A Simple Choice

It didn’t need to end this way. It really didn’t.
That was all that was going through his head as he turned to walk away back down the alley into pitch blackness. The same one only minutes ago he had mysteriously appeared from, an entity emerging from the void only now to be consumed and return again. His footsteps fell loud and violent against the silent streets which encased the alley. The slap of his boot soles against the uneven payment. The sound of the mixture of blood, muddied water, and trash run-off which had made their home in the cracks and blemishes of this forbidden zone. The body now leaking life essence into the alley, which had only recently been an older man come to face him now resigned to join the land of the dead and walk his final path to the under realm. A path none had walked and returned from; all but one. Unknown to the man now gone from the world, he had come face to face with the only person who could freely walk that path and return. A mistake which had cost him everything.
As his footsteps silenced, walking out of puddles and muck and back into the darkness Grim knew that it never had to end this way. That this was not some predetermined event which was bound to occur. Instead a fate that Chip, in his late 50’s, had come to choose that night. A decision which was foolishly made, half-heartedly declared, and final in its outcome. But it was just that, foolish as none of what happened had to.
Choice. Grim muttered to himself. Choice is their biggest downfall when it comes to freewill. It was for this small thing that so many had found their end, made their exit, and turned up in the darkness with nothing left to their names. Grim was well aware that the opposite point could be made. That happiness, life’s small joys, and excitement which made life vivid also came from these freewill choices. But more often than not, these spur of the moment decisions to act larger, hold power which was non-existent over others, and play the bigger person in a situation where the options which lead to where Chip now remained. Alone, bleeding out, regretful in a dark and filthy alley. A place where no one would ask for to be their final resting place.
While the family may find the body and provide it with the proper death rites which had been written down long ago, it was only people like Grim who knew the truth. That it would be just that, a proper rites and burial for the body. The soul would forever be bound to this spot as its entrance to the under realm. Would forever be his soul's place of resting if one could even call what he had gone through rest.
It really is a pity hissed a voice from deep within the darkness, a voice which would sound to all others like the last breaths of death being forced through a harsh and dry throat. To Grim it was simply one of the nether beings who welcomed him back to the void. The voice echoing and being retracted as it was spoken, projected through space yet sucked back into the vacuum. A pity to see such a man make such a mistake that he must welcome us into his final walks, his terminal footsteps being marked not in the world of the living, but dragged and left along the bank of the Soul’s River.
His decision was this, no more no less. It was a sentiment Grim had accepted sometime in the late 1300’s when death and violence was the way of living. The time when the under realm had been overrun by those lost and battered souls. A time when he was awakened to walk between worlds. It was all a choice, neither good nor bad. Simply a choice which ended him here. A pity.