To Kiss A Corpse Goodbye

0 - 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

The first time she'd ever killed a demon, it was in a traffic accident.

She had travelled this road with her wife. The first time, it was long before the word wife was ever going to appear anywhere in conversation. Hell, they weren't even friends back then. They knew not even the bare basics of each other's names. Adelaide hummed, tapping the wheel, happily imagining the day. Jisako, with her big round eyes, clinging to a silver shawl, struggling to find the seatbelt in the back. It was the first time Jisako had ever been hitchhiking, and she'd been sitting shyly the entire time. 

Jisako had barely spoken a word about herself then, and not many more even after they'd wedded. However, Adelaide recalled something about that day. Immaterial but ever so sharp within her mind. That there had been something about the air that day between them. Adelaide could scarcely recall what it was, but it was a silent acknowledgement. She had glanced into the rearview mirror a couple times, catching the eye of the woman in her backseat.

There had been something on the road that day too. Grey-ish and speedy. A hint of laziness tempted her to speed up and carry on down the road. Write what she saw off as an animal and nothing more. However, Jisako had witnessed the humanlike form it bore. She had let out a mighty scream of fear so loud Adelaide turned the wheel sharply. Among exorcists, there were many glorious stories of a first kill. Years of training which would amount itself to a story of a difficult battle. Adelaide had run the demon over entirely by accident.

On impulse, recalling the memory, she glanced up and noticed instead, something running into some pile of rubble which lined the road. Something grey-ish and speedy, just like all those years ago. Though it passed rather quickly. Then she saw it again, low to the ground, and charging once again through the rubble. Something with a human-ish head, and hands– so of course, a demon. It was crawling, as though it were trying to avoid detection. It was then that she knew, it must've been some sort of spirit. She hummed, even. It was a sight for bored eyes.

Glancing at her watch, and reasoning she was well enough early, she slowed the car to a stop. It let out a protesting creak, though that did nothing to deter her. The creature stopped, staring at the strange thing which had stopped in its territory. Its eyes were milky and unclear, sunken into its humanlike face. The creature let out a strange hiss, through sharpened teeth, raising its hand, which bore a claw of some sort. Young devil, Adelaide mused.

She smiled at it. The creature didn't at all return the favour. It sat still, eyeing her up and down, with a great and obvious suspicion. Its claw still held high, as a threat. Not unwarranted, of course. She continued to smile. "Have you eaten any humans yet?" she cooed, stepping the slightest bit closer. "If you haven't, you must be terribly hungry."

The creature backed away at first, and responded in unintelligible groans– although it was unlikely it had understood what she said at all. Adelaide stepped closer, haphazardly The creature jumped on her. She staggered back, her body thrown to the ground. The creature grabbed for her throat, shrieking madly. She rolled. They tussled on the ground– tumbling over one another, through the rubble and the glass shards. Adelaide grabbed for grips, sinking her hands onto its shoulders. She slammed its head against the ground. A harsh crack rang out, and from the break in its head, dust spilled from inside the creature.

It grabbed at her hair, pulling her head down, trying to bite her. She reeled her hand back, striking at the thing. Her fist came back once again, covered in dust and blood. The creature raised its hands– scratched at her arms, her wrists, threw her on her side and attempted to claw her stomach open. She responded with kicks in retaliation.

This much was routine.

The creature clawed at her neck– but she wasn't too fazed by it. These sorts of things– younglings born from fear and trauma– they weren't that much stronger than the average human. Therefore, of course, they were a much easier thing to fight than the average demon. She didn't need to be turning tricks with the cross here.

Adelaide pulled back once the creature was nothing more than dust. Enough strikes had taken it from this world. She laughed again. She was rather jolly about all such acts. It was nice and amusing and easy to do: to laugh at the evils which would forever plague all mankind. In a sense, it was also one of the only ways in which anyone could keep their sanity around here, because these demons wanted to haunt everything that existed.

She sat next to the pile of dust, and glanced around. Nothing else of its size was running around the rubble. There were animals, of course. Birds, rats, dogs, and cats. Most of them were sick. Ribs protruding from their little bodies, and their coats being made mainly of bald patches. They were shivering. The weather had gotten colder.

Adelaide glanced back at her car, which still sat idly, waiting for her on the road. If she'd parked it on a normal day, the traffic would've eaten it alive– there would've been no end to the horns and the cursing. Quit taking up the road, don't you know my father works at a nuclear silo? she joked to herself, before finally getting up.

The truth was that radiation had made driving rather convenient. Mainly, because now most people were too dead to be taking up road space, but even besides that, it was a rather tough sell to make most of them want to go anywhere their geiger counters would scream at them for visiting.

While Adelaide was indeed fairly certain the radiation had taken several years off her life, that fact alone did nothing to deter her. Nor did it particularly bother her. This specific road was a shortcut, and she much more found it in herself to value the time in the immediate minutes than in the long term. She had no reference for whether she was intended to die at fifty, or at one hundred thirty-three. It was simply all out of her hands. What she could visualize was the difference between ten o'clock, and eight. Especially when she was wanted at eight.

Adelaide gripped her steering wheel tighter as the car bucked up in protest against the potholes and the rubble. "It's only potholes. Just think of it that way. Things haven't changed that much," she cooed. "We're just on a rough road heading to meet good ol' Snakeman, like we always are." She whistled into the dry air, needing to fill the dead silence with any sort of sound when the car did not reply.

There weren't enough living things on this or any other road anymore, and Adelaide had no wife with whom she could spend the day talking anymore. So now it was her solemn duty to speak to the objects, like a preschool teacher gone mad.

It was as pathetic as it was ridiculous, and even she knew it.