A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths, by Micaela
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Rosanda and Worth were standing in the wind, shrouded almost by the dusk that filled the sparsely wooded area around Rosanda's house. Although he could barely see her, Worth was staring at Rosanda, terrified for them both. Rosanda's husband was holding her fiercely by the arm, and forced her to the ground.

Both men were well aged, beyond twenty but not a year above thirty. Worth was shrouded only by the darkness there, while Rosanda's husband, Narric, was magestically adorned, rage and the right to rage illuminated in the haze of shade. Both men were watching Rosanda, a beautiful and slightly younger blossum.

"For you," Narric growled softly, barely audible. He paused, lifting his eyes from his wife bare on the ground to Worth. "For you, my dear wife," he spoke again, his burning eyes on Worth, "death." With a high arching of his arm, he brought a knife from his tunic to her throat.

Worth screamed out, but she was already dead. The woman he had felt warm against his body a mere moment or two before was dead. He gasped in horror, staring as her husband lowered her gently to the ground.

He fell back, the words of Narric slicing through his thoughts, undeniable. "Would you wish it worse?" he raged softly, "If her deed- your deed!- was known to any other, a stoning would have killed her," he acussed. Narric stopped in his tracts. "For you it will be worse," he muttered in thought.

Worth thought of running, and turned on his heels to do so when Narric shouted, "Stop!"

He turned around to face the source of his current fear and previous envy, helpless.

Narric was not even looking at him, but at a thing below and behind him, and rose his voice to out-match the wind. "For you, a thousand deaths!" he yelled with righteous rage, and did not advance, but held his hands in fists.

Cowardly, Worth ran until his feet gave out underneath him the first time, stumbling over ground they could no longer feel. Having now, more breath to spare for tears, Worth wept bitterly over what he had seen and done; fear still raced in his heart, fooling him into hearing footsteps when there were none. Glancing as best he could through the dark of night, he resolved finally that Narric was left behind.

The dark lightened to prepare for the morning, revealing where blind panic had taken him; he had reached the edge of the woods, and was now facing a slope designed for the death he sought. It was hard to force his legs to once again carry him, but the memory of his lover's death propelled him, and made it easy to drop over the edge.

He felt the full force of death upon him, and entered a stage of emptiness, were awareness was only felt as an absence.

Did suicides go to heaven?
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Awareness returned, defying the afterlife. Worth was in the body he had disgarded, as healthy and bare as the moment Narric had cursed him, and surrounded by a town square. It was the same moment of night that he had left.

"No... Impossible," he declared. "Please, I wanted to die!" he begged the sky, frantic. He shivered, realizing that he had died; after all, he had felt death descend on him, and all the pain that comes with such a death. He began to shake, and whispered to himself, "That's just... one.... One death...."
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A rush from the relative invincibility soon raised the count to ten deaths, with 990 left to go. It was soon realized that there is no painless suicide, and Worth began to envy the normal people around him. Even if their death was painful, they died once. Just once. They didn't live in dread, knowing that when their suffering should have ended on Earth, it would instead begin again, healthy and young as ever, and with more than nine hundred deaths to go.

For his 12th life, Worth discovered that his body would age to a natural death, just to start over again. He began to go mad with time and remembered pain.

"One more one more," he repeated, as if trying to fill an empty void with the sound of his words, as if they would ease the pain of 999 deaths and 999 lives.

He glanced at his naked body, huddled in an alleyway. Scarless. "Scarless," he repeated next. "So many scars." There should have been more than a hundred scars, from previous deaths. He could barely remember his name, but he could remember the sound of Narric's voice when he had cursed him. He could almost remember the reason he had been cursed, but he had sinned so much since then that it was hard to count who, what, or how. Narric's remembered voice sent shivers up his spine, and threw his mind deeper into chaos.

"Help me, help me," he begged someone on the street. When they hesitated to pass him by, he continued, "Kill me please... please...."

The man gaped slightly, filled with horror at the tone of Worth's voice. He started to walk backwards, away from him, then turned and ran. He arrived at a phone booth, and dialed for help. "There's a crazy man in the streets. He asked me to... to kill him!"

The police arrived to find only a dead body, unknown to everyone in town. A man of average hieght, good looks, and perfect health except for the long gash across his throat, his blood lining a shard of glass nearby.

And Narric was thoroughly revenged. Now it was God's turn.

Do suicides go to heaven?
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