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    Jericho awoke, shaking from his nightmare. He had always had night terrors, they never made sense to him. "Just nightmares." He'd say, and go back to sleep to enter another, hopefully more pleasant dream. They were usually of things most people feared, nothing that would really be worried about. This one was different though. In it he found himself alone with a faceless man, he was talking to him, conversing about life and death, and in it made a deal. A deal to live forever, a pact he knew not of the price.

    He couldn't sleep after his dream, so he had gone downstairs to make some coffee. While it brewed he returned upstairs to check on his nine year old daughter Rose. She was sleeping soundly, as she should be at 5am. He smiled and walked in, replacing the sheet over her that she had kicked off in her sleep. Jericho went back downstairs and poured a cup of coffee, turned the radio on, and sat at the kitchen table. He listened to the music play as he drank his coffee until suddenly thunder crashed and he got up, walking to the window and looking outside. It was storming hard then, and Jericho knew it wouldn't be letting up anytime soon.

    The lights flashed, and then it went dark, all the power had gone out, the city went in shadow, the sun not yet rising. Jericho saw a large flash and watched as lightning struck his car in the driveway, then the tree, and again in the yard. He ran to the stairs and started up, knowing that the noise would wake Rose. He made it half way up and lightning struck again, shaking the house and causing Jericho to fall. He landed at the bottom of the stairs, arm broken and unconscious.

    He woke up an unknown amount of time later when he felt himself floating. His house had started to flood, and no sooner had he woken up he heard Rose screaming, crying in pain for her daddy. Jericho stood and climbed the stairs, despite all pain, and ran in her room.

    "Rose!" Jericho shouted, then he felt his blood run cold, he saw his daughter still lying in bed with one of the support beams to the roof on top of her. Jericho came to his senses and grabbed the beam, shifting it enough to get it off of most of her.

    "She isn't going to die from this, she will be in pain, and suffer always, but it wont kill her. She'll be crippled for the rest of her life, and you... you will die here today." said a voice, seemingly from nowhere.

    Jericho scanned the room, his eyes fell upon a man, standing in the corner, facing away from him. "Who are you?" he asked, in a mix of fear, shock, and anger.

    "Me? Why I am simply a messenger," the figure said as it slowly began to turn, Jericho went pale, the figure had no face, iit was the man from his nightmare. "I bear you a proposition, end your daughters suffering, kill her with this knife and you shall also live forever as reward for your deed." The figure held out a dagger, its blade black and twisted, the handle carved from marble and reinforced with gold.

    Jericho was hesitant, he stared back at the man and didn't move, didn't speak, just stared.

    The figure pushed it forward, placed it in Jericho's hand, and vanished saying "The rest is in your hands now, do as you will."

    Jericho stood there, feeling empty, crying as he listened to Rose's suffering. He raised the knife, thinking over his future, his daughter's future, and the dark promise of eternal life.

    "I'm sorry Rose, I don't want you to suffer..." Jericho said, crying as he started to bring the knife down, suddenly he felt his arm stop, held back by something, again he wasn't alone...

    He stood there, frozen in fear as Deaths cold skeletal fingers tightened around his wrist. The hooded presence reached inside his robe, producing from its eternal shadow an hourglass, filled with blood red sand. The bottom had only just begun to receive sand from the nearly full upper half. Jericho's eyes focused on a tarnished gold plate upon the base. The unholy manifestation took its finger and wiped the gold, restoring it to its former golden glow. Jericho's face showed horror as he read the engraved name scratched into it, "Rose Nevar", his daughter's name, and then it spoke.

    "It is not yet her time to pass, be forewarned that it is unwise to force open the gate of death, for it may not shut."

    Jericho's ears bled from the unnatural voice speaking to him. He forced a motion, and with such the shadow released his arm. It flew forward, the knife embedding itself into Rose's neck, her hourglass shattered.Grains of sand tore Jericho's skin as they filled the room, leaving Death's robe in tattered remains as well.

    Jericho fell to his knees, bleeding from each new cut as the dust settled. A skeleton filled with a horrible green glow stood before him now, the unholy light consuming all things.

    "Your path has been altered, and the light removed from your heart," the abomination whispered, "you will fade from life but will not be granted death as you have defied my word."

    The room crashed down around them, the house which sat in the big city now alone in nothingness. Only dark stood now, and with the raise of a skeletal hand, the Shadow of Death had vanished.

    Rose's corpse sat up and stared with an empty, soulless set of eyes. She remained motionless, as if a doll, not breathing, blinking, or shifting in the slightest form.

    "Why daddy, why have you stabbed me, why..." her voice trailed off as if she never said anything at all, while she remained staring emptily at him.

    Jericho fell, grasping his skull, crying out in pain. He was responsible for the heartless flesh in front of him. She stood, walking slowly towards him, the air itself seemed as if she wasn't there forcing her way through it.

    "R...Rose... I..." he began, forcing words through the dense air, cut off by the passage of Rose, right through his body.

    A black marble door appeared behind him, opening slowly as she walked towards its arriving emptiness. Jericho jumped to his feet, turning around quickly to see.

    Rose approached the door, it standing at least 20 feet above her, and a white smoke started to seep out and envelop her. The knife fell from Rose's body and stuck into the ground. Her wound healed before his eyes and she stepped forward towards the opening gate to an unknown realm. Jericho reached forward and tried to grab Rose's arm, only to be met with air, his hand went right through. She walked into the mist inside the gateway and began to fade.

    "Goodbye Daddy," she said, giving a slow glance back at Jericho as both her and the gate disappeared.

    Jericho broke into tears, crying until he had nothing left. "I see now, I am in Death's prison... my eternity is sealed in this hell I caused," he said, standing in nothing, fading to nothing. Darkness was all the remained.

    Many years passed in Jericho's haunting prison. His physical being long since gone, only his soul remained in the darkness, and it too had become empty. Eternity seemed as though it would indeed last forever, his sentence had to be served out in solitude.

    His keeper played games with him, taunting him with an ominous gate, the same gate he had seen before, the gate out. Jericho knew not where it led, but simply that it was a way to leave this prison. He reached it once, he found it closed. Another time, it's doors open wide, he made his way inside. It led him through a hallway of mist. His body reconfigured as he walked, flesh reconnecting to bone, skin attaching to muscle, his physical being returned. At the end of the tunnel was a similar gate, only of white marble instead of the ominous black. Jericho tried with all his might, thinking this eternity was over, he forced the door and threw himself inside, caring not where it led. He should have. Jericho landed, or rather crashed to the ground, where he lay looking back at the gate, still open. Tears fell from his eyes, he saw now where he was. The inside of the gate was white marble, the outside black. Jericho had fallen where he had began, tricked by Death for it's own amusement, to decay all over again.

    Only until all hope was lost did time pass. Jericho's only motion was to try and sleep again and again. The gate would appear, but he no longer tried for it, knowing there was no escaping Death's design. From time to time he would cry out for Death, he begged to be granted death, only to be met with silence each time. Until....

    "What must I do to be granted death...," Jericho strained to say, "how can I earn your pity?"

    To this Death responded, his first words to Jericho since hes imprisonment. "To die one must have life, thou does not."

    "Then give me life so that I may find death!" Jericho shouted coarsely.

    "Thou wishes life to die, how ironic." Death's response was harsh, true it may be.

    "Yes, I beg of you, grant me life, and allow me to die..." Jericho was on his knees, kneeling before emptiness, begging Death for life. The gate appeared, out of it poured the white mist, along with a green glow, It was coming.

    The gate opened all the way, the doors seeming to break. Death walked through the mist, carrying a scythe, dripping with fresh blood. In his other hand, however, was an hourglass. On it was a blank gold plate, and inside wasn't a single grain of sand.

    "It is a blank life," Death said, holding the empty hourglass up to Jericho, "do you want it to be yours?"

    Jericho stood, blank faced, unable to speak for moments, then when he realized that it may not be another trick he said, "Yes, please allow it to be mine, let me live once more!"

    "It shall cost a life, your debt paid to me until you earn another, and so this shall be yours." Death explained, extending his arm and pointing through the gate.

    Jericho need not answer, he started towards the gate, upon reaching it he stood still, unsure if this was another of Death's games. Then he pushed on anyways and was drawn in as he walked, led like a moth to flame. His body did not return to him this time, it instead disintegrated, his soul itself falling to pieces.

    At the end he found a simple door and opening it he found light, Jericho vanished into this light, born unto Sarah Witchelm who died giving birth. In Deaths lair the top half of the hourglass filled with blood, turning to sand, and the gold plate filled in with the name "Allen Witchelm", all as the doctor proclaimed "Its a boy!"