Messorem (Under Construction)

VI - Dead People Are Great At Parties

"Do I - you're half-naked! Why are you here, and why were you in my closet?"

Anubis threw a broom back in that had gotten knocked out and shrugged. "Accidently teleported into it. O'daddy 'o is trying to keep me busy and sent me to fetch you for your first reaping, can't believe I have to babysit, after now you'll get texts instead, and...you're crying?"

After lowering the gun I laid back against the wall and tried to get a handle of myself. He had scared me. I had been frightened at the chance to see my murderer's face again, on top of what I had been already been feeling with Andrea's appearance, it was all so overwhelming. Anubis stood awkwardly by as I crumbled back to the floor and shuddered, eyes still wet.

"What, did I scare you?" he sneered unsympathetically.

I shot a dark, piercing glance at him. "You're a prick."

Anubis raised his brows pointedly in agreement and started exploring the apartment without much consideration for courtesy, touching things without permission, looking in the fridge. I decided to ignore his presence and went to get dressed. I gathered my pocket-watch, the phone, and my scythe, which was retracted and fit in my coat pocket. When I exited the bedroom I found Anubis sipping a beer and going through a box of pictures I had gotten out.

"A ladies' woman, eh? Right on. Hot blonde. How was she?"

He held up an anniversary picture of Andrea and I kissing. I snatched it from him and carried the box away. "Stay out of my stuff." Anubis seemed not to care, and he didn't listen either. Once the box was out of his reach he started pulling out the books on my shelf.

"Oh, you're the emo, mopey, poetic kind aren't ya?" He held up a collector's edition of Edgar Allen Poe. "Classic sign. And what are these? Lovecraft, Shakespeare, really? "Jack the Ripper", "The Psychology of Serial Killers", "Evil in the Flesh", morbid obsession maybe?"

He moved on to a stack of CD's. "Yep, there it is. Nirvana." Anubis chuckled. "Why do you humans insist on worshipping people who kill themselves?"

I clenched my jaw. "We going or what?"

"I guess..." he breathed out, then something caught his attention. Another photo, of a 12 year old girl on a bay horse. Me. "You had a pony! So have I, a few thousand! Classic rich kid flag. Let me guess, they disowned you, hence why you had a job and whatnot. What'd you do to piss them off?"

"I left." I said sternly. "Because they refused to accept me for who I was. They were too concerned with image. It was more important than their own daughter."

Anubis observed my face with a look of...was that respect perhaps? "Hm. You're better off, Silver. Here, let me see your watch."

I placed it in his hand and paid mind as he said, "You can punch in coordinates with the numbers to go somewhere specific not yet marked, like this see? Turn nob to number, push button, repeat, then press twice."

He grabbed my hand just in time to take me along with him. We appeared somewhere downtown; it was drizzling gently, cars sped up and down the wide streets. Neon lights lit the night sky. Connor and Jack were waiting for us nearby, chatting and sharing a smoke. They looked funny doing it; one a leather-clad goth and the other in a stark white linen shirt and blue trousers, looking like he had come from the Renassaince Fair recently. Both stood straighter with our appearance.

"Ready to meet some new friends?" Jack asked with a whimsical smile. "They're kinda stiff and not really for conversation, but they sure are drop dead fabulous."

Connor snickered, but the humour was lost on me in such a sour mood, and Anubis just stared at Jack bleakly. "Let's get it done Aberstein."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Fine. Yours is first Connor. Scythes, everyone, we wouldn't want the locals seeing."

Connor and I both took out our scythes and were amazed to find our surroundings change. Everything got blurrier. The pedestrians, the cars, the lights, the buildings. Like we were no longer a part of it. On a higher frequency, perhaps. Jack had his own scythe with was all kinds of blue and gold...and rather feminine. Anubis merely "stepped in", if that's any way to describe it, he appeared not to need any device to aid him. I supposed it was a god thing.

Jack led us into what appeared to be a large, empty lot undergoing construction from what I could tell. He was running his mouth while Connor listened intently, and maybe I was supposed to listen as well but my mind was preoccupied. I watched the ground, eyes narrowed, thinking about what Andrea had done when I had seen her again. They say hindsight is 20/20. You're always able to pinpoint your mistakes, but you don't know it when you're making them. I had had the perfect woman and I had literally thrown her away. My mistake was equating my work with my own sense of self-worth. I had grown up in a filthy rich family, who expected all to heed their beck and call, who did nothing except keep up appearances and play fucked up mind games with their neighbors. Once old enough I took off, working any job I could to pay for a shitty apartment. I didn't want to be a part of them. And working made me feel useful. When I had gotten into the police academy, I had felt important for the first time.

I bent myself backwards over my job so I could feel good enough for Andrea, and in doing so pushed her away from me.The irony.

"Idiot." I cursed aloud. Anubis noticed and cast me a sidewards glance, but said nothing.

A soft light lit the dark spaces, and we all gravitated towards it. We turned a corner to find what appeared to be a person standing there; a construction worker, looking rather confounded and made of white light. Several thin etheral threads linked him to a dark, human-like shape at his feet. The body. He had probably fallen.

With a nod from Jack, Connor proceeded forwards.

The spirit looked at him. "I-I fell."

Connor smiled at him. "I guess that's all it really takes, huh?"

He swept Ruber over him, cutting the threads, and the spirit lifted into the sky like a balloon. We all watched it go, no longer shaped like a person but a ball of energy instead.

"Like cake." Connor commented.

"Most of the time." Jack tilted his head as the spirit disappeared. "But never let your guard down, you two, you'll never know what could happen in a world such as ours."

---

"Well, they're in this building somewhere." Anubis gestured towards the door. "Let's go get the dead person."

I led the group through the office building in search of my "assignment" as Anubis kept calling it. Bright light, dead body. That's what I was looking for.

Unlike last time though, I felt a pull in my chest. I was being led to them. Connor gave me a look that said he had felt it too, so I obeyed my inner compass and kept on.

We didn't find it until the 5th floor, and then something started to feel off.

Walking onto the scene of a homicide was insane. You could be around someone dead from age, health issues, a household accident and not be too disturbed by the corpse. But when someone was murdered, an awful, dark energy was left behind that triggered your animal instincts and begged you to run. You could feel the victim's fear, and the murderer's twisted satisfaction.

Despite the blur I saw the blood plastered over the walls and the white tile floor. I saw the woman's corpse, mangled and broken. The office papers she might have been holding were strewn across the room, the desks, some stained by her blood. No one else was around; she had probably been closing up.

And I saw those little white threads coming out from the body, but nothing was attached to them.

"Fuck! Not again!" Jack pulled out his cell and dialed a number, and when whomever answered he said, "Sir, we've got another one."