The Vessel

I was in complete shock.

Surely this isn’t possible. I must be hallucinating.

“Damon?” I asked, “you can’t be alive. You should be dead.” He smiled.

“That’s what you and all the other people watching were supposed to think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was causing a distraction for the job you were supposed to be doing, which you did a great job on by the way.”

“Thanks,” I replied quietly, “but that doesn’t explain how you’re not dead.”

“I possess a lot more abilities than a mere human. I knew that the stunt wouldn’t be fatal from the start. And if it was, well, I guess I would be dead right now, wouldn’t I?”

“But how did you disappear? Surely that’s impossible.”

“It’s easy to tell you’re human. You’re missing the whole point. I just disappeared, it’s something that I can do.”

“It can’t be that easy, can it?”

“You’re right, it’s not. It requires every little bit of concentration that you have in your body. If you don’t completely focus, then it can lead to dire consequences.”

“Is it possible that I can do it, too?” Damon shook his head.

“You might be different from other people, Ada, but you’re still limited to the basic human abilities.”

“Oh,” I scowled, “it really could’ve come in handy.”

“Hey,” he said as he looked around, “do you have any food?”

“Food? But you don’t need food, do you? You’re not really, uh, living, anyway.”

“It’s true, I don’t need food. But there’s something about the taste of what you all eat that makes me addicted to it.”

“Well, yeah, of course I have food. After all, I wouldn’t be able to live without it.” I led Damon into the kitchen. As he sat down, I went into the pantry and pulled out a container of chocolate muffins that I’d recently purchased.

“So,” I said as I headed over to the dining table, “why did you help me? I thought I had to do all of this by myself.”

“It was your first time. You didn’t know what you could do, and I had to cut you some slack, right? I couldn’t expect you to do it all right your first time.” He took a bite out of a muffin and continued on with, “I’m surprised, though. You actually did pretty well for your first time. Most people would have cracked under the pressure or wouldn’t have the guts to pull it off, but you genuinely surprised me.”

“I’m glad I could be of so much help, then. But I still don’t feel as though killing people is the right thing to do. I just don’t think that these lives should be taken just because you want me to.” Damon grinned evilly.

“Well if you don’t think it’s the right thing to do, then I could just take your life instead. Less lives would be loss, but you’d only have to hand over yours. But whichever you choose, I will find somebody to take your place, and I won’t stop searching until I find somebody that won’t chicken out.”

Was that really an offer he just made? Take my life and the killing will stop. He’ll find somebody else to do it, but at least there will be fewer murders for the time. I should take more time to think this over, but I don’t want to risk anything.

“Damon, I won’t allow you to take my life. If you’re just going to find somebody else to do it, then I might as well stay alive and do as you wish me to do. So,” I smiled as Damon picked up another muffin, “who’s our next victim?” Damon smiled back.

“An excellent choice, Ada. I could have easily found another person to take on the task, but you seem the most capable. As for the next person we must eliminate, I must warn you that this will be slightly more difficult than Tafani. Are you sure you still want to take this on?”

“Of course,” I replied, “I value my life. I plan on staying alive for as long as possible.”

“The name of the man you must kill is Rocco Armstrong. He’s been bringing drugs into the country and, because of his crimes, must be eliminated as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible? You mean, like, today?” Damon shook his head.

“No, it pretty much just means whenever is good for you. But the sooner, the better. Sometime this week, preferably.”

“So I can live my life as much as I want, as long as Rocco ends up dead?”

“Pretty much, yeah. But it will get harder than this. There will be times when people have to be killed the same day and others even in the same hour. This is more of a practice for those times than anything.”

“So this man doesn’t have to be killed, his life could be spared and we could go on to the harder stuff right now?”

“No, he’d still need to be eliminated, but we could decrease the time that you have if you want?”

“No thanks. I’d rather have the time to figure out how I’m going to kill him.” I walked out of the kitchen, leaving Damon with all the muffins to go up to my room and get my laptop.

“Hey,” he said when I came back down with the laptop in hand, “what are you doing?”

“Looking up Rocco Armstrong, of course. How am I supposed to kill a person without knowing what they look like? If I didn’t know, then the whole mission would probably just turn into a massacre.”

“Well, you do know me. I know what these people that need killing look like even before they commit the crimes.”

“Before they commit the crimes? But how do you know that they won’t change their mind and not do anything? It’s all up to freewill.”

“This world does have freewill, I’ll give you points for being right on that one, but your freewill will always land you in the same situation. A perfectly good and well-functioning member of society could just turn,” he took a bite into the muffin, “into a destructive mental patient in seconds. Freewill, in the end, doesn’t mean a thing.”

“So some kind of creature like yourself can change a person’s mental state anytime you want?”

“That’s not my job. I’m just the one that does the killing. I have no control over what a person says or does, I just know how they’re gonna end up.” Wait, is it possible that Damon is...

“So you’re,” my face dropped, afraid all of a sudden, “the grim reaper?”

“Not the grim reaper, no. That’s just a legend that people made up to explain deaths. I’m a lot different to the grim reaper. For starters, my true form isn’t skeletal and covered in robes.”

“What is your true form?”

“I can’t show you that, can I? What fun would that be? Besides, you haven’t even guessed what I really am yet. Maybe there will be a day when I’ll be forced to reveal myself. But unfortunately for you, that day won’t be today. I don’t think you’d really want to see it anyway.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a bit dark and, well, scary for humans.”

“Really? I don’t scare easily. If your true form can scare me, then I owe you.”

“Owe me what?” that’s actually a difficult question. What does one owe something that doesn’t belong to this world?

“I’ll owe you more food, as much as you want. A buffet, even.” Damon smiled.

“You might as well give me all the food right now, then.”

“Not until you show me your true form,” I replied as I typed Rocco’s name.

“You do realise that not all criminals have been released to the public, right You might not be able to find him.”

“You tell me this now? How am I supposed to do this now?”

“You honestly don’t remember? You have me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I could have sketched the face for you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I thought you might’ve been a bit smarter than that. I chose you for this task because I thought you’d be smarter than most people.”

“I’ll start thinking smarter, then. Hey,” I said just as Damon was about to take another bite, “oh, you can keep eating. I was just going to ask if you can draw.”

“Sure I can! I’ll give you a full detailed sketch of his face in ten minutes. Just get me a grey lead pencil and some paper and I’ll start right away.”

Standing up, I turned off my laptop and left the dining room once more to get Damon some paper and a pencil.

“Here,” I said as I returned.

“A stopwatch? Why do you have a stopwatch?”

“To see if you can actually give me a full detailed sketch in ten minutes, of course.”

“That’s my time limit?”

“If I have time limits for killing people, surely you can have a time limit for drawing. Oh, and by the way, your time started as soon as I gave you that pencil. You have nine and a half minutes left.” Damon began drawing before I had even finished my sentence.

Wow, he can draw fast. I never thought he would be able to draw that quickly.

I stared at the paper as his hand rushed over the page, drawing lines and sketches faster than I could see.

Surely he can’t draw this well and so quickly.

“How much time do I have left?” Damon asked as he continued to draw at light speed.

“Six minutes,” I replied as I looked down at the stopwatch, “I never thought you would actually be able to draw this quickly.”

“I should be done before I have one minute left. Maybe I lied about ten minutes.” I continued watching until he said, “stop.”

“You had two minutes left. I never thought you’d be able to do it that quickly.” I picked up the paper, “so this is Rocco Armstrong?” Damon nodded. “Well, now that I have a face and a name, I should get started on thinking of how to get rid of him, shouldn’t I?” and so I turned on my laptop again to give me something to do as I thought.