Puppets and Their Strings

She was doing it again. Thinking. She hated thinking on a job. All these irritating, irrational thoughts spinning through her head turned it into a veritable whirlpool of sensory information, sounds and scents and sights tearing through her concentration.

She sat back on her heels and tucked her dark hair into her equally black hoodie, scanning the street below. She wrapped a dark grey scarf around her lower face, ignoring the scratch of the rough wool over her cheeks and ensuring that the tiny angel wings depicted on it were positioned exactly over her mouth before tying it off.

Pausing in her normal routine, she turned her gaze inwards. Focusing on everything she didn’t want in her head, she chased her bothersome thoughts through her synapses, a flurry of electrical signals. She took a deep breath and instead focused on nothing, finally expunging those thoughts out of her mind, wiping it as one would clean a slate.

Free of distractions, she tugged her hood up over her head. Golden eyes flashed, catching the dying sunlight as she opened them, and she grinned at the rays of the sun. What a beautiful day.

Too bad she had to ruin it.

She took a glance at the paper in her palm, rubbing her thumb over the rough paper and etching the face that decorated it into her mind, committing it perfectly to memory. She threw it to the side, sending it flipping and fluttering over the edge of the building, floating to the street below.

Her feet made no sounds as she rose, stepped up to the edge of the roof. She admired the view for a moment, then filtered it out.

From now on, nothing mattered by the chase. The hunt. The kill.

Turning, her back faced the open, welcoming air. A long exhale, almost a sigh, and she spread her arms wide. She shifted her weight back, rocking on her heels, closing her eyes and allowing a blissful smile to come to her face…

And fell.

Vera laughed, exhilarated. She always loved this, this chance to fly. To be free. To escape the world, to soar. Air rushed through her widespread fingers and she let out a whoop of pure adrenaline, overjoyed. She reached a hand out towards the sun and let it shine through her fingers, for a split second all that existed to her was the sun, her, and the boundless, endless, limitless sky.

All too soon, she sensed the ground approaching and flipped, that unlimited view vanishing as she landed on one knee amid the gasps of the people around her. Like ripples in a pond, they spread outwards, begetting themselves until whispers flew like dust, blown about by the wind.

Then Vera lifted her head, and all was still.

She could feel the tension in the air as the crowd took in the subtle outline of the knives in her sleeves and the sheathes strapped to her thighs, as they took in the midnight black of her hooded figure and the tiny patch of pure white that marked her for what she was: an angel of death.

Death was a part of life in this town as much as life was, coming as surely as the tide to everyone. But as always, people fear the unknown. The ones who delivered death were unknown and treated as the entrance to that void itself: regarded with mystery, hostility, and fear.

Only a single thought was working its way through the neurons of the every mind in the crowd as they beheld this nameless, faceless omen, this bringer of death: "What if it's here for me?

Vera straightened slowly, the fear -no, terror- in the air tangible, like she could reach out and touch it, slice it with a blade.

A knife-slash smile cut across her face, hidden from view, her hand went to her pocket. A solitary scream rang out, but silence soon regained control as her hand just rested there. She lifted her other arm slowly, languidly, and allowed her pointing finger to dance along the crowd.

It came to rest on a solitary middle-aged man near the back of the group who, to Vera, was now nothing more than a face.

Soon, he wouldn't even be that.

Her eyes gleamed as she spoke, one word.

"You."

It was as if he had a plague. In a way, he did. He had been marked. Flagged. Tagged for instant death. Immediately after that word left her mouth, that single syllable winding its way into the minds of all those present, thumping against eardrums and sensitive nerves, firing the neurons and translating itself into electrical impulses, sending the same feeling of relief to every single onlooker.

A gap appeared around the man, growing by the second. He stared around with unseeing eyes, the reality of the situation sinking in. But the apparition, the angel, the demon, the Deathbringer, hadn't finished speaking yet.

"Accept it. Or not. It's your choice, as much of a choice it may be."

The man made a coughing noise, and attempted to speak, only to be ran over by the killer's words.

"If you accept it, I promise to make your end quick. If not..." she trailed off and chuckled, the sound cold enough to freeze the blood of everyone present. "If not, you get five seconds."

Vera's gaze bored into him, drilling holes in his scared eyes with hers of liquid metal that flashed, then crinkled up into a grin that no one could see. Not a friendly grin. Like a knife, it was cold, deadly, sharp. The grin of a hunter.

"Run. I dare you."

And run he did.

Vera laughed out loud and raised a clenched fist into the air above her head. In a voice that carried over and quelled the murmurs of the crowd, she counted. "One."

A forefinger extended.

"Two." The next.

The man turned to see what was going on, why the crowd was silent again. He lost his footing and crashed to the unyielding pavement, leaving particles of asphalt embedded in his cheek and bloody trails along the street.

"Three."

He got up slowly but kept running, searching desperately for somewhere, anywhere he could hide, escape from his pursuer, this omen, this sign, this Deathbringer.

"Four." Vera's eyes narrowed and she crouched slightly, lowering her body and tensing her muscles, preparing herself for the chase.

"Five."

The word left her mouth, cold as death and quiet as a whisper, yet somehow everyone could hear it. From the moment she exhaled, forcing air past her vocal cords, shaping the words in her mouth and releasing them to the brisk fall air, the man was dead. It was a simple fact, known by him, her, and everyone around them.

Her smile tightened, drawing the skin on her face taut as she lunged forward, gaining rapidly.

Crossing her arms and whipping her knives out of her sleeves, she drew even with him and tapped his shoulder before blowing right past him. Spinning, she snapped an arm out and he came to a screeching halt with the point of a blade resting ever so lightly on his chest.

Shaking her head slightly, Vera lifted her free hand to her face and hooked a finger around the top of her scarf, tugging it down around her chin.

"Didn't your parents ever tell you not to listen to strangers?" she snorted at his astonishment and winked at him, flashing him a bright white smile.

The man, captivated by her deep golden eyes, gaped at her, not able to understand.

"Wh-what? Why?"

She grinned slyly at him and his cluelessness and slowly replaced her scarf.

"It doesn't matter if you see me-"

She spun.

Knives flashed.

"-because you're already dead."

The crowd surged forward, a tide of people who had finally regained their voices. Vera turned towards them and stepped forward, vanishing into the crush. She emerged from the crowd just as they reached the body, a smirk gracing her hidden features as she ducked into the lengthening shadows.

Behind her, silence closed like a wound.

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