For the Sky to Turn Red

I was running.
I had been running for a long time, too long.
I had been running since I was last at the sea, and now I reached a new one.
I wept into the ocean, and vomited all into it as I wept. I kept vomiting until I had nothing left inside of me.
I kept crying as I lay there, for there was nothing left for me, and never would be.
I couldn’t do the one thing I should to give myself a normal life. What she would have wanted, what they all would have wanted.
So I cried into the sea.
I was alone here. I had nothing on me but my robe, my Scythe, and the Key, Which wasn’t that bad when you got right down to it.
I kept crying for some time, but finally I was all cried out.
I wasn’t wearing shoes, not that it mattered, if it did I couldn’t have run this far.
Kneeling on the rocky beach I screamed up at the sky, it showed a promise, it showed a lie.
I fell asleep on the rocky beach, I don’t know for how long I slept, but it was sunrise when I awakened.
There was no one near this place, it was isolated and undesirable, which is exactly what I wanted for now.
I needed to think, there had to be a way to fight back, somehow there always was if you could pay the price.
Sometimes it wasn’t worth it, but I had nothing left to lose.
I got up. The tears on my face had dried.
“RED!” I screamed to the open sky.
You will know what that means.
Remember it.


I did my morning exercises, I had fallen out of practice but this would be a good way to focus myself.
I started out by breathing, again and again I breathed in and out until the world itself seemed to follow the rhythm of my breathing, I sped I up, but as I did I ordered the world away from me, or myself away from it.
I felt the world around my slow down, or at least that is what it was to me.
I ran up and down the beach, I went faster and faster as I did so, much faster than any human could run.
It was one advantage I had, and my greatest one.
I practiced with my Scythe, cutting off tree branches and cutting the sand, always making sure not to catch the Scythe on anything.
I didn’t want to tear my arm off.
I danced like this for just over an hour, it was peaceful, almost normal for me.
Finally I stopped, holding the Scythe above my head for a moment before dropping it.
I was never going to fence with it. Anything that could fence with me could kill me before I raised my Scythe.
The Scythe had only one purpose, to kill, to murder those lesser than you for good or ill, and it was all that I needed it to do.
I was setting out for New York today, it was the center of this country’s mind, it was the only place I could do what I needed to do, which was to slaughter everyone I met until something stopped me.
Not the best plan of course, but the only one I had.
I started running, soon I found a town, the highway signs had said I was in Maine, this was on the other side of the nation I had ran across, which was where I wanted to be.
At a glance I am human, my heart beats like yours does, I am warm to the touch, and no doctor could find anything to say differently, unless I run.
When I run I am faster than anything land based in the world, and most airplanes and submarines, I have power inside me, which can be used for good or ill.
I chose ill today as I slashed a man in the street.
The cut wasn’t deep, he should have lived a long and healthy life even after I slashed him, but he fell to the ground dead.
I couldn’t have easily killed him with the Scythe, if I had got it caught on a bone I could have had my arm broken or worse, but I have more than one power, as does my Scythe.
It was my father’s.
Now with only a simple cut on his arm the man was dead, if he had a family it would grieve for him, their lives would never be the same, neither would mine.
But don’t worry about them. I would probably kill them today.
I moved hundreds of times faster than anyone in the world, slashing and cutting and dashing and screaming silently about the town, killing all the while.
“RED!” I screamed again, tearing the town with my cry.
I came to a glass door, a supermarket was here, I could see the people behind them, I was moving to faster to dodge or survive hitting it, there was no way I could have survived if I hadn’t turned into crimson smoke.
I moved under the doorway pressed flatter than a pancake and ran through the aisles killing my way through them, returned to human form.
Half an hour later I was done, everyone in the town I could find was dead, I had searched every house and found many, and all were now dead except for those hiding under beds and such.
I had killed everyone.
I felt empty, though not as bad as I did last night, compared to that emptiness was a blessing
I ran to the center of town and pulled out a large golden key, and in the center of town I wrote a letter in the asphalt of the street.
“None of us want this, I want to reverse it, I am looking for the one who can.”
“If you can stop this, either through killing me or raising the dead, go to New York City tomorrow morning, I will be there.”
“See you all very soon.”
“RED DEATH.”
I ran from the town, in case it was nuked by a panicky government.
That was the only thing that had a good chance of getting me.




Sometime later I was watching the news. Sometimes the government might be able to cover it up, but not something like this.
Thousands had died, low thousands of course, but still so many.
Over a hundred had survived by hiding, and they had called for every conceivable kind of help, I had torn through the Masquerade in a single bloody stroke.
That worried me, if nothing had stopped it yet nothing could stop it, everything had to care about not being known, or else they would be known in some way, or too weak to be of much notice.
Now would be the perfect time, maybe the only time, to save themselves from witch-hunts and genocides that will follow my action, but so far they were all too stupid to do it.
If you have the power to raise the dead, or make people forget about them, you show yourself now, not when the fires are burning and they are out for your blood.
But nothing in this entire God-Forsaken world had stepped forward.
Well New York is next, and they will have to step forward then.