Chapter 3: Death That Followed, that Haunted And That Finally Killed

Again, I was running. Again eleven, in tights and terrified, screaming; I was trying to out run death. The screams were tightening my chest and tears were filling the corners of my eyes and I even coughed but out of fear and confusion, the screams continued to rip across the air night. The second scream joined mine and falling without control, I tumbled to the pavement, tearing open a hole in my tights that had opened and closed a thousand times, threads sowing closed and ripping again each time I dreamed of this night. My tiny head turned to see my mother fall, slowly like a tree, to the ground and her victor walk away.

What now?

Then I blinked and trees of ungodly height surrounded me. Pockets of stars and the night sky peeked through the canopy fifty feet above the ground. Though it was dark, I knew my skin was the color of dark ash. Fear was beating against my heart but there was new sensation that was more powerful than anything I had felt before. It was the same thick warmness I felt as I slept in Dina's room. I didn't scream as I looked around and saw four, three-legged animals circling me. They were hissing and squealing, clearly pissed. One leapt but I step-sided it, grabbed one of its webbed feet and ripped it from its scaly leg. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in my neck. Pale hands grabbed my shoulders and I gasped. The things that had been circling me before looked frightened then slithered off. I closed my eyes—

—then woke up on top of a medieval castle balcony. In my hands I held a bloody cloth. My arms were covered in a lacey pink material that moved in the softest wind. I heard a grunt and looked up to see something big and blue glaring at me as something oozed out of the side of its mouth. Without my direction, my hands lifted up the pale pink dress and pulled out a piece of wood threateningly. Any fear I previously felt melted away with the wood in my hands. The blue monster in front of me snarled.

"Let's end this now, Slayer," it growled and leapt forward.

We tumbled backwards and I cracked my head against the wooden door. I felt horribly sick and suddenly the blue things eyes turned an electric green and a wild hiss erupted from its throat as fangs appeared from its open mouth. It bent down and proceeded to eat out my heart.

I screamed again. I was in my own room, in Manhattan, New York. I was in my own bed and safe in my city. My skin was wet, my hair was wet, my face was wet, the bed was wet, with sweat. Suddenly my back went numb and I collapsed into the mattress, the impact shaking the bed ever so slightly. Freezing, I pulled my legs to my stomach and shivered.

These weren't normal dreams. When I was thirteen, I was diagnosed with night terrors. The doctors said it could be post-traumatic stress finally rocketing to the surface, but they began before my mother died. True enough, however, to the doctor's diagnosis, they got especially violent afterwards. I would wake up with my throat dry, tears fresh on my face and my chest on fire, screaming like a mute person trying to make noise. There would be red welts on my arms and on the skin around my heart, like I had been trying to remove flesh from bone.

Now, in Manhattan, I could see the red blood shining even in the dark. The night terrors finally stopped when I turned sixteen, but apparently they weren't gone for good. The walls seemed to close up as I tried to melt into the stucco beside the bed.

As much as I hated to admit it, maybe Dina was right. I was getting restless with my mother's death day approaching. Old memories were mixing with my imagination and the result was truly terrifying.

I knew I shouldn't go back to sleep. I shouldn't. But tonight, the nightmares had defeated anything that resembled a fighting spirit and to fight back, I just couldn't do it.

*~*~*

"Get up, come on! Dr. Zwangel's aquarium/zoo only comes around the country once every five years and guess where they are today? Call me back!"

"Hey, I've got Starbucks and two tickets to the Red Socks game. You still like hotdogs right? Gimme a call back and we can plan."

"I'm trying to decide if to paint my bathroom or the living room turquoise. You wanna give me a call back before I make some horrible mistake?"

"Reid. Get out of bed. Look, you can't stay in bed all day. You're going to have to face the world some time. It's not my business but you seriously need to call me back or I'm going to call the cops."

I groaned from underneath two pillows and shoved the earplugs haphazardly deeper into my ears. Dina had been calling for the better part of five hours, occasionally leaving messages that made me want to punch out my own ears. After the fourth, I reached a pillow from the top of my mountain and threw it as hard as I could towards the answering machine and phone. I heard it collide with something and a plastic something clattered to the ground. I grinned and rolled over, pulling the covers up to my chin.

Oh, God.

It's today. That was why she had called so many times and left disgustingly cute messages. She was trying to distract me, make me think about anything else but this. The day that I had been trying so hard to avoid had crept up on me so unexpectedly, I felt as though there was a bomb planted somewhere close by and it would detonate at any moment.

Dina was trying to make me get out of the house and not think that today was the day my mother was murdered right in front of me.

I rolled out of my bed, my feet prickling as they touched the cold floor. The clock on my bedside table read 10:32 A.M. The job at Bonanza had started a long time ago. Should I even bother showing up?

I glanced out the window, hot and cold air battling out their eternity-long war on my windowpane, creating a fog from which outside objects are swirled into a haze. Yawning and deciding work was for another day, I walked over to the window and smoothed away some of the fog. Manhattan never quit, even though sometimes I considered doing so. People, buses, cars, bicycles moved constantly, tirelessly and I yawned again, watching them all from my window.

*~*~*

In a matter of minutes, I had my running "gear" on and an extra windbreaker was tied around my waist. Even five feet away from the window, I could feel the cold clenched around the building, trying to wiggle one of its determined fingers under a door crack to freeze anything that came into its path. Running had been chosen as my appropriate bullet-biting distraction and the apparent conditions outside would be welcoming. The thought of the coma-inducing, frost-bite-causing cold was a dream I severely hoped to come true.

I hopped down the staircase, warming up my cold heart. I shook my legs and ankles, preparing them too. Then through the door I went, and immediately got hit by a blast of ferociously cold air. I swam through it, my hands freezing for a second onto the metal of the revolving door. But now outside, it wasn't that bad, just that numbing cold that could needle its way into every muscle, bone and nerve in your body if you let it. But I wouldn't. I started jogging, pacing my way down the street, going faster as I went.

Then as I hit the street corner, freedom began. Blood started flowing fast and hot from my head to my feet. I could feel the pulse in my ankles and heels as each dashing step brought me forward. Sticky, warm air fogged in front of me as I panted. The flower shop passed me by so quickly I barely noticed. Around a stop sign and down a hill. Cross a street. Up onto the sidewalk and onto the gravel path. As I bounded through the park gates, the first marker went off in my head. One mile down. Seven to go.

*~*~*

The sight of the empty, abandoned park was an oasis in a desert. A slight early morning snow had crisped the ground, matching the miles of once golden trees and warm grass to the dank, grey clouds in the sky. As it was a day in the dead middle of the week, mostly everyone was at school or work, or not stupid enough to come out in freezing temperatures unless they needed to be. I liked to consider myself not a particularly dumb individual so my reason for being outside, alone, on a frightfully bleak morning was to think of nothing in particular. When I awoke this morning, I did not immediately think of the park as my escape but now the idea seemed brilliant.

I came to an icy bench, shoved away some snow with my hand covered in the sleeve of a jacket, and sat down. Above me the murky clouds were constantly swirling and changing, moving and shifting, but from my glance towards the enforcers of winter, they looked perfect still. As one giant curtain covering the entire sky, maybe the entire galaxy, the clouds surrounding my world were blank and empty even though they held so much potential for other things. I knew at any given moment they could pour down buckets of icy rain, or sneeze softly and send snowflakes twirling down from nowhere. They could move away and the sun would return to remind us there still is a light somewhere. Either way, they could be anything but for as of this moment, they were silent and still as an empty canvas and that was exactly what I wanted my harassed mind to be.

For a moment, I considered going to sleep, right there on that park bench.

In the breadth between sleep and reality I heard a sound that scared me and nearly brought me to tears. It was a child's laughter. A child at play was laughing hysterically. I opened my eyes to see my seven-year-old self run through the snow in the field in front of the bench, pick up a snowball and throw it at the redheaded woman behind her.

"Got you, Mommy!" The little girl squealed. The woman smiled and laughed then picked up a snowball from the ground and threw it at her daughter.

"Nope, I got you!"

The girl let out something between a playful scream and a laugh as her mother tackled her to the ground, throwing snow into the air.

The woman and her daughter had rolled down the hill so I could barely see them now, but their voices were still as clear as day.

"Mommy, after this lets sit on that bench up on that hill and have lunch."

"Ok, sweetie, it's your birthday, we can do whatever you want."

Now back in present times, I leapt from the bench, the seat scalding me from head to toe. Out of all the benches in the entire park, I had to sit on this one. How could I forget that birthday? What I had hoped would remove me from painful memories had brought on something that slashed me in half. I bounded up from the seat and started to run away down the path.

I sprinted into the wooded path area and closed my eyes, hopeful silence cracking inside of me. The wind was more intense in here, dashing around close trees to bite me in the face. I could hear no animals, no rustle of wind-pushed leaves. Nothing put pure silence and the echo of my breathing and the scratching sound of my sneakers ripping in the gravel. Once again I was breathing in emptiness and the blank canvas appeared in my head.

My stomach hurt even before I heard it. The childish laughter had followed me but now it came from a child that was older than the one out in the snow. Colored in grey I ran through an autumn forest now, where life was still present and games were still played. A redheaded mother and her daughter raced around the thick oaks, laughing and giggling. The mother lunged for the little girl, who turned at the last moment to run to the other side of another tree.

"Since when did you get so fast?" The mother panted, which only made the girl giggle harder.

"Maybe I was always this fast and I just let you win." The little girl danced around the tree as her mother tried to catch her breath.

"No, I think it's from all that broccoli I've been feeding you. Or maybe it is in your genetics and I'm Super Mom. Haha!"

She struck a pose as a weight lifter and the little girl erupted into happy squeals. She leapt onto her mother and they tumbled backwards into a heap of crunchy leaves.

"You're the best mom ever. I love you."

"I love you too&"

"Damn it!"

I, as the rest of the world, was colored again in a blanket of grey and snow and no life. Again, free from the torturous lock of almost forgotten memories, I now veered off the path and slammed my fist into a tree trunk. There was a sharp pain in my four knuckles and I gasped for a moment, relieved by the pain. But then as I stood, staring at the blood coming from the open wounds, I remembered every single moment I had with my mother in this park; every smell, every sight, every sound, every happy emotion, coming back to slap me in the face, furious that I had drowned them out for so long.

Running, for the first time in my life, was not the way to solve my problems.

I was nauseated but I knew throwing up would not remove the knotted, sick feeling that jumbled the inside of my stomach. As a child, I wanted to be able to fly and now again I did, just so I wouldn't have to spend one more second in this torturous park, where a torrent of memories was clamping down on me so harshly I felt like a captive in my own mind. Shivering not from the cold, I turned down a path and tried, without success, to block out the onslaught of painful remembrances.

*~*~*

After running half-blind through the twilight streets and weaving through the sea of people frantic to get home, I stumbled into an artificial brightly lit area and hit a glass wall. I looked up and saw that I was outside of the Burger Bonanza. Guilt reflected from the restaurant almost as brightly as the neon lights that bathed it in a fake stream of an almost greenish glow. My mother would be appalled to know I worked at this grease-trap and as confused and shaken as I was, my feet unconsciously steered me to the one place that even the mere memory of my mother would refuse to step inside. The hell that had caused numerous outrages at myself, at the people around me, and the fights between what should be my superior and I was now the last solace in the world left.

The clear door squeaked as I threw my weight upon the bar, and stumbled onto the white floor when the door easily gave way. An unconscious hand ran up and down my crossed arms in an act of comfort. For a moment, I thought the restaurant was closed and someone forgot to lock up. But then I heard the soft scuffle of feet and Freddie appeared from behind the back. The clipboard and the plumage were gone. His hair was slightly rumpled and he wore a withered look on his once proud face.

I stared at him and he stared back. For the first time I could not read this man's face. He usually wore an expression of exasperation, or even happiness, or the almost constant grin of arrogance, but now he just stared. As the minutes ticked by, I realized the expression he wore was similar to something I had seen before. Either it was a look given to me, or worn by my own face, I could not say but then when he glanced to the floor, then back up, his brown eyes sad and tired, the appearance was placed. It was the same look Dina had been giving me, most prominently remembered when I had been brought back to her apartment a night ago.

Comprehension slammed into my chest and I turned away, almost wishing to leave through the clear door and into the surge of memories that waited outside. He sighed and I could not ignore him, horror and fear making me unable to resist the sound. His shoulders were hunched, as though a great weight was pulling on his back. His eyes bore wrinkles I had not noticed before. Freddie was tired.

"I'm not going to apologize-," I snarled, the words coming out before I could stop them. But he acted like he hadn't heard me.

"If you want to work, the late shift starts in fifteen minutes," Freddie replied tonelessly. "I'm recording stock in the back. Eric and Carol should be arriving any minute. They get here on time."

Freddie's brown creased for a moment as though he didn't mean to say his last statement, trying too hard to hide just how furious in fact he was, trying to remain as indifferent as he could. Then he regained his more-than frosty demeanor and disappeared again behind the wall that divide the grill area to the cashier.

I accepted this and went to change. Then I decided to do the other thing that my mother would reject most of all.

*~*~*

Gray smoke rushed into my lungs, and evaporated into my body, releasing all tension, I could feel it. I arched my back up the brick wall, exhaling the smoke into the night. The gray cloud that had engulfed me now separated me from the ghosts that almost immediately tried to swarm me when I left the Bonanza; they now swirled away with every sharp breath out, a breath filled with toxic fumes. Peace for the night was finally found as I stood, cold and smoking outside of a fast-food restaurant, figments of years past only a grasp away.

Every year since the death of my mother, I had spent the anniversary in moments like these. I rarely smoked, unless on this sort occasion. The last time a cigarette burned my mouth and lungs was a few months ago, when Ani had stayed for a week while Jennings tried to fix up a stock drop here in Manhattan. She visited the Bonanza everyday. I found a pack of cigarettes at the bottom of my sock drawer and that probably saved my life. Now I needed the sheer reassurance of the burn again, the knowledge that with every breath there would be a vicious, searing pain in my chest, which was enough to keep my head above water.

The clear door slammed shut beside me and Freddie left in a rush, signaling for my turn at the window. A patched scarf fluttered off behind him, hiding the baby-boy complexion and finally, he disappeared in a screen of dark black night mixed with white breath. He was gone.

*~*~*

That was the first night in a very long time I had stayed awake during the whole night, apposed to a terrified, interrupted sleep and when the moments of decent sleep came, I would sit up, cold and sick, flashes of thousands of monsters appearing every time I blinked.

Coffee did not touch my lips once, nor did it tempt me. I stood for the full seven hours, knowing customers would not come, but I was willing to stay in here as long as need be to keep the distractions going until the final hours of this day weaned away. There was one spot on the stucco where I stared at until the wall of black night that enclosed the tiny restaurant slowly melted into an open backdrop of purple. It was then, when the death day had passed and memories were suppressed until another year, did the clear door swing open and a cool breeze introduced a dark man to the front of the restaurant.

He was thick, solid straight through, and his dark jacket covered a grey sweatshirt. The sweatshirt's hood was lifted over his face and as he turned towards a table, I could have swore in the second his face flashed under a florescent light, a jagged scar smudged his right eye. He was seemingly no different than the rest of the gruesome customers that we served everyday. So I expected him to come loping up to the counter and order our "double ouncer quarter pounder", famished after a particularly late night repaving a road. Yet he never moved from his booth but only took out a coke can, a flask and poured the brown contents of the flask into the can. He sat for a moment before taking a large sip from the can, and then slowly lowered his head onto the table.

If Freddie had been here, he would have immediately shoed away the bum, but the man wasn't breaking anything or doing anything illegal that I could see so what did it matter to me to let the guy get a little extra sleep before leaving to do a job none of us would dare do because we consider ourselves far better than manual labor.

The man's arrival had broken me from almost a dream-like state, where hours lasted minutes, and I suddenly realized I was parched. With his arms resting his head, the man was indefinitely asleep by now, and so, I turned towards the back grill. Two young kids, around Tom's age, were fast asleep around a table, two bottles of empty beer stood next to their relaxed hands, which held four poker cards. Eric and Carl had apparently made it and agreed with me as to the amount of customers that would come through the clear door that night. I didn't mind that I was the only one awake. In fact, I was glad to prolong the moment those horrible nightmares would return. But now that the day had passed, perhaps the frequent occurrences of those nightmares would slow, maybe even cease. I could only hope. I poured myself a large cup of ice water and drank two large gulps before refilling it all the way and returning to my post.

When I came back to the counter, I saw that the man was gone. He left nothing behind, here and gone for a precious couple of minutes. I shrugged it off: there was nothing too unusual about the burly man that had stopped in here. But as I went back to the counter, my legs finally realizing how tired they were, I saw something on the table that had not been there before. It was a small slip of paper.

I sucked on the straw, the cold blast in the back of my throat waking me up from a daylong reverie. I then moved towards the table and picked up the scrap of paper and opened it.

Slayer,

Have you awakened?

So, fear wasn't inspiring insanity inside of me after all. My conclusion in the sewers was dead on and now my only regret was not listening to myself for once.

I was being stalked, and it was not safe. It was time to do something about it.

*~*~*

It was cold and everything was blurry when I left the Bonanza. The wind was lapping at my heels and scraping at my scarf and coat to get at my neck and back. But I turned against it; I leaned away from the cruel wind and kept walking firmly, one foot right in front of the other. My mind was straying, slowly becoming insanely focused on my step, but I realized that if I was off guard for a moment, he, who ever it was, would come back and take me away. My head snapped around, my hair flipping in the movement and wind, when I heard something behind me. It was a plastic bag scrunching away on the ground. The wind finally scooped up the bag and threw it into the pink light. The morning sky was beautiful, assuring to most people that the following day was going to be safe and secure. But I knew those days were long past.

Whether it was fear removing common sense, or the terror that I would inadvertently step into the back seat of the man that had been haunting every place I went, I refused to hail a cab and walked the seven miles through streets, alleys and cold wind to finally find protection.

Eventually, the numbness overcame the cold and I barely recognized that I had arrived. The bottom of the door squeaked as I pushed it open. The balding man at the counter looked up and smiled.

"Welcome to GreenSmith Hunting Guns."

I looked up at him, and his warm greeting was rebuked. He frowned and went back to reading his magazine. As I passed the front counter, I saw in the reflective mirror up in the corner that I wore a scowl that frightened even myself.

In her early years, Dina was an avid deer hunter, her father taking her out each weekend to teach her how to handle a gun and aim like sniper. After my mother died and I started to live with Dina, she drove us out to her father's land and tried to teach me some old moves. The only gun handling I ever paid attention to was the handgun, a pistol, a Magnum. Although, as I passed through rows and shelves of guns, I was fairly certain I could load, cock and shoot even the hunting rifle.

It sat at the far back, mounted among shotguns and the 22 rifles. It was black and sleek and promised security. A Magnum 55 Eagle. I took it off the wall and held it in both palms. The weight felt good, something solid. I hope to never use it, but I was obscenely glad to have it.

"That's a nice choice." I turned to see the man watching me with great interest, a grin on his thick lips. Apparently he had forgotten my glare at my arrival and was becoming increasingly impressed with my choice in weapons.

A sudden grin of pride ghosted my lips and I ran a tentative hand over the black metal. The fields of white wheat appeared in my mind and the smell of wind mixed with baked bread filled my nose, blowing my imagination full of autumns spent out in the New Jersey countryside. Dina attempted to make me forget about my life in Manhattan by shooting away everything that moved. She was trying to life bearable again and I just threw it in her face. My hands unconsciously clenched as I thought of another year that went by, every day Dina trying to pull me back into the world.

"Hold up there, little lady. Don't squeeze that too hard." The man at the front was now walking towards me, a worried frown pulling his forehead down. "You do know how to work these things, don't you?"

"Of course," I snapped. "And this is what I want. Ring it up."

The man nodded and took the gun from me reluctantly. I followed him to the register, watched punch in the ID numbers of the gun and then looked expectantly up at me.

"Your license, please."

"I don't have the card with me. Look up the number. Name, Dina Wilcox. Phone number 1-656-555-3072."

The man typed as I spoke and nodded when I finished. He ran the gun through a metal swipe and handed me a small case, which I knew was full of bullets.

"Have a nice day."

I was suddenly entranced by the smoothness of the top of the gun and the rough handle.

"Yeah, you too," I murmured. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man give me another funny look but I simply ignored it and left the store.

Turning left I ventured into a dark alley and opened the case of bullet. My thumb clicked onto the hard button and the bottom of the gun fell out, bearing the empty rounds. I picked up one bullet, slipped it into its holder and loaded the gun. There was a sudden rush from my fingertips up through my arm as my hands slid the pushback with a sharp click. I pushed the safety button and with one hand shaking, I put the gun in the back of my jeans, covering it with my corduroy jacket. With one press of a small button, no one would dare to cross paths with me.

Feeling as though every eye in the world was giving me a reproachful glance, I tossed the case of bullets into the street where it skidded into the sewers. Then with one more glance around, I left, a need, as I'd never felt before to see Dina, rising in my throat.

*~*~*

It felt strange to know that a day had passed and all I did was realize my life was in jeopardy and in retaliation bought a gun. I could have gone to the police but they would only handcuff me and keep me behind bars until someone paid bail. Banks might have saved me from the drunk-tank once in a while but his actions did not go unheard in the police headquarters. Frankly I was surprised he hadn't been fired yet. Not that I cared.

Now prepared, I whistled to a taxi and waited a second before a yellow shiny cab pulled up in front of me and I climbed in. I told the Egyptian man the address and he sped off, clearly not interested in me (except for my money) in the slightest. Sinking low into the seat, hiding from the windows, at last I was calm.

*~*~*

"Hey, ma'am, up." A heavy hand hit my knee and I jerked awake. "Up. We are here."

The cabbie pointed out the window and I saw the concrete wall, surrounded by foliage and a sign that read Green Moss Apartment Complex. The man held out a tan hand for his payment. My hand reached inside my coat pocket and pulled out a twenty.

"Keep the change. Buy a hat to cover that balding spot."

The man grunted, whether he understood me or not, and stuck the bill into a metal box under his seat. I opened the door and stepped out in the cold. As the cabbie drove away, the door slammed shut and I smiled.

With a sudden rush of homesickness, I thought of Dina. The sun was setting far off in the distant, over the tops of the trees and sending the sky into a twirling mix of pink and grey and gold. Tomorrow was nearly here, by my standards, and maybe within two days my life could reach something back to normality, instead of the normal week. Maybe I wouldn't be in so much pain for too much longer.

Suddenly, my smile began to melt away like syrup near a flame. That wave of awareness suddenly crashed into me again, causing me to stumble and fall to the ground. The wave then pulled out into the growing blackness around me and set the world into sharp angles. Lights from surrounding stores suddenly were suddenly blinding, blues and golds and whites and greens hitting me straight in the eyes, causing a sharp pain to electrocute the back of my head and for one of my forearms to raise up, trying to block out the lights. Sounds from the underground subway that stood twenty feet below shook my brain, sending a violent ringing into my ears. A thousand murmuring voices leapt into my head and vibrations from thudding footsteps threw me into my own private earthquake.

"Make it stop&" I begged.

And I felt the thing appear again. The swirling black of a figure came towards me, out of nowhere and it was now closer than it ever had been. Though in pain and slowly growing deaf and blind, I still recognized the terror crawling into my throat.

"Don't hurt me&"

A hand touched me and I jerked back in response, but I still couldn't stand. My only defense was to stare up at the unrecognizable figure with my eyes watering and my hands clamped over my ears. The hand grabbed my wrist and started to pull me, the motion turning my head and causing a new onslaught of sound, sight and feeling to come rushing into my head, racking my body and releasing any last thoughts to fight back.

*~*~*

When I woke, the world was back to its regular, bearable levels of sound and lights. The sun was gone and for the first time since I was three, I was terrified of the dark. Though I wasn't crying in pain from awareness, I could still feel someone close by. Either a figure made of vortex blackness or just a regular human, there was no real way of knowing, but they were there. As I awoke fully, I noticed I was lying against a brick wall and a dumpster. There was a light coming from the other side of the dumpster and very slowly, I sat up and crawled into the light.

Pain struck me again from the originally bright beam, but as it faded I saw a figure standing under the light pole.

"Hey, Reid."

The sultry voice that came from under the streetlight almost removed me from my skin. I scrambled to my feet and my hands became white-knuckled fists.

But the only figure that evolved from the blinding bright was Ani Clark. At first I could barely recognize her, a limping figure suffocated in dark surrounded by light. Then my eyes completely adjusted, and I saw she wasn't limping at all. She was playfully half-skipping. She stopped next to the lamppost and white marble fingernails ran up the pole. An albino snake-like arm wrapped around the metal post and she spun slowly, each foot taking sharp, exact steps, her pointed heels clicking on the pavement. Finally her head turned towards me and smiled, and that was possibly the most frightening part about her. Her grin was not one of joy or happiness, it was of white hot, animalistic fury.

"Oh, wow, tonight of all nights and you're the first one I run into&" She took a step, the blonde hair, smooth like silk drenched in blood, swept half her face away. "What a world, right?" She giggled, shaking on her head. Again, ankle-to-ankle she moved. She stepped into the alley, white spidery fingers scuttling over the brick of the next building. The wind moved the silk black skirt around her and pulled at her hair. The moon shown off her skin and again she smiled that furious smile. A hummed tune echoed out from her throat, breaking into the silence of the night. And then she laughed.

Suddenly, everything inside of me was screaming to run. Run far, far away. But my legs refused to move.

"How was Rome? All the servants to the right amount of perfection?"

Ani looked at me as though I was just an ignorant child. She glided towards me to where she was just a step ahead. Her head cocked to the side, in almost a curious expression, as though she was trying to remember something but couldn't. Ani smiled again. I tumbled backwards and her eyes lit up as though she remember what she had been thinking.

"Fine, all fine. But I came back here because, well, I don't like crowds& or audiences&" She murmured. She took another sharp step forward and the corner of the dumpster pinched into my back. As she came towards me, the florescent light bathed her in an oily green, for the first time showing all of her.

She was gaunt and pale, a ravished hunger in her eyes. Bruises spotted her arms and her hair was tangled and torn. She wore all black, like she had just seen the bad side of a funeral. Her hair swung back, showing her thin skinny neck and there just above her collarbone, a white thin scar laced her neck. Had I not been paralyzed with an almost painful fear, I would have mentioned something about that scar, for I had never noticed it before. But I responded to her out of habit.

"Look, I don't have time to deal with you, so if you've got something you want to say-,"

Ani cut me off with a sharp laugh. "It's not so much I want to say as so much what I want to do. Because they say, you know, actions speak louder than words."

I think she pushed me next. Her hair rippled, and next moment, I was flying backwards over the ground of the alleyway, a painful echo on my chest. Stars flickered in front of my eyes as the back of my head smashed into the brick wall. A dull thrumming began to pound in my temple and my vision blurred. I looked up through watery eyes and saw Ani staring wistfully up at the moon. Tonight, she looked like she wanted to take a piece from the sky and hold it near her. The wind blew at her again, and somewhere past the confusion and the pain in my head, I saw how beautiful she was. Ani turned her silver-coated face towards me, looking at me as sadly as she looked at the moon.

Then like a snake uncoiling, she launched, her mouth wide open, a horrible snarl ripping from her throat, and her eyes were gold, slit like a cat's. The area around her nose and eyebrows was broken and crumpled. Her canine teeth that had grown roughly an inch in length hung down and with a primal realization, I knew she wasn't human any longer.

Damn it, Reid. Get up. This is bad. She is bad. Fight.

She appeared in my face, hands pressed against the dumpster on either side of my head, her nostrils flared.

"I know you hate me and you will hate me more after this night, " she said. "What I take from you, no one can ever give back. And yet, I feel sorry for what I will do to you. Would you feel the same way if you were what I am?"

"Christ, Ani, what the hell is wrong with you?" I asked and tried to squirm away, then suddenly one of those white spiders struck my chin and bit down. I gasped as her talon-like fingernails sunk into my skin and blood ran down Ani's elbow.

Her nostrils went haywire. I saw the whites of her eyes for a moment and her jaw clenched and unclenched.

"You stupid girl!" Ani whispered with a strained voice. "You still have no concept of what you are or what I have become!"

Time stopped and the sick girl in front of me faded in and out of focus. Something was so very, sickly, disgustingly wrong. I felt lightheaded and woozy.

Wake. Up. Reid. She'll kill you if you don't fight!

Ani was looking at me with intense curiosity, her nose still twitching.

"There is life inside all of us," she muttered. "So much of it, it's overwhelming. We don't know what to do with ourselves. So we offer it up to who ever is willing to take it. "

Her nails bit harder. Starvation shown in her eyes and glittered like an inferno engulfing the world.

"Well, this must be your lucky day, Slayer."

Then, very carefully, she turned my head to the side, my chilled neck facing her directly. She was obscenely close, but I felt no breath from her on my skin. Suddenly, like a blast of ice wind ripping into a room, cold air wrapped its way onto my exposed neck, into my hair and my ear. If I had not goose bumps before, I was now directly doused in an inch of them. Needles pricked my skin, pure heat then burning cold.

"Ani," I groaned, the iron fist around my jaw making it almost impossible to talk. "What are you-"

Something to the equivalent to a pair of steak knives sunk into my neck and I screamed.

Pain was shooting out from my neck to every part of my body. It froze my fingers, pinched my back and carved at my legs.

The steak knives drove farther in, and I felt Ani's entire weight upon me. She was crushing me into the wall. I gasped: her weight and the immobile brick behind me were slowly cutting off my air. But she didn't seem to notice or care that I was dying.

The world went from black, to white, black to white and black. The pounding in my head had returned but now it clamped over my entire head like a bear trap, a pulse flickering throughout every vein.

I can't breath.

I can't see.

I can't& I& can't&

*~*~*

New fingers clenched onto the glass that sat below me. They held so tightly to a broken bottle on the ground, they burned with fresh blood. And then&. I swung.

Ani flung away from me, spinning like a top. Then she collided with the brick wall on the opposite end of the alley and I heard a disgusting snap. She didn't move after that.

Though it was not a particularly cold night, I could see my breath as I panted in the dark alley. My neck burned fiercely and the freezing blood was dripping onto the front side of my shirt. My hand was also bruised and bleeding, the bottle held loosely between the fingers. But, on that night, the only thought that crossed my mind was why isn't she getting up?

Ani lay crooked against the brick wall, her head sagging on her chest and dried blood on her chin. The bottle clattered as it rolled away when I leaned forward to Ani.

"Ani. Ani, wake up."

I took hold of the pointy shoulders and shook them hard. Her head rolled disturbingly free on her neck. Then the head fell back, the eyelids dropping open to show pale eyes, white and hungry.

No.

"Please, come on."

I reached for her wrist, to check for a pulse, and as I did, I smeared blood all over her milk-white forearm, her hand, those purple veins. I threw the arm to the ground, horrified.

My blood-covered hands latched onto the brick wall and started to scrub my palms against the rough brick. Tiny scratches were slowly appearing on my palms and fingers. Fresh blood droplets ran down between my fingers, the bruises on them becoming almost unbearable but I didn't stop. I had to get the blood off me. When it wouldn't, a wretched sob echoed out from my throat and I gasped, my lungs suddenly not working. I looked back at the girl's limp form.

"Ah-Ah-Ah-Ani, come on, please, please wake up&." A tear splattered onto her pale face. Her face was like porcelain china, precious and very breakable. The rest of her body was like a tombstone. I shuddered, my stomach convulsing and my skin twitching until I leaned over and threw up.

Oh my God, I killed someone.

Again.

Corwin L Mavis. Cory. Oh, God.

I stood and stared at my blood-covered hands. They were tools of destruction, weapons of torture. Bleeding with unclaimed guilt, they stared blankly at me as though not knowing of their sin. The light behind me barely touched her twisted legs, covering the rest in pure blackness. From that, I turned and stumbled out into the street.

I wasn't taken by the undertow of alertness but even so, everything felt too bright and too big. Everything was shiny and sickly-sweet-smelling. A dull thud pounded in my ears as though the blood was slowly rushing to my head. I feared I was going to throw up again. My vision blurred, turning the world into one big rush of color. My legs felt weak and I stopped walking.

There was an obnoxiously loud screeching sound and I looked to see two bright lights engulf me. Something hard and metal slammed into my hips. Flying momentarily through the air, I then smashed into thick glass and metal, rolled on a cold surface then hit a hard something that sagged with my impact and popped me back out. I fell, hit the pavement and part of my face tore away. One of my wildly swinging arms curled under my back as I tumbled to a stop. I felt a pull and heard a crack in my shoulder. Pain leapt across my shoulder blades and ripped down my back.

I sobbed. Finally, I closed my eyes as I rolled one more time, my torn face resting on the cold pavement. There were sirens in the background and with this as a final satisfaction, unconsciousness carried me away.