Moon Knight: Nightly Affairs

Chapter 01

Two Weeks Ago
In Hawai'i, the sun beams down onto the waves and tanning those laid in the sand— making it the perfect day to relax at the beach. Children play in the water, splashing their friends as their parents wade by the shores. The calming breeze moves the leaves of the palm trees as a young woman walks to the nearest restaurant for her daily Monday Mai Tai.

As she enters the small building, her ears are filled with the sounds of people chattering and faint jazz music playing in the background.

On this beautiful day, she's in a classic red bikini top that ties in the back, which is paired with black high waisted bikini bottoms and matched with a black wrap, leaving one of her legs exposed up to her hip. Her dark brown hair cascades down her shoulders to the middle of her back, swaying with every step she takes toward the cashier. Surprisingly, the place isn't as busy as it usually is, she finds this more pleasurable.

Behind the counter, a young woman with platinum blonde hair looks down at the book she's reading. The brunette can't help but chuckle as she watches the cashiers nose scrunch up as she reads one of the last lines on the page.

After two minutes the woman in red and black clears her throat and says, "Alani, I hope you know you're working."

Looking up from her book, the cashier chuckles, "Honestly, I kind of forgot because we've only had about 10 people come in today." While Alani closes her book she asks, "Do you want your usual?"

"Of course," she responds as she places her elbows onto the marble countertop. She watches the woman move about behind the counter, fixing her Monday Mai Tai: lime, orange, pineapple and lemon juice put with ice and orgeat syrup.

As the brunette waits, she looks around the unusually empty building. She sees a group of friends sat in the lounge chairs by the large windows by the front, the sun beaming down on them. Tables moved closer to the middle of the room with couples, families and a few loners minding their business. Big picture frames hung on the walls; photographs of the water, the trees and sands. Of course to make the place feel more aesthetically pleasing they have large Monstera Deliciosa in the corners of the restaurant, matching the white, gold and beige interior perfectly.

Alani turns around with a completed beverage and a smile, "This might be the quickest drink I've made you!" The blondes smile slightly falters as she stares at the woman's eyes, "I thought you had brown eyes- Oh, are you wearing contacts? Where'd you get those ones? They're so pretty!"

"What are you talking about? I don't wear colored contacts," the woman raises an eyebrow as she pulls out her phone, going to the camera app and flipping it to show her face to see what the cashier is talking about.

Low and behold, she has dark gray eyes and not her usual chocolate brown irises. The longer she stares at herself the more her vision blurs, her muscles tensing and her breathing becomes more erratic.

"Hey, it's okay! Sometimes eye colors change. I mean not drastically like that, but, hey! At least they look good," Alani tries to calm her friend with her playfulness, but she realizes that there's more going on than just her eye color. "Eira, are you okay?"

The dark haired woman stumbles forward a bit, dropping her phone on the floor and grabbing onto the counter to hold herself up, but it's to no avail. She falls to her knees and closes her eyes, panting and clawing at the ground to find anything to hold onto, the pain in her body growing immensely.

Alani runs around the counter to get to her friends side. She kneels down and tries to comfort the woman by rubbing her back, turning to the people that are watching in concern and confusion. "Someone call for help!"

Eira opens her eyes and looks down to her cracked screen, her already unsteady breathing hitching in her throat. A face, her face, stares back at her with a disgusting grin.

The person in the phone laughs maniacally before saying, "We've risen," in Coptic.

Those words. Those two words make something in the woman snap. She looks up at Alani, seeing fear in her eyes as they slowly roll back, also noticing her skin shriveling, sticking to her bones and turning a light gray.

The lights begin to flicker,  then they shut off completely and an eery silence takes place. There are no screams, no heartbeats, no footsteps, nothing, just complete silence.

When the lights come back on, blood is found all over the walls, streaming in the cracks of the tiles on the floor. Everyone that was just alive, had been killed quickly and efficiently. Some have large holes blown through their heads, missing pieces of their abdomen, or had been torn apart- limbs scattering the red stained marble floors.

One person, however, did survive the unexpected attack.

Eira.

She's standing in the middle of the blood bath, her body drenched in crimson liquid, her hair sticking to her face, her eyes staring into nothingness, not a thought behind her irises.

"We've risen," she mindlessly starts to mutter as she exits the restaurant through the back door, not bothering to take a look at the devastation she wrought, not daring to spend another moment in the room full of dismembered bodies.

As she takes a step through the back door, her eyes turn back to their normal color and a gasp escapes her lips.

She jolts awake in her bed, sweat dripping from her forehead, her body shaking beneath her covers.

The woman sits up against her headboard and places her head in her hands, distorted whispering can be heard in her head, making a sob exit her throat, but allowing that to slip through causes an ear shattering scream to follow.

She keeps screaming- incoherent words, sobs and whatever else she's had bottled up just comes flooding out. Eira throws her right arm out toward her bedroom door, a wave of black energy shooting from her palm, completely demolishing her wooden door as the two come in contact.

She takes in a long breath as she combs her fingers through her hair, then looks to the damage she made.

On the far wall, just outside of her room, she sees a glowing scale, the bright white light making her squint. On the right side of the scale there's an Ankh and a feather, on the left side there's a human heart. The scale starts off being balanced, then slowly and slightly gets heavier on the side of the Ankh and a feather- the hearts glow begins to flicker to a dim shine, almost like it's representing the light leaving a space, making it dark, like good leaving and bad entering- a soul becoming corrupt, a person becoming destructive, almost as if there is a shift in the Universe and not the kind anyone would want to stick around for.