Fragment of Death | Jack

He was never meant to become a spirit guide for the living, let alone interact with them, but I grew to love him.

I don’t speak often about my other guides or alters. Mostly because they aren’t around as often anymore, and my main unholy trinity — as I call them — being Byleth, Darokin, and Zagan Lestan are around me all the time.

Another I consider a guide, and I feel he does too, I miss often. He didn’t originally have a name but was brought to me through Zagan. He was named Jack, and he came to me as pale as the face of the moon with coal-colored lips, eyes that were a dark and endless void — literally — and his hair was short, shaggy, raven, and in his face.

He spoke quietly and was generally a muted being. I knew him as a spirit of some sort at first, and he would often fade away when he was nervous, which was quite often. He’s very socially awkward, perpetually melancholic and in love with it, and doesn’t do well around people. Zagan helped him with this over time, but there was a big reason why he avoided the living.

After writing and rewriting Jack’s story, as Zagan and he told me it, I found out that Jack was something that’s hard to describe. He’s Death in a way, but only one version of the figure. A fragment of Death, as he puts it. He was never meant to become a spirit guide for the living, let alone interact with them, but I grew to love him and he’s one of my dearest. He feels he’s breaking a big unspoken rule by straying from his original path, but we’ve brought him around to the idea of existing for himself, too. He’s also become quite human in his interests and behaviors.

Above is one of the more recent drawings I did of him.

An interesting thing about him that he’s learned to control, is his ability to pass on the despair he’d absorbed from many souls through touch. This was difficult at first since a mere shake of the hand could flood you with depression, fear, or dread. Of course, he’d never interacted with the living, so he’d never realized it was a problem. It isn’t anymore, which is a relief to both Zagan and I since it affected him as well.

I have a few conversations Jack and I have written down together. I’d like to have more of them, but he’s been absent for a short while. I miss him hovering over my shoulder in his half-translucent form, watching me read Edgar Alan Poe or make art.

It's Samhain eve. Maybe I can call to him again and he'll come back around.