Grave

There's this story of a girl. You can call her a damsel in distress. A cry for help. You can say all these things about her, and not a single one would be true. See, she didn't need rescuing. She needed to be the rescuer--the hero.

I suppose that's how all these things begin. You drop right in to the part where the scorned kid squeezes her fists in the sky and vows vengeance for all her pitiful losses. Her family? Killed by evil fiends. Her one true love? Taken away too fast. Maybe that's where these stories start, but for me, it started with a deal.

Pen pressed to paper. A few checkboxes already checked. Odreaux staring at me from across the long table, weathered face lit by candlelight.

"Well then?" he asked. Parisian accent thick like syrup and bringing chills to my spine.

Tap, tap, tap.

I pressed my lips together, squeezing the length of the pen. My hand shook. "Sorry for not rushing into this," I said. I glanced at the fine print once more.

He sighed. "We've been over this. You're not signing away your life..."

It'd be easier if I was.

"Sign the paper," he cooed.

I could. I could sign it and walk away. Leave that dark room in my past. Walk to the elevator, go down, all the way down. Find my way home. As if I hadn't lost a thing. Or I could just...snap that pen into pieces, and reach for Billy the security guards' piece, and empty the bullets into Odreaux's head. Boom, splat, over and done with.

But I didn't.

I scribbled my signature on the line and dropped the pen. It clattered and rolled, reverberating in my brain. Billy took the contract and walked it over to Odreaux. A sheepish smile crossed his face.

"You can go now," he said, gesturing to the door.

I scooted from the chair. Stood. Made my way to the door. And in the corner, a final tap resounded. My twin sister struggled in her chains, mouth moaning behind ducttape. I looked away, walked out the door, and on my way to the elevator, I heard a gunshot.

So this is all there is. One stupid eighteen year old girl sitting alone on she and her dead twin's birthday, at the top of a shitty warehouse apartment in the bad parts of town, sketching a picture of the candle-filled cake she couldn't afford.

Pathetic, really.

But everyone, no matter how fucked up, had a past. Mine was simple. At a tiny farmhouse outside of Rhodes, two little girls huddled in the rain, watching firetrucks drive up the snaking hills to their burning home. One little girl would grow up to be an infected maniac, the other would be given a choice. Let her go or release her on the world. Watch it burn. Just like their home. Like their parents.

But what good was a world without her?

I bundled the picture into a ball and threw it across the room. Sinking deeper into the ripped leather couch. Police sirens roared outside the half-open window. Thunder followed, lightning filling the gray sky in streaks. The skyscrapers loomed in the distance. Odreaux fast at work in the tallest one. Ridding the world of the evil, the things that lurked below, and the one rotting in his office. Lauren.

I scratched my skin. White and chapped starting at the blue veins of my wrist. One hundred days. One hundred days until the infection took me over, encompassing me in a rage-filled need. She was gone, but with me still here, the world had only one hundred days left. I had only one hundred days left.

Better make them count.