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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/myrasam79 on 2024-11-10 06:31:21+00:00.

Life is a fragile, flickering ember in a vast, indifferent night. I’d always thought about how easily it could be snuffed out—how quickly it could slip between the cracks. Death was never far from my mind; it wasn’t something I feared but something I felt an uneasy kinship with, as if the darkness had always been waiting, just outside my peripheral vision. Maybe it was because of the countless funerals, the whispered condolences, and the heavy, solemn silences that had clung to my childhood like a damp, suffocating fog. Or maybe, it was the grim fascination that bloomed in my chest each time I read about some poor soul’s end in the morning paper.

You grow up hearing the clichés: “Life is short,” “You never know when your time will come.” But they don’t prepare you for how trivial, how fragile, it all really is. I found myself dwelling on these thoughts even more the day I saw my reflection staring back at me from a store window, the tired eyes, the sunken cheeks. I almost didn’t recognize myself, like I was staring at a stranger caught in some private, wordless agony. It should’ve been a wake-up call, but it felt like a bad omen.

That day, the air was thick with the scent of rain and gasoline. I drove my rusted old car along the stretch of highway that cut through town, thinking about the time I had wasted, the jobs I had lost, the friendships that had dried up. There was an ache inside me, deep and gnawing, a frustration with the shape of my life and the endless, gnawing emptiness that nipped at my heels.

The rain started softly at first, just a gentle pattering on the windshield, but it grew into a torrential downpour, a curtain of water that turned the road into a river. I barely noticed when I passed the turnoff for home—my thoughts had drifted too far away. The music in the car was playing some melancholy tune, the lyrics washing over me without sinking in. Maybe it was that distraction, or maybe it was just fate, but I never saw the truck until it was too late.

The headlights came out of nowhere, blinding and hot, cutting through the rain. I slammed the brakes, but they locked, tires shrieking against wet asphalt. The car spun, my body lurching forward as if trying to escape the inevitable. The impact was violent—a crunching, splintering explosion of metal and glass. My head snapped back, and my body folded around the steering wheel like a rag doll.

In that moment, everything became a blur of red and black, a whirlpool of pain that seared through my ribs and snapped through my bones like brittle twigs. The air was filled with the coppery scent of blood, mingling with the acrid stench of burning rubber and engine oil. Glass shards bit into my skin, burying themselves in my face, my arms—tiny, gleaming teeth that tore through flesh and left me choking on my own breath.

The pain was all-consuming, an unending tide that crashed over me, pulling me down into a deep, endless cold. My vision dimmed, narrowing to a dark tunnel as the world outside the shattered windshield blurred into nothingness. I felt my pulse slowing, a sluggish rhythm, like a drumbeat fading into the distance.

For a moment, I thought that was it—that I’d finally reached the end of whatever strange and unremarkable story my life had been. But then, in that fading twilight, I saw something—something that shouldn’t have been there. A figure, standing just beyond the cracked glass, watching. A silhouette framed in the haze of rain, unmoving, like it had been waiting all along.

My last thought before slipping under was absurdly clear: I knew that face. I’d seen it before, somewhere—maybe in a reflection, maybe in a dream. But that realization faded, swallowed by the cold darkness that took me in its arms.

The world returned slowly, first as a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed through every inch of my body, then as a suffocating, metallic taste in my mouth. Consciousness crept in, unwelcome and hazy, dragging me back from the comforting, indifferent darkness I had drifted in. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the shattered remnants of my car, the highway strewn with glass and twisted metal, maybe even flashing lights or concerned faces. But there was nothing. Just a strange, cold quiet.

I was lying in a bed—a stiff, unfamiliar one, like those cheap motel beds with too-thin sheets and a mattress that smelled faintly of antiseptic. The walls were bare, no windows, no light except for a dim glow that seemed to have no source. It was as if the room itself exhaled a faint, sickly luminescence, barely enough to see by. I tried to move my arm, to test if I was still whole, but even that slight shift brought a fresh wave of pain, sharp and biting, cutting into my bones.

Then, out of the silence, I became aware of another presence. I hadn’t heard footsteps, hadn’t felt any shift in the air, but I knew I was no longer alone. A figure stood by the foot of my bed, half shrouded in the murky darkness that swallowed the edges of the room. My heart pounded, a sickening thud against my ribs, as my eyes adjusted, taking in the stranger.

He was tall, his frame wrapped in something dark and flowing, almost like shadows had gathered and clung to him. His face was pale, ghostly, and stretched with a tightness that seemed unnatural, as if his skin had been pulled too tightly over the bone beneath. His eyes were deep-set, black as voids, drawing in all the faint light around them. There was no expression in them, no spark of life, just an endless, impenetrable darkness. I knew, in some instinctive way, that this was no doctor, no rescuer.

He said nothing for a long, agonizing moment, simply watching me. The silence stretched until it felt like a physical weight pressing against my chest, making it hard to breathe. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft but unnaturally clear, each word cutting through the stillness with an almost surgical precision.

“You were meant to cross over,” he said, his tone devoid of warmth or malice. Just a statement, as simple and cold as if he were telling me the time. “But you hesitated.”

Hesitated? The word felt absurd, foreign. I hadn’t hesitated; I had been hurled into that blackness, helpless against the pull of whatever lay on the other side. Yet there he stood, as though my very struggle to hold on had somehow defied the order of things.

 “Who… Who are you?” I managed to whisper, but my throat was parched, every word a jagged scrape against my vocal cords.

For a moment, he didn’t answer, his head tilting slightly, as though studying some peculiar creature. “Names matter little here,” he replied, almost a whisper. “But I am what you would call the end. The last sight, the final word.”

The Angel of Death. The thought clawed at the edges of my mind, bringing with it a visceral, primal fear that twisted in my gut. But there was something else there too, something I couldn’t quite understand—a strange feeling, as if I’d seen him before, felt his gaze on me in some hidden moment of my life. Like he had been lingering in the corners of my existence, waiting for the right moment to reach out his cold, unfeeling hand.

“I… I don’t want to die,” I said, the words raw and trembling, a futile plea against the inevitable.

He offered no comfort, no reassurance. Instead, he raised one pale, bony hand and pointed to the far corner of the room. My gaze followed his gesture to an object that hadn’t been there before—a mirror. It loomed large and ominous, leaning against the wall as if it had been waiting for me. Its surface was tarnished and veiled with a haze, the kind of imperfection that spoke of centuries buried in darkness before being exhumed and placed here with deliberate intent.

“In life, you lingered on the edges,” he murmured, his voice distant yet impossibly close. “Staring too long into reflections, watching yourself as though you were an observer instead of a participant. You invited me in long before you realized it.”

A chill crept through my veins, an icy numbness that mingled with the dull haze of pain meds coursing through me. It was an unsettling sensation, as if frost had seeped into my blood, but even the chemical fog clouding my senses couldn’t blunt the oppressive weight of his presence. It was true—I had always felt a strange detachment, an unsettling awareness of my own mortality that had gnawed at me, even in moments of happiness. I had flirted with the concept of death, letting it dance at the edges of my mind, fascinated by the void that seemed both foreign and familiar. But this? This was something else entirely, something that turned my stomach with a sick dread.

“You have been given another chance,” he continued, his gaze returning to me, unblinking, unwavering. “But there is a condition.”

A condition. The words came with a heavy weight, like stones tied around my ankles. “What… what do you mean?”

His gaze flickered toward the mirror again. “Reflections are dangerous things. They hold pieces of us, echoes that can linger and grow, feeding on our fears, our doubts. You will return to your life, but there is a rule you must follow—an unbreakable rule.”

My mind raced, struggling to make sense of his words, to grasp the meaning hidden beneath his expressionless gaze. “W-what… what rule?” I stuttered, my voice barely holding together under the weight of the moment.

He stepped closer, his form blurring slightly as he moved, as if he were made of smoke and shadows. When he spoke, his voice dr…

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