As Good As Dead Novels & Stories

I commanded as I take further steps close to him The grasshoppers disintegrate and Abaddon starts screaming and scratching his face, his body starts emitting black smoke as he falls on his knees and slowly his body vaporizes leaving only a tiny grasshopper and lifeless human. I kill the grasshopper with my feet as I squash it to death. I try to steady my breathing as I turn my focus at Asmodeus “Well that was unprecedented” he sighed “You are the only one left” “Yes isn’t it sad, Mason? Do you wanna know what’s really sad?”

The pain in my neck was gone. I realized I could fly. My body floated through the air as light as a cloud. Drifting upward, I looked down. Below the balcony, a boy in a blue winter coat hung from a strand of bunting. His body was swaying gently in the freezing wind. His face was a bruised purple, and his wide eyes were staring blankly into the distance. Why did he look exactly like me? That was when it hit me. I was dead.

The words slipped softly from my mouth. Then, like a passing breeze, I disappeared. A broken cry echoed through the living room. The world was beautiful. If I get another life... I hope it has a happier ending.

Rotting, skeletal hands burst from the mud, grabbing my ankles and pulling me down. "The Deadlands," Zade roared, his shadows flaring. "She opened a gate to the Deadlands!" Sasha let out a horrific, echoing laugh as she was swallowed by the green mist. The ground gave way entirely, and Zade and I plummeted into a dark, screaming abyss.

Then she walked up to me, viciously grinding her foot into my wound, using my blood as ink to press down her handprint. After finishing all this, she revealed a cruel smile. "Let him go," she ordered the security guards before saying to me, "John, you know? Your look of despair was just like your mother's before she died. On the day I went to court to declare you dead, I deliberately delivered the good news to your mother. Who would have thought that she'd be so frail? She passed away due to a heart attack." Nora did not have an ounce of pity on her face, only provocation.

Only the mess and my battered body remained. As I curled on the icy floor, my phone vibrated. It was a message from Sofia. "Ella, see that? Vincenzo believes me in the end. So what if I lost the baby? I still have him and the entire Camorra family behind me. And you? You're nothing but a cast-off no one wants. A bitch like you deserves to die!" I picked up the phone and typed three words. "As you wish." The moment it was sent, I deleted all our chats and that number I'd had for eight years.

No, no, no— “Cute,” the college boy muttered under his breath, voice shaking. “Real funny.” The intercom laughed. A warped, metallic chuckle. [HELL IS IN RECYCLE MODE] it purred. [YOU WILL ENTER DEAD WORLDS FOR THE AUDIENCE’S ENTERTAINMENT.] My throat felt dry. Dead worlds. Audience. “Entertain—” My voice cracked. [PLEASE DIE BEAUTIFULLY,] the intercom finished, delighted.

“We need to get him to the infirmary now! He can still...he can still...” My voice broke completely because even as I said it, my body already knew. That stillness wasn’t unconsciousness, it was something else. Asher exhaled slowly, like this whole situation was exhausting instead of catastrophic. “That won’t help,” he said. I turned on him fully now, fury blazing through every vein. “What do you mean it won’t...” “He’s already dead.” The world went quiet, not silent but dead like everything had been sucked out of it in one violent pull.

I give them paradise. "At the cost of their existence," Axel said. His dagger was out now, flames flickering along the blade. "They're not living. They're being slowly erased while dreaming about lives they'll never have." *And isn't that better than what you face? Fighting your way to a Core that might not save you? Facing administrators who want you dead? At least here, you die happy.* The buildings around us started to move. The walls rippled like water. The peaceful deadies we'd seen earlier were appearing again but this time their eyes were wrong. Empty. Controlled.

"Is this... a dream?" "No, Darren. I'm with you," I whispered and tried to stroke his face. But when I lifted my hand, I could only see a skeleton. I panicked, but Darren held me in his arms. "I thought it was a bad dream... But how could it be a bad dream... when you're in it..." He said in a soft voice. "Darren, are we dying?" I asked. "I'm already dead, Louisa..." He said and placed my hand in the empty hole in his chest. "But it's OK because you'll still be alive... You and your baby..."