• “The place where no one else can enter is my own mind. A place where I myself can’t even enter…Why is it that I have to suffer so much when other people live a life so full of joy? Is this my punishment for my sins? If so…then please just end my suffering now so I don’t have to go through this pain again. It hurts….why are you laughing at me….I ‘m crying in pain and sorrow…and yet you laugh at me still as I cry here all alone in the darkness.”

    It all started the winter of 1984. Probably the last time I have ever experienced the joy of living, and the sadness I held. I was walking home one day after school, and someone was following me from somewhere I couldn’t see. But who is it? There’s no one there? What’s following me in the darkness….what’s chasing me….is it coming only for me? The images of that night have never faded as I lay there bleeding in the snow, cold and alone, no one there to hear my cries as the blood from my body flowed in a stream on the padded snow. The cold winter air froze me….and I drifted away in darkness, cold and alone, forever sleeping.
    But something felt warm again in my body, and that was when I woke up to a bright light of a church, candles surrounding me, giving me warmth of my cold and still frozen body. There was someone by my side, holding my hand tightly, chanting something under his breath for my revival. But I didn’t feel alive, not anymore….I felt dead and lifeless as that thing in the shadows came up at me and attacked me unknowing and feeble. Why must it be me….why am I so weak to such things such as this….why can’t I be strong and protect myself?
    “Are you in pain child?” A kind yet cold voice said next to me.
    I looked up at the man who spoke and gave him a pained expression. One that was probably so sad that nothing in this world could return it to its original state. Weakly nodding my head, he gave a grim smile as he looked down upon me. I raised my voice as high as I could for him to hear me and asked him something.
    “When can I die father?” My voice was shriveled in agony as my voice broke out of exhaustion. Father looked up and gave a solemn face…he closed his eyes and did not turn back to look at me. But he placed his warm hands on my own and spoke gently.
    “Child…have you not noticed that you are dead….why won’t you pass on?” Letting my hands go, I sat up and looked at my hands. They were pale white as the snow I slept in, and my body felt cold no matter how many candles surrounded me. I placed my hand on the candle’s flame and it turned to ice. Flinching away, I turned to look at Father and ask what this meant, and he told me in a gentle voice that I was a shinigami. An unfortunate soul that lives off the lives of the people that die early on, a bringer of death to those who must pass on to heaven or hell. As for I….I cannot go to neither those places. Crying silently, a man came from above covered in black attire and slightly pulled me toward him. I wasn’t afraid…I felt safer…more comforted with this man’s cold embrace. Strange as it was, I felt relief for this mysterious figure to come up to me and have me take his cold hand, not knowing anything else. The next thing I knew, I was gone from the church and was told to forget everything of my life on earth and become one with death.