The Collectors

Desperate

           The next morning was bitter cold and the air had that metallic scent, it wouldn't be long before the first snowfall came to New York City. I glanced out the kitchen window. I didn't live in one of the penthouses of the Upper East Side. No instead I lived in a cardboard box of an apartment. Two bedrooms, one bath and incredibly cramped. The apartment at most could fit three people but on average it was home to five. There was myself and Levi as well as Birdy, Grace, and Luke. We were all employed under Kane, he was the one who sent us to collect the souls. Who Kane worked for was a little vague. He referred to them only as "Upper Management." Who exactly that applied to was something we were not privy to. 

       Our lives consisted mostly of following orders and taking souls. We didn't pick our jobs no one would if given the option. We were chosen, there was no other way to come by this position. We all died young, Levi was the oldest at 20 and Birdy the youngest at 17. But we didn't just die, no we all died trying to save someone we loved. That moment of complete selfishness earns you an important rank amongst the Angels. But after years of taking souls, seeing countless pale faces and fingers locked in rigor mortis starts to break you down. 

        Looking out the window I saw a mother ushering her children to the bus stop, handing them their lunches packed neatly into brown paper bags. She kissed them each on the cheek as they scrambled up the dirty steps. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and I realized just how desperately I craved that sort of bond. I used to be human, I used to have a family. I used to have people who cared about me, who gave me medicine when I was sick, people who remembered my birthday. Now I was just Poppy. But I wasn't alone in that, no, we had all been robbed of our histories the moment we became AODs. I was invisible to the world now. I was stuck somewhere between alive and dead. A ghost with a heartbeat.

         "How did you sleep?" Grace asked as she sauntered into the kitchen in a faded New York Giants football jersey  and knees high socks. I knew it wasn't really a question it was her way of trying to get me to talk about the nightmares. If she though a simple question would be the catalyst for me divulging everything I had been hiding she was wrong. She was dead wrong. I knew I was losing my grip. Whatever it was I had been able to push it down and now it was starting to erupt. But why couldn't they just understand I had a right to be angry.  I was stuck in this never ending darkness. How much death could a person see before they inevitably lost their sanity? I feared I was close to knowing that answer.