Death Is My Friend with Benefits (Book Four - WA Winner 2013)

Chapter 21: Goodbye

Happy Halloween. I always update this series on Death's favorite holiday. ;)

* * * * * *

Stumbling out of my seat, I hurried towards the back of the restaurant as best as I could in my illusion high heels, hoping that the demon that I was supposed to kill wasn't following close behind.

            Obey.

            Suddenly, as I was weaving between tables, I felt the room closing in on me and fought to keep my equilibrium. Everything seemed to pulse violently to the beat of my heart, a sheen layer of sweat broke out on my forehead. I looked down at my hands as I started to run and felt my claws unleashing.

            Crashing into a waiter, I fell onto a couple's table, knocking over a woman's red wine who shrieked in my ear and irritably leaped up from her seat.

            "You idiot!" she shouted. "You ruined it! You ruined my dress, you stupid bitch!"

            I stared at her, trembling as she continued to shout at me at the top of her lungs, a vein pulsing on her forehead. She pointed at the man across from her and said that he was her husband, that he would ruin me. The people around us grew silent, listening to this insane woman shout at me. There was nothing supernatural or threatening about her, and I was letting a complete stranger yell at me? A human? Embarrass me?

            "I'm not leaving until you pay for this dress!" The woman jabbed me on the shoulder with her finger.

            Kill.

             I looked at her, only momentarily yearning for her weakness. Her humanity. I had once been human, now I didn't feel human at all. I didn't feel...anything, actually. I felt numb. As if someone had taken over my body, I reached over to the woman's bright red dish and cracked it into her chest, watching the red sauce drip slowly from her stomach like a dark bloody stain. I started to laugh a bit crazily, feeling the room tilt again and shifting my weight on my left foot, eying the butter knife dangling off of their table like an uneven seesaw.

            Kill.

            The wife shrieked again and came at me with her head hung low like a bull. She was only a human, slow and uncoordinated. I easily stepped out of the way and gripped her flailing right hand, biting down on it with my teeth until I tasted blood. It was thick and tasted familiar. so I bit into her hand again, taking long pulls of the substance. That made her scream more. We fell to the floor and I punched her in face. I must have gripped the table cloth in my hands as I fell because I pulled it with me, covering her face with it and whacking her through the cloth.  Again. And again. People rushed to try and help her. The harder the hit her, the less I felt.

            And less...

            And less...

             Her husband dove towards me, shouting. All these things seemed to do is shout. They were so weak. How could I have ever been like that? Couldn't they just shut up?

             I whacked the husband blindly in the solar plexus, flipping him over onto the ground with my legs and strangling his neck with my hands. I threw my head back and laughed as he struggled beneath my hands, tears flooded his eyes. My claws unleashed, digging into the flesh of his neck. Blood spurted out all around him, drenching me in the process. Drenching everything. Somewhere, in the middle of it all, I even cut myself just to watch the blood flow out of my skin, grinning.