Prologue

            The office was large, windows making up one entire wall. The remaining three were bland, painted an eggshell color and adorned with only a few plaques. The door, a dark wood that matched the desk and fully stocked book case, opened carefully to allow the entrance of a young woman. She looked at the man behind the desk, a physically fit man with graying hair, and coughed on a giggle. He was staring at his computer screen with a perplexed scowl, his brow furrowed to look like two caterpillars that met in the middle. At the faint sound, the man behind the desk looked up and shut off whatever he was doing before. This woman took priority in his mind at the moment. The engraved name plate on the edge of the desk read the name Jared O'Malley.

            "Will he do it?" O'Malley asked quickly, wasting no time in getting to the point of her visit. The woman, dressed in a painfully casual outfit when compared to O'Malley, in her jeans and tank top, sat down on the comfortable chair in front of the desk, keeping her eyes on her nails for a moment before answering him.

            "He'll do it, Mr. O'Malley. For a price," she added.

            "Damn, Annika, can't you just give me a straight answer?" His voice had shot up a few octaves; Annika laughed at him and tossed a letter on the desk in front of him. When he picked it up, he immediately located the small marking he was searching for. The scythe, drawn in black ink, was nearly imperceptible to anyone who didn't seek it, but Jared's life depended on finding that one little design, that lone symbol in the top right corner. "How much does he need to do it?”

            "Cayden is a touchy guy, O'Malley. He'll confront you with a price when he comes to you for the details. Just be careful with what you say to him, or he'll kill you just as fast as he will kill your buddy Will. And, one more thing before I go: don't try to haggle with him. He'll cut your throat the second you disagree with his prices. Just go with it and be grateful he came back from his little trip for your petty case of jealousy." Annika was as prickly as she warned Jared this friend of hers would be.

            "Why he had to leave to come here, just to leave and go to the other side of the country, instead of just calling me on the phone, I do not understand at all," Jared sighed, muttering under his breath. "Where do I meet with him?" Up until the day before, when Annika had called him, he'd begun to think he would need to handle this himself.

            "You'll know when the time comes. He will let you know, in his own way." Annika stood, taking the letter back into her jacket pocket as she turned toward the office door. "Watch your back, Jared O'Malley. You never know when he is watching." With that final warning, she left without another word, closing the door with a delicate, barely audible 'click'. Almost instantly, the room grew dark, the fluorescent lights dimming to the faintest orange. Jared turned around, in search of the cause for this abrupt darkness. Annika's voice whispered menacingly in his mind, a well-timed reminder: 'Don't haggle! He will kill you!' As the words echoed in the confines of his skull, a shadow spread over the far wall; Jared's eyes fell on the windows and it became clear it wasn't just his office that had darkened. To his eyes, it seemed the light of the entire world had been covered, blocked out by a thin cloak of shadows. Silence followed the darkness, which only grew, but after a few moments of panic, a voice brought forth the sheer terror he should have felt the entire time.

            "You require my services, Mr. O'Malley," a soft voice said, the sound colder than the touch of ice. It whispered in his ear, sending chills racing down his spine, and goose bumps erupted over his flesh. "You need my help, the help of Death, to kill your so-called friend." Jared could do little more than nod in reply to the stranger, who laughed as he moved around toward the windows. “Annika told you I would be coming, so why do you seem so…” The speaker seemed to struggle with finding the right word. Finally, he seemed to have found it: “Startled?”

            “I didn’t quite expect this, Cayden. And I certainly wasn’t aware of the fact that the man she had gotten to help me was Death,” Jared snapped, then looked down and shook his head.

            “Watch yourself, human.” Cayden walked around the room with deliberate slowness, adding a predatory grace to his movements, his shadow moving like a separate entity against the wall beside him. The shadow’s form was different than his physical appearance: torn up wings hung behind it, but even in the shadowy form they seemed to shine, as if covered in an oily substance; the figure on the wall was cloaked and hooded, unlike the almost human appearance of Cayden’s tangible body. “You need me to kill your old partner, William. He won’t be the only one to die because of this, you know. But I know Annika informed you of this early on in your meetings. His wife will probably get caught in the cross hairs. And it is very likely that his daughter will suffer from some of the repercussions of this.”

            “I don’t care. Kill them all if you have to. Name your price and I will pay it.” Jared, unaware of how high the price would truly be, didn’t back down from Cayden when he approached. It was only after Cayden’s hand was buried deep in his chest that he realized the payment alone would cost him his life. Before his eyes, Cayden tore his still-beating heart from his chest and held it in his right hand. He chuckled, holding the bloody mass in front of his chest.

            “I will kill them,” Cayden whispered darkly. He spread dark wings that matched his shadow, and a cloak of swirling, abysmal darkness replaced the jeans and t-shirt he had been wearing moments before. He was the embodiment of Death, cradling the beating heart of his client in his skeletal hand. A laugh rippled through the air, the sound alone leaving frosty chips of ice on everything in the room. After a moment of looking over what he had done in the human’s office, Cayden shook his head once again and sank his sharp teeth into the heart, feeding from the life that still beat inside it, then the pulsating mass gave a weak little attempt at reviving itself before dying in his hand. “They will die, by my hand, just as you have.” With his final growl, the shadows lifted and light took their place once again, and Cayden was gone.

Reviews

[Jason Dyer]

Amazing tone and attention to detail. A bit lengthy but I don't feel any editing is necessary. Hopefully you'll take this as a compliment but I envision a comic or graphic novel when I read this. I can see the storyboard panel almost come to life..

[rivers]

Your prologue is enticing me forward...So far a fine beginning, I'm listening to Dr Deaths prance...now to more of the story as time allows...

[MOON]

Well written, keeps you reading and scary too.

[Loki Ragna-rock]

enticing prologue

[Aeternal Oceanfire]

Yes! Macabre and morbid story!

[Closed]

Wow! This great! You can feel the suspense build towards the end. I look forward towards chapter one. :D

[AK]

Nice story! It is going really well. Please keep writing!