The Collector

prologue

It was nine months.
Nine months of pain, regrets, nine months of her going insane, nine months she would never forget when when he came, standing with his black cloak covering his head and pooling down around his feet, holding a long sharp sickle poised.
Her imaginations of what her baby would grow up to look like, how he would hold her tight when he gets scared, how he would get mad when she takes away some of his priviledges all went down the drain when her child came out of her breathless, noiseless and stiff. His face was pale and his fingers blue. Her only replica was taken away from her. The agony coursing through her veins were enough to block out the voices of the medical personnels around her. She was frozen to one spot, trying to comprehend what had just happened, but that was when she felt his presence.
The dark aura enveloping the air was almost suffocating. It felt fog-like and smelt like smoky sulphur. It was as if a dark mist had settled on the room.
She slowly turned her head to the corner of the room and her eyes fell on the dark cloaked man standing with an outstretched arm drawing something from her baby. She looked around to see if anyone else could see what was happening but no one seemed to notice the strange act of the strange man. They all looked frozen.
What the strange man was drawing from the baby looked so beautiful and she was strangely hypnotized by it. The memory of her child's death faded away as an unbearable hunger clouded her mind.
Now she wanted it. She wanted what he was having. Oblivious of what the strange man was drawing from her baby, a magnetic craving gnawed her soul. Her oblivion didn't stop her from standing up and cautiously strolling over to where a dark shimmering hue that floated and fluctuated around like an amoeba in front of the sickle of the cloaked man.
As she reached out to it, he looked up at her making a gasp escape her throat. He had a long scar running from his eyebrows down to his jawline. He had mismatched eyes that were both darkened and dilated. One was grey and the other blue. And he had a sharp jaw that was clean shaven. He looked dangerously striking. He started mumbling strange words in a strange language with unmoving lips. Almost immediately, the hunger rushed back into her system and she reached out again and touched it. Something surged through her and a forced pushed her roughly back to the bed.
She stood up immediately, and ran to the toilet. She started throwing up a black sticky substance while tears rolled down her eyes.
When she was done, she looked at the mirror that was hanging above the sink with cracks around it.
A long scar was etched on her face from under her ear lobes down to the back of her neck, her eyes were now mismatched, blue and grey. And worst of all, she was bald.
The pain and hurt from her child's death mixed with the confusion of her recent transformation made a loud piercing scream to erupt from her.
And the windows, mirror and light bulbs shattered.

Black Out!