Demon Driver

With shaking hands, Scarlett unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door, cautiously stepping out onto the highway. Her vehicle was untouched, but surrounded by the plumes of smoke and wreckage of a fifteen-car pile-up. A semi-trailer truck and a cement mixer lay on their sides, lumber and wet cement littered the highway, crumpled vehicles sprawled into a jagged heap between them.

Traffic in the opposing lanes had come to a standstill. Beneath the rumble of the engines, the blaring of horns, and the wail of incoming ambulances, there was an even more terrifying sound, or lack thereof. Of the 15 wrecked vehicles, there were no sounds of struggle, agony, relief - life.

"Woah! Scar, that was a close one." Rey'aziel appeared beside her, clad in his signature black attire – black boots, tight, black jeans, and another one of his sarcastic T-shirts with large, red lettering writing out "Nope, can't go to Hell" followed by smaller white letters "Satan still has a restraining order against me." Crossing his heavily tattooed arms, Rey smiled at the frantic woman, eyes glowing a bright, almost crimson color.

"What have you done?" Scarlett snarled at him, but didn't wait for an answer. She sprinted to the nearest vehicle, crouching to check the crushed interior. The passengers, however many, had been reduced to little more than a bloodied pulp. She turned away and fell to her hands and knees, stomach heaving as the contents of her breakfast made its way back to her mouth in the form of thin, sharp bile.

Rey'aziel sauntered up behind her. "Thank you, Rey'aziel," he prompted, dramatically. "You saved my life, Rey'aziel. You're the greatest guardi—"

"SHUT UP," Scarlett snapped.

Rey'aziel hissed, falling back as if he'd been punched. "That was ungrateful," he murmured.

"I am ungrateful!" She nearly screamed, "I don't want you, so you can just go." Scarlett got to her feet, and weakly stumbled towards the next vehicle. In the distance, sirens wailed, but they were far too late to salvage the lives of those crushed in their vehicles. The accident had formed a halo of death and destruction, and Scarlett Osiris was the in center of it all. When the cement mixer skidded on black ice, Scarlett should've been the only casualty.

"If I did not protect you now, and every other time, you'd be dead a hundred times over."

"I only have to die once," she told him, almost wistfully. She thought of how close she had come to death, all the close encounters that had peppered the 24 years of her life – each accident with a wider circumference of devastation than the last. When she was five, she ran into the street chasing a stray ball. A car, speeding through the neighborhood, nearly hit her, but seconds before the impact came, the driver swerved to the right, hitting the three kids in the driveway, waiting for Scarlett to return with their ball.

"Sweetheart, you never have to die," Rey'aziel said.

When she was ten, a rouge, leaf fire in the neighbor's yard set that house ablaze. Rapidly spreading, the flames soon engulfed the five surrounding houses in its heated embrace, sparing only one residence. The Osiris house.

"How can you justify ending dozens of innocent lives just to save one?" She took an exasperated breath and mentally prepared herself before peering into what might've once been a minivan, then immediately recoiled from it, moving on, as tears of anger and anguish filled her eyes.

Rey'aziel shrugged, unperturbed. "It's my job to save you – not those other dozens."

Again, a memory pushed its way to the front of her mind. When she was seventeen, a mentally unstable ex-boyfriend came to school with the resolve to shoot her, but when she escaped with a fellow classmate, everyone left in her wake paid the price. Thirteen students and one excruciatingly boring history teacher were shot, seven killed.

Again and again, throughout her life, when danger and tragedy befell her, Rey'aziel snatched it away and pushed it tenfold onto those around her.

Scarlett straightened abruptly, turning to stare at the dark figure. "Fine then!" Raising her hands in the air, Scarlett yelled, "If you only care about my safety, then rest assured, I'm saved. You can go now."

"Job's not done yet."

A mix of emotions constricted her lungs. Scarlett turned her back on him, making her way unsteadily to the next vehicle. More death. With him, it was always death, just never hers. Her life had become a sequence of tragedies, and her continued existence was a threat to those around her.

Fed up with the constant fear for everyone around her, with the pain of living life knowing that she was the cause behind the death of tens – probably hundreds - of lives now, fed up with living with this Being - that knew only of death - always "protecting" her, Scarlett bent down, picking up the largest shard of glass she could find, and held the jagged edge to her throat. "Are you allowed to save me from myself, Rey'aziel?"

She blinked, and he was behind her. With one touch, the glass dissolved into sand.

"Now, the job's done," Rey'aziel said, a smirk in his voice. "For today."

And then he was gone. Just like that her guardian angel - well demon - vanished in the air, going, Lord knows where, until he was called back to "save" her once again.