Death's Ledger

Chapter 1 - Warren & 5th

September, 1991

I'd lost him.

The short, bald, and unathletic one. I imagined it would be easy, but in typical "Sage Valentine" fashion, I'd lost track of him on Warren & 5th and I knew what that would mean.

I ran wildly, second-guessing myself with every desperate stride. My thighs burned as I ran through derelict alleyways lined with shrubs, paying no heed to the thorns that would normally slice through skin. I ran through them. I didn't have to care. They were long-forgotten, like me.

I ran over tree roots, slipped on the moss covering them, but continued on. It didn't faze me. I felt nothing but my heart battering painfully against my chest. I ran freely through a crowd of commuters ready to leave the city in droves. Gravel crunched under my feet as I raced by; the sound was like thunder in the still of dawn.

"But he couldn't have felt me coming," I repeated to myself. "He just couldn't have."

Or could he?

I slipped through a small fissure between bodies and dove into traffic, jumped over cars, got stuck behind open car doors, and managed to almost shove at least two people to the ground to free myself. Thankfully, they never saw me coming or felt me go.

No one is supposed to feel me. I'm dead.

I ran and ran, until I came to a quaint two-story house with two chimneys, a peaked roof, and a large tree on the other side of it. Then I climbed to the first branch, but if anyone had seen me, it might have appeared as though I ran up that tree as well. I looked down, struggling for air, each breath burning my lungs.

I'd lost a soul and it wouldn't be long before I'd have to answer for my carelessness.

I sat there for a long time with eyes closed and the afternoon sun warm against my back. When the sound of my pounding heart subsided, I opened my eyes. The sun had gone. In its place, a ghostly fog wrapped itself around all that was 'natural.' It knew to steer clear of me - I'm not natural anymore.

Nature seemed to have a day for certain things. Today the fog made the city an uneasy picture, dark and brooding. For a moment, I looked up through the branches towards the top of the tallest building in the city. I wondered what it would be like to plunge from the highest building into the vast, dense fog. My imagination told me it would be like falling into a tunnel at first, bursting through the fog and clouds, I would scream downward toward the city. The skyline and trees would look beautiful; the peaks of buildings long behind me and growing further away as I fell, with only seconds left to reflect on my existence while plummeting, soon crashing, into the bosom of the earth.

I wondered if I'd feel it - the pain.

As I pondered this thought, I was distracted by footsteps.

"Hey, Spazz," said a voice below me. I looked down hastily to find a familiar face. A pale, slender arm reached up, holding an unlit cigarette. "Got a light?" she asked.