed.

You all know I’m a bit of a neat freak, so the thought of getting blood everywhere…

Raphael. That was his name. Neat freak Raphael, about to hang himself in order to show his friends that…What, that they shouldn’t kill themselves? Was that really necessary? I opened and narrowed my eyes at the idea of such stupidity. What kind of moron decided to end their life for something stupid like that, without knowing the consequences?

I knew consequences, and I knew them well. I’d only been contending with them for the last…For quite some time. I’d forgotten the exact number of years. I flinched, feeling that it was about to happen. Oh, I had to prevent this. No one needed to become like my kind. Not for such a dumb reason. Eternal damnation, if it’s going to happen, ought to have a really good purpose.

I tossed my head a little, running my fingers through my silver-gray hair out of habit, and then blinked my way to where I needed to be. At least there was one efficient thing about being what I was. No travel time required.

The boy on the bed’s eyes widened when I appeared before him, and he jumped down off of the chair he’d set up for himself, obviously startled. “Who are you?”

“My name is Seta.” I said pleasantly, flicking at a piece of lint on my jacket. A pity about the afterlife- contrary to popular belief, lint can still affect you. “I’m here to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life. Which is to say, the suicide thing.” I gestured to the rope and chair.

It took him a moment to respond. “So you’re what, Death?”

I would have snorted if it wouldn’t have made me look incredibly undignified, and instead settled for rolling my eyes. “I’m here to stop you from committing suicide. Do you really think that would be my goal if I were Death? No, I’m a shinigami, and I have to say it’s quite odd that you aren’t entirely freaking out on me.”

He shrugged. “I was about to kill myself when you interrupted, so-.”

“Yeah kid, I know.”

As if I’d never interrupted, he went on. “So whatever happened, I wasn’t really going to be shocked.”

I lifted my eyebrows and informed him flatly, “You’re a moron.”

No answer.

Now wasn’t that just pleasant?

This is disgustingly short, which I resent, but the first chapter was of course the lead-in. Subsequent chapters will be longer, definitely.

R&R, please!