The Ballad of Ava and the Reaper

The Ballad of Ava and the Reaper

They say the brightest lights burn out fastest. But some don’t burn out—they get dragged across the threshold and come back... wrong.

Before she was Trash Queen, she was Ava—a rising starlet with a velvet voice and the kind of stage presence that could silence artillery fire. The world was on the brink of war, but Ava didn’t care. She had her voice, her dream, and a spotlight to die in.

And someone was watching.

Vox de Gaunt wasn’t just another face in the smoke. He was Death in a bowtie—dressed like a gentleman, but colder than the grave. He didn’t collect souls the old-fashioned way. No scythe, no screaming.

He offered deals.

“You won’t live to see peace,” he told her behind the club, sirens whining in the distance.
“But you could sing forever.”

She said yes. Of course she did. Who wouldn’t? What he didn’t mention was that her voice—the real part of her—wouldn’t survive the trip.

What came back was Trash Queen. Undead, eternal, still beautiful—but broken in a way no one could fix. She could still wail, still melt amps and shatter chandeliers. But that spark? The divine, fragile flaw that made Ava Ava? Gone.

She remembers greatness, but can’t feel it anymore. That’s why she destroys hotel rooms. That’s why she screams through her sets. Not for attention—for grief.

“I was going to change the world,” she whispered once, curling up in a cheap motel after a show.
“Now I just set it on fire.”

Vox doesn’t speak of it. But sometimes—after the stage lights dim and the roadies vanish—he watches old tapes. Recordings of Ava, before. When she was alive. When her voice could end wars and start revolutions.

He sits alone in silence, expression unreadable, skeletal hand resting on rewind.

He’s done this before. He’ll do it again. That’s his curse.

He doesn’t age.
He doesn’t learn.
He just keeps trying.

Undead Among the Living
Trash Queen isn’t really a member of The JURN. Not permanently. She’s a force of nature—a hurricane with lipstick and fury. She joins them sometimes when the moon is wrong and the amps beg for pain. But it never lasts.

The others don’t ask why. They don’t need to. They know the story.

Vox tried to save something that wasn’t his to save.

And what came back was louder, meaner, and sadder than anything the living could understand.

Fin.