Chap 4 : This Realm Smells Like Disinfectant and Poor Decisions
The hospital was an assault on every sense I possessed.
Everything was white.
White walls. White floors. White ceilings. White lights that hummed with the kind of aggression usually reserved for interrogation chambers.
The air smelled like some kind of chemical punishment—sterile, vaguely minty, and deeply offensive to the human experience. But beneath it , lingered something else.
Fear.
A scent I recognized from battlefields.
Though somehow—
This was worse.
At least battlefields were honest.
As i sat on a hard plastic chair in the waiting area, my legs pressed together and my hands folded neatly in my lap like a prisoner awaiting divine sentencing.
I began recalling this humiliation had actually started when we were at the parking lot.
I had stepped out of the red metal death contraption—the car—looked up at the massive white structure humans called a hospital, and said, with all the dignity available to me in this tragically mortal body:
“Very well. Lead the way, Magworm. Your Dad.”
Your Dad paused halfway through locking the car.
Then he turned.
Slowly.
“Your Dad?” he repeated.
I frowned. “Yes. You are the one who told me earlier to address you as ‘Your Dad.’”
Mum pinched the bridge of her nose so hard I briefly wondered if humans could collapse their own skulls through repeated self-inflicted pressure.
“God… give me strength,” she whispered.
Tangled-Haired Menace—Mina—made a strangled noise beside me that was either laughter or the dying call of some unknown creature from this realm.
Your Dad adjusted his glasses in a way I found deeply inconvenient.
“It’s just Dad,” he said.
I stared at him.
He stared back.
“Dad,” he repeated, pointing to himself with the grave seriousness of someone announcing a royal title. “Not ‘Your Dad.’ Not ‘Magworm.’ Definitely not ‘Magworm.’ Just… Dad.”
“I was being respectful,” I said.
“No,” Tangled-Haired Menace wheezed from beside the car, “you were narrating him like he’s a side character in a nature documentary.”
She folded in half laughing.
Dad looked genuinely offended.
“I do not radiate side-character energy.”
“You absolutely do,” she said, still gasping for air.
Mum turned and smacked the back of my arm.
“Say ‘Dad’,” she said darkly, “before I introduce you to our marker.”
I blinked.
“Our… marker?” I asked carefully. “What is that? And why does it sound like a threat?”
“Don’t test me.”
I studied her.
Her eye twitched.
Her toes moved.
This was new.
And deeply concerning.
So I chose—
for the first time since my descent into this realm—
to remain silent.
So, naturally, the moment we entered the hospital, I refused to call anyone anything at all.
This was a strategic decision.
Mum and Dad were at the registration desk, speaking in low, urgent voices to a woman behind a glass window.
Tangled Menace sat two seats away, a small notebook, which i came to know off, balanced on her knee, her pencil moving in quick, confident strokes.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Documenting your downfall,” she said, without looking up.
She was drawing.
Of course she was drawing.
While I sat here, trapped in this sterile nightmare of humming lights and questionable smells, she had chosen this moment—this moment—to create pictures.
I did not trust it.
I looked around, attempting to assess the situation.
Humans were everywhere.
Some sat in rows like I did, staring into nothingness as if they had already accepted their fate. Others moved with unnatural urgency, carrying flat boards or pushing rattling metal structures on wheels that sounded like they were moments away from collapse.
A child cried somewhere in the distance.
A woman laughed too loudly at something on her glowing rectangular device that she is holding.
An old man shuffled past in a loose robe and slippers, dragging behind him a metal stand with a bag of liquid attached to it, a thin tube trailing after him like a disturbingly obedient pet.
I watched him pass.
What… is this place?
What kind of realm gathers humans like this?
Then I saw a sign.
Waiting Room.
I stared at it.
So this was a place where humans came to… wait.
For what?
Judgment?
Salvation?
An audience with whatever deity they believed in?
I paused.
Then—
My eyes narrowed.
If this was where humans gathered at their most vulnerable…
Their most desperate…
Then surely—
He would be here.
Morvath Elir.
In the realm where I'm from, he was known as Death. The Ferryman. The Guide of Souls.
In human terms—
The Grim Reaper.
Of course he would be here.
Where else would Death linger, if not in a place filled with the fragile, the broken, and the nearly departed?
This was his domain.
His hunting ground.
His workplace.
And if I could find him—
Perhaps I could ask for help.
A favour.
A message delivered to the Tribunal.
A chance to plead my case.
I was, after all, a celestial being.
Surely…
Death would recognize one of his own.
I sat up straighter.
My posture shifted.
My purpose returned.
And then—
I saw him.
A note from B.R.LEE
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