Grim Tales
A bit of Prelude
Chapter 2
Due to bad circumstances, my laptop failed. I haven't been able to update since then, so I had begun rewriting chapter 2. I intend for it to be better than the original. This current update, I had promised for Christmas, and the end of this week. Well it's an hour after, and my time has been swallowed by a lot of stuff, leaving this chapter largely unfinished. So, I suppose this will be chapter 2A and so on so forth until I get up to where I believe a good chapter 3 would be.
Mandy had her gun pointed toward the blonde child. The tension in the air seeming to reach a breaking point. Mandy pulled back her gun, cradling her baby at a distance from the girl. Mandy narrowed her eyes and asked in her icy voice, "Who exactly are you, girl. You have a lot of nerve to kidnap the child of Death himself and his just as dangerous wife. I don't suppose you value your life at all."
"Do you value that baby at all?" the girl retorted.
"Of course not. Worse choice I've ever made." Mandy growled.
"So why do you keep the child?"
"I made a bet." Mandy answered simply, with a shrug, "and I don't lose bets."
"Neither does the reaper. You beat him. My 'mommy' told me so." The girl made small air quotes.
"Who the hell are you, tell me before I make you tell me." Mandy lowered the gun's sights, focusing between the young girl's eyes.
"My name is Harmonia. I'm sure that's all you'll need to know in any case. I've been studying you after learning what happened to my mother. My father became a useless and eventually dead, bum. What I'm doing with you, is making another bet. I'll bet that you'll never learn to love these rascals without my help. You'll-" The young girl's speech was abruptly cut off due to Mandy's already short fuse of patience burning out.
"You get out of here. Never bother me again."
Harmonia gave something of a twisted smile. A familiar gap was between her front teeth. She had yet to grow in a tooth but it looked like a stub was there. Harmonia began to walk toward the windows. Mandy's patience, now at a boiling point, began firing more shots at the girl. They rang through the complex like church bells in an abandoned village. The girl began to book it toward the windows of the complex, jumping from the window before hitching a ride on the same phoenix that had kidnapped Junior.
The night sky seemed to full of the comedic sounds caw of the phoenix as it flew off in the distance, as well as the sound of it hacking up some sort of mucus covered ball of feathers. Mandy looked down at the Junior. Once again, she was rethinking this entire marriage. These kids, everything. Everyday there seemed to be another attempt on the kidnapping of these kids and somehow she is suppose to love them. Loving much of anything was the one thing she did not intend on happening until she was well lost to oblivion with no chance of existence.
As Mandy returned home, night had already began to fall upon the ever gloomy landscape. She had rushed the now sleeping Junior up to his room, Laying him down in his bed. Giving a sigh, she laid a blanket lazily over him. She marched into the study, downstairs. Collapsing in a chair and groaning loudly.
"I hate kids..." she sighed.
"I don't suppose dat means you had a good day?" Mandy turned around quickly, finding Grim walking toward her from the far end of the room, "I notice you took my-"
"Your scrapbook diary?" she cut him off.
"My journal!" cried a frustrated Grim, trying to maintain the masculinity of his hobby.
"Whatever you call it. It's a scrapbook, Grim."
Grim grumbled, "So how was your day wit Junior?"
"The brat got kidnapped, the usual."
"I suppose dere isn't too much different going on den. How'd you get rid of de kidnapper?"
"I didn't."
"Well dat's a first." Grim's curiosity rose, "what exactly happened?"
"Grim, there was this kid. She was ugly as sin. But something was different about her?"
"You mean as ugly as you before the pa-"
"Not the time or the place bone head. I'm in no mood." Mandy growled.
"Cool yourself down child!" Grim waved his hands out in front of him "Alright den, what be so special about dis girl?"
"She felt familiar yet different. Like I knew her from somewhere. She said her name was, Harmonia." Mandy crossed her legs and pensively stared into the fire burning next to her chair "This girl felt out of kilter yet, perfectly in balance."
"Never heard of any ugly children by dat name or description. Course, I bring people out of de world, not into."
"So you know nothing of this girl then?"
"As far as tings go, you know more dan I do."
Mandy remained quiet. She felt all that could be said had been said. Unless you wanted to get into needless chit-chat about each others day. Mandy hated the idea, though Grim felt it would be good for the two of them. With nothing else to do but go lay in their bed until she eventually fell asleep, she asked, keeping direct contact out of this, "So how was the day with Minnie?"
"It was good. For de most part. She wanted to go to dat tree in de ruined church. I never liked churches."
"Seemed alright with it when you were a nun."
Grim pointed a finger and sighed, "Dat was den, Mandy!"
"Kind of like your scrapbook. Hey, I don't judge you much more than most people in the underworld."
"What's dat suppose to mean!"
Mandy gave a slight smirk, "I think I'm going to head to bed, Grim." she rose from her chair and made for the door.
"I'll be making clippings for my journal."
"Scrapbook." Mandy said as she exited the room.
"Journal!"
The next few weeks went as normal as ever. Grim would make his usual rounds around the world, presenting himself at catastrophe after catastrophe, then come home and talk about the usual old man who thought he would cheat death and through some miraculous force of idiocy, would escape. Everyday as he came home it was the same old,
"I think I'm living in a cartoon! Some of the stuff that happens could never happen to any other reaper!" of which, Mandy would crack a smirk.
As far as this last week was ultimately concerned, Grim had been having a rough week. Megaville was having all kinds of trouble and even more death's than Grim had felt was suitable for a city filled with heroes. He was wondering if any of them were taking their jobs seriously.
This day in particular started a bit differently than the others. As Mandy was waking up, a courier had stopped in with a letter. Mandy groggily rolled from her bed, looking out at the courier. He was blushing slightly, seeing Mandy in her night gown. She took the package, closing the door on the courier. She looked over the nicely wrapped package, the ribbon getting glitter everywhere. There were plenty of scales and balances on the packaging.
She opened it reluctantly, not exactly trusting it, but feeling confident enough to just open it. Inside the package was a necklace.
"Probably that Judge I bribed..." she sighed, "told him to leave me alone."
