Filed to story: Sorry Alpha I Am Wolfless Novel
The next person that was closest to me was the man with the leash. He had looked so sad and lonely when he had been walking around aimlessly. I tried to look beyond the rage filling him and see the man beneath that false mask.
He was maybe in his early forties or late thirties. He wasn’t too old, and he was a decently handsome man. I briefly wondered if he had a family that he had left behind. I didn’t dwell too long though. I just put my hand to his head and started to watch the important parts of his life like I had with Franny.
This man seemed to be happy and in love with a young woman that was always smiling at him. In those images he was younger as well. They got married and started a family. They had a daughter that looked like his wife, and he seemed to be a wonderful and doting dad.
I smiled as I watched him give his little girl everything over the first few years of her life. She was spoiled, but she still seemed to be such a sweetheart. When the girl was about two, the family got a puppy and the girl loved him so much.
From there all the images I saw had the dad, the daughter, and the puppy. They were always going to the park or just walking around the neighborhood. It was nice.
One day, when the girl was about five, they were on a walk. The dog’s leash broke at the clasp and he took off running toward the street. The dog made it to the other side in the blink of an eye, but the little girl had started to run after her dog, right into the middle of the busy street.
The dad, seeing this, ran after his daughter. He managed to get her out of danger at the last second, but he wasn’t so lucky. He died protecting his daughter. He died a hero. I could tell that the man’s love for his family was what had kept him in this place. He had died instantly when he was hit in the street, so he actually didn’t know if his daughter had been saved. Because of that he was doomed to walk aimlessly around the street he had died on, looking for her forever.
“I can see beyond your death. Just seconds past it, but it’s there. She lived. She wasn’t hurt that day. You saved her. And when she moves onto the next life, I am sure that she is looking forward to thanking her daddy for saving her life. You should go there to wait for her. Go and be happy and watch over her from your paradise.”
I watched the lonely father’s eyes sparkle with tears. He was happy to hear that his daughter had not died. That was all that had been holding him here. He didn’t want to abandon her here. He was a good man.
His passage to the afterlife was quicker than Franny’s had been. His light engulfed him sooner and he disappeared from in front of me.
I repeated this process again when I went to the woman that had been sitting on the bench, waiting for the bus that was never going to come for her. She had a life that was harder than a lot of people’s. Still, she rose up and made it to the point where she could do whatever she wanted and didn’t need to rely on people.
The day that she died, she had been waiting for the bus to take her to an interview at a famous architect’s office. She was applying for her dream job and refused to accept anything but success.
While she sat on the bench, reading a book while waiting for her bus, a drunk driver had left a bar down the street. He immediately lost control, confusing the gas pedal and brake pedal, and ran right into the woman and several others that had been waiting. She wasn’t the only person who lost their life that day, but she was the only one still here. She had been so determined to get that job that she never stopped waiting for the bus that would take her there.
“Dreams come true when you’re a good person. You are not doomed to live in purgatory. You will do what you love when you move from this place. There is nothing that should be holding you back. You’re stronger than that. Rise above it and be your own boss.” The woman smiled and nodded at my words. She seemed to appreciate that. After having relived her life through the images that I saw, she seemed ready to move on. She, like the man, disappeared quickly. She moved on from her limbo and transitioned to her next stop.
I was helping these people. That was what I needed to do. If I could help them all find peace and move on, then there would be no one left for Hekate to send after me. At least, not in this part of the underworld. While I was in this particular area, she would be rendered powerless.
One by one I went to the others to help them. Those three teenagers that had been walking together had all been murdered. All three of them had been murdered in almost the exact same place and by the exact same person.
The first boy, who had been killed in the seventies, had been the man’s first victim. The second boy, killed in the eighties, had been his twelfth. And the last boy had been his next to last victim. He had been killed just after the turn of the millennium.
The murderer, a man that owned a shop on that street, had targeted the boys and his other victims, after they had been customers of his. He killed them shortly after their orders had been finalized and they were on their way home. He had been a prominent and upstanding citizen, so he had never been a suspect until the last victim, who he mistakenly left alive. The girl that lived told the police everything and he had finally been brought to justice. I was able to see all of this even though the boys had died long before the conclusion of the case. All they needed to know though, was that they had received their justice. That was all it took to help them move on.. They smiled as their lights took them out of the bindings and into their afterlife.
****
Riviana
****
One by one I went to the others. I don’t know what to call what I was doing exactly. All I knew was that these people were moving on and finding peace and that was making me feel so much better.
There had been almost two dozen souls that had come after me when Hekate had issued her command to them. Nearly two dozen people that she threatened with her eternal damnation. She wasn’t able to do that though. I wasn’t going to let her. She wouldn’t ruin their afterlife anymore than she would get out of hell.
Person after person. Soul after soul. I got closer to being safe and moving on from this place as well. As long as Hekate sent these people after me, I myself was stuck in limbo. I was a living being that was stuck in the in between.
And to make matters worse, with each person that I freed from this place, the air around me got colder. It was like the air was reflective of Hekate’s mood. I knew that she was pissed off at me for foiling her plans to get my soul.
The moment that the last person was freed of their binding, having moved onto their eternal happiness which involved painting murals, Hekate screamed in frustration. Her voice once again sounded like carrion birds that had taken flight for a particularly juicy piece of roadkill. Man, that was creepy.
“DAMN YOU!” She screeched the words so loud that I felt like they were spoken right into my ear instead of from the entire space surrounding me. “YOU HAVE ONCE AGAIN RUINED EVERYTHING, RIVIANA! YOU HAVE DESTROYED MY PLANS!” She seemed to be breathing heavily enough for it to be called hyperventilating. The frustration, anger, fear, loathing, whatever it was that you wanted to call what she was feeling, it made her sound as if she were shaking uncontrollably.
“And I am glad that I ruined it for you, Hekate. You don’t need to be toying with people like that. You are an evil, sadistic, psychotic, bat shit crazy bitch.” OK, that insult wasn’t the greatest, but at least it was true.
“You will pay. Mark my words, you mongrel scum. You will pay for foiling my plans. I will destroy you, and then the world.” I couldn’t believe that she was still thinking that was a possibility.
“Go ahead and try, Hekate. Go ahead and try to get out of here. I will stop you.”
There was no response to my words. It felt to me like Hekate had disappeared from the vicinity. Even the atmosphere, and not just the temperature, felt better with her being out of this place. I could breathe easier and the goosebumps had left my arms and neck.
“Finally.” I sighed and nearly collapsed to the ground in relief.
I couldn’t let myself get too relaxed, though. I had just been through one major attack that had been thrown at me by an evil Goddess bent on destroying the world. Letting myself do anything aside from taking this seriously would literally be like signing my own death certificate. Mine and everyone that I love.
Without showing my vulnerability, exhaustion, or anything else that would be seen as a weakness, I jogged over to the three little imp boys that I had been protecting. The moment that I got close enough to them, I removed the barrier and then the bubbles of heat from around them.
“Are you alright?” I knew that they were OK physically, but I needed to ask about emotionally and mentally as well. They may be imps, but they were still living creatures.
Not a single one of them spoke. It was the same as every time I had spoken to them before. They nodded at me but didn’t speak. The one that had cried when we first got here, because he had been hurt, hugged me around my waist when I asked him if he was ok. He seemed to be more affectionate and clingy than the other two were.
I found all of that adorable, but I couldn’t dwell on it for too long. We had a lot of work to do between now and when I finally found Hekate in her prison cell. I needed to talk to the other me as well as them. I needed to figure out how I was going to destroy a Goddess that was already living in the underworld. In truth, is there even a way to do that?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I will work really, really hard to figure it out. I would do what it took to come out on top and save the world. This one and the other one.
