Like Death

I did it. I had to. It was a horrible deed, but it needed to be done, to save others from what that thing was.

My stepmother was an angel. Not a literal 'wearing white robes and wings holding a golden harp singing praises to God and Jesus and Bunnies on High' angel. She was from the sky though, just the night one with the stars. She was – well, you know, an alien. She wasn't like those things that came to kill people, God no. She was from the star at the head of Andromeda constellation. Well, a planet revolving around the star, not the star itself. She did mention having heard of people who really were from stars themselves, but she said they were mostly just legends.

Well, at the same time she was an angel. There wasn't a sweeter soul in the world. She wasn't attractive, not in the way supermodels with their skeleton thin frames and pointless Gomorrah-inspired lifestyles are supposed to be. If you didn't know her, know her as a person, you'd think she was plain. She had a lazy eye and it always appeared that she was looking around you, not at you. A little overweight, maybe. But God, if you knew her. Everyone liked her. She was sweet, she was gentle and she always cared.

She wasn't perfect. She worried. She worried that she'd said the wrong thing to someone. She worried about my father, though she tried so hard to hide it. And of course, she worried about me, with all my strange little problems children have. Jokes went over her head, but that was probably a cultural thing, her being an immigrant and all.

My own mother is a bitch, really. I did go through that stage where I was angry at my father for leaving me and mum, until my mother said the most evil thing to my stepmother, right in front of me, and expected me to laugh. That's when I decided I'd rather live with my Dad and stepmum, that's when I understood why he'd left. Even now as she tries to fix our relationship, my answering machine is filled with messages from my mother about how it's mostly my fault anyway. Fine: let it. As long as I don't have to deal with her. Even though my mother treated her terribly, my stepmother tried to make sure my mother and I had a relationship. I'm sorry I couldn't do that for her.

I found out her secret by accident. On the day of the Battle of Canary Wharf, when the ghosts turned into those robot things, my stepmother and I were alone in the house. I was only ten, and that Cybercreature reached forward to grab me as I tried to run out of the house. Then my stepmother broke her secret, and her right hand went straight to its eyes. I saw a white light emanate from her fingertips, and I heard that thing scream. As it fell to the floor, I remember the look of horror on my stepmother's face. She had to tell me then.

Maybe I would have broken and told the world, with public opinion on aliens and all if my Dad hadn't been injured. In all the chaos and panic of that day, my Dad got into an auto accident. That sort of gathered all my attention instead. I never told anyone, not a soul, about my stepmother. We were too busy taking care of my Dad after the accident to talk about it much at first. As he improved though, my stepmum and I actually bonded over her secret. I was the only soul in the world she could talk to about her 'difference.' She talked about being a refugee of this great war in the stars. She talked about being a stranger in a strange land. About being afraid of my Dad finding out. About the authorities finding out. About her friends finding out. About me finding out.

And oh, she told me stories. She told me about her people, the Redarah and how they lived. She told me about her life as a refugee. My stepmother saw such things, good and bad. She kept some trinkets -not many; otherwise she'd be noticed- in a shoebox in her bedroom closet that she showed me. She had a tiny seed that when sowed would turn into a living starship, although she told me firmly that the seed wouldn't germinate in any Earth soils. I tried planting it anyway and she was right, nothing happened. She had an actual laser gun, but it only went up to a stun setting. She had pictures we looked over together, and she would tell me about them, the placed she'd been and taken those images of. But my stepmother always reiterated that of all the placed, she was happiest on Earth, with my Dad and me.

She had one last object that she gave to me on my last birthday while she was still alive. It looked like a regular pair of sunglasses only things didn't look darker when you looked through them but just different, skewed maybe. She had acquired them during her days as a refugee when she was afraid she'd be caught by the old enemy of her people. She said that they showed things not how they were, but how they should be. They weren't perfect, she warned and if you wore them too long they'd do things to your mind. I wore them only a couple times, with her, to see what she really looked like, that's the reason she gave them to me you see. She was beautiful; she was made of white light that shone when she smiled. But like I said, I only wore them twice so she wouldn't worry.

My stepmother died when I was seventeen. She was carrying groceries up to the flat and slipped at the top of the stairs. I was so sure that the coroner did the autopsy they'd find out her secret but whatever her disguise was it worked after death. My Dad and I were crushed. Not only had he lost his wife and I lost my stepmother, but we had lost that light. I'm not talking about that light she was made out of, but that light she filled everyone with when she was in the room. Her laughter, her smile, her sweetness was all gone.

I was depressed for a very long time after that. I took out the pair of sunglasses and began to carry them with me, to remind me of her. I never intended to use them in public, but I think I did so out of curiosity at first. Not for long, mind you, I remembered my stepmother's warning. The first time I put them on outside the flat after she died was on a train. I stared at the people sitting around me. I saw the people how they were supposed to be and I laughed out loud.

One man had gotten hair transplant or those weird hair plugs; with the glasses I could see him as he was: a man with a balding hairline. He looked at me irritated when I laughed at him so I moved on. Most people looked as they should, but there were a couple women I could tell had had plastic surgery; breast implants, nose jobs. My fingers bobbed the sunglasses up and down and my vision switched from before/after shots like an advertisement.

I stopped laughing when I saw the girl with the horrible scars all over her face. When I took the sunglasses off, the scars were gone and she was just a normal girl reading a magazine. I imagine she must have had some sort of accident or been hurt terribly by someone and had gotten surgery to get rid of the scar. Those women with the huge breasts and thinner noses didn't need those surgeries, but that girl with that horrible scar did.

After that time on the train, I put the glasses away for a while. Then about a month later when I was having a bad day, I put them on and took a walk through the city park. I could see more plastic surgeries, some needed, most not. I could see people's real hair colors beneath all the chemical dyes. (I've come to learn there are very few true blondes in the world.) I could see some people limping with the glasses and see them walk fine without. I felt better then, after seeing people for what they really were. I don't blame most of them; a lot of people just wanted to be better looking. I don't know why I felt some much better after wearing the glasses. I think maybe because I felt closer to my stepmother then, looking at people how I think she saw them; so flawed, in so much need of help.

From then on I took them with me about once a week. Every Wednesday during my lunch break, weather permitting, I'd go outside and have my lunch on a bench or by a fountain and wear them and just people-watch. Perhaps it should have depressed me, seeing the truth under such deep layers of lies and plastic. Instead, it felt like a release, quieted my mind somehow. I alone could see the truth, that feeling of power was strangely comforting.

It went on like that for a year. Once a week I'd have a sandwich, a Coke, Mars bar and everything you're hiding on your skin. Oh the things I saw. I saw the usual plastic people, and the fewer people with such scars hidden by surgery. I even saw a couple of aliens, hiding in human disguises, but they walked on normally and I supposed they were like my stepmother: aliens who call Earth home. I didn't say anything. It was all my secret. It was my secret, my gift, my power.

Then I saw that thing.

It happened on a Thursday that week. The Wednesday before it had been raining, so I just ate indoors. The next day, that Thursday, I got out though and went to the Millennium Center. I put on the glasses and walked around, looking for a good place to eat. Then I saw it, rising out of the ground. I dropped my Coke can and the pressure caused it to explode at the cap, bubbles spraying madly, hissing from the can. I don't think I even looked down at it.

I think that thing was Death. Everything about him was Death. It all hit me at once, imploding my head. It was a living skeleton. He wore a long dark coat, dressed like an old-time military officer. His skin was yellow, a putrid yellow, the sick vomit death yellow, tightly covering over the frame. And I could see all of him. I could see every death he was. I could feel every death he was. It was starvation, it was disease, and it was poison. I saw his broken bones where he had been trampled by horses. The burn marks where fire had branded. The hole in his gut where he had been hit with a spear. I could see every bullet hole on him; I could count dozens, and one in his head peering out to me like a third eye.

What scared me most, what made my heart stop, was what he looked like when I took off the glasses. In the eyes of everyone else in the world, he was handsome. Built like Adonis he strutted around, smiling at all who would have it. Without the glasses, he had blue eyes (to see you with), a perfect nose (to smell you with) and a wide flashing grin (to charm and kiss and eat you with). That's what Death looked like, I realized then. Death walking around, flirting with poor people clueless to what was stalking them.

I didn't follow him; I was too terrified. He didn't notice me then, thank God for that, but that sight stayed with me. Always will.

I ran straight to my flat; I didn't go back to work. I called the next day with some excuse about eating something bad at lunch and being sick. I couldn't go in that day either, or the next. On Monday, when I finally went in, I saw my boss come in to reproach my absence until he saw up close. His face drained of color and then told me to go back home until I felt better. I looked ill enough for him.

I couldn't sleep. I would lie awake in bed and any attempt to close my eyes would cause that face to flash like it was scorched on the inside of my eyelids. I wondered if maybe I had been wearing the glasses too long and unknowingly ignored my stepmother's warning, but every fiber of my being told me that thing was wrong.

After a week, I tried to put my life back. I worked, I went out with mates, dated. But every once in a while I would feel a chill on my shoulder and would spin around expecting see that thing's face behind me. I didn't touch the glasses for weeks.

Then one day I realized that the life I was trying to live was just another form of Death. Another form of that thing, and another victory for it.

Then I saw it again. I was taking a mate of mine out to a nightclub to get over a bad break up with her boyfriend when I saw it. It was in its human form, smiling, charming and chatting up some bloke. I froze, there, too shocked to move as I watched the two leave together. I wanted to stop him, scream at that poor guy to run away, run for your life, for that thing was a form of death, a thousand forms. But I froze. By the time my friend snapped me out of it, they were both gone. I knew that thing now had another victim and I had done nothing. That's when I swore to do what I've done.

I knew at least one club he'd been to and probably be again. My friend said I was being silly, but she hadn't seen that thing, not in its false face or its real one. I developed a plan, worked it out. I think working out the plan was therapeutic, kept me sane. When you've seen that face full of death, you need something, anything to distract you until you destroy it.

I kept an eye out for it. Every street I walked down, every public place I'd been in, every restaurant I ate in or pub I drank in I searched for it. I began going out every night, not to have any type of fun but to search for it. I began wearing the glasses regularly, in any public place. It took a lot of time, but I managed to see him. I knew he went to this one restaurant at least once a month. I saw him at a bar with this Asian woman but they had disappeared before I was able to get to them. Best of all, I found out he frequented that nightclub, the one I had first seen him in with that lad.

Maybe I got a bit obsessive. But having seen that face, seen all the death on it, I knew it had to be evil. Everything I've ever feared and ever will was sketched on that face. Anything that could withstand that much death had to be in leagues with something evil itself. How could you let something like that walk around? How could you stomach knowing it probably had victims planned and you were doing nothing? I had to sacrifice time with friends and my Dad thought I disowned him, but I was doing it for them. For my stepmother. Would any of them believe me if I told them? I'd be sanctioned if I breathed a word. Even if I had the glasses as proof, they'd still send me away. My stepmother had always been terrified of the government organizations established to hunt people like her. Britain, the U.N., even Wales have organizations to kill aliens and to collect anything alien in origin. They'd take the glasses, force me to tell me everything I'd know about my stepmother and still interrogate my Dad for information. I couldn't tell them without becoming something to dissect myself.

After six months I had everything I needed. I had supplies, some of which were very hard to come by. I had done all the research. I picked out a spot. I had made all the preparations, the materials ready. I had a plan. It could have gone wrong at any moment, but I could think of no other way. I knew that whatever this thing was, it couldn't be killed. To be honest, I was more afraid I wasn't emotionally ready. How could anyone be ready, really ready, to do what I was about to? Turns out, I was about to be ready without any help at all.

When I walked into that nightclub and saw him at the bar, I saw him as he really was. I wasn't wearing the glasses, not that moment, but I still saw him. His face of taut yellow skin over his visible skull. Eyes that had seen more death than anyone in that room combined. I didn't need those glasses. I could see his true face even without them.

I seduced him. He didn't know who I was, or that I saw his true face, but he must have thought I'd make an excellent victim for he returned my flirts without hesitation. At the suggestion we go to my flat, he smiled and thought it a great idea. We never got that far.

We were taking his jeep in the direction of my flat when I said I needed to be sick and he pulled over immediately. I opened the door and managed to vomit a little while getting the syringe out of the special wrapper in my pocket. When he leaned over to ask if I was alright (all the better to steal your trust with) I turned and jabbed him with the needle, right in the heart. He tried to struggle but the drug worked quickly. Within seconds he gasped and slumped over into my lap. It was awkward pulling him into the backseat of the jeep. I tied his hands with a plastic cable tie, (I never thought I'd be the type of person who'd ever do that) and on second thought, his ankles as well. And I took his gun.

I drove the jeep to the underground car park where I had the car waiting. I dragged his unconscious body onto the ground and cut off the cable tie so I could get his coat off. The second the tie was cut, he came to life. That drug should have knocked him out for hours but he was awake in less than thirty minutes. He lunged for me, but his ankles were still tied and his movement was limited and clumsy. I used the stun gun he didn't know I had. He didn't pass back into unconsciousness straight away; he just yelled in pain, so I had to do it again.

I took off his coat and shoes, checked all his pockets and removed everything in them - his trinkets, electronic devices, and a leather-lined piece of yellow blank paper. I even took off his watch; he wouldn't need it anyway. I couldn't bring myself to take off his clothes, I had no desire to see any more of the Death scars on him. I retied his hands and chained him so he could not move. All his things were placed in the back seat of his jeep. I set up the car bomb in his jeep to go off in twenty-four hours. That was the best I could do.

I dragged him over to my car. I didn't put him in the boot; I researched ways of how to get out of a boot and figured out he would know some too. Instead, I put the thing in the backseat where I could at least keep an eye on it.

The drive out to the country seemed forever; with a creature that looks like Death in the backseat that could wake up and try to kill you it seemed a lot like forever. When we finally reached the destination, that thing and I, I let loose a sigh of relief. Then I opened the car door and puked onto the grass.

I dragged the thing out; that wasn't exactly easy. I wasn't even nineteen yet, dragging something that felt twice my weight through the field. I would have driven the car up closer but I was afraid of someone noticing the car tracks in the dirt. That was unlikely, but with that thing that looked like Death so close, with me touching it, I was afraid of everything. I thank God for the adrenaline rush I had that night, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do any of it.

Finally, I brought it within a metre of the hole. I had spent weeks digging it. Every night for weeks I had driven out there and spent the hours I would have otherwise spent lying in bed trying to gain that nonexistent sleep out in this field instead, digging the hole. It was a metre wide, two metres long and three metres deep; I had measured it just the day before.

I was just about to get up and turn on the equipment when that thing sprung to life once more. His hand grabbed mine and I let out a panicked yell. My other hand reached automatically for the stun gun, but with his one free hand he grabbed for that instead. He wrestled it from my hand, it must have been easy my palms were sweating so much, but I crawled away just as he tried to stun me. He lay there in chains, with only one free hand wielding a stun gun screaming at me to let him loose, as if I were that stupid. I went into the car and grabbed my stepmother's laser gun from under the driver's seat and shot him. When I was sure he was unconscious, I kicked the stun gun away from him. Then I turned on the small portable electric generator and started the transportable cement mixer. Yes. I had this all planned and ready.

I tied up his one free hand while waiting for the mixer to do its duty. By the mixer I had a rope I had used to climb in and out of the hole during its digging and used it to tie his free hand to the chains. It was then he woke up one last time and it was this one last time I did not try to put him back to sleep.

He did not fight that time, but began to try to talk. He – It, asked why I was doing this and did not understand when I said I knew what it truly was. I was prepared for this; I had always imagined that it had only shown itself to its victims right before it killed them, or maybe it kept its true form to itself, rejoicing in its own private hellish secret. So grabbed a mirror from the car, put the glasses on him and showed him his reflection. I explained that with these glasses I could see people for what they truly are, and so I knew what he truly was. I remember the look of horror on its face and I knew it was because of me, because I knew alone in the world knew what it was.

As I worked mixing the cement, that thing yelled and protested, saying that the glasses were something like x-rays, only they showed old wounds. It tried to say that he had had an accident once and became immortal and everything I saw were just ways of death it had survived.

For one brief moment, one terrifying instant I almost believed him. I thought maybe the glasses had done something to my mind, like my stepmother had warned, and all this time I was insane. Then I realized what it was doing, that thing. It was trying to get into my head and make me into another one of its victims. I came back to my senses and I took off the glasses of its face and went back to work.

When I thought enough cement was ready for the first pour, I rolled the thing into the pit. It fell down and I heard the cracking of its bones as it hit the three feet of set cement I had already poured down and set to dry days before. I looked down to see it lying there in the middle of the pit, like a sign to me that this is what needed to be done. It stared up at me. It was at this point it began to plea, begging for its life. No, that's wrong. Begging for its life would imply that the thing was alive, that thing that looked like Death. No, I suppose it was just pleading for continued freedom, freedom for more victims.

It cried. It tried to scream for help that would not come. I poured the first batch of cement onto it and it tried to struggle but too many of its bones were broken and it could only writhe in agony.

It was when it began to weep stop, stop, stop! that I began to cry. But I kept going. As the cement finally covered his face, his last words to me, to anyone were "Please, please, please."

For one final second, the last second I saw his face, he stopped being the skeletal nightmare and went back to the face he showed the rest of the world. I breathed a sigh of relief that I would never see its face again. I wept deeper than before, not out of the horror of the required act I was committing, but out of pure and utter relief. That thing that looked like Death would never touch another person again. I had given the thing that would never die a grave anyway.

I kept going, kept pouring more and more cement until that thing was covered in at least five feet of it and then I watched. I waited three days for the cement to dry, to make sure that the thing didn't come out. I didn't hear any screaming, for you need air to scream you know. When the cement had completely hardened, I finished it by filling what was left of the hole with gravel, than regular dirt. I removed the equipment, drove back home and took a long, long shower. After that shower, I finally felt clean, clean of all that creature was and what it had done to me.

The land I had buried that thing in was part of a protected area, a wildlife preserve, and while that had made it more risky that I would have been caught doing that deed, it also meant that no one was going to build over that land, no one would ever dig it up and find that concrete block. It took a couple more days of work to finish it all, getting rid of the equipment, of any loose ends, but once that was all done, that was it. I saw on the news that there was a car bombing reported where I had left the jeep, but thankfully no one was hurt and there didn't appear to be any link back to me.

It took me a little longer, but I finally got my life back together. I convinced most of my friends that my odd behavior was the result of a bizarre depression kicked off by my stepmother's death, and most of them understood. I made up some story to my Dad about my mother telling me a lie about him that I had only recently realized was not true, and we were able to get our relationship back on track. I did lose some friends permanently and that's always made me a little sad, but I know I did the right thing. I got another job, a better job and began dating again. I still take out the glasses once in a while, not as often as before, but I do so I suppose to keep an eye out for others like that thing. What I'll do if I find another, I'm not sure, but I wear the glasses all the same.

I couldn't kill whatever that thing was, but I've at least stopped it. I know it can't hurt anyone anymore, that thing that looked like Death. It's buried in stone, unable to move, trapped forever or something close to that. In this strange world where Earth is being attacked (at least) twice a year by aliens and monsters and things inhuman, I've defeated at least one evil in this world, that thing that looked like Death, and I'm proud of what I've done, even if I can never tell another soul.

And best of all, I can sleep again, and I sleep well, knowing I've done something good.