Mari
Blood was what he coughed up when he whispered no sobbed my name.
When he saw that the cold demons in my eyes did not disappear and my steady gait remained determined he said he loved me.
More blood was coughed out onto the freshly fallen snow during that desperately declared truth.
" Certainly in another life I would have loved you ," I nearly growled right before I truly became a… Reaper.
My former lover's black red eyes widened while he became stumbling over useless requests for mercy as my quinque came down.
Then it was over all too quickly leaving me to wallow alone amongst the silence in that field of crimson snow.
" Though I can't promise that in the next life the monster won't be me and the reaper wouldn't be you ," I say as the quinque falls from my shaking hands.
My composure remains but for a moment longer before I'm cradling the corpse of the ghoul that had loved me, crying.
I was already imagining the classic tragic melody playing over the end credits when the director shouted ," cut that's a wrap !"
Then the character that had possessed my body on and off for the last few months became captured in an endless purgatory that is a movie.
The once dead ghoul opens his eyes with a completely thriving annoyance and says to me ," I can't wait to get these creepy contacts off … Oh and you did great by the way. I can already hear the sobbing audience's now !"
Then my co-star is skipping towards his trailer leaving me to kneel on the fallen snow.
I glance up half hoping to see the blue or clouding skies that the audiences surely will bare witness to.
But there will only ever be a grey ceiling for me to gaze up at.
I run my hands over the crimson snow with a small knowing frown.
It's all fake and the magic of this long game of pretend has come to a regretful end.
With a sigh I rise from the ground and glance down at the fake quinque.
It was a prop that I had taken special interest in designing and constructing myself.
In fact the inspiration for it had come from the appearance of the quinque that had come the closest to killing me.
The look of it was a sword with a red blade that had seemed to be set aflame.
Almost like a sith's lightsaber, I thought with a small choked laugh .
I had just kneeled down to pick it up when the now concerned voice of the director called my name and told me some investigators wanted to speak to me.
I shot to my feet and turned towards the director with a thousand concerning questions raging through my mind.
" Must be very curious to know why we are here...less just say it's for a far more gruesome matter then perhaps you drug addictions ," a squirrelly old man says with a rather disconcerting smile as he rudely pushes past the now silent director.
The old man's partner wanders after him with a slightly annoyed grimace on his face.
When our eyes meet his features form into a sober show of a pity filled smile that was silently preparing to deliver a very grim type of news.
There is a presence of death in the air and it's not just because of the weaponized corpse's hidden away in the investigator's briefcases.
" Is someone dead," I asked in a rather monotone voice while my hands shook.
" Your Father was killed this morning by a ghoul," The old man said as his huge eyes studied the set and I with a rather chaotic like intensity.
The old man's partner looked like he wanted to slap himself in the face at the bluntness of his fellow reaper words .
" Are… are the rest of my family alright," I asked as my nails dug into the palms of my hands .
My vision was becoming blurry and everything was shaking.
Even as I began to collapse a thousand furiously shouted questions were ripping their way out of my mouth.
The old man looked calming down at me and without a sign of annoyance let me rage until grief was the most powerless emotion in my mind.
With a fading focus my mind made a note of the fact that the old man had held his partner back from comforting me.
A sliver of peculiar gratitude swelled up inside of me so when my rage quieted I looked up at him and smiled.
" He was alone when it happened," The old man tells me before catching sight of the prop quinque laying forgotten beside me.
An almost startlingly crazed demon begins to take shape inside the old man's odd shaped eyes.
" I will personally slaughter the ghoul that killed your father," He promised me while his partner attempted to gave me his heartfelt condolences .
" When time comes to make that monsters kagune into a weapon of justice let me be the one to design the look of that quinque please ," I asked as my fingertips trailed over the blade of my false quinque.
Then the old man begins to smile down at me and says with a laugh that my idea is a marvelously interesting one.
I lay the quinque across my lap and tell them ," When I was a teenager a classmate of mine saved my life with a quinque just like this one...I think he called it Yukimura something."
There is a faint flicker of recognition in both of the investigators eyes at the sound of the real quinque's name.
The old man's partner has his mouth hanging partially open almost like he's about to bombard me with a series of rather nosy questions at any moment .
I put a stop to any chances of having to suffer through an interrogation by simply mentioning the fact that my grief stricken mother and sister probably really needed me right now.
They bid me farewell after that with more condolences and pity filled smiles.
When I finally found myself safely away from the movie set and stuck in traffic laughter started to spill out of my mouth.
Fresh tears were flowing down my face as my hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly it was almost to the point of being crushed.
I hastily covered one of my eyes with a huge hunk of hair as it transformed from a peasant emerald shade into a demonic red black one.
" Poor papa wasn't alone when he died, after all he paid a whore enough money to fuck him and apparently...follow him into hell ," I dared to whisper as I recalled his frantic pleas for mercy after witnessing me behead the harlot.
Reminiscing about my old man's execution draws a certain old ghoul investigator's promise back to the for front of my mind.
" Looks like you're going to be made into a liar , gramps because sadly if Arima Kishou couldn't put me out of my misery then I doubt you ever could. "