Shades of Blood #2: Enter The Reaper

You cannot escape the Reaper. Especially not if you steal his body to return to the world of the living.When the rules of love were written, one of them said this: “Once you put a face to the hunger of your heart, your heart cannot let go.”Unaware of this rule, for love had never confided in me, I recently put a face to my heart’s hunger, and this was an unwise thing to do. For with the fresh sting of hope in its nostrils, its hunger grew exponentially and fast, and soon engulfed everything: my thoughts, my dreams, my room, my day, the streets, the earth, the sky, and before I really noticed, and before anything could be done to stop the beast, or even slow him down, my life was nothing but hunger for that one face.Unaware of this rule, yes, but I am no stranger to the hunger. We are acquainted, Beast and I. I say Beast, for Beast he is, but a beast with the softest voice and the sweetest yearning. He is the whisperer of dreams long abandoned and the promiser of perhaps futures. He is also the ruthless and unremitting tyrant dictating moment by moment what you feel and what you do and what you don’t do.