"To kill a monster... you must become one"

Nothing that's all he felt at first, as if he was floating in a dark endless void. He felt peaceful in the endless darkness.

He hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep for a few weeks now. Lincoln was grateful that for once he was sleeping very well. He did not remember what he had been doing the day before, or what had been going on for the past week. All he remembered was feeling a lot of stress, and a lot of anxiety, but why. Then he remembered it was the last week of school, finals week. That must have been it. He was about to graduate the 5th grade and that must have been the cause of the stress, why he had not gotten any sleep.

He slowly opened his eyes. It was dark, his room was pitch black.

Must be the middle of the night he thought. What time is it? He. He rolled over to his right to look at his alarm clock. But all he could see was more darkness. He reached his hand out to where he thought his alarm clock was, only to have his hand hit a wall.

"What the?" he became confused. His room was a bit small, but not this small. He continued to feel around him, and started to panic as he started to realize he was NOT in his room.

He was in some sort of box. He continued to feel the walls of the box, they were soft, lined with some sort of velvet. He was in a coffin.

His younger sister Lucy was obsessed with death, and all things dark, she collected coffins.

Annoyed Lincoln realized that one or more of his sisters must have picked him up while he was sleeping, and placed him in one of Lucy's coffins as a joke. He knew exactly who would do something like this.

"LUAN!!" He screemed, his voice full of rage. Lincoln's older sister Luan was the prankster of the family. Sometimes Luan would go a little over board with her pranks, especially on April Fool's day. He knew she never meant to hurt anyone, but this was the last straw. Lincoln was never quick to anger, and almost never resorted to violence, but as soon as he got out of that coffin, he was going to give his older sister a beating she would never forget. As his eldest sister Lori would say, he was going to turn Luan into a human pretzel.

He started pounding on the roof of the coffin, but it didn't budge.

"YOU THINK THIS FUNNY LUAN!!!!" He screamed again, "WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE, YOU'RE GONNA BE SORRY!!!!"

He then noticed something was in his pocket. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out his cell phone. He turned it on, the light filled the coffin. It was then that Lincoln noticed what he was wearing. Normally when he was in bed he just wore orange PJs, otherwise he wore an orange t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. However now he was wearing a nice orange button down shirt, brown kakis, and dress shoes. The same outfit he once wore when Lori made him go on that date with Ronne Anne.

Why was he wearing this now, did his sisters change his cloths while he was asleep, why would they do that. A bit much for just a prank.

He went into his contacts list to find Lori's number.

"Hello" came a sad voice on the other end. "who is this?"

"Hey Lori" He answered, "It's Lincoln"

"Is... is this some kind of joke?" Lori's voice was getting a little irritated.

"Sorry, I know you don't like me calling you on your phone, but this is kind of an emergency" Lincoln apologized.

"Don't EVER call this number again!" the line went dead.

"Dang it" Lincoln said. "Maybe Leni would help me." He then found Leni's number on his phone.

"Hello" Lincoln instantly recognized Leni's soft sweet voice. Lincolns second oldest sister Leni may not be the smartest tool in the shed, but she was one of the sweetest girls you could ever meet. "Who is this?" Much like Lori, Leni's voice sounded unusually sad for some reason, like she had just lost something she cared about. Lincoln figured maybe someone bought the dress she wanted or something, she tends to get emotional about that stuff.

"It's Lincoln" Lincoln again replied.

Silence...

"Leni?"

"Is this some kind of fucking joke?" Leni's voice had a rage Lincoln had NEVER heard come from her mouth, EVER.

"W-What?" Lincoln was both confused and scared "Leni, I'm not joking, I'm trapped, I need help"

"Lincoln Loud is FUCKING DEAD! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" Leni screamed, then she started to cry. "do... do you think this is fucking funny!" for a few minutes Leni Just kept sobbing. "I just lost my FUCKING brother! is this funny to you, whoever you are, to play on a young girls misery like that? Did I ever do anything to you huh? Did Lincoln ever do anything to you? Go fuck yourself!" the line went dead.

Lincoln sat in the darkness with his jaw hanging open. Never in her whole life had Leni Loud ever once expressed any amount of genuine anger. Never once had she said a bad word like that. But the thing that shocked Lincoln the most was the line "Lincoln Loud is fucking dead." Why would she think he was dead? He was pretty damn sure he wasn't dead, he was still breathing.

He put his finger to his throat.

He had a pulse. He was pretty sure that meant he was alive.

He looked through his contacts list hoping someone would give him an answer. Then he spotted a name he had never put in his contact list, the name simply read CALL ME in all caps.

He called the number.

"I was wondering when you'd call" Said a voice on the other end.

"Who is this?" Lincoln asked.

"My name is Alex" said the man on the other end, "And I'm gonna help you Lincoln Loud"

"How do you know my name?"

"All in good time" Said Alex, "But first you need to get out of that coffin"

"I tried it won't budge"

"It ain't gonna be easy" said Alex, "especially since you're 6 feet under the ground"

"WHAT?"

"Licnoln, you are far stronger than you could ever hope to realize. You just need to focus, summon all of your strength" The Line again went dead.

Lincoln put his phone back in his pocket. He placed his hands against the roof of the coffin, and pushed against it with all of his strength. As he pushed harder and harder against the lid, his veins started to glow orange.

Eventually he was able to break a hole in the top of the coffin. Dirt poured in as Lincoln tunneled his way to the surface.

Lincoln's hand burst through the ground as lightning cracked in the distance. He pulled himself free of his tomb; his body was instantly doused in rain.

He stood up and looked into the cloudy sky. He fell to his knees and took a deep breath of fresh air.

He looked around him and realized he was in the middle of a cemetery. His heart raced as he turned around to see the tomb stone behind him. His heart stopped as he read the inscription.

"Here lies Lincoln Loud. Beloved friend, brother, and son. Your time here may have been short, but it was full of love, may you find peace in the next life. You will be missed. 2006-2017"

"Shocking isn't it" came a voice from behind him, the same voice that was on the other end of the phone just moments ago.

Lincoln turned around to see the man whom the voice belonged too.

There standing in front of him, was a tall menacing looking man. The man had a dark black leather jacket, over a dark grey hoodie. He had blue jeans and cowboy boots. He had the hood of his sweatshirt draped over his head, so that it cast a shadow over his face. All Lincoln could make out on the man's face was his mouth, which seemed to be curled into a slight smirk, and his eyes, as blue as the sky, which seemed to gaze into Lincoln's soul.

"you... you..." Lincoln stammered, "You're him aren't you? Th-the grim reaper, the angel of death."

"You could say that yes" The man said "To many I am the embodiment of death. Most who see me never live to tell the tale. I have become a myth to most people, but as you can see I am very real"

"Then it's true" Lincoln said, as he started to tear up, "I-I'm dead!"

Then everything came back to him.

...

A few weeks ago Lincoln passed out while playing with his sister Lynn in the park. He woke up in the hospital where they found the tumors in his brain. He was given 2 maybe 3 weeks to live. He was sent home after they deemed nothing could be done. The fallowing weeks were filled with pain and sorrow as he spent his remaining days saying goodbye to his loved ones, and trying to make everything write for them when he passed.

The last day of his life, he was back in the hospital as he had once again lost consciousness.

He remembered waking up once again in that damn hospital bed. This time he was hooked up to a bunch of machines that were helping him breath.

He heard the doctors tell his family that he only had a few moments left, and that they should say their goodbyes.

Lincoln's heart started to race, this was it, this was the end. He tried to speak but couldn't, he could only sit helplessly as his family, his parents and his ten sisters sat in the room crying their eyes out. One by one they walked up to him to tell them how much they were going to miss him. What hurt the most was when his sisters apologized for the way they treated him in the past. He never felt that they had hurt him in any way his entire life. Sure they teased him, sure they picked on him, but that's just what siblings do.

And it's not like he was a total saint either, he's picked on them before, he's gotten into fights with them before, and sometimes the fights were his fault.

Yet somehow, his sisters who had shown him so much love his whole life, had the idea that they were horrible people, and he was an innocent little angel. He hated that he had to die with the people he cared about the most, thinking like that.

Suddenly he felt almost as if something had embraced him, it didn't feel like a person, more like some form of energy.

He started to feel a sense of relaxation, of peace.

As his sisters continued to cry and repeat "I'm so sorry Lincoln" and "you don't deserve this" and "It should have been me", he was able to gather up just enough strength to say a few final words.

"Guys..." he said very weakly "It's... ok... I..." He was unable to say anything further.

Soon everything started to go black as he lost consciousness; the last thing he was able to make out was "No Lincoln please don't go!" He didn't know who it was, he assumed it was Lola or Lana, the 6 year old twins, maybe Leni.

After that he did hear one more thing, but he thought he was just going delusional as his brain started to shut down.

"See you soon, Lincoln Loud"

That was the last thing he remembered before he flat lined.

...

And now hear he was, literally staring death in the face, waiting for him to escort him to heaven, or hell or purgatory, or the Ghost Zone from that show Danny Phantom. Wherever it was he was destined to go.

"You died Lincoln" The dark figure before him said.

"No, I" Lincoln started to talk and cry at the same time, "I don't want to die, I'm just a kid."

"We all have our time" Said the mysterious man.

"But my... my... family, I can't leave them the way I did" Lincoln pleaded. "you have to at least let me see them one more time. PLEASE!"

The man starred at Lincoln for a while in silence as Lincoln cried.

"I'll go wherever you want, just let me see my family one last time, so that I know they're ok"

"Relax kid, Relax" The man finally said "you may have died, but you're not dead, and I'm not taking you anywhere. I can guide you, but you must find your own path"

"Wait so, I'm alive" Lincoln stopped crying, his fear and anguish had been replaced with confusion.

"No" Said the man, "I said you're not dead, I didn't say you were alive"

"Wha" Lincoln raised an eyebrow.

"You are beyond the means of life and death" The Man said. "Answers will come in time. But until then... you like Spider-man?"

"Spider-Man?" Lincoln was more confused now than ever

"You know, bitten by a radioactive spider, now he has spider powers. Written by Marvel comics."

"I know who Spider-Man is! What's your point?"

"My point is, much like Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility"

"Huh?"

"I'm saying use your powers wisely kid, don't abuse them."

"Powers? What powers?" Lincoln asked. He was more confused now than ever.

Then Lincoln thought, what the hell is the grim reaper doing reading comics, and watching superhero movies. Then it hit him, this is not who he thought it was.

"Who are you?" Lincoln asked.

The mysterious mans dark sinister expression returned, as he said in a low voice.

"My name... Is Alex Mercer, and I'm the man who brought you back"