"If you are alive, well... this is the mens room." I repeated. "Ladies is just next door."
She had a wild look in her eyes now, her face vaguely distorting as she came closer to me, but the low light changing angle on her face didn't seem to alter her look at all.
"Wait!" She called out just as I decided that was a good time to leave. I felt sorry for her, in some sense, I understood she was going through something hellish and confusing. Somehow the wailing fear I was encountering never quite reached me. "Don't leave." She moaned.
I frowned. "I can't help you, sorry."
"But you can see me, you can see me!" She cried out.
I cringed at the noise, if people couldn't see her could they hear her? If not it was going to look particularly strange for me to walk out of the mens with a woman's wailing coming from inside.
"Sorry lady." I said, shrugging, feeling bad as I turned towards the door.
Just then I felt the strangest grip on my neck as I was shoved forwards, I turned around to see her form gliding on the floor almost as though she had forgotten how to walk and her face approaching mine so fast I gasped. My back hit the corner of the sink but the power in her hand as she wrapped it around my neck and pushed me backwards had me crashing partly into the mirror behind it. Nothing broke my heart pounded loudly in my chest, blood roaring in my ears.
Her form distorted around me, her hand was icy cold and chilling my skin. The hair on my arms was standing up on end as I tried to push her away but my hands sank into the strange empty space that I was pushing at.
Crazed eyes glazed over, the whites tinted pink, nostrils wide. I couldn't see anything else, the rest of the room blocked out by her. She opened her mouth and I saw clearly the unsettling lack of two teeth off to the right side of her mouth.
"Help- You can help me... Help me!" Her grip on my neck got tighter and her fingers felt unnaturally long. I tried to crawl away but I was beginning to really feel the lack of air and gasped out, her nails biting into my skin yet somehow not puncturing or even bruising me.
"Stop-" I managed to croak out, the corner of something behind me sticking into my lower back as I tried continuously to pull away from her.
Her phantom form seemed solid only where it mattered and I couldn't break myself free, there was a slow rise of panic beginning to build up in my lungs and looking up to see the strange way her eyes were dilating wasn't helping one bit.
Suddenly I realised the weirdest thing about her, the thing that had made me so comfortable recognising that she wasn't alive after all; the woman had no smell. Nothing lingered on or around her, even the common smell of sweat and skin that is so normal you don't notice it at all was absent and it was blindingly obvious that somehow this woman was there, but also not there at all.
Her long black hair tickled my arms. Hair and hands, solid, but the body was nothing.
When I reached out to pull at her hair I was stunned when her form went sailing across the room and she landed awkwardly between two urinals, having somehow hit the wall and even appeared to be gasping in pain, looking up with terrifyingly wide eyes at the form that had tossed her across the room with nothing more than a breath of air.
It was Death.
She clutched her arm and groaned in pain and he looked over his shoulder at her, pure annoyance on his face. "Don't pretend to feel pain. You're dead." He said coldly.
She was surprised but instead of replying with a rebuttal she just buried her head, a little further than seemed healthy for someone in a body with bones, in her knees, and sobbed loudly.
Death then turned back to me, cold eyes surveying me with a level of irritation that made me feel a lot like some kind of ant crawling on top of his picnic basket.
"What do you think you're doing?" He hissed.
I frowned. "You're mad at me for being strangled by a ghost that took me by surprise in the mens room? What's a soul doing roaming about like that anyway?" I asked him angrily, rubbing my neck as though trying to ease a pain that should have been left behind from her strangling me.
He moved closer. "You gave her a physical form, whatever you imagine the feeling of starts to render on you. Like a memory. Do not repeat that mistake."
I glared at him. "How am I supposed to know that?"
He said nothing but took another step closer so that now his legs brushed against mine. "You would know about that if you wanted to work for me."
I looked up at him, it was really damn hard not to get dazed by how attractive he was and the look he gave me, almost especially when he was mad, was one of the sexiest looks I'd ever seen on a man.
"I said I have a job."
He nodded. "You do have a job."
I looked around. "Shouldn't you be dealing with that?" I gestured in the direction of the dead woman.
He nodded again. "Of course."
"How did she escape you?" I frowned. "I thought you were all-powerful somehow... in theory at least."
He glared at me, turning up his nose and looking down at me. "I am superb at me job, I do not let anyone escape me."
I hummed. "Doesn't look like it here."
He slid his hand around the back of my neck and I shivered at the feeling of his fingers as they gently brushed my skin, and then he pulled me closer so sharply that my head was pulled up without warning and I gasped out loud, his grip becoming more painful, the fingers threading through my hair and tugging at the short strands and the little burn it left behind made me feel funny.
"Don't be coy." He said in a low threatening voice, dark eyes glittering as he spoke. "I can punish you whenever I like, safer not to forget that."
I rolled my eyes, the action miles away from the severe beating of my heart that followed the words that sent a wave of lust rolling throughout my body. It was hard to hide something like that through any other means than being obnoxious.
I laughed awkwardly, placing my hands on his chest and brushing his cloak as though I was evening out the creases. I was trying to buy myself time to respond but instead I realised how much of the muscular form I could make out just by brushing his chest. The cloak was made of something strangely thin, yet it's matt finish gave it a rougher, thicker appearance.
I pulled my hands away, flushing darkly, trying not to imagine exactly what he looked like under the layers of no doubt pitch black material.
"No need for that..." I ended up saying, so quietly it was almost more to myself than to him.
He seemed placated by that, however, and moved on with his explanation. " I do not preside over every case of death, my minions do my work for me, I deal with the problematic ones."
"Problematic ones?"
I watched his gaze drift towards the woman who was still crying in between the urinals and my gaze followed too.
"That is a problematic one. Usually happens when they die high or during an emotional extreme, their soul slips out of their body and they get lost. Sometimes they cry and scream and try to get as far away as possible. Sometimes they escape and return to their body days later, trying to stay alive in the festering ruined remains of what was once their human identity, like with Prewett. Occasionally the more harmless problematic souls are completely unaware they escaped at all, they can end up anywhere, their presence is much quieter when they're not trying to hide."
"Like where?" I asked, fascination overcoming me so that I was once again chatting to Death as though we were sitting alone in a coffee shop, once again ignoring the wailing of some deceased individual nearby.
He seemed to enjoy the question, though. "I once tracked down the soul of a carpenter from the 1960s, died mending a roof and for the next forty odd years he stayed there, mending the roof, whistling. It's a strange muddled state they get into when they are released from their corporeal form."
"Wow," I hummed. "That's weird."
There was a glint of pleasure in his eyes and automatically all I wanted to do was to slip in as many praises as I could think of to see that pleasure grow. It was oddly addictive, but I held my tongue. He'd already just caught me being strangled by a ghost in the toilet it was probably best to limit how embarrassing I could get for one day.
He turned around slowly, his cloak following with a few seconds delay.
"You, follow my minion. He will take you to the afterlife."
She looked up at him and then shrieked all of a sudden and screamed and wailed and I realised that there was a black form at the door, similar to the strange matter that gathered around him at all times twisting and moving as though it were another limb.
The form approached and reached out a hand and when she looked up at him, her bizarre; red-eyed, tear-stained face finally fell silent and despite looking miserable and afraid she took it rather calmly before they both were whisked away into nothingness, what exactly happened there I couldn't for the life of me know.
"It feels like there should have been a gentler way to take her to the afterlife."
He turned back to me and in a flash I felt those red eyes pinning me back against the sink. "You can add your two cents when you are ready to show up for work."
"Death, I'm not sure why-"
He raised a finger and I felt my lips close together and I wanted to gasp in shock and cry out something really angry and spiteful at the same time. "You have something to answer to." He said, his voice low.
"I do?" I asked without thinking, realising only after I spoke that I could talk.
His glare was dark enough to peel paint off of a car door. "I thought I told you nicely to cease all coital relationships..." He hissed.
I raised my hands in front of me, the pinch of nervousness returning knowing that not only had he seen me and Zack meeting up but that he now knew who the boy was that had popped into my head when he had forced me to my knees in front of him. I didn't know exactly why that made me nervous, maybe because it was Death himself, but above all I supposed because he looked positively dangerous the way he was looking at me now and there was a real sense that I got around him that he was more dangerous than even I anticipated.
"I did..." I replied weakly.
His eyes narrowed further, turning to slits where his eyelashes met in the middle. "So everyone touches and kisses you on the neck."
Ah.
[A/N] Thank you patrons...
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