I was thirteen years old and playing in the neighborhood park with my friends. It was the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. We were playing chase when suddenly I tripped and fell down. The ground slapped hard against my hands and knees. The fall had dazed me a bit, but then I saw something odd buried in the dirt in front of me. It appeared to be a rock, and I became mesmerized by it. I forgot about my friends and the game or the pain in my palms and knees. Something compelled me to dig it out. I had it out in no time. It was small and slim. A friend came up to me and inquired what I was doing. I quickly hid it by placing it in my pocket. My friends and I finished our game throughout the afternoon.
  That evening, I was taking off my pants when I discovered the item in my pocket. I took it out. I had forgotten about it. It was dirty, and I went to clean it off in the sink. I turned it over in my hands, studying it. It was a bone; it had to belong to a small animal. Instead of tossing it aside, I became fascinated with it. I once again became mesmerized. My mother called me to eat. I hid it quickly in my room and this time I did not forget about it.
  The next day, the school day came and went. I rushed back to my house to take a glance at the bone. I could not get enough of it: the whiteness, the smoothness. Trapped in the allure of it prevented me from doing my homework. Hours had passed and my mother got onto me for not getting it done before our evening meal. I ate and finished my homework. The entire time, my mind would return to the bone. It was just a stupid bone. I don’t know why my mind always came back to it. I have always been a curious person, but this felt like more than curiosity.
  On the second day of school, I constantly thought about the bone. I began asking odd questions to my science teacher about bones. The ones he had in his class of the human skeleton did not appeal to me. He informed me they were fake and only replicas. I realized I had never seen a real bone until the one I found. He as well took it as curiosity about the human body or perhaps puberty. I realized it was more.
  At some point, I started taking the bone to school with me. I had to have it near me. Over time, my obsession grew with it. It was not enough to have it in my pocket, but I had to keep holding it. I even got into trouble with my teacher. She thought I was doing something inappropriate with my hand in my pocket. I apologized and somehow convinced her not to tell my parents. My concern was keeping the secret about the bone. I was indifferent to being in trouble with the teacher or my parents. I did not understand, but I knew I had to keep this a secret. It had already changed me; I was more devoted to it than my school or social life.
  After that incident with my teacher, I started keeping it at home. My fixation on it was becoming a problem. It was stupid. I did not need it with me all the time. My social life was a good one and my grades were a little above average. I had my friends from my neighborhood that I went to school with and I started talking with a girl that enjoyed talking with me as well. Life was good without the bone.
  However, all things changed when I started keeping it at home. My friends found me less funny. My grades suffered. The teacher would call on me more and I would never have the correct answer. The girl I was talking to did not want to talk back with me. I knew the moment my life took a turn was because of the bone. I kept it in my closet in a shoebox with some older toys. Girls came and went. My humor with my friends was not that important. My grades were my primary concern. I focused on my homework, but I still got poor grades. My teachers started calling my parents and my mother got onto me.
  I argued I did the work, and the teachers did not like my answers. That lie worked with some subjects, except for science and math.
  It was in the back of my mind all the time: the bone. My eyes would catch the box buried in the back of my closet. My closet doors were on slides and when I slid the doors open, my eyes went straight to it. I would subconsciously leave it open and then conscionably close it so I would not have to see it.
  Weeks went by with my grades not improving and me failing a test in my favorite subject in school.
  My parents yelled at me for failing the test. I had studied and knew it but still somehow failed. That night I could not sleep from being frustrated with myself. My life was falling apart. If the bone could help, so be it. I left the lights off and retrieved it from the shoe box. In the dark, I was in an almost meditative sitting position. I closed my eyes and held it in my hand. I could feel something. It was something from the bone, something from the darkness. I had stayed there for a few hours. I felt rested and good, and went to sleep holding it.

  The next day, I started taking it to school with me. I had to have skin contact with the bone. I don’t know how or why, but I needed it. My symptoms from online led me to drug abuse websites. This was not a drug, it was an object. I got some string and tied it to the inside of my thigh. I could feel a difference with every step I took and every breath I held. My life changed. I did better at school. The answers came easier. I was funnier with my friends and that girl started talking to me again.
  One could say it was all confidence that it somehow gave me, but it was more than that. The teacher allowed me to retake the test that I failed. I asked her why, and she said she just felt like she had to. Without studying, I sat down and got every question correct. She quickly graded it in front of me and was impressed. I was even more impressed. I told my parents, and they were thrilled. My mother, the breadwinner of the family, gave me a hundred dollars for no reason that same evening. That was the most money I had received for anything.
  I could not believe it. My life changed for the better, as long as I had the bone tied to my leg. The next year I was a freshman of highschool, I was getting straight A’s without really trying. I was the most popular person in school and tried out for every sport. I was exceptionally great at each try out. Before sports never interested me, now I enjoyed it since it came easy. I seemed to be taller than I was and also better looking. My life went from decent to amazing.
A year later and it was autumn. For some dumb reason, my friends thought it would be cool to go to a graveyard. I agreed and went with them. I invited my girlfriend, and she and I made out. It was our first kiss, as a couple and in life. We discussed our future colleges of where we wanted to go to.
  I enjoyed the evening and returned home, but the entire time I felt a little distracted. Like a something kept tugging at me. Days went by, and I still felt the need to return to the graveyard. I was sixteen when I snuck out and went to the graveyard at night. I did not know why I was there or what I was needing. Suddenly, I got on my knees and I started digging with my hands. I carried on like a rabid dog, focused intently. I dug down and down and I came upon a hand sized rock which I used to help with my digging. Luckily, the rain from the night before left the ground easier to dig through. I came down upon an old casket in the hole at the marked grave. After opening it, I discovered what I sought: bones. Why didn’t I think of this before? Why would I need a silly small animal’s bone when human bones could help me more? I grabbed the top part of the skull and an upper arm bone from this person. I did not even bother to read who this used to be on the tombstone. It no longer mattered. To me, the bones did not represent a person who used to be alive. They were tools that I now owned and was gaining an understanding of how to use them.
I returned home and cleaned them up; they were beautifully white and smooth. I tossed the small bone in the trash. It quickly fell out of sight and lost in the full trash can. The next day, it was on the news that someone had dug up a grave and desecrated it. My parents were appalled and shocked at the news. I was not scared or nervous for the crime. I was meant to have them. They had called to me and now I own them.
  Something had taken over me and I needed to find out more. I researched online for ancient books and texts. The search engine gave me only fantasy books. Instead, I searched online for old bookstores. There were few that existed. I ditched school and took a bus to the ones I found. They were not the usual bookstores. I hoped to find something to help me. I found nothing and was disappointed.
  I lied to my teacher and parents and they thought nothing of it. I used two different lies. Neither of them cared, or it was the bones helping me. The teacher I told I went to research colleges, my parents I told I was on a school trip.
  I began sitting in the dark, holding the skull and arm in each hand. I would close my eyes and let everything swirl and come to me. My meditative ceremonies gave me the rest I needed while the bed became a useless piece of furniture in my room. I went to school with the two bones in my backpack, wrapped in old t-shirts, for I had to keep them close. I lost all interest in my life: school, friends, my girl, my future, sex, and alcohol. Those used to matter, but not anymore. One morning, I found my hair was starting to turn grey at the edges. After I trimmed off the grey hairs, I went to school. I was on my own in a self-discovery about something that I did not know if anyone else knew or understood. I simply needed to do one thing: to get more bones.
  I ran away one day and threw away the books in my bag. I ventured out at night, only went to other cemeteries and dug up other graves. My collection grew, and I sought only certain ones. From one grave I only wanted a collar bone and from another grave I needed the middle toe bone on the right foot. I did not know the reason, but I had to have these. There was something I felt I could only describe as a power. It was with me when I had my collection all around me. I had them attached to my skin from tying it with strips from my old shirt. There was another skull I found that was bigger than the first one. It fitted over my head perfectly and comfortably. I had it on and could look through the eyeholes. My hunger faded away as clouds and the bones somehow sustained me. My sensations of the world changed. I could sense and feel life and death all around me. I could feel the dead as a carrion could and sense life as a predator.
  Years passed by. I noticed my long hair turned grey and my skin looked that of an old man, yet unafflicted by old age aches and cramps. I began to steal life from the living, or I feared I would simply stop living one day. My appearance remained the same, but I regrew my vitality and strength from the life thievery. The bones had given me so much, but it also took in an unknown symbiotic way.
  In the woods one night, I came upon a group sitting around a campfire. Their backs were to me. Their heart beats echoed louder to me than their talk and laughs. From the strength of their heart beat I would know if they were young and old. Their hearts all had about the same strength, but each was a little different rhythm, similar to the variety of a person’s voice. It became habitual to steal life from a group of campers, especially the younger ones. I was about to cast the spell when I realized: these used to be my friends. Right there sat my ex-girlfriend. Yet that was another lifetime, a different life. It did not stop me or prevented me from taking what I needed from them. They passed out on the logs and fell onto each other; as dominos might. I approached them observed the life I could have had. That life met little to me. The knowledge I had found was something I knew people sought all their lives for and never came close. My peers would awake the next day and knew little of what happened to them.

  Ages past and another autumn came, I walked among the trees in the forest. They were turning colors: from green to brown and burnt orange. The wind blew a cool, crisp breeze. I ventured forth, sensing death. I came upon a man hauling a body through the woods. The man was someone from the city that did not belong out here. He was dumping a body who he recently murdered. The corpse was badly beaten and their dead eyes were still wide from their sudden death. I could sense the innocence upon the dead person. I startled the man that was dragging the body.
"What kind of whack-o are you suppose to be?" the man said in a stereotypical Italian mobster tone.
"I am Rathdaan, nercomancer," I told him simply.
"What??" he asked. I did not respond to him. I raised my bone and skull I always carried in my hands. He took it as an act of aggression, as it was. He drew his gun he and shot before I finished.

  The mob-like goon fell to the forest floor, absent of life. Rathdaan fell dead too, being gunned down by the goon. The corpse the mobster had dragged suddenly sat up gasping for air, as though they had not held a breath for over twenty-one hours. Dried blood covered his head from the old bullet wound. He recognized the man he owed money to, laying there dead. Unaware of what took place or how he was alive, he took what money the mobster goon had and left. He never saw the dead man covered in bones hidden among the tall weeds. The resurrected man lived the rest of his normal life, unaware of how he truly came back to life.