Her life was a mess, she knew. Her dingy home was littered with empty pill and vodka bottles. The television was broken, the glass shattered in the corner of the room. The stench of sweat and blood permeated the room and made her nauseous. Dirty clothes, moldy and grimy, covered the concrete floors. An old stereo played the same haunting song over and over again. She didn't know if she still had a job, she couldn't remember the last time she'd gone. The phone was disconnected, the cord ripped from the cracked plaster wall. The lights, cheap fluorescent, swayed eerily from the ceiling, casting shadows and monsters on the walls. The refrigerator was empty, broken. The heater, too; she couldn't remember if the water still ran or not.

Her fingers were blistered from burning her cigarettes down to the quick. Tears and snot stained her cheeks, and she rubbed them raw. Her once blonde hair was now greasy and dark, dirty. Mascara stained and burned her eyes. Her body was frail, cold, dirty. The clothes she wore fit her badly; they were too big and getting bigger. She wore no shoes or socks and her feet were blue-tinted from the cold. Her brown eyes, highlighted by the smudged mascara, were sunken into her face, seeming too big for her tiny head. She lay in the middle of the floor, staring at a wet spot on the far wall where she'd thrown her last bottle of vodka. The shattered pieces of glass still glittered with the liquid. She took a shallow breath and shuddered against the cold, her mind blank. It was raining outside, she thought faintly as she put the stolen revolver in her mouth.

Her blood colored the dingy walls, the shot echoing with a piercing sadness throughout the place. her body fell in a heap onto the concrete floor as whatever blood was left began to ooze from her wound. Her life was over, the pain and suffering done and gone. No one would ever know that she had been alive in that house for four-hundred twenty-three years.

1

He jolted awake, gun in hand as he looked madly about the dark room. Then his attention came to his screaming cell phone. With a vicious oath, he grabbed it and flipped it open.

"Yeah?" he growled, glancing at the cheap alarm clock. 2:47 A.M.

"Kale Harper?" a female voice murmured into the phone.

"What do you want? How'd you get this number?"

"My name is Gage and I am a detective with a private agency. I understand you were discharged from police headquarters last month because of the famous Cummings' murders case?"

"What the hell does this have to do with you?" he asked, ready to hang up on her.

"I need your...certain skills on a job I just got called on."

His harsh laughter filled the phone. "Listen lady. I don't need no pity from you. I also don't need a job, and I’m not gonna help you."

"Even if it's just like the Cummings case? The same situation?"

Silence. She smiled into the receiver and waited for his answer.

"Where you at?"

Arrogant female laughter filled the phone and had his nerves buzzing with sudden arousal.

"Do you know were the old, torn down high school is on Tripper Street?"

He muttered his understanding.

"It's the fourth house on the left past it. See you there in thirty minutes."

He hung up and dropped the phone on the bed as he stumbled to the shower. This was going to be interesting, he grumbled.