Contractor: Chapter - 36

In the words of a poet "If you're so smart, explain this Clarissa. Pow." So true.

The mass of blue fire swirled around me, I could have sworn I heard laughter as the air was sucked from my lungs. I choked on the emptiness for a second before the world grew dim and blackness crept in at my vision. Just as I was about to pass out the fire calmed down and started to move away. If it was truly Jonas he’d gotten careless, I wasn’t dead yet. I recovered quickly and stood, with its back turned to me I figured I would be able to get in at least one good hit. I debated between using the hammer or chisel, both still firmly grasped in each hand. I took one quick lunge towards the flaming mass and swung recklessly with the hammer but it heard me coming and avoided the hammer faster than I could have thought possible.

“Burn.” His hissing voice was clearer now.

Tendrils of flame whirled up around me, catching hold of whatever they could. The familiar feeling of burning and the disgusting smell of my own cooked skin and hair filled my nose in seconds as I struggled to break free. No matter what I did the fire stuck on me and followed me. I wound up rolling on the floor, still unable to extinguish the blue flames as darkness finally reached me and I burned alive. Again. You would think I would have learned not to play with fire after the first time. The cold collapse of death I had experienced before. The time between death and revival was like blinking or waking up from a nightmare. Things were different this time.

When I fell into the blackness, I was conscious... sort of. There was no blink, I was dead but I didn’t fade. I was down but not out. In dreams there were times when I wouldn’t exactly be anywhere but I knew where I was supposed to be, it was like that. I couldn’t see or feel anything, but I could hear voices. They started out as whispers, words I couldn’t quite catch as they drifted by, then gradually the amount of whispering voices grew into a roar like thunder. I was washed away in the noise, it got to the point where it felt like the roaring was all there was anymore, it almost replaced my concept of silence. Then the screaming started. Bloodcurdling, the chilling screams that you would only make as you died slowly. They weren’t all the same voice either, there were men and women, hundreds of them and every one of them was different.

I felt like I had been isolated in the roaring storm of whispering and screaming for hours. When I was revived I was confused as to where I was and why things were so quiet all of the sudden. It was strange, being in the maze felt like a distant memory, yet here I was again. It couldn’t have been long either, Jonas’... I don’t know what to call it, there was probably a word for that kind of soul monster thing. I’ll just call it Jonas, and Jonas was still there stooped over Clarissa’s disgusting corpse. I felt no shock about my surroundings now, the sight only disgusted me. It was an odd, almost emotionless, clarity. My eyes locked right on to the shard of glass I could clearly see Jonas was protecting. The one going through her neck was not clear like the rest. Even from a distance and with Jonas taking up most of the reflective surface area with his soul I could see the familiar black space glittering back at me. One of Dante’s mirror shards, only a good bit longer and thinner than the ones I’d seen.

The second I saw it what felt like a millions voices in my head started to speak. It was like being in the middle of a crowd at first, but the words gradually came together until I could hear the same word reflected across every voice. “Finish it.”

I knew Jonas would notice me the second I got up and started to move, so I would have to move quickly. Not caring how quiet I was I jumped to my feet, the hammer and chisel still gripped tightly in my hands, and rushed towards Clarissa’s body. Jonas noticed me as fast as I thought he would and I was again surrounded by a blue mass of fire. I swung away at it with the hammer but it did nothing. Two white hot sparks caught my attention as if I was directed to them and without noticing I was even doing it I jammed the chisel between them like a knife. Unlike before the chisel connected with something and my other hand followed quickly with a swing from the hammer smashing the chisel in even further.

The fire faded and Jonas fell back, the chisel embedded deeply into the part of his body I imagined to be his face. He didn’t exactly have a body though, as he lay on the ground it looked like he was slowly melting away. The consistency of his shadowy black mass reminded me of cornstarch and water. A feeling of urgency came out of nowhere and I rushed over to Clarissa. My hands were shaking as I yanked the mirror shard out of her neck and positioned it over her heart. I could feel the glass cutting into my hand as my muscles clenched in anticipation of what I was about to do.

I caught something move out of the corner of my eye and turned my head to look. When I looked back Jonas was right there in front of me, his hands wrapped around mine in an ironclad grip. He took a different approach this time. Instead of searing pain from fire I was engulfed in a freezing mist, my mind went instantly to the day I gave up the rights to my soul. It wasn’t a physical chill, it was a chill in the same place I’d felt the voices coming from before. It was nowhere near as strong as when that woman had done it to me, or perhaps I was stronger. Regardless of the reason it did not leave me paralyzed, as was likely intended, rather I was able to ignore it. With my hands shaking from the force I was using to keep them where they were I had very few combat options. I whipped my head forward into Jonas’ face. The sound of the impact surprised me, while he looked like an inky black mass he was quite solid.

Luckily for me the impact surprised him as well. Jonas flinched for a second, but that was all I needed. The force that I had been using just to keep the glass shard in my hands was more than enough to break through his shocked grip. The second the glass pierced Clarissa’s heart I knew it had worked. Her eyes flew open, an agonizing shriek of pure pain split the air as her body was engulfed in the tendrils that had attached her to the floor. The sound was so intense it made my ears physically hurt, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my eardrums were continually rupturing and healing. It seemed to be having a greater effect on Jonas, who appeared to be utterly crippled by the sound. I watched dumbfounded as he slowly crumpled to the floor and was diminished into a pile of bones. I was so distracted by Jonas’ disappearance that I hardly noticed the rest of the room deteriorating as well.

“Don’t just stand there and gawk, Sam.” Dante had appeared kneeling next to what remained visible of Clarissa’s body. He looked as calm and casual as ever as the room started to shake and debris started to fall from the ceiling. With a sickening sound like two wet pieces of metal grinding against each other he pulled the mirror shard from her chest. “I don’t see what you find so shocking about a dead wraith.” Dante sighed. There was a word for it then, a wraith. Jonas probably wasn’t the first person to turn into a monster like that, it didn’t make it any less traumatic though. Jonas had been so much like me, forced and tricked into doing things we didn’t want to do. We had both taken at least one life and regretted it more than anything else.

“His name was Jonas.” I muttered. “He was a decent guy.”

“No. That was a wraith. Jonas died a long time ago.” Dante’s voice was stern, but I sensed a hint or remorse buried in his words. “We should be leaving now.” He put his hand on my shoulder.