Once I fell asleep, I could immediately tell the time and place that my memory took me to.  It was the day I came out to my mom as trans.  Before I knew it, I went back to that time.  My parents are divorced, so my dad already knew. He had told me not to tell her, but my mom had just given me a pastel pink frilly dress for my birthday, and told me I had to wear it to dinner that night.  When she had said that, I just couldn’t take it. I told her thatI was trans and wearing that would make me even more uncomfortable thanI already was.  Then she started yelling.

“IS THIS BECAUSE I WAS NEVER THERE TO TEACH YOU HOW TO BE A GIRL!! YOU CAN’T BE TRANS YOU WORE DRESSES AS A KID!  When she said that, I was in the kitchen and a knife was sitting there. My internal voice came; it started telling me how no one really cared about me, and that I would be better off dead, along with telling me  how no one would ever think of me as a boy. Unlike this time, I didn't fight it. So, when my mom turned around, I grabbed the knife and tried to slit my wrists. When my mom saw what I was doing,  she only got louder. “I PUT A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD, I FEED YOU, I CARED FOR YOU FOR 13 YEARS, AND YOU’RE JUST GONNA KILL YOURSELF, YOU’RE JUST ATTENTION SEAKING!” I dug the knife deeper into my skin and heard my dad walking in.  I felt someone start shaking me, and then I heard my name being called. 

I awoke to find Dagon leaning close over me. I could feel my face turn red, and then he jumped off of me. “Are you okay Kit? You were screaming and crying before.” Crud, I had forgotten about that.

“Sorry about that. If you hear me crying and screaming again, it’s just a nightmare, so you can ignore it. If I get too loud though, please come wake me up,” I said. “I thought that maybe they would stop because, well…” I motioned around the room. 

“Oh, um, Ok.” He was clearly worried, but didn’t want to make me uncomfortable by asking.  He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in days.

“Dagon, you look exhausted. Did you sleep?”

“Yeah, I slept really well. I just woke up, I'm an early riser,” He laughed. I could tell he was lying, but before I could ask I heard a voice.

“Awww you guys are sooooo cute together!” Dagon whipped around, and I jumped up seeing Satan leaning on the door frame. 

“What do you want?” We both yelled.

“Ok fine,” They rolled their eyes. “I’ll stop shipping you guys together.”

“What do you need?” I asked

“I have something to show you, get dressed,” They threw what looked like my favorite hoodie and baggy jeans at me, and then a Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and white blazer at Dagon “the rest of your clothes should be in your closets.” 

After we got changed, Satan brought us to what looked like a lecture hall. There were others there. Some I noticed had cuts across their necks, and some had red marks on their necks. Others looked sickly like Dagon, and with some, nothing seemed noticeably off, but most of them wore long pants and long sleeve shirts or hoodies.  After Satan left the room and came back a few times with more people, it began.

“Now,” Satan clapped his hands. “you all died yesterday, which means you have today to ask questions, and learn as much about being a devil as possible. No questions are stupid questions, so before we split up does anyone-”

“Yes!” A little girl about 10 yelled from across the room. “Why don’t I have a roommate?”

“Oh, good question Lenore, so everyone has a roommate. yours just hasn’t died yet,” Satan explained, and then turned to everyone else. “When everyone is born, they are assigned a roommate, and those roommates both get along very well.” and I will be completely honest when I say he looked directly at us.

“You said that our demons just don’t like living, so why do I still have those horrid dreams?” Another person asked. They were much older, probably in their mid to late twenties.

“Oh, so those demons are out of my control. I like to call them rouge demons. Usually, they are caused by trauma.” Satan sat there waiting for another question, and after a few seconds he started listing names, and then he brought those people to a different room.  Once he came back, he did that again.  After he came back for a third time, he finally said  Kit and Dagon among his list of names, but this time, he just brought over a table or more like summoned a table.  On the table he had an assortment of various weapons, except some weren’t quite weapons, and more like magic items.

“Most of these objects have  clear reasons for being here, while others may not. Now, I can’t control what item you choose, but I strongly encourage you to go with your gut instinct, because some that may not seem helpful may be to you.  Lenore, would you like to choose first?” Lenore, the little girl from before, had short blonde hair and blue eyes.  She also had brown horns. She stood up, walked over, and picked up a pair of swords. Then, she walked back up to where Dagon and I were sitting and sat down. A few more names were called  before Dagon, he had chosen a scythe. Directly after, I was called, and I picked up a deck of tarot cards with a few throwing knives.  Don’t bother asking why I took the tarot cards. I just knew that those and the knives were the best options.  Once everyone had selected an object, Satan proceeded.

“So, all of you have been selected for the most honorable position possible.   You are the reapers! Your job is basically to kill people’s demons, and to bring their souls to judgment.  Sometimes, depending on the person, I will tell you to bring them directly to me.  Now, here’s where things get interesting. When you are killing them, it's not them that you have to beat. If they are an angel, you have to fight the, uh, piece of God in them. If they are a devil, sometimes the demon will come willingly; other times it will not, and with the mortals we don't really have to do that because they do not have a piece of immortality in them.”

“Wait! We’re immortal?!?” A man in his 30s yelled from across the room, along with a few others.

“Oh, sorry about that one, I guess I forgot to tell you. And no, you’re not immortal, your demons give your bodies a fast healing time, so for example, if a normal weapon stabbed you, you would heal too fast to be able to  bleed out.”

“Wait, but that’s how I died!” A few others and I called out.

“No, you’re not understanding. So yes, that is how you died, how your mortal body died, but it was only able to happen because a reaper fought your demons and weakened them enough that they could not heal your body.” He could tell we were still confused, but I don’t think he knew how else to explain it, so he just continued. “Anyway, there is another important job for reapers. There hasn’t been a problem in over 2,000 years, BUT sometimes those angels tend to rebel against us, or maybe it’s by God's order, I have no clue, but they do that, so when there is a problem, the reapers become my ‘army of the dead’ in a way.”

I didn’t know much about Dagon yet, since we had only met yesterday, but I could tell he wasn’t a big fan of fighting or blood by the way he had tightly closed his eyes and grabbed his head. Looking around in this room only one or 2 other people had the same sickly look as him, but the rest had all died from other things besides an overdose.  “Are you ok?” I whispered to him.

“No. No,” he whispered back in a shaky voice.  It was clear that he didn’t mind seeing blood. Something told me that he just didn’t like the idea of harming another being. 

“What's going on? We’re roommates, so we’re kinda stuck together. If you feel comfortable, you can tell me.”

“I-I don’t wanna hurt anyone, someone they hurt me. I don’t wanna be them,” He was shaking his head with his hands. “Please, I don’t want to hurt anyone, please, please, please.” I grabbed his shoulders and started gently shaking him. Something was really, really off “She, she hurt him, she hurt- she hurt ME! I’m nothing like her, nothing…” He kept shaking his head. “I won’t be her!  I won’t! I Won’t! I WON’T!” He was getting louder.

“Dagon, Dagon it’s ok, you won’t be like her, you will NEVER be like her.” I didn't know what was going on. Was it a flashback? I had never seen someone else have a flashback, so I had no clue. I didn't even know who he was referring to, but if something that bad had happened, there was no way, no fucking way I would let him believe he was ANYTHING like her. He was in tears at this point, and I couldn’t snap him out of it. Satan was too busy explaining how to throw a hatchet to notice what was going on, so I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed him and I gave him a hug, while whispering in his ear “You are nothing like her, never were and never will be.” Dagon let go of his head and hugged me back.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be.”

“Hey, love birds in the back, is there something you want to share with the class?” Satan called. We jumped away from each other, and I could feel my face turn red.

“NOPE!” I yelled. I think my voice cracked as I said that, ‘cause people started laughing.  

“Dagon, what about you, are you good?” I looked at Dagon and he was still semi-crying, so I looked at Satan, then Dagon, and then my eyes returned to Satan, I glared at them.  They rolled their eyes; then moved on.  As it was talking, I started to realize that they weren’t kicked out of heaven because they were questioning God’s choices. They were just curious and wanted to learn. Maybe that’s why it was constantly asking if we had any questions.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” They said. “Welcome back, to the waking realm.” As he snapped his fingers, we were in Thantosville, New Jersey, right outside the hospital where-where, NO, that’s not important right now! I’m dead, and even the voices agreed that there is no point in caring about the living. They didn’t really care about me. “Now, everyone get a group of three or four people and be on your way, to collect some souls of the dead.”

I looked around, and the girl named Lenore turned to me, as if to ask if she could join Dagon and I.  Dagon was still pretty upset, so I motioned for her to wait a few seconds, and then I addressed him.  

“Hey Dragon, are you ok? What ha-” Dagon hugged me.

“Thank you really, you didn’t know anything about what was going on but you still helped,” He whispered.

“Well yeah, anyone should! Especially if we’re in a place full of mentally ill people!”

He laughed, “Well, I still owe you one!” He thought for a moment. “Wait, did you just call me DRAGON?”

“Oh, I think I did, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, I was gonna say that I liked it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Umm hello? I’m still here,” Lenore stated.

“Sorry, I forgot about you for a second,” I replied. 

“Yeah it’s ok, but everyone else left already. and I think Satan has someplace to be,” I looked over to see them tapping their foot and staring at the clock.

They looked up, “Nah I don’t have anywhere to be, I have absolutely no life.” the way it waited after saying that made me think that it thought it was funny and was expecting us to laugh.

“We should probably go anyway,” Dagon (or Dragon) acknowledged. Then, he grabbed my arm and pulled me out into my hometown.  Then I saw them.