Chapter 2

The stench was nauseating. The fog swirling around the room parted like a curtain to reveal the Reaper standing in the corner.

She never did know if or when the Reaper would show up. Sometimes it would be to witness a mercy killing, to put whatever hapless creature out of their misery, and sometimes it was to witness life fighting back, and to give the soul a choice, remain a soul and belong to the Reaper, or live, and live life differently.

However, there was no victim, no other beings present besides her and the Reaper. The air stood still, and she could feel a humid mist begin to settle around the room. The dust particles even seemed suspended in mid-air, like suspended atoms of life.

The beam of moonlight shone through a broken window. This home had been neglected and abandoned a long time ago. It was a shack, perhaps this was once a bedroom, where she stood. The odor from the stained and rotting mattresses could kill someone, luckily, she wasn’t among the living.

Rats scurried across the floor, a slight breeze did nothing to help escape the humidity of the room. She raised her eyes to where the Reaper stood.

The Reaper didn’t speak, it never did. It just pointed the customary, symbolic, long scythe towards a sheet in the corner of the room. It was odd this sheet was startling white against the nasty molding background. It was hiding something, and she was immediately drawn to it.

Just as she began to walk toward the sheet, it began to fall. Behind the stark white sheet was a pristine mirror. No cracks, no dust, in perfect form, set against the dilapidated background of the condemned shack, it was out of place, it should not be here.

Just as you shouldn’t be here. The sound echoed around the room. The voice didn’t belong to the Reaper, it was always there, echoing and ricocheting off the walls and into her ears.

The screams brought me here, what do you mean I shouldn’t be here? I follow the screams, those are my orders. She never had to open her mouth, her thoughts were heard, always.

Do you think you were always this? The Reaper pointed the scythe at her, and for some reason she looked down at herself. She wasn’t flesh and blood, she didn’t have skin, rather her essence was the inky black of a shadow, and those shadows formed what could be considered fingers, hands, toes, a head, and so on.

You forgot where you came from, what you were. If you forget these things, you forget your purpose, then you are no longer any use to us. The voice hissed, the tone dripped with obvious displeasure. The Reaper slowly advanced toward her, making her take a step backward.

My purpose? I do what I am told, I go to where I am brought. Her steps backward stop, as she feels the mirror just behind her.

And that…the voices hiss, sounding like a choir, their words echoing in a multitude of tones…That is preciseeeely the problem. You’ve lossssst your way. The Reaper advanced. It’s long cloak and shroud billowed as it moved, silently, slowly. A bony skeletal finger reached out and landed on her shoulder.

At that moment, she began to feel. A numbing, freezing gust of wind surrounded her, she began to feel the cold warring with the humidity in the room. Her hands began to feel as if there were a thousand miniature needles poking at her. She looked down, and gasped. She could see muscle forming on her hands, bones and skin began replacing the shadowy wisps that had comprised her being.

What is happening? She began to feel pain, cold, and her head began to ache and throb.

Creation. The voices responded, just as the Reaper reached out and gave her shoulder a shove. She stumbled backwards, into the mirror, not shattering the glass, but falling through it. She fell, and fell, and fell…

Something’s Got a Hold on Me…

As the incomparable Etta James sang, and ooo it must be love. Yet, this isn’t about loving anyone but myself at this moment. You know they say when you hit rock bottom, you know the only way to go is up? What they don’t tell you, though, is that beneath the rock of the bottom, there is still the threat of a molten lava core that can just as easily burn you just as bad as your body thumping on the rocky bottom will . Especially when you are in this pit through no fault of your own.

Ahh, one may wonder, isn’t that just dodging responsibility? In this case, being the responsible one is what landed me in this pit. Being the adult, caring for an adult who obviously doesn’t get one rat’s ass or a flying fuck about themselves can bring you to your rock bottom. So no, being responsible, respectful and optimistic is what got me here.

So how do you get out? A bottle of whiskey and a few cigars later, I’m finding and figuring that out. As I tap my nails on the coffee table, my inspiration to climb out is not wanting to see myself drown. I like myself too much to let go of my life. I’m tired of holding my tongue, so I won’t. I’m tired of being the adult who has to always wipe the irrational spittle from the mouth of an idiot. My life is too precious to be more worried about their poor choices and lack of accountability than my own sanity . Since exiting isn’t an option, I have my time to disassociate, and form a battle plan. But first, we drink. Cheers to the end of the cycle of bullshit.

Something’s got a hold of me, and it has kept me from falling down into the pit of despair. This world, and the chaos it brings was enough to wake me up and stop letting someone else dictate my happiness. The appeal and the perk of being an author/writer is that you do have some control over characters of your own making. “Write the vision, and make it plain, so that he who sees it may run with it.”

Well I’m writing my own vision, I am making it plain and to quote Kurt Russel in Tombstone “Tell ’em the law is coming.You tell ’em I’m coming, and hell’s coming with me”.

Cheers!

About Nikki Red and her other selves.

Hello and glad you found us! As for me, well I’m still looking for me. I’m starting over in this writing world. Life happens and you are no longer who you used to be. Your views change, your ideas change, your muses change and grow with you. No longer am I that woman that can find inspiration in a song beat. Now, inspiration comes from breathing. Breathing in life, enjoying the smell of wonder and chaos. Breathing out the bad and the toxic and vile thoughts that may hold one captive. Every inhale is a discovery and every exhale is an learned lesson. So welcome, and I hope you enjoy breathing with me. It is, after all, how we live.

So this is the return of the old and the new. I’m updating both of my files to align with the fact I’m every woman. Thanks to Chaka Kahn. I’m embracing the fact that I have several pen names. There is no reason not to indulge in every facet of your character that makes a brilliant diamond shine. So be on the lookout for the old, the new, and everything in between.

Chapter 1

Screams were always what woke her, if you could call the hair’s breadth of a moment she closed her eyes, sleep.  Yes, screams, whether they were high pitched wails, childlike howls, or the piercing ones where the utterance of sound doesn’t cease until the offender needs to take a breath which were normally the most disturbing. She never knew if the offender needed a breath or if they just stopped screaming. 

 

Long wailing, high pitched shrieks serve as the alarm and the timer for the assignment.  The low-pitched guttural moaning are the ones that made her pause, and wait for a moment or two, because those were the cries of eminent death.  Those were the screams of those who’d already given up.  These were left to the Reaper to come and collect who was rightfully his.   Those were the ones she was meant to avenge.

 

The childlike wails cries, these were the ones she was meant to defend, as they had life in them yet, they had not given up nor given in.   Because they fought for life, she would fight for them. 

 

This outcry now, was an explosion of a wail, a moan of anguish, a disquieted bellow that she wouldn’t normally bother with.   She learned through the years that these sorts of utterances don’t coincide with her taken oath.   Sometimes, they belong to a person enjoying a sumptuous meal, or these were the sounds of the essence of satisfaction after sex.   Those situations left her embarrassed and unsatisfied with her vows and oath as a protector, so she’d long ago abandoned paying any attention to them.   

 

The bellow sounded again and roused her from her own lamenting, and the urge to take flight became too delicious to ignore. Her arms stretched out, and she leaned forward, the heels of her feet leaving the concrete parapet, lifting higher until her toes bent, and the momentum carried her off the ledge into the wind. The beauty of her form would entice those to be in awe if they could see her. She never jumped, merely allowed her ethereal form to fall and ride the wind, the same wind that carried these sounds to her ears.

The wails would guide her where she needed to be. In the blink of eye, she would find herself at the scene, and these scenes were never a pretty picture. She’d become numb to them all, but there was always a twinge of pain, hurt or suffering she felt, perhaps to never forget her long forgone humanity.

 

As she floated towards the ground, the familiar sense of reckoning was not there. She would, in most cases, have a feeling of what transpired to beckon her presence. The feeling was absent, and she felt nothing but a void. There was a feeling of loss, as there usually was, it is why she was called, but this was loss, not death. Bewildered, her mind told her dark eyes to observe everything before and about her. There was a new purpose to her journey.