The Fall That Kills

A Story by Nash

Time passes inexorably, and life is tied to death. Thus comes the harvest. Part one of a potentially continued series.

"W-what did you just say!?" he sputters, spittle escaping his lips, punctuating his shocked exclamation.
"I said that I am quitting." Her tone is cold and sharp, like the first winds of the harvest season, or more relevantly, the long, silver knife she draws from seemingly nowhere. She levels the blade at him, ice calm, then continues speaking as terror spreads across the man's heavy face. "I know what you're thinking, what you're about to say. you can't do this, or something equally pathetic. Well, you're wrong," a sardonic, threatening grin bares her slick teeth in a flash as she pauses, umber eyes gleaming in the flickering fluorescent lights. "I can."
"Please... don't do this. I'll pay you - anything!" he begs, a cold, terror-born sweat dripping down his brow. Without thinking, he takes a step away from her, his back pressing against the window of his opulent office, fifty stories above the ground. His fingers stretch towards the wall as he inches to his right, searching for the phone to call security.
A harsh thuck brings him to a quivering halt and his eyes fall upon the blade now inches from cheek, piercing all the way through the glass. A crackling noise, like dry leaves underfoot, follows as the window fractures further, eventually becoming opaque from the ubiquity of the hairline fissures. "You are not going to call anyone. This" she licks her lips, the silver of one of her canines - reminiscent of the blade now embedded in the window - glistering before she finishes, "is just you and me." She pops her neck, her crimson hair rippling as she moves, complimented by a blouse the color of an October moon at sunset. "Now then, do you have any last words? Not too many, we only have sixty more seconds or so. Tick..."
He gulps, desperately wracking his brain for words that could spare him the death she promises with every motion of her lithe body, every inflection in every word, even in her gaze. It is the gaze of a hunter who, having tracked her quarry to an inescapable corner, decides to savor the kill. "I... please. Fall, can't we just t-talk this out? I'll give you anything..."
She sighs, shaking her head as one would at a foolish child. "The only thing I want from you... well, I can take it for myself. And that's much more satisfying than having it handed to me. Not that you'd understand that."
Suddenly, she takes one long step forward before throwing a turning back kick to his chest, finishing the job of shattering the window, and with it, his hope. He screams, but his words, too, are ripped away from her. He dies before he hits the ground, life ebbing away like the last warmth of a fire.
"It had to be this way, Summer. Maybe next year, you'll go with a bit more dignity." She murmurs, wiping something from her eye.