Death Street Freaks

Southern Hell

Chapter One - Southern Hell

Death, it's different for everyone. Some people go peacefully in their sleep, others go the hard way painfully. It can be fast or slow. Here in Sycamore, Mississippi, located in the Mid South region; we usually go painfully. The speed of the act isn't always the same. Some creatures like to toy with their prey first, others like to get it over with. Here we all know we'll die, although when was the question.

I never saw mine coming, although I should have suspected it. No one likes  escaped prisoners very much, especially when they're a Seer. A creature that Cold Hearts are scared of, and being scared makes people do crazy things. That didn't help me any.

____

The last things I saw  was the eighteen wheeler that ran nose first in the driver side door, where my widowed mother sat driving. Then the sickening crushing sound of the car door and my mother's bones. Both of us screaming, each one mixing with the other's. Then the impact hit my side as we were pushed in to a old power line pole; crushing us between the two. The impact rocked me forward, slamming my head on the dash. The last things I heard was the screams and the crunching of the cars and the pole cracking like a storm. Although, the very last thing I saw when I looked up, was my true reason of death. I would have lived if it hadn't been for the power line pole breaking off at the top, and then with it's jagged end it went through the car roof and right in the middle of my chest. It went all the way through my rib cage, hit my heart and out the other side and through the seat I sat in. There was only a small pain, like someone had punched me, and then I could feel nothing at all. I drew my last breath. There was no flashback of my life, just nothing at all.

In a way I was grateful for dying. I was now going to be a family again, see my dead father, probably still dressed in his army combat uniform. But that wasn't the case when everything went silent and black. There was just nothing, no Heaven and no Hell. I guess it could have been a 'Between' but it was just completely quiet,  like a dreamless sleep.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in a morgue. I was cold as ever, pale and with a hole in my chest almost as big as a dinner plate. Fascinated, I had watched the skin began to grow back and grow over my chest, my heart began to beat again, and blood started to run through my veins. I was breathing heavy, scared out of my mind for once and at a lost for words. starring at my blue eyed savior that stood beside my drawer in her Gothic fabulous get up, pale, tall and beautiful, and very familiar, I knew why I was awakened and alive.

I am Alexandra Collins, I am a Seer. The Cold Hearts fear me, the humans hate me, and the Howlers stay away from me.  I died four months ago just outside the Arkansas/Mississippi state line. I was warned to come back to the southern Hell of my home town, Sycamore, Mississippi. After everything, after running for four months from all the things they threw at me, with only a backpack with a few belongings and a stolen motorcycle, jumping job to job for a little cash to get me through the next day; I wasn't the little sixteen year old girl I was before. I changed, but Sycamore hasn't.

So here I am,   standing in the front yard of my best friend - the only reason I am still alive today - Taylor Johnson's house. The house was old, built around the Civil War. Faded red brick that was  more pink than anything, with creamy white shutters and a dark green door and roof.  A giant magnolia tree grew in the far corner of the yard next to the road of Depth Street on my right, and to the left was a line of bushes separating us from the library. Across the street behind me was a empty lot where a nice, light blue house had stood. Just a few feet away from the empty lot was the big Court House that had the same red brick and green roofing, although it was better kept. It was Cold Heart central, but Taylor knew how to handle herself, as did her family before her. There was no telling how many Cold Hearts  had been invited in, formed by a few truths and surrenders.