Summary: Long ago I sold my soul and doomed myself to an eternity in the Underworld. I did everything they wanted for centuries, but no more! I'll find a way out of my destiny or die trying! I leave you my story in the hope that someone else can succeed if I fail.

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Just as Oscar predicted, Escape never returned. I found only one guy who claimed to have seen him on the day that he disappeared.

"That lunatic was heading towards the front lines," shrugged a soul whose uniform had become more holes than cloth. "Ranting and screaming at people to let him through. But after that... nothing."

"So you saw him get destroyed?" I asked.

"Not exactly, but who can survive in a place like that," he laughed and tossed an arm onto the bonfire.

I came to accept that perhaps Oscar was right and Escape had been destroyed.

We were miles from civilization after all. There was nowhere to run.

Things had been almost tolerable when I had friends by my side, but without them, there was nothing to distract me from the horror and death that I faced every day.

I withdrew within myself (like I had so many times before) and became just another washed out ghost who roamed that depressing desert. Waiting for my end to come like it had to everyone else around me.



"Hey, he's watching us again," hissed one young foot soldier to his friend.

He subtly tilted his head in my direction as they continued to practice sword fighting.

I was sitting in the sand by the open square. Knees drawn up to my chest. Lethargically watching on without bothering to be subtle. I wasn't supposed to be there, but I could do as I liked until I was yelled at for slacking off.

His friend bit his lip. He quickly turned his head away from me like I also uneased him.

"Don't let one creepy soul distract you," he snapped and lunged at the other guy. "Whatever you do, don't take your eyes off the enemy!"

There were dozens of soldiers practicing around them. Most of them had arrived a day earlier. Awkwardly swinging their swords like they'd never entered a battle before.

Almost all the recruits I saw when I first got there were dead. The ones who remained had lost all their optimism. Weeks earlier they'd laughed and bragged about how they were going to change the Underworld. But as time passed, their faces became grim and lifeless. Like they'd seen and done too much to go back to who they were.

Sometimes I'd thought I found people I knew, in the faces of those mortals or souls. Like I was desperately searching for some hint of familiarity amongst all those strangers.

"Alphonse?" I said to one large soul who resembled my old friend. His size and hair were almost identical, but when he turned to face me, I was looking at a stranger.

"I'm sorry," I muttered with my head down and eyes fixed on the sand by his feet. "I thought you were someone else."

"Again!" He cried. "How many times are you going to keep doing that?"

"I'm sorry! It won't happen agai-"

"Creep," he said and shoved me to the ground.

I didn't get up, and instead just sat there. Feeling nothing but shame for having made such a stupid mistake, but it wouldn't be the last time.

My tasks never changed despite my friend's deaths, and I was sent to clean up the battlefield alone as the last remaining member of my group.

It was tough on my own, and everything which used to seem easy suddenly took five times as long.

Then one day I found him.

The short commander who I thought would never lose.

He was at the bottom of a small crater with his eyes wide open, several holes in his stomach, and lifeless limbs contorted at unnatural angles.

Surrounding him were the bodies of twenty Heavenly soldiers. At least he put up a good fight before they eventually ended his life.

I'd thought that man was different. That he could figure out a way to beat anyone and survive until the end, but there he lay defeated like everyone else who I'd ever believed in.

"Crap," I hissed and tried not to look.

I took hold of the closest body, a large demon twice my size. I fruitlessly pulled at his feet and attempted to shoulder his weight, but as much as I pulled and struggled, I couldn't get him into the cart.

I screamed in frustration and let him fall to the ground. Kicking the body once before collapsing myself.

I buried my face in my hands and gave into despair.

I was alone.

I was so bloody alone.

"Need help?" Said a man's voice from before me and a ghostly hand took hold of the corpse's' legs.

I removed my hands from my face and looked up to examine the new arrival.

It was Spots.

He was covered in sand and wearing the same dusty uniform as myself, but there was no doubt that it was the man who stood beside Foreman and helped berate me until I wanted to end everything.

Without thinking, I jumped to my feet and shoved him to the ground.

I then grabbed anything that I could get my hands on. Rocks, debris, body parts, and began throwing them at his body in a sad attempt to bury him.

"Wow, wow, wow," said Sports as he quickly unburied himself and backed away. "There's no need for that." He grabbed hold of his shirt and pointed to the number stamped across it. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm B147 now! We're both on the same side, right?"

I stared at him while wondering if it was all just a new mind game he'd created to hurt me, but I could think of no reason why he'd attack me in that hole, and I needed his help.

I allowed the rock to drop from my hand. I then grabbed the body's shoulders and Spots grabbed the legs.

"Funny, right?" Said Spots. "The two of us meeting again after all these years, and in a place like this. I never thought I'd see your sorry arse again Gir- I mean..A272," he said while reading the number on my jacket. "What a story this will make."

With our combined strength we managed to pull the body into the cart, then moved onto another.

"So, where you been all these years?" He asked.

"I have nothing to say to you," I hissed.

"Don't want to talk then," he smiled. "I respect that. I mean, you never were a big talker back then. Unlike that friend of yours. Wow, did she have a mouth that never stopped once it got started."

I let the body drop from my hands.

"How could you do it!" I snapped. "How could you worship a guy like that crazy arsehole?"

Spots looked right at me. He was quiet for a moment as though carefully trying to formulate the right answer.

"It wasn't like I... or any one of us... Really wanted to be like that. Deep down anyway. But we didn't have a choice. It was either eat or be eaten in that place."

"What sort of crap is that! You all had a choice!"

"And end up as one of that guy's victims? Are you insane?"

"You never had to go that far. It was like you were all enjoying yourselves!"

"Ah, perhaps, we did a little," he nervously scratched his head, then jumped when he noticed the rage in my eyes. "But only because the pain doesn't feel as bad when you're inflicting it on somebody else."

"That's a weak excuse!"

"Maybe, but it's the only one I've got," he began dragging the body by himself. "You know that I never wanted things to end so badly for you, right? A milder punishment would have been enough, but Foreman was so insistent. He always had a thing about obliterating whoever tried to challenge him. He wouldn't stop until he'd crushed every ounce of your free will."

"And you did nothing to stop him."

"And what should I have done? If I got in his way, then it would have been me instead. That's how that place worked. Everyone knew that, including your friend. How come you're the only guy who refused to get it?"

I bit my lip. I couldn't deny that he wasn't wrong, but I didn't want to admit it.

"That guy, Foreman," said Spots. "Wasn't so evil once you really got to know him."

"Whatever."

"He was just like the rest of us, you know? He just wanted to be something more than a soul slave, but he couldn't, so he became something stuck between us and those brothers. Perhaps it changed him into the monster that he became."

"I met him once."

"Who?"

"Foreman."

"And?"

"He was broken."

"That's no surprise," Spots laughed without a hint of remorse.

"I thought he was supposed to be your friend."

"I said that he wasn't bad. That doesn't mean that I actually cared about the guy."

Spots' eyes were so dead cold that I knew he couldn't be lying.

"Where did you go?" I picked up the body's shoulders and helped Spots lift it into the cart. "After they sold you."

"Became king of a small country and married thirty wives. Had a great time too, until I lost it all in a rigged game of cards. Now I'm working here to pay back my debts and exact my revenge."

"Really?"

"Of course not!" Spots scoffed. "What do you think happened to me?"

I thought of asking, but there was no need. His real story was no different from the rest of us souls.

We worked together and soon filled the cart.

I should have returned to the bonfire, but I couldn't stand the place where Oscar was murdered. Instead I sat on the edge of the crater and watched the distant battle.

Bright flashes of colored light and explosions lit up the sky. It would have been beautiful if it didn't mean the death of thousands.

I expected Spots to soon disappear, but he sighed and sat down beside me.

We both observed the fighting together. Occupying the same place not as enemies, but equals.

"Hey Spots."

"What?"

"Can you tell me one of your stories about life on Earth?"

"Alright," Spots tapped his fingers against his knees. "There is one story that I've been wanting to tell," he paused for a moment as though collecting his thoughts. "Once, long long ago, there was a mortal man who lived in a small village in a tiny hut. Inside that hut there was also a beautiful woman and four small children. I can't tell you how they and the man were related, but he loved them more than anything else in that world."

"So they were family?"

"Maybe. But the man had forgotten their names. Unfortunately they were very poor, and then one day the food ran out. The children complained of their hunger so the man set out to find something to eat. He sat in the town square for hours and begged anyone he could find, but no one would part with what little food they had. On his way back, he encountered a magician on the side of the road. A man in a grey suit who could make seeds sprout into flowers in the palm of his hand."

"Like magic?"

"Exactly like magic. Hungry my friend, that man said with a large smile. Fear not, because I can get you anything that you possibly desire. Just sign here on this dotted line and it will be yours. Does that sound familiar?"

"No."

"Well it should," he winked. "The man knew not to trust men who promised impossible things, but it was either make a deal with a devil or watch everyone around him starve," said Spots with a hint of bitterness. "The man signed the contract, and in exchange the magician handed over a large bag of seeds. No different from any that the man had seen before, but they immediately turned into giant turnips once the man returned home. How wonderful! The children cried. Now we can eat for weeks."

I laughed at the ludicrousy of his words, but Spots ignored me and continued.

"Their joy brought warmth to his heart, and the man went to bed that evening knowing that all was well. But once he fell asleep he never woke up in that world again. And that my new friend," his eyes looked directly into mine. "Is the only memory I have that the soul market couldn't erase."

The laughter died in my throat. I silently sat there and tried to process his words. Searching his face for any hint of deception.

I had long worked out that almost all of Spots' stories had been blatant lies, but that one was different from the others.

If it was true, I felt jealous that he could remember something.

"How about you?" Spots asked. "Do you remember anything from before you sold your soul?"

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"There's nothing."

"Do you ever want to know who you were back then?"

I wasn't sure how to answer his question, so I didn't.

I'd spent decades wondering and imagining what sort of person I could have been, but I'd long accepted that my memories were all gone.

"Do you know where we go after this world?" I asked.

"It depends who you ask," Spots shrugged. "Some believe that we simply disappear from existence, others believe that there are other worlds beyond this one. There are some people out there who think that you can even be reborn as someone else. As stupid as that sounds."

"Do you think I'll remember," I said while thinking of the way Oscar screamed as he was destroyed. "When they erase me from this place?"

"Who knows," Spots laughed. "No soul's ever come back to tell anyone, have they?"

I stood up and brushed the dirt from my uniform. I then combed my fingers through my hair and took one step towards the distant battle.

"Well, I think it's time to find out."

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Thanks for reading this chapter and feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you. :)

I don't know if you've noticed it in the story, but I actually greatly dislike war. Even more so with the current war of words between the U.S and North Korea.

I currently live in Japan. North Korea has already sent missiles over the country twice and is threatening to sink it into the sea. No one has bomb shelters, and if North Korea were to send a missile most people have nowhere safe to hide. Pretty much every day is spent thinking Well if they screw up and a missile lands here, that's the end for me.

Trump making up strange nicknames, and using statements such as destroy North Korea, is only making the situation worse. I just wish that he would please stop it and talk like a serious leader.

Knowing the geography around here I'm certain that a war (even if it only lasts a few months) would mean the death of thousands. So now I greatly hope that the whole situation can be resolved peacefully.