The car rolled once, twice, three times before it became deathly still and Daniel came to bear their souls to the pearly gates where Saint Peter waited with a stack of books in his arms to explain the one rule: the couple must read through every lie they told the other, and then he handed the stack to the man who began to read, everything from little white lies to the more serious and harder to forgive until, finally, he closed the final cover and turned back to Saint Peter as the angel drew a scroll from within a sleeve and held it out to the woman, the love of his imperfect life to read four short words.

I love you, too.

 

2: Hit & Run

She was standing in the rain when he first noticed her.
He remembers it distinctly because he’d been on his way home when he turned the corner and threw on the brakes when he saw her. She didn’t even flinch, dull blue eyes glued to the sky like she was looking for the stars beyond the storm clouds. He glared, pressing his palm to the wheel and splitting the silence with a honk. She didn’t flinch, but she did roll her head to look at him, short black hair slicked down. Eventually, she moved, letting him pass, eyes never leaving his car.

He saw her again the next time it rained, this time on the street outside his work. Lightning struck the building just a couple yards above her head, but still she didn’t flinch, didn’t even seem to notice. She watched him quietly, following when he started down the street towards his car. Finally he stopped, turning on her in a mix of fear and rage while she ran her fingers through her wet hair, slicking it back and revealing some of the shock white streaks in it, unfazed by his yelling.
    “It’s been a long time,” she finally spoke, her voice distant and monotone, “normally I’d bring a car battery,” she looked up at him, electricity arcing across her skin, following the nerves, “but don’t worry, it was just for show.” She lashed out, again and again, striking him with the excess electricity in her nervous system, until it burned her too, drawing blood.
The man didn’t move anymore, collapsed on the sidewalk, his heart stopped.
She walked away, pausing only to glance at his car and the child sized dent in the front bumper.
 

The kid had been afraid of lightning, too.

3: Coffee Shop

The young man looked out the window of the dimly lit cafe, watching the crowds shuffle by past a veil of rain blocked from hitting the window next to him by a bright yellow awning. The cafe was quiet aside from the distant sound of a vinyl record- smooth jazz playing from somewhere behind the counter where the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air with the scent of rain. It was a nice atmosphere, peaceful even, and the young man was rather comfortable in his booth in the corner as he took a sip from a porcelain mug. The record skipped. A hand twitched from the cracked mug to the pistol on the table in front of him, safety off and round in the chamber as wide, sleep-deprived eyes darted around the room looking for any sign of movement beyond the rain that fell with the last slivers of daylight through a hole in the roof, acidic drops sizzling on already porous wood floors. Nothing moved and the record returned to playing normally so his gaze returned to the window, peering past the blood-splattered window into the street, watching corpses shuffle along the road like a parade of ambling puppets, waiting for one to find him where he hid and hoping the scent of blood that hung permanent in the air and clung to his clothes- to his very soul by now wouldn’t draw them near like the piranhas they’d become. 4: Mine

Years ago, there was a little boy that spent most of his life in the closet under the basement stairs. He was small and frail for his age -malnourished but not starving- and his dark hair and eyes stood out in stark contrast against his pale skin that rarely saw daylight except through windows. His house was small and in shambles, the paint peeling and floorboards warped and broken but it was the only home he’d ever known. He shared the space with two others: the demon who often appeared to him as a red-headed little girl in colonial dress who shared his closet with him or as a tall, shadowy figure that would linger and whisper from dark corners and the monster, a young woman in her very early twenties who shared similar features to his own once you looked past how gaunt he looked next to her. The demon was his friend- an imaginary companion he’d conjured up while locked in the dark closet where he was safe from the monster who kept him grounded her in the present rather than drifting off in some unexplored universe inside his head, a friend who’d vanished a few months back when he’d told her she wasn’t real, leaving him alone in the house with the monster. He missed her now, missed the distraction she offered that helped him forget he was trapped without the price of also forgetting reality. The little boy couldn’t be sure how long he’d been locked in this time, just that when the wires finally clicked in the lock and he let himself out, the dim lights felt blinding and he was hungry, so he crept as quietly as he could manage toward the kitchen. He froze in the archway when he heard a crash, like shattering glass from the other room, holding his breath as he listened to the monster move sluggishly in the room, debating whether it was safe for him to sneak some food or if he should eat from his stash this time rather than take the risk. The monster stopped and he exhaled through his teeth before tiptoeing around partially full glass bottles on the linoleum floor to climb the counter so that he could sneak some snacks from the upper cabinet -saltines and peanut butter- things that she wouldn’t miss before he opened the door of the fridge to peek inside -an orange- because he was feeling a little bold today. The little boy took his loot and climbed down from the counter to flee only to find the monster watching him from the archway so he froze in place, prey caught in the gaze of a predator. She was bleary-eyed and sagged against the wall, stinking of alcohol even at this distance with new needle marks in her arm and for a moment, the little boy hoped she hadn’t actually noticed him. “Oh my sweet little boy,” he flinched as she started toward him, taking a step back and stumbling over one of the bottles that had long ago become a permanent fixture there on the floor, like glass booby traps, this one’s contents spilling across the linoleum. “I love you.” His blood ran cold; he’d never heard those words before, had no concept of what they meant or how to react. He didn’t have to wait long to learn because the monster stepped forward and the light caught the glass in her hand- a broken bottle with sharp, jagged edges. Run. The boy’s instincts repeated the command from the voice and he did try, turning to dash for the other door, but he only made it a couple of steps before the monster closed bony fingers on a fistful of his threadbare shirt and jerked him back. Cold glass tore into his flesh and blood gushed from the wound where his neck met his shoulder and frightened tears poured down his cheeks while he struggled to get away. Frantic dark hazel blue eyes looked to the silent walls for help and in a moment he would later call blood loss induced mania, the boy heard the strange voice again- the demon’s voice, like millions of overlapping whispers in a mostly incoherent jumble until a possessive growl broke through the rest with one word: Mine. Then the monster slipped, losing her footing in the puddle and crashing to the ground, hitting her head on the floor hard enough her eyes went glassy and closed. The little boy was free of the monster for the moment and fled quickly to his hidden stash, finally releasing the death grip on his food to pull an old shredded sheet from withing to press to the wound, repeating over and over in his head the steps to stop bleeding that he’d read from one of the books he’d found at the library. It wasn’t helping, not until he felt icy hands close over his, firm and solid despite there being no physical form to accompany it and the little boy shivered. I understand now, that voice again, the whispers from deep enough inside he suspected it had a grip on his soul, why you never feared me. The boy wanted to know who it was, but the voice answered that with a familiar presence- the demon that haunted his every step, lingering in the dark places in his head and the real world. “Why?” The boy’s voice was hoarse from lack of use and sounded far away. There was a sound, something like a purr but primal and dangerous. Mine. 5: Long Live the Imposter King

The young woman, even in minimalistic street clothes and without her crown, still had a sort of regal bearing, her cloudy eyes staring straight ahead and unwavering. The imposter king, the one who had fought so hard against her power, to steal her throne only to learn that she’d never wanted it. That she’d run away years ago, letting the kingdom crumble in her absence. Even now, she’d only returned because she’d found the place far worse off under his rule and with no power of his own to keep everything from collapsing. He pressed the blade to her throat, hard enough to draw a tiny sliver of blood and show her he could easily kill her then and there. The runaway queen’s cloudy gaze remained unfocused and staring blankly past him. Those eyes had always unnerved him, blind and yet almost all-seeing as they were. A soft, knowing smile painted her lips, her blood running down the edge of his sword. “Kill me,” she spoke calmly, a hint of sadness in her tone, “if you believe you can bear to be haunted by all those our decisions have slain- if you can handle another ghost to haunt you with them,” she pressed her fingers to her chest as if to say she’d join them, “then kill me,” she paused as she lifted her chin slightly, offering him a challenge, showing him that she did not see him as a threat any more now than she had in the past, “because I can.” What began as a seed of uneasiness at the back of the imposter king’s mind all those years ago finally sprouted, growing quickly into an almost animal instinct making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and warning that if he should try to kill her, things would go terribly wrong for him very quickly. The blood pooling at the edge of his blade finally dripped and as it fell, he glanced back to find tentacles of shadow, ink black and wicked sharp, aimed for his torso as if homing in on his heartbeat and the sound of his breathing. “Or you can walk away.” The smile that had before seemed soft and a little sad now seemed almost cruel, offering him a choice he didn’t really have. The imposter king turned to run and the shadows followed, allowing him three steps before, with a flick of her wrist, they found their mark, darting forward to impale him with enough speed and force to lift his now limp form into the air. The broken crown toppled to the ground, bounced twice, and rolled across the floor until it came to a stop at her feet. The runaway queen lifted the broken steel and as her power flowed through it, the material was reforged into a thorny circlet of silver and shadows, the new crown settled on her head as though that were where it had always belonged. 6: The Demon Beneath the Stairs

I've never really been afraid of the dark; in the dark, my mind can wander freely, painting pictures and telling stories until I forget I'm locked in a room with no windows and no lights- a closet, I think now; that's the part that bothers me: the locked door, the lack of escape route, the trapped feeling that descends on me like an animal in a cage. I first met Lucy in that little closet under the basement stairs, a little girl my age in colonial dress, an imaginary friend I'd thought at the time- at least until I'd told her as much. Now they lift the curtain to reveal a mirror dyed black by the sheer brutality of a murder it alone was there to witness and I don't flinch when I see the shadow clinging to my back and painting my face with the same dark, sunken eyes and inky tears I see in my bathroom mirror at home because Lucy didn't take kindly to my abandoning him in that closet alone. They let us into Peggy's room, the sound of a spirit box loud in the room and despite the questions, despite the other groups getting answers in a ghostly voice, all we get is icy cold and the stench of fear hanging in the air like a fog along with… is that a purr? Something instinctual- primal not from the box because he has no need, but from behind me in some dark corner. He takes the fun out of it, out of this haunted place, and I tell him as much as we climb the stairs and the moment my foot touches the landing, there's an audible gasp from below, the empty Devil's rocking chair frozen, poised mid tilt as if whoever is there sitting in it is holding their breath and waiting for my shadow and I to pass over. I've never really been afraid of the dark, even here beneath the stairs of another demon's house, but that smile I see reflected in the glass cabinet door across the way that doesn't match my face? That terrifies me to my very soul. 7: Consequences

“You know I never wanted to hurt anyone,” the woman with the lightning scars spoke softly, each syllable carefully controlled because if she didn’t, that could hurt people too, “I never wanted it to end this way.” There were tears welling in her green eyes, a hint to tell him she was being honest about that, at least. “Even if it’s been a long time, even if it was just one,” he watched her flinch, wanted to tell her it’d be alright, but he didn’t want to make her a promise he didn’t know if he could keep, “you did hurt them.” “I know I did!” She snapped a little, the Irish overpowering the normal Russian of her voice and electricity sparking in her eyes for a second before she broke off, taking a deep breath while she raked fingers through her choppy black hair, exposing more of the shock whitened streaks as she did, “I know- I did it all arseways, I just… I’ve always been one thing, even after all these years I still can’t handle silence,” she gestured wildly in the direction of the speaker somewhere in her cell playing a faint melody, “and I- I didn’t know what else t’do,” she looked away, years of guilt eating away at her from the inside, “I don’t know how to be anything better than the monster my father made me,” another deep breath, raking her fingers through her hair again before she looked up at him through the bulletproof glass, “but this time,” a cruel, broken smile found her lips as the electricity sparked in her eyes again, almost making them look blue, “I wanted to do it,” she held his gaze with an expression less hers and more primal despite the fact the music hadn’t cut out, “he deserved it for what he did.” “He deserved justice,” he replied despite knowing there was no real point in arguing about something already done; she’d killed a man, didn’t matter if he was guilty or not. He wasn’t her first, but he’d been the first since she’d… escaped her family- lost her family… she never was clear on what had happened exactly, just that she was never going back. “So did the kid,” she argued back, that smile again, the one that had earned a consistent place in the description witnesses sometimes gave about a famous and very dangerous vigilante right along with the electric blue eyes, “but the system failed him,” her voice was cold and hard now but still controlled, “and I refused to do the same.” She turned away, more lightning scars visible than he’d expected, marking her spine and her joints but not quite hiding the older ones from metal belt buckles, cigars, and blades- gifts from her father. She settled against the wall, the electricity gone from her eyes when she looked up at the detective again, replaced by an exhaustion he hadn’t seen there in years. “If that makes me a monster to be caged like this for the rest of my life,” she cocked her head to one side, as if mentally weighing her consequences, “then so be it.”