It was raining, large drops that stung and they hit loudly against the priests single umbrella. There was nobody else but me as the coffin lowered into the hole. This was the third funeral in as many months. First, my father Walter, then my brother Shane, now my mother Edith. They weren't my real family anyway, they adopted me five years ago. Before them I was in a foster home, but that burned down and I was the only one to survive. Before the foster home was my real parents who died when our car went off a bridge into a frozen river.
I was the only one at the funeral other than the priest and as I walked the two miles back too my house my fists clinched harder and harder until the cold no longer bit and I lost the feeling of the rain running through my hair. I was walking under a bridge next go the railroad tracks, only a few miles from the Brooklyn City limits, when I bumped into a man. He was wearing a very nice black suit, with a tie the color of blood, his face was very pale and in the darkening evening light the veins in his face seemed to pulse red. But his eyes were the most unsettling, they seemed to be nine rings the outer most of which was a bright glowing red which eventually became black at the center ring. He spoke and his voice chilled me to the bone, it had the quality not at all dissimilar from that of a snake.
"Hello Anien how was the funeral?"
"What how did you know..." but he cut me off.
"I know a lot about funerals... When, how,.... why. You have gone to several in your life. And you will go to many more, but I am here to give you an offer not a riddle."
"And what offer would that be?"
"Well I am in need of someone to help me around my home, in return I will return several lost items to you."
"What items are you offering exactly?" I said raising an eyebrow quizzically. In answer he reached into his shirt and removed a piece of cloth, as he splayed the cloth over his hand the image of a family appeared, my family.
"What are you offering?" My voice was tainted with conflicting, boiling emotions that competed to control my voice, but I stayed calm and kept my voice even.
"Your family, in full and all you have to do is sign this." He removed a scroll and a feather quill from his suit. I took them both and put the contract on a ledge to sign.
"This pen doesn't use ink its just a feather. What do I do with it?" He took the feather and cut my hand with the sharp point then gave me back the pen dripping in my blood. Then I signed the contract.
When I woke the next morning it was to a voice I hadn't heard in years. It was my mothers voice, she was blathering on about some outrageous  gas tax as I sat up in bed. I was lying on the small bed in my small apartment. My father was sitting next to an even smaller coffee table reading the paper. My brother sat next to him reading the comic section of the same paper. I jumped out of bed with a jolt and the excitement nearly made me trip as I did so. I ran in the bathroom and got dressed. As I did so, tears ran down my face and I wiped them quickly away. When I stepped out my Mom was holding a empty milk jug,
"No milk, your Father can't make pancakes without milk, could you run down the street and get some please?" I grabbed my coat eagerly and hurried down the stairs and outside. I was more than willing to have time to process what happened. My mind flicked through a dozen explanations for how my family could be alive again but none of them mattered. I turned into the convenience store at the corner of my street and grabbed a jug of milk out of a refrigerator. As I gave the clerk my money my hand brushed against his hand. He paled and the color drained from his face.
"Wow sir your hand is very cold..." Then he fell to the floor and grabbed at his left arm, his breathing quickened and then stopped altogether. I stared completely immobile while he died on the floor. Then I stumbled backwards and out the door, as other people rushed to aid the old clerk. I burst out into the cold and knocked over a women walking her dog. The women tripped backwards as I hit her, she fell into the street and a bus slammed into her. Her dog walked over to her body and wined pathetically. Then I ran, down the street, into my building, and in my apartment. With the recent events I had completely forgotten about my family. My mother saw the look of horror on my face and stepped forward, laying a hand on arm.
"Are you ok honey, what's wrong?"
"Ya you look like you've seen a ghost." This from my Dad as he slapped my shoulder with a gruff hand. Then my little brother stepped forward and took the milk out of my shaking hands. My grip was so tight that he had to pry my fingers off the handle. The looks of concern around me calmed me to the point I regained my senses. This was good because my sense of smelled picked up the cent of gas at that moment, out if the corner of my eye I saw my brother light the stove.
The explosion was immense, disproportionate to the amount of time the gas could gave been on. But that didn't stop the fire ball from melting my families skin off their bones and destroying the floor below us so we fell several feet to the ground floor. But even as the fire consumed the building around me I stood cold as ice watching every second with unblinking eyes. I watched my family burn around me, but fate had been crueler than that, the whole building burned down and twelve other innocent people died for no reason.
A quarter of an hour later I was back under the bridge, my clothes were singed but oddly enough my skin was burned to the bone in places and yet I felt no pain. I screamed into the darkness lamenting my family, taken so soon after I got them back.
"Where are you!"
"So you discovered your new talents I see." The man had stepped out of the shadows like some long forgotten ghost.
"You lied to me, you said I would have my family back."
"Judging by their remains on your.... , he paused searching for the right word, body you did have them back, and for a lot longer than I expected."
"Shut Up! How do I stop this! How do I go back to normal!" As the anger in my words escalated and my rage came out in full fury the various fires on my body light again.
"Do you know the story of the Exodus, the tenth plague that ... he sent against Egypt was the Angel of death, but he had a predecessor. Before the fall of man, the first angel of death was mighty and powerful like his successor, but the fall brought him low he descended into the underworld with me. He was weakened by his replacement at the hands of... of his previous master. He was never again able to marshal himself in his own form again and so I go from mortal to mortal and give them the gift of his spirit. There is no way to remove it, you are now Harbinger... The Harbinger of Death."
I rushed forward and grabbed the man by his shoulders lifting him high off the ground, but nothing happened... no heart attack, no gas explosion. He began, instead, to laugh loudly and mockingly.
"What I didn't tell you is what my name is, all thou I suppose you might guess. Regardless, you have no power over me for I am your master and you, a tool to be used at my command." And with that he disappeared into the shadows.
I could only think of one thing to do, one place I might find refuge in. There was a church barely three blocks away. As I walked my rage built, a stray cat lost its life to a pick up truck as I walked but I hardly noticed. I walked by a store window and saw my reflection in the window. My skin had turned gray and seemed to shimmer, no it was something else not me but something around me. I turned my head away not wanting to see what I had become. I rounded a corner and saw the church, I began to walk up the stairs to the doors, but after each step I moved slower and slower until some invisible force kept me from moving at all. I yelled at the sky and tore at the ground, it was then I noticed deep black clouds moving in over the city thunder boomed in the distance. I could not help thinking this storm was my doing, some battle between good and evil was brewing and this storm was to be part of the climax.
"Excuse me sir are you alright?" It was a priest, the one who had been at the funeral with me this morning, his face knit in concern as he reached out a hand to rest on my shoulder.
"No!" But it was to late, yet nothing seemed to happen. I sighed mightily, then a crucifix on a chain swung out from the priest's shirt and I caught a glimpse of it.
"No you're not alright sir?"
"No, no I am alright it's just... Aaaha it doesn't matter I... I would like to ask your advice father... I want advice about my sins." The Priest nodded his head understandingly and lead me inside, but I stopped outside the threshold of the church pausing in thought.
"I would rather we talked out here on the steps father."
"Alright." He sat next to me on the steps and we sat watching the traffic rush by for several moments before I spoke.
"Father, I have let myself be tricked into a situation I can't escape. I... I want to be forgiven for the choice I made... For the people I've killed and all the people I think I am about to."
"God forgives all sins if we are truly sorry but I can't forgive you for a sin you plan on committing in the future because if you plan on sinning again that means you are not sorry for these sins."
"But, what if it's out of my control I hold people's lives in my hands but I can't control how I handle them."
"Every single person is given a choice sometime in their life, they can choose to accept the choice that God has given them and allow God to guide their path, or they can hide from the choice and try and escape their fate. So will you face your enemy or run from it."
"But what if I can't defeat it."
"Then perhaps you don't know what your real enemy is." His words suddenly struck home and I stood and started walking down the street. The priest didn't protest, but he watched me as I disappeared into the distance. I walked back to the store window and looked at my reflection. I felt a coldness creep up from my chest and my eyes hazed over.
Suddenly I was somewhere else, some when else, the land around me changed and people rushed by. I recognized it as the graveyard I was at this morning. Around me I watched hundreds of people be buried, thousands of people crying for the people they had lost. Each scene sped by in fast forward and each and every ounce of the pain and grief these people felt was my pain the pain built in my chest, in my soul, as it grew. I collapsed to my knee's and I saw in front of me, the three tombstones of my Mother, Father, and Brother. Then my pain joined the rest and it burst out of me in a wave. It rushed out in a cloud of darkness and stood behind me.
"You seek my end... You are not the first of my host who has sought my destruction and I am still here.. Give up mortal and this pain will not last... it will as you will fade in its own time, when I have no more use for you." It's voice was terror incarnate and seemed to be the voice of dozens upon dozens of people, like millions of people's cries of pain morphed into words that broke my spirit as they crashed down on me.
"Why? Why would I surrender to the fate every living thing fears? Why should I allow death to control me? Why should I be forced to punish the good as well as the evil. Why should I be the man I between life and death? I will not be a herald, harbinger, nor an angel. I am only a free man, who is free of you." Death just laughed he threw his spectral head back and roared at the black sky.
"Fine, but to be free of me you must join your victims in the pit." And that when I saw it, the scene of thousands of funerals, had continued threw our conversations but now I saw more; not all, but some of the coffins had extra cargo. Shadowy figures thrashed in the coffins as they lowered into the ground, fighting to escape the fate they had been doomed to suffer.
"Feel their agony it will make you strong. It is their suffering that fuels us, we exist because of their sins." Death's words barely registered, I was not listening instead I walked to one of the many coffins being lowered into the ground. The hole that had been dug for this coffin glowed red and screams of horror came from it. I reached my hand through the coffin and placed my hand on the chest of the thrashing soul inside. His pain rushed into me like a river, then came his anger, next fear, finally I felt only a sense of contentment his acceptance of the fate he had been given and remorse for the sins that had caused him to be condemned to perdition. Then these feelings over whelmed me until they drove out the pain.
  "I may be death's tool but perhaps you don't know what death truly is!" And with that statement of defiance I leaped forward and thrust my hand into Death's incorporeal chest. I let the contentment, remorse, and defiance that was so built up inside of me flow into him. He screamed in fury and the shadows that made up his body shook. I looked around and saw that the souls in the coffins had calmed they lay peacefully. I felt this scene slipping away and suddenly I was back in the rain in front of the store. My face was back to normal, but I could still see the shadowy form of Death in front of me. The specter began to move fleeing from something I did not see. Then I saw the priest I had spoken to earlier standing in front of Death which stood as a ghostly form in the rain, he put out his hand and grabbed death by the head and forced it to its knees. It was then I noticed that the priests eyes we're glowing an abnormal shade or bright blue and his whole body glowed.
"This is a fight beyond you, beyond even me, I can only hold him for a few more seconds so you have to choose. When I let him go he will return to his master and simply find another host." As he said these words the priest's black shirt and collar changed into a white robe and wings could clearly be seen folded behind his back. His words struck home and I realized what I had to do. There was really only one choice I could make. I could not condemn someone else to the fate I had already suffered. I had already lost and there was nothing else for me to do.
I had crumbled to my knees but as I stood the rain began to pour down around me. I stepped forward and placed my hand on Death's chest.
"Let him go... I've got this." The angel released his grip and Death stood and faced me, my hand still on his chest. Then he was gone, I felt the cold chill of evil inside of me and I knew I was bound by him once again.
"What do I do now." I asked the angel.
"I believe you still have some role to play before your story is done for good or ill. My master wouldn't have you suffer through this needlessly. However, before I go, there is something you should know. That thing inside of you has the power to kill by using it is power over you, it is in your restraint that it's power is kept in chains." And with those final words he was gone and I was left standing in the rain.
Even to this day I can still feel that rain beating down on me, except it isn't water beating down on me it's Death trying to beat its way out. Someday it will, just not yet.