My Curse

You would think life would be fair – but it’s not. And it’s strange how some things are covered so well on sci-fi and horror television shows and yet, people think most of that stuff is all make-believe.

Well, most of it is.

My curse in this life is that I can see what most other Humans can’t. I can see Angels, Demons and Reapers – but I mainly see the latter. Angels aren’t that common, and they’re out to protect the person they’re tethered to more than to show themselves in public. And besides, when a Human knows they’ve got an Angel tethered to them, they’re not going to tell everyone about it because ... well, would you?

Demons are everywhere. I spotted one at a party once years ago, and he spotted me. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever come across. I found my friends and got them the outa there before anything happened to them. But I remember what they said to me: ‘You’re nuts Dayna. He was fine!’

Glancing up at the rear vision mirror, while sitting at the set of lights, I spotted him in the car behind us, his red eyes glowing through the rear window of my car ‘He’s anything but fine. Did either of you talk to him? Kiss him, make fun of him?’

Belle sat in the seat next to me, hesitating, ‘Well, he said he could do anything for me. He promised.’ She went quiet.

‘Then?’

‘Well, he said we had to kiss, not shake hands.’ She blushed, ‘He’s a hell of a kisser.’

I remember her funeral well, because it was only three weeks later she died. The police still have no idea how she came to be in an abandoned building in San Fran on the other side of the country on her own; and yet she had only been with me the night before for dinner and a movie. From what I know, I’m still a suspect two years later.

Reapers are a different deal.

I see them all the time. They’re normally around car accidents, hospitals, funerals ... basically anywhere where there’s been a death and they have to collect a soul. I even see them when the news is on and they show a volcano blowing its top – and I see them all standing around the townships it’s going to destroy. This is why I don’t watch the news. They’re just too creepy.

And yep, I saw a couple of them at Belle’s funeral, when I should have only seen one. That caused me to wonder why there were more than one to collect her; but I didn’t want to ask too many questions about it all – after all the police were looking at me as a suspect.

And you know it’s strange, I’ve never had a Reaper looking at me or in my direction. They’re normally looking at the person who is going to die, or they’re standing outside the place where a death is going to occur.

But the other day, I stepped outside a movie theatre and saw a crowd of them looking up at the building. There had to be about thirty of them standing, staring. I turned and looked up, shading my eyes against the sun just in time to watch the windows on the top floor of the Cineplex explode and smoke billow out from it!

“Oh my God!” I muttered, unable to pull out my phone, knowing that whatever I did next was useless. If I pulled out my phone, the emergency crews wouldn’t make it in time... but if I didn’t? I turned to the security guard nearest to me, “We need to evacuate the whole centre now!”

“Why, it could be just the Cineplex...” he muttered.

I looked over near the doors of the main shopping complex, and spotted more Reapers standing by the door and inside the place, watching, “No! The whole place will go up if you don’t evacuate now!”

The alarms howled and rang, as people spilled out on the streets surrounding the massive centre. I stood across the road with the people watching and waiting to be told what to do next, when a hand landed on my shoulder.

I turned to find a Reaper was there, “Why didn’t you leave it well enough alone? Their time was up.” I turned away, feeling a chill where his hand had been. When I turned back, he was gone. As I looked around at the people standing around me, I realised I had screwed with how these people’s lives were going to turn out. At some point in the near future, each of them were going to die. As I watched on, Reapers showed up next to each survivor I had gotten evacuated from the centre.

Within the next month, each of these people died. Their time was up at the Cineplex and I stopped it – when I shouldn’t have.

I needed to be on my own for a while, so I sought out my local church, where I saw they were preparing for a funeral service. I didn’t want to bother them, so I sat in the very back near the door. People filed in. People I knew... but they didn’t come to see me as I stood and approached them.

“Dayna.” A voice at my shoulder said, and I turned to see a man in a suit, “I knew you’d make it.”

“Make it?” I asked, “What are you talking about?”

“You still don’t know? You’re dead. You died at the Cineplex. When you looked up as the place exploded a wall fell on you.” An expression of worry crossed his face, “Oh, you don’t remember, you died so fast.”

“And I see Reapers all the time.”

He nodded, “Yes. That man who patted you on the shoulder, he was your Reaper. And you should have left things alone – Natural Order and all of that.”

“Where am I?”

He looked around as all the people sat down in the lovely church I used to attend, “You are at your funeral.”