Welcome to a new chapter! Here is yet another part of my writing playlist: The Pretty Reckless – Heaven Knows
One, two, three and four, the devil's knocking at your door
Caught in the eye of a dead man's lie
Show you life with your head held high
Now you're on your knees with a head on low
Big man tells you where to go
Tell them it's good, tell 'em ok
Don't do a goddamn thing they say
Warnings for this chapter: Kol's temper and Jess' vocabulary
Chapter 3: Audacious
"Cory?" the woman asked yet again and the ghost in question appeared behind her, hovering. "Where's your friend?"
"Right there, Jess," Cory pointed straight at Kol. "Can't see him?" The woman squinted and sighed.
"How long since you died, Kol, was it?" she asked and Kol turned to Cory with an incredulous expression on his face.
"Is this for real? She looks bloody ridiculous! Can she even commune with ghosts?" he was rambling, which he knew was a bad habit, but whenever his rage rose, the filter on his usually witty remarks vanished. Cory gave him a pointed look. Kol stop pacing angrily and threw up his hands, the sound of them slapping his denim covered thighs ringing out in the empty hallway. "I was killed a little over two weeks ago," he finally said.
"Two weeks, he says," Cory told Jess with a smile.
"Oh, makes sense then," the medium mused, looking up, her finger coming to her mouth, then humming a second and seeming to come to a decision. "Well, nothing to it. Let's get you on the docket, Kol, and Cory can be our middle man until I'm able to see or hear you, which shouldn't really take more than a month."
"A month?!" he yelled. Cory put his hands up, taking a step through the door as well and attempting to calm him down.
"Kol, man, it's just a mon-"
"I don't have the luxury of a month waiting to even get contact with the living world," Kol hissed in anger, vaguely aware of his features changing into his vampire ones, sharp teeth bared at the ghost and medium. "There must be a way to hear my grievances today."
"Man, I told you that Jess has a docket based on priority, we need to abide by these rules," Cory continued, but Kol was done waiting. He stepped forward at vampire speed, reaching for the medium who was two steps out in the hallway, his anger rising further when he went through her, slamming into the all familiar barrier of the door. "Woah, bro!" Cory had stepped back just in time.
"Y'all need to cool the fuck down!" Kol's head snapped to the medium, Jess, he reminded himself, at the tone. "I'm willing to help, but not if there's going to be this fucking alpha male nonsense. Now, this is my house, my time, my rules. If you don't like it, Kol, you're welcome to go look for another motherfucking medium but I'll promise you there ain't no better than me that you'll find," the young woman finished, and Kol felt like he was looking at her for the first time. Under that ridiculous getup a fierce strength lay and he could see that in her eyes. She was a headstrong one, he could tell.
"I'm willing to give anything a go," he finally said to an expectant Cory. "Just a tad short on time."
"Looks like you've tamed the beast, Jess," Cory laughed and the medium shook her head.
"Hotheads are my specialty," she smiled. Again, Kol marveled at the change in the woman. She ran hot and cold, like quicksilver. It was like watching a leaf dancing in the wind, but only in moods. Those kids of people were his weakness, he had to admit. He had always been the impulsive one and he loved being in the company of those who only fueled his temperament, and didn't provide a foil. Perhaps, it would be interesting to be the ghost to this woman's medium. "Let's begin, shall we? I've got a few more ghosts besides you guys tonight." Jess stepped into her apartment, waving a hand and Kol went to follow – only to slam right into a familiar barrier yet again.
"Oh, blast it," he groaned. "Cory, mate, she needs to invite me in."
"Aah, right," the ghost chuckled. "He's a vamp, Jess." The young woman, still holding the door, smiled mischievously.
"The usual then," there was a giggle. "I'll have you swear a solemn oath that you will behave in my home, purely as a guest vamp, no anger issues and blood issues, courtesy," Jess said, leaning onto the door. Kol was, in all honesty, sick of the damned hallway.
"Yeah, whatever, I'll respect your bloody rules, now let me in," he was beyond annoyed and just wanted to get this whole ordeal over with. After she received a nod from Cory, Jess spoke again.
"Come in, Kol," her voice had a teasing note to it, which he despised. He was the one who teased because he was the one in the superior position. Always. Being reduced to this carnival show was abhorrently humiliating. As he passed the medium on his way in, Kol spotted the way she closed her eyes and took a breath, before closing the door. "Any chance that you grew up somewhere northwest? Perhaps, Montreal or Maine?"
"Virginia," Kol supplied with a frown.
"He says Virginia," Cory repeated.
"Ah, that explains it," Jess nodded with a secretive smile and locked her door. "Now then, shall we, gentlemen?" And the young woman led them both into her apartment.
The medium's apartment was as ridiculous as her garments. After the short and extremely narrow hallway, dark due to the late evening, Kol entered through a curtain of coats and jackets into the living room. It was tiny. Positively miniature. A white, fluffy carpet, which looked to him like it was made out of poorly combed dog hair, lay in the middle of the room, a small round coffee table on top of it, filled with books, magazines and mugs half full of liquids. Someone had a bad habit when it came to doing the dishes, Kol noted in distaste. There was a couch, painfully neon green, but rather comfortable looking, a small sofa chair and a TV, as well. Furthermore, white shelves filled with books and knickknacks lined the white walls, making the room seem smaller than it was. The area continued into a kitchenette on one side, rather tiny and also accented in bright greens and some purple colors. Further, he could spy a little hallway leading from the junction of the counter with bar stools which signaled the end of the cooking space and the little dresser which was at the end of the couch. Undoubtedly, down that path was a bathroom and a bedroom. On the opposite side of the kitchenette a large window took up the space, spreading outwards in a French balcony, where Kol could see various clothes drying. But, the worst part of the whole ordeal was the number of ghosts in the small space.
"Alright, everyone," Jess called out to around ten of them, excluding Kol and Cody. The vampire noted how most of them looked rather morbidly dead, some form of injury marring their human appearance. "Let's begin tonight's session. I'll go over the rules very quickly," Jess threw herself into the only sofa chair, picking up a notebook and pen from the table and carefully choosing the most recently made coffee. "I don't do ghosts at work. I don't do ghosts when I'm out with the living. I don't do ghosts in my bedroom. I don't particularly enjoy visions, but if it's necessary for communication I will do my best with them. There is a priority system based on how urgent it is for you to contact the world of the living, going from green to yellow and finally red. I don't do disrespecting the system, because then all I'll do is not commune with you. This is my house, my rules, I'm the boss here. Questions?" she asked after listing off the already familiar rules. There was silence. "Good, let's open tonight's session, we have three hours before I need to go to bed. If you would all give me your names, details about your deaths and requests, we'll get to sorting you according to priority." The ghosts started shuffling, some walking towards the couch, others towards the kitchen or the window and one by one, they began giving their information, which went straight into the notebook.
Kol watched the woman work for half an hour, giving out green and yellow slips of paper with information, sliding them onto the table in front of her in stacks. She took sips of coffee in between, sometimes tucked her hair behind her ear on the left side and twirled her pencil occasionally when she had trouble understanding the spirits in her living room. However, his patience was running out.
"How long does this usually take?" Kol asked Cory, who shrugged, leaning against the counter of the kitchenette.
"Can take up to an hour to get everyone sorted, then she starts taking the more urgent requests first," the ghost replied.
"That's unfortunate," Kol grinned in a familiar, sinister way. "I don't much fancy being kept waiting." He knew that it might've been a bad idea to spit in the face of the woman's rules, but he didn't much care at the time. He was Kol bloody Mikaelson and he took precedence over these silly ghosts and their issues. They had an eternity to fix themselves and go into the light or whatever. He was on a clock and he would be damned if he'd wait in line like a proper soldier.
Kol had stopped feeling remorse for his kills after the first few. It was such a long time ago when he'd begun leaving a blood trail wherever he went. The faces and the taste of his victims' blood had blurred into only two things, more hunger and the euphoria of the high after feeding. So, when Kol made a quick round of the room, killing every single ghost there except Cory, it was just a normal thing for him. It was like a casual stroll in the park for any human.
"What the fuck?" Jess exclaimed, jumping from her seat, looking at the bodies on the floor, all of them in different states of mutilation.
"Holy shit, man. Are you-" Cory started, but Kol interrupted, pointing a red finger at him, while still holding a ghost's bloody heart tightly in it.
"Now, mate, tell her I'll have her listen to me first," the vampire ordered, no room left for argument. Cory repeated what he said to Jess in a shaky voice. Kol expected the woman to concede. To tremble in fear. To break down crying. But, all that happened was that her mouth twitched down and she looked up from the bodies, eyes positively stormy.
"Oh, fuck no!" the medium yelled. "Get out of my home." She pointed at the door, which just miffed Kol even more.
"Now you tell her that I'm not leaving until she contacts a witch for me," Kol growled at Cory, who again served as his mouthpiece.
"Hell no!" Jess said again, shaking her head. "For doing this, not only will I not listen to you now, but I'll never ever help you! Go find another motherfucking medium!" she stomped out of the living room, towards the small hallway connecting to her bedroom, presumably, all the while avoiding the dead ghosts on her floor. Kol turned positively vicious, following her.
"You, stay there," he told Cory in a tight tone, successfully rooting the other ghost to his spot. He ignored the wide-eyed, betrayed look on the man's face as he went after the woman.
Her bedroom was simple, only a large bed and a wardrobe, a small desk in the corner in front of the window, even more shelves and books, the color scheme still white, neon green and dark purple. Kol went in with purpose, through the open door, finding the woman on her laptop on the bed, googling the information she'd gotten from the ghosts. She was waiting for them to revive, he realized, further fueling his rage.
"Listen here you dumb sow, you're going to get me a witch, or I'll haunt you until the day you die," Kol threatened, only to realize that she couldn't or didn't want to hear him. He stood in front of her, using all of his rage to slam her laptop screen down on itself, which only caused a slight case of a flickering screen as his hand flew through it.
"Stop throwing a tantrum, you maniac," Jess retorted without looking up. "I'm not going to help you."
"A tantrum?!" Kol went to her bookshelves, desperately flinging his arm out, trying to get them to move. One book trembled, but didn't fall. He went to the desk next, attempting to toss the things on it onto the floor, but causing only a few pages of the open book to flip over.
"Yeah, yeah, you can rage all you want," Jess said dismissively, her temper obviously having cooled down. "Judging by your current state, without my help you won't even be able to be heard by another medium. So, good luck with whatever nefarious plan you have in mind."
Kol was ashamed to say that he raged around the woman's apartment the whole evening, even going as far as to kill some of the ghosts who had revived yet again. They didn't seem too bothered with his murder spree, seeing as it merely took them a few minutes to rise again, as if he hadn't torn them apart. Ghosts, as he was learning, were almost invincible. No amount of mutilation could kill them. All that he had managed to do was disturb some of them enough so that they had to rematerialize outside of the apartment and then come back inside, regarding him coolly. None of them had complained. None of them had retaliated. And Kol was positively furious.
"Talk to the bloody woman!" finally he screamed at Cory, who just shook his head.
"Nah, man, not till you calm down," the ghost had replied. "I ain't about to make trouble for Jess."
"So be it," Kol growled and rushed forward, sinking his teeth into the ghost's neck. Cory's screaming in the background, completely disregarded, the vampire pondered on the oddity of drinking blood from ghosts. Sure, it tasted fine. However, it didn't give him that clarity and high he would usually get. He didn't feel the hunger which had plagued him for a thousand years. Instead, he was indifferent towards it. Drinking was a means to an end.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Jess murmured from her spot in the sofa chair, glaring in Kol's general direction as he let Cory's limp body slip to the floor. Kol smirked, leisurely walking over to her, taking a seat on the couch next to the spirit who was currently attempting to communicate her grievances to the medium. The woman, in her forties with clear rope bruises around her neck, glanced at him nervously when he threw his arm around the back of the couch, the act not intimate, as it might be sometimes, but an obvious threat. Yes, he'd killed that one three times already, Kol noted in sadistic joy.
"I don't want any trouble," the woman said. Kol smirked wider, his hands going up in an almost surrender motion. "I just want my family to know I'm at peace."
"And I just want to be first in line," the vampire sneered. "I suppose we can't all have what we want, darling." Without letting her utter another word, Kol snapped her neck, letting the body of the ghost fall back onto his arm.
"Jesus Christ," the medium rolled her eyes. "Okay, then. No more sessions until this lovely spirit leaves us, I suppose," she said to the crowd, a murmur going through them. "I'll be sending out the letters for the requests I've taken down up until now and then we will continue whenever our company is better." The ghosts silently filed out, passing through her door, some thanking her verbally and others simply nodding at her. Kol, however, was nowhere near done with her. As his rage had managed to slowly transform into cool, icy anger, he began to plot how he'd ruin every single part of the woman's life until she gave him what he wanted.
Jessica Reid was twenty-one years old, living on her own, fairly independent and enjoying her daily job in retail. Well, as much as one could enjoy such a job. She had moved to Seattle to pursue her schooling, but in the end, she'd needed more money for it. One thing led to another and she was left working and saving up in hopes that by the time she was twenty-six she would be able to pay for her own tuition and not burden her family with her life.
However, there was another side to Jessica that not many knew of, which was that she could, quite literary, see dead people. The crowds of ghosts had been following her about for as long as she could remember, and she found that she didn't mind them that much, for one could learn a lot about life from the dead. However, in order to have a relatively normal life, she had put down some ground rules, for the first time, after settling down in Seattle.
Jess got up that morning and went about her usual routine, only to realize that she was by no means alone. While brushing her teeth after a shower, in the fog of her mirror, letters began to appear, causing her to groan through the foam.
"G'mornin'," she greeted the wayward angry ghost who had set himself upon her the previous night. Her casual remark to his threat in the mirror only seemed to enrage him, as he did his best to make her toiletries fly off the sink. However, as he was merely able to make them shake violently, Jess ignored it. A new ghost, she figured. "I'm gonna get some coffee and why don't you make yourself at home, seeing as you're already doing that."
She continued to ignore his anger throughout the morning. He'd made her utensils rattle in the drawer while she was getting a teaspoon for her coffee and he'd made her coffee a little too hot for her liking. Following that, the ghost had proceeded to flip the pages of her newspaper as she tried to read through the obituaries. But, Jess refused to rise to his challenge and continued to go about her usual day without letting him know that he was, in fact, bothering her. It seemed to infuriate him.
It wasn't to say that Jess wasn't a little apprehensive about the whole situation. She'd been on the wrong end of quite a few violent ghosts in the past. She could still recall, sometimes even rather violently in nightmares, how a ghost of a man who'd died on death row had attached himself to her, seeking forgiveness from his family. Unfortunately, he'd been all too keen on showing her everything he'd done, due to his inability to communicate properly in the beginning. Jess had also had a run in with a ghost of a serial killer, and that had been even worse. However, compared to those, this current haunting seemed almost juvenile and rather harmless, especially by such a novice of a ghost.
As he rattled the hangers in her wardrobe, she could feel the emotions coming off of him in waves – anger, desperation, fear, longing, sadness and loneliness. He wasn't particularly bad, in her opinion, as far as ghosts went. However, he was damn rude and she wouldn't be showing him any mercy anytime soon.
So, Jess got dressed quickly, tossing on a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt, picked one of the waist length jackets from the hallway and a random shawl, and gathered her necessities in a bag. Tossing one more look around the apartment, Jess noticed it was empty of spirits, nodded to herself and closed and locked the door, leaving.
She took the bus to work, seeing as she couldn't really afford to keep a car. Gas was expensive and she was barely making it, considering her savings plan. The aura of annoyance and anger followed her, which told her that her friendly new ghost was coming with her to work, but it didn't bother her all that much. She was glad to feel the rage dim a tad from what she'd felt last night, which gave her hope for the ghost. However, she still wasn't ready to give in and commune with the man.
Jess got off the bus in downtown, looking to the same woman at the bench who sat there every day. She offered a small smile and sat next to her for a brief moment.
"Good morning, Mrs. Dubois," Jess greeted. The old lady looked up, giving her a hesitant smile.
"Good morning, dear," she replied.
"How are you feeling this morning?"
"Much better than yesterday, dear girl," replied the woman again.
"My offer still stands, whenever you feel like you might need a helping hand," Jess told the old lady and then stood with a polite nod, leaving when Mrs. Dubois waved after her.
To think that mere years earlier, she'd have thought Mrs. Dubois alive. Jess had gotten much better at discerning who was living and who was not since moving to Seattle. There was something about being independent that had her paying more attention, she supposed. After all, when one could see ghosts, who often looked like perfectly healthy humans, as clearly as one could see one's own reflection in the mirror, it tended to get a bit tricky discerning between them. The clothing sometimes gave them away. At other times, it was the vacant look in their eyes. But, mostly, it was the wave of emotions which crashed over Jess as soon as she was close enough.
Speaking of a crashing wave of emotions, there was her petulant boy again. He was following her, she knew, and to work no less. Well, it wouldn't do him any good other than maybe to shock him to high heaven. If the best he could do with his newfound dead state was rattle some things and write in the steam, she was perfectly safe from him.
Kol had gone from blinding rage, to scheming icy rage, to volcanic eruption manic rage and finally settled at raging annoyance, all within the past twelve hours or so. The woman, the medium, was infuriating. She had the gall to dismiss him. She had the audacity to ignore him. Him. She had giggled and smiled at his attempts at haunting her. She had casually disregarded his threats, which had, truth be told, left him almost immobile on the floor panting in exhaustion after he'd managed to get them through to the world of living. And, to top it all off, she'd invited him to make himself at home in her tiny dump of an apartment. The gall of her. The audacity. The teasing smirk. She had all the control in the world over him and she knew it. And he despised it.
Still, he had managed to calm down a tad, in order to observe her better, so that he could haunt her better. He'd decided to follow her to wherever she was going, even. Kol had been a little impressed at her conduct with ghosts in public, he had to say, because some weren't so easy to tell apart from the living. But, mostly, he'd been intrigued by her general aloof demeanor at his presence. He wasn't going to stay so easily ignored, he promised himself. Shouting hadn't worked, so he had to do something else. He would never admit that he'd spent the majority of the evening, as the medium drank her coffee, read a book and watched a TV show, yelling at her and rattling things, which was all very much in vain.
Finally, Jess stopped in front of a shop that had a sign above it featuring a neon image of a lady in 16th century clothes, skirts hiked, cursive letter spelling out 'The Rouge Duchess' next to it. She opened the door and entered, Kol quickly following. He stopped short as soon as he saw the insides of the shop, eyes wide as he looked incredulously about. A slow, modern song with deep base accompanied the red accents of the interior, causing almost every item his gaze landed on to grab his attention.
He was surrounded by phalluses.
That's all folks! Let me know what you thought :D
Side note: Lucy from the previous two chapters was inspired by Wordsworth's Lucy Poems, if you're interested in it, I'm always up for a chat on the topic, or you can do your own research :)
Review reply for a lovely guest:
Merci beaucoup pour le commentaire! Je ferai de mon mieux pour écrire rapidement de nouveaux chapitres :)
Excuse any mistakes if I made them, it's been a while since I've used French xD
Best!