The Sirens Of Purgatory bk 1; Kara

Prologue

        I guess the first thing you should know about me is that I'm dead. The second thing may be that my name is Kara Mickaelson. Third, I live in purgatory with about ten thousand other souls, although I only see those whom are involved with my life. Or rather, afterlife. That cuts the population down to about one thousand.

        Yeah, I know, that is still a lot. Like... A LOT. But the thing is, I would  only have about two others here with me if I didn't work in the living realm. Sometimes, I wish I only had two. Sometimes, I wish they would leave quicker. I usually wish their presence wasn't so necessary.

        In life, I was about 5'5" with dark hair, pale skin, and an ass that didn't know the word "stop". I wasn't particularly gorgeous, but I also wasn't ugly. I was above average in the face and brain, with average life prospects. I also didn't stand out much. People would constantly ask "Do I know you?" Then feel too awkward to walk away when it was discovered that no, they did not know me. I didn't really mind, though, because I was able to land more boyfriends that way. I enjoyed thinking I was something special, when really I just reminded them of their dead girlfriends.

        Now, a normal girl would have ran away screaming just from that. I wasn't a normal girl. I thrived on that knowledge, used it, consumed it. Maybe that's why I have this afterlife job now, because I was such a shitty person in life. Most people would have seen it as a red flag that a boy mentioned their dead girlfriend in the first conversation. I didn't hen, and I couldn't now.

        I guess I should explain. See, the powers that be decided to give me a gift. When I died, killed by one of my boyfriends ironically, they sent me here. Purgatory. Or at least that's what we deadies think it is... Because really, where else would it be just like your old life, minus the loved ones and copious amounts of strangers, and the streets being mirrored? You're walking down fifth avanue, Chanel on your left and Versace on your right? Nope. Here Versace is on the left, Chanel on the right. Cheesecake Factory and Rain forest Cafe? Inverted!

        That's another thing, food. We can eat, but it doesn't taste like it used to. Remember being a child, eating paper clippings? Yeah, food is just as dull here as paper. Might as well eat paper. You'll get just as much enjoyment from Panda Express as you would from eating the receipt. 

        Ooh, right, my job. I'm a Siren. Not the beautiful tragic rock dwellers. Those are actually mermaids, and I've never quite gotten why people call them anything else. It's obvious they're mermaids. Smelly fishbitches. Sirens are deadies who have been charged with tracking down a certain type of soul. Some retrieve rapists, others snag serial killers. My friend Lila takes adulterers and cheating husbands. Occasionally she takes a cheating wife, too. Lila goes both ways.

        My charge is murderous boyfriends. Befitting since that was my weakness in life. No, really, I found my boyfriend's trophy room, filled with bloody clothes and clippings of girl's hair, and next thing I knew, I woke up in purgatory. Dead as a door nail, with the overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility to take more boys like him.

        "Taking" is what we call it when we find one of the souls we're hunting. We take the soul and throw it to hell. Or, for a rare Siren, heaven. There are some who take children that are being mistreated so badly it verges on murder, or souls that want nothing more than to be freed, and they do just that. All those stories you see on the news about suicides or kids beaten to death by their families? Those are Sirens doing their jobs. We're couriers, supernatural FedEx, captai- Well, you get it.

        Some Sirens have gone mad with their work, completely shut down and totally dead to the world. I've seen a Siren stop working, just... Stop. They vanish, never to be seen again. Some speculate that they were ferried to hell or heaven, some say they just ceased. I choose not to imagine what would happen if I just stopped. It doesn't seem like a friendly thought.

        Remember the others I mentioned earlier, my Purgatory roomies? They're all girls murdered by the seven hundred and fifty-nine killer boyfriends I've taken. Yeah, sounds like a lot doesn't it? Well, that's because it is. As a matter of fact, there's one more murderous boyfriend being born every ten minutes. Since there's a baby born every second, that doesn't seem like much, but I promise you it ends up being too much for even me. Which is why I have one thousand roommates, give or give a couple hundred.

        It's not ALL bad... The girls are mostly fun, despite the gory way they look when they first get here. We don't use money in purgatory, everything just... Exists, so fashion has never been an issue for us. We enjoy our flat tasting alcohol, sitting around telling the same stories time and time again. We do each other's hair and play dumb kids games like dress up, we have grand galas and fancy balls... It isn't all bad. It's just sad knowing this is it.

        One girl in particular, Moonbeam (Yes, her parents were vegan hippies.), has taken a particular liking to my long blonde hair. Yes, blonde. Not dark. It seems that I changed a lot when I died. I now stand 6'2" with a slim build, sun-kissed skin, and long blonde hair. I look quite a bit like Blake Lively, if she was ever the type to sleep in all day and let her hair be played with by a hippie love child. 

        This is my world, the world of purgatory and killers. I live amongst heartbreaking trauma patients and girls who can't stop the bleeding in their chests, literally. We don't get girl scout cookies because no ten year olds are dating murderers, and we can't even move past the "My last boyfriend killed me..." stage because no boys are in our plane of existence. It's not much, but it's not bad all the same. No, I suppose as far as this Siren is concerned, my story isn't the worst.