In the Shadow of Death - unfinished NSW

[Tiana Calthye]

Ben gave the challenge to write a story about a dead woman who has to watch, as a ghost, her husband fall in love and live with a new woman.

 

This was my first shot. Depending on if I can get it back on track it may or may not be continued.

 

Author disclaimer: The religious beliefs presented in this are not representive of my own. Please realize this is speculative fiction and I am not presenting something I believe to be factual. Fantasy, rated PG-13 for adult themes. It's pretty clean so far, no language or violence or sex.

 

In the Shadow of Death

 

The cathedral is a much more fascinating place among the dead; it is a bright light among the shadows and it stands out like a sore thumb. Among the wastelands of the dead, there is only the lure of the candles and the music. When I lived, I heard the music and it meant so little to me. Now the music is the only thing that keeps me coming back.

 

(Well, no. That’s a lie. I would be bound here regardless, but the music lures me to this place I call my home. Myself and so many of the other wraiths of a time forgotten.)

 

The hymns are powerful. Once upon a time they were just songs, sung sometimes without meaning and sometimes without heart. But here they dig deep. This is a realm of spirit and as such, the songs sung with spirit penetrate and shatter the shadows for but a moment of relief from the constant, nagging pain, from the agony and from the fight that will never let us free.

 

We are forgotten.

 

But we will never forget.

 

I was not so very old when I died. My name was Bridy. Then it was Britney. Before it was Birdy. Before it was Brittana. Before it was Tanya. Before it was Maria. Before it was Anna. Before it was Bridget.

 

I remember every life I ever had, and every moment’s flash of blinding pain, through water, through fire, through heaven and earth and the things below the earth.

 

They lied to us, you see. Sold us an afterlife. Sold us on heaven and sold us on earth and sold us on an eternal torment that lay underneath death and beyond that dark window of peace—so fleeting! I’ve seen it before some eight times. They say eight is cursed. But every culture has their little curses. Everything they’ve ever told us was a lie. No one knows what lies beyond death except for the dead, and those who lie between living and dead, bound on to strings of mortal whispers by some nefarious thing that holds us here.

 

Some of the dead have whispered of eldritch beings.

 

I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen them. I have only heard the songs.

 

In living, the songs are meaningful poetry sung to the gods of a world that simply must believe in life and death and something beyond that death. They’re right in that sense. There is something beyond death. There is this, and then there is the rebirth. We must get it right.

 

I haven’t found any gods yet, but I don’t deny that there may be some that linger here in this space between places: between life, between death, in the valley of the shadow of the terror of death.

 

Here, the words are distorted: when once they sang praise to an Almighty God, now the words come through as haunting images and memories. Words here are not the same as words there. I believed, there, though I never really lived what I believed. Then I died and I remembered every time I had died and all of the pain and none of the hell.

 

Perhaps there is an eternal peace that waits beyond the shore where one finds an infinite sleep and no more of this bondage!

 

The words come through haunting. Horrible. Distorted by the eldritch quality of this place. They call upon things that are older than Time, things that people dare not name anymore or perhaps have forgotten how to name. May they ever remain sleeping in the shadows beyond death, pray the dead, because when they wake they will take us and break us through the veil.

 

We fear the mystery most of all.

 

What lies beyond the valley of the shadow of death?

 

Fortunately, I may never find out. The chains that keep me here are stronger than any immortal beings from beyond the soil of this shadow land.

 

I was thirty-one when I passed away for the eighth time, and witnessed from above the grief of a husband I’d barely know—witnessed the grief and witnessed all of my regrets. Perhaps I first thought the regrets were what kept me here, unable to move away from this shadow of Earth, where the memories of the things lived on.

 

But the memories of times before time live on and the ghosts of my past lives told me quickly otherwise. I would never move on until I dealt with some… unfinished business. It is the ever undying tradition of a ghost: we do not move forward in our lives, and in our deaths, because we must deal with our deaths.

 

And in my case, deal with Death.

 

Death is a shrewd woman, and a shrew as well. She wears her red hair like a fox, tied behind her head in a tail that trails off to a little tail of white that only begs to say how very mortal she truly is! I jest, of course. Death is but a whimsy of this place, as much as I am. For every memory that lives on between, the myths live as well.

[Amidala Skywalker]

Interesting start. Haunting, and an interesting philosophy. You've made me curious, at least. I don't think this is your best work that you've ever written, but it's good. If you do decide to continue, you didn't totally lure me in, but I'll keep reading.

[Jidai Geki]

I read this a couple of days ago, but didn't have much to say other than I'm waiting to see what happens. Post s'more.

[Tiana Calthye]

Interesting start. Haunting, and an interesting philosophy. You've made me curious, at least. I don't think this is your best work that you've ever written, but it's good. If you do decide to continue, you didn't totally lure me in, but I'll keep reading.

I mostly just posted it because Ben was bugging me. I don't think it's my best work either and it wouldn't have been posted if Ben hadn't commented. If I write more, I'll post more.

[Lord Ar-Pharazon]

Interesting start. Haunting, and an interesting philosophy. You've made me curious, at least. I don't think this is your best work that you've ever written, but it's good. If you do decide to continue, you didn't totally lure me in, but I'll keep reading.

I mostly just posted it because Ben was bugging me. I don't think it's my best work either and it wouldn't have been posted if Ben hadn't commented. If I write more, I'll post more.

 

It wouldn't have been posted had I not commented? What about the fact that it was pending challenge? What about that, T?

 

I thought it was interesting. I guess it just seemed to taper off, since it ended without really moving into another direction. I like the description of the personified, female death. I thought that was good, and vastly different from a stereotypical depiction of death as a black hooded skeleton or something that's been done and redone countless times. This was bizarre enough that I could see it going somewhere, but also weird enough that it could easily taper away. Your call, T, but I wasn't disappointed.

[Tiana Calthye]

It wouldn't have been posted because this is an unfinished first draft which I tossed in favor of a different approach which is about half done at the moment.

 

Your challenge WILL still be met. I just didn't like the philosophical rambling of this one all that much.

 

And the next version also has a personified female Death.