The instant she declared that I was a Reaper, I became aware of what I could only call an interface in the periphery of my vision. It felt like it had always been there, but if it had been, I was positive it was something that I would have noticed before. In the upper right was an icon that looked like an outline of a head like you’d see on a website for your personal profile, and just like a website, when I focused on it, my “profile” popped up.
Name: Bridgette Nelson
Race: Human
Class: Reaper
Level: 0
As crazy as this new interface was, it wasn’t really any weirder than seeing . . . whatever it was that I saw chasing that old lady. And that poor old lady was my priority at that moment.
“You have a whole lot to explain!” I muttered under my breath as I slowly rolled up to the corner and pretended to check my phone, again watching the older woman as she tottered along. But naturally, the voice didn’t say anything. She’d gone quiet, which I was beginning to think only happened at the absolute worst times.
Granted, it wasn’t like she was doing it on purpose, not as far as I could tell. After all, she wasn’t really a living breathing thing, even if it felt like it. She was information downloaded to my brain in a desperate attempt by a dying woman to tell me . . .
To tell me . . .
Well, I didn’t know exactly what she was trying to tell me, but it certainly felt important.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Okay, she’s turning. I’m going to get closer, I thought hard inside of my head, directing my thoughts to the voice. I was beginning to get the hang of it, or at least, I thought I was, but the voice was back to not responding.
Would it be disrespectful to name her? It felt weird to just refer to her as ‘the voice.’ Then again, what wasn’t weird about the whole situation? If someone had tried to tell me that I would be stalking the elderly while talking to a different personality in my own head that no one else could see, I would have assumed one of us was showing far too many signs of dissociative identity disorder.
Whether I ended up naming her or not, it looked like I was flying solo for the moment, so I hurried toward where I’d seen the old woman turn left.
She certainly was walking a long way for someone who looked more wrinkled than my balled-up waitress apron whenever I forgot it in my bag after a day off. Maybe that was ableist of me or ageist or whatever, but I’d never known my grandparents, so it was not like I had any experience with what day-to-day life was like for them. The only interactions I’d had with seniors was serving them at the diner or back in high school when I had volunteered to read to the elderly at a nursing home or even done sewing projects with a few.
I kept on, however, fabric store long since forgotten. When I finally reached the corner, she’d gone around, I peeked around the edge to see that she’d stopped at a street cart and was in the middle of ordering a gyro.
Maaan, once I got my next paycheck from the coffee shop, I was going to have to treat myself. I loved street cart gyros and falafel. Something about how they made it was always top-tier delicious.
But I must have spent just a touch too long drooling over the idea of filling my mouth with delicious pita, meat, and tzatziki sauce, because the phantasm twisted for a second, its not-quite-a-face craning in my direction.
All previous instructions flew out of my head as we locked eyes, except it didn’t have eyes. Its entire face was like a skull made of smoke, shifting this way and that, suddenly expanding only to shrink. It had no nose, no ears, no hair, and instead of a mouth and eyes, there were only endless, depthless black holes that swirled in so much ominous energy that my stomach churned yet again.
Name: Phantasm
Class: Lost Spirit
Level: 1
Life is hard. Death is supposed to be easy. Sometimes, that transition doesn’t go smoothly, though, and a newly departed spirit is lost. Phantasms aren’t technically evil, but they will do anything they can to pass on to the next life, even if that means prematurely ending another life just so they can tag along on the journey to the afterlife.
“Uh oh. It sees you.”
Welp.
That probably wasn’t good.