Crossed Lives

The man crawled backwards along his lounge room floor with his terrified eyes never leaving the figure that was standing before him. With a thump, his back hit a wall, ceasing his movement. Looking up once more, he gave a terrified gasp as his attacker slowly walked towards him, like a cat stalking a mouse. Through the blood that was partially obscuring his vision, the man beheld the figure of a glowing young woman, who appeared to be no older than her early twenties. Her golden blonde hair fell in ringlets down her back, whilst her icy blue eyes seemed to be devoid of any discernable emotion. In her right hand she held the hilt of a sword, the blade of which was glistening in the moonlight.

Shaking with fear, the man pushed his back hard up against the wall in his attempt to put some more distance between himself and the sword-wielding young woman. One blow to the head from the sword hilt had seen the man fall to the ground, fighting just to remain conscious. Now his attacker was once more standing within striking distance.

A beam of moonlight poured in through the front window, illuminating the girl’s pale skin. Her petite face was set in a scowl that was made sinister by the slight curving of her thin lips. That hard, emotionless face was enough to cause the man to start trembling uncontrollably. Swallowing hard, he managed to find his voice and ask the only question that he could think of.

“Who are you? Please, I have a family,” he whimpered, cringing slightly as the girl’s ice blue eyes seemed to bore into his skull.

“Who am I?” the girl repeated with a laugh, yet her eyes remained emotionless. “Why, don’t you know? I’m Tabitha McCray, your Guardian Angel.”

The man’s eyes widened in horror as his so-called Guardian Angel raised her sword high, before swinging it around for a fatal blow to his head. Watching with satisfaction, the dark haired head bounced once upon the carpet before rolling to a stop, and Tabitha wiped her bloodstained sword off on her victim’s clothes. Looking down at her own clothing, she noticed that her shirt and flowing skirt were now splattered with blood, and touching a finger to one of the stains, she smiled wickedly as it came away crimson.

“Serves them right for thinking that I could ever be an Angel,” Tabitha said in a tone of voice that held a hint of anger. Still staring down at the body, her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a scream. The man’s wife and three young children had just arrived home, and Tabitha smirked at them as her blade shone in the moonlight.

0.0

Staggering out of the room, Talon wished that he could wipe the horrific scene from his crimson coloured eyes, but he knew that he never would be able to. You could not see something as grisly as he had just seen and simply forget about it; the horror always stays with you, never to be erased. Words simply couldn’t describe what he was feeling, but one thought came through loud and clear – he never wanted to feel this way again.

Tearing open the front door of the modest family home, Talon stumbled out into the pouring rain that had started to fall within the last few minutes. It was just a typical, middle-class family home, with matching décor, white carpet and mint-green painted walls. But that one room – the lounge room – was a scene of gruesome destruction. If he hadn’t have seen the rest of the house first, he never would have even known about the white and green colour scheme.

As a Reaper, it was Talon’s job to locate the dead and detach their souls from their bodies, then get out of there before he was spotted. Yet his mind had been thrown into complete shock by what he had found in that room, and by the sudden sense of familiarity that it had evoked within him.

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

The rain was running down his jacket in tiny rivulets, and his wet hair was sticking to his face and forehead. Rhythmically slapping the pavement, his joggers made squelching sounds as they slowly filled with water, yet he didn’t stop running. He couldn’t stop until he had put as much distance between himself and that house as possible. Flying around a corner, Talon’s feet suddenly slipped out from underneath him, and his left hand shot out lightning fast to break his fall. Barely even noticing the stinging sensation in his palm, he climbed back onto his feet and continued running.

‘It’s just too much.’

Slipping and sliding on the wet grass of a park, Talon collapsed down onto a wooden bench, gasping for air. It wasn’t like he was exhausted from the run; it was like the visions from that house were suffocating him. He was being smothered by the horror of those memories – some new and some more fragmented and distant – and he couldn’t shut them out. That house, those five bodies, and the blood everywhere; he couldn’t escape from the images.

Resting his head on the back of the bench, Talon closed his eyes and let the rain steadily pound his face. Eventually, he noticed that his breathing had returned to its normal pace, yet he could still feel a heavy weight resting on his mind.

‘Never again.’

Talon sat on that bench for what seemed like a lifetime, just letting the cold night rain wash over him, cleansing him of the nightmare that was permanently etched into his memory. After a while however, he rose to his feet, causing water to cascade down his body. He was soaked to the bone, but he didn’t care. He was numb from the chill night breeze, but he didn’t care. As he slowly left the park, Talon simply did not care that he had failed his mission. If failing meant that he got to keep his sanity, then he would gladly choose failure any day. It was as simple as that.

‘I quit.’

0.0

There were many books in the Guardian library, yet none of them had any interesting information on Reapers – the title that she thought she deserved to have. With a frustrated sigh, Tabitha McCray threw the book that she was currently reading across the long table and snatched up another. Opening the cover and flicking through several pages, Tabitha was about to throw that book as well when a single sentence caught her attention:

The Reapers created the Replicas in order to cope with their growing workload, by using recreated souls of specially chosen deceased individuals.

“Recreated souls?” Tabitha mused, intrigued. “Does that mean that they can artificially create souls and fashion them into people? People known as Replicas? Interesting.”

Both Guardians and Reapers were chosen for their jobs at death, or were left to ascend beyond the physical world, yet if what Tabitha had just read was true, then no new souls had been made into Reapers in a long time; the Reapers had been making their own, based on souls that they deemed worthy to copy. But why? Was a manufactured Replica Reaper better, or simply easier for the proper Reapers to control? Tabitha didn’t have the answers to these questions, yet she felt certain that the book that she held in her hands did. Settling in to read, she jumped when a voice boomed out her name.

“Archangel Gabrielle!” Tabitha exclaimed, magically sending the book away to somewhere safe to be read later. Yet in her haste, she wasn’t clear enough about where she wanted the book to go, and she wasn’t entirely sure where it ended up.

“Do not look so surprised, for you should have known that I would be coming to see you,” Gabrielle said with a disappointed frown. “Did you think that we would not find out about your … accident earlier today?”

“Accident?” Tabitha asked in confusion, before her blue eyes lit up in comprehension. “Oh, that! It wasn’t an accident,” she said, and Gabrielle sighed.

“It is not our job to take lives, but to protect and guide. What you did to that man and his family was barbaric, and goes against everything that we stand for,” the Archangel lectured, but Tabitha was only half listening.

“I told you when I first arrived here that I wasn’t cut out to be a Guardian,” Tabitha spat, having been over this argument more times than she cared to remember. “I’m no good at saving people. I always screw it up, and people always get hurt because of me. I should have been a Reaper,” she added bitterly, and Gabrielle smiled at her in sympathy.

“You were made a Guardian because of what you have inside. There are many good qualities in you that you are simply too afraid to see, but which I hope will make themselves known to you in due time,” Gabrielle explained, yet Tabitha just snorted.

“Those good qualities didn’t save me when I needed them, did they?” she spat. “No, I’m much more suited to taking out vengeance and ending lives, just like that man’s. How many young girls ended up sick, or even died from the drugs that he was selling to them, whilst his wife and children benefited from the money? Too many. They deserved what they got.”

“And you have created your own fate by following this course of action. I only hope that you still have the capacity to learn from this,” Gabrielle said with a sigh, and as Tabitha turned her ice coloured eyes to look at him, a searing pain shot through her shoulders as the world around her dissolved. Collapsing to the ground, Tabitha closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as the pain subsided and the world solidified around her. Opening her eyes, she was shocked to discover that she was in a very familiar part of the mortal world, and that the Archangel clipping her wings had caused the pain in her shoulders. She still retained some of her Guardian powers, yet she was completely stranded in the harsh world of life and death, with no way of leaving.

0.0

The thump of a book being dropped echoed throughout the library, and bending down to retrieve it, Talon spied something else that had been shoved further under the shelf, a piece of which was just barely visible. Getting down on all fours, the young man slipped his hand underneath the shelf and pushed out a dusty leather-bound volume. Standing back up, he flipped the book back and forth in his hands before taking it back to the table with his other book.

After returning from his failed mission, Talon had done his best to avoid the Reaper Masters that controlled when and where he was sent to detach souls, and so far he had succeeded. Before he could leave the Reaper world forever, he needed information; needed to know how Reapers were brought into being, and why the blood-soaked horror of that house had stirred up memories deep inside of him; memories that he didn’t even realise that he had.

The library was quiet, and was actually closed, yet Talon had managed to hide unnoticed amongst the dusty books until the doors had been shut. Now, he sat at a table surrounded by books, yet none of them offered up any information that he didn’t already know. Frustrated, he picked up the book that he had found underneath the shelf and started to turn the pages, not really reading what was written on them, until one passage caught his attention:

The Reapers created the Replicas in order to cope with their growing workload, by using recreated souls of specially chosen deceased individuals. These souls were fashioned into the form of the original soul, yet their irises were stained crimson by the process, thus identifying a Replica from a Reaper. Replicas are also unique in the fact that they do not retain the memories of their mortal lives, as they did not possess a mortal life in the first place. However, some research indicates that under certain circumstances – which differ from one Replica to another – memories from the original soul may be awakened, yet this is unconfirmed and thus, not likely to be true. Without these memories, the Replicas have proven to be extremely useful in the job of Reaping, and do not seem to have the same independent nature as a person possessing a real soul.

“In other words, we’re easier to control,” Talon breathed in shock, before anger overcame him and he slammed the book shut, causing a cloud of dust to billow up in his face, stinging his crimson coloured eyes.

‘I’m not real.’ The realisation hit like a lead weight, and Talon sat for a long time just staring at the cover of the book. He had thought that something wasn’t quite right in the Reaper world for some time now, as the lessor Reapers – who he now knew to be Replicas – were always so hard working and compliant, whilst the Masters just sat around and did very little actual work.

‘They must have chosen to copy the souls of people who were hard workers, and who could get things done,’ he thought, before pushing his chair back and standing up, pondering what his next move should be. ‘I definitely don’t want to stay here if I’m just a pawn. But where can I go?’

He thought of all of the places that he had seen in the mortal world; all of the quaint little villages, the bustling cities, desert towns and seaside retreats. So many wonderful places, yet one place in particular came to mind. Even though Talon now knew that it wasn’t his memory, he felt a pang of familiarity nevertheless.

The click of a door opening suddenly echoed throughout the library, and swearing under his breath, Talon concentrated on the image of what he considered to be his mortal home, and vanished from the Reaper world.

0.0

The nightclub was pulsating to the beat of loud music, and people were coming and going all of the time as Tabitha McCray stood some distance away, silently watching on. The bouncers were checking hand stamps and ID cards, letting people in and turning others away, and Tabitha could remember a time when she had been one of the many people in that particular club.

She had just turned twenty-one, and in celebration she and her best friend Aimee had decided to go out clubbing. It was something that the girls didn’t often do, as they preferred a night at home with movies and junk food; yet this was a special occasion. The club was on the other side of town, and after catching a taxi across town, the girls were soon enjoying the nightclub atmosphere. Tabitha, with her curly golden locks and blue eyes and Aimee, with her dark brown hair that had been died black and eyes that were as green as emeralds, soon found themselves surrounded by several attractive young men, who were all willing to buy them drinks of whatever they wanted.

As the night continued on, Tabitha noticed that Aimee was well on her way to being exceedingly drunk, and that she herself was noticing the effects of having consumed more alcohol than she could handle.

“I don’t feel too good, Tabs,” Aimee admitted as her friend held her elbow, keeping her on her feet.

“Do you wanna go home?” Tabitha asked, and Aimee gave a sick nod of her head. She really did look bad, and Tabitha was glad that she hadn’t consumed quite as much as her friend had.

“Did you girls want a lift home?” one of the young men that had been rather friendly with them the whole night said, appearing behind them, and Tabitha was about to say no when Aimee’s knees buckled, almost dragging them both to the ground.

“Uh, okay,” Tabitha agreed as the young man, who Tabitha remembered had been called Dylan, helped to pull Aimee back onto her feet. Leaving the club, they were soon joined by two of Dylan’s mates, one of which reached out to steady Tabitha as the cold night air caused a sudden moment of dizziness.

“Whoa, steady there,” the young man, Brendan, said before offering his arm to the drunken young woman. Tabitha accepted, and after walking away from the nightclub and down several streets, she began to wonder where they were going.

“Dylan, where’s your car?” she asked, but he didn’t reply, and Tabitha felt Brendan’s grip tighten on her arm. Pulling her arm free, she stepped away from him as an alarm bell finally started to sound in her drunken brain.

“Calm down,” Brendan said with a smile, yet Tabitha was already marching towards where Dylan and Aimee were. Grabbing her friend’s hand, she tried to pull her away from Dylan, yet he held firm.

“What’s the matter? I thought that we could have some fun before we took you home,” he said with a smirk, and Tabitha started to panic. Aimee was beyond sense, and probably wasn’t even aware of what was going on around her.

“Look, my friend is really sick, and we just want to go home,” Tabitha pleaded as the third guy, Zack, came up behind her.

“Yeah, she really went down hard after that drink we gave her,” he said with a sick grin, and Brendan whacked him across the back of the head.

“Shut up, you idiot!”

Tabitha’s blue eyes went wide with horror. “What did you give my friend?” she demanded, once again trying to pull Aimee away from Dylan.

“Will you relax? She’ll be fine in the morning, promise.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe you? Let Aimee go, and we’ll walk home by ourselves,” Tabitha spat; yet Brendan suddenly wrapped his arms around her waist, easily picking her up and away from Dylan and Aimee.

“Easy there, Goldilocks. You’re not going anywhere,” he whispered into her ear as Tabitha started swinging her legs, hoping to connect with something vital.

“Let me go!” she yelled as her heel connected with Brendan’s knee and he dropped her with a yell of pain. “Aimee!” Tabitha yelled before a shoulder barge from Zack sent her crashing into a brick wall, and in her drunken state she couldn’t catch herself in time. Her skull cracked on the solid wall, and she could hear Brendan yelling at Zack as she collapsed onto the ground. Her last thought was that she had failed to save her best friend as her ice blue eyes closed, and darkness consumed her world.

As her thoughts drifted back to the present day, Tabitha pushed away from the building that she was leaning against and walked away from the nightclub. She didn’t even know why she had come back to this place, yet her feet had made the decision on their own. That night, on her twenty-first birthday, three would-be rapists had accidentally killed her. A small comfort was the fact that her unexpected death had panicked the boys, causing them to leave Aimee without ever laying a hand on her. Yet Aimee had suffered from alcohol poisoning, and had spent the next few days in hospital, sick as a dog and grieving for her friend.

When Tabitha had been made a Guardian, one of the first things that she had done was to drop in on Dylan, Zack and Brendan, who were serving time in a minimum-security prison. She had gotten her revenge that night, and the three deaths had been blamed on other inmates. After that, Tabitha had made a secret vow to never guide and protect those who didn’t deserve to have a Guardian watching over them.

Entering a bar that was some distance away from the nightclub, Tabitha lazily let her blue eyes scan over the crowd. A smoky haze hung in the air, and the dim light cast everything into murky shadows, turning the patrons into half disguised creatures. Yet one creature stood out from the crowd, shining through the dim light and drawing her in; a Reaper that seemed oddly familiar to her.

Pushing her way through the crowd of people, Tabitha saw the young man turn around. His crimson coloured eyes went wide as they spotted her, and Tabitha stopped dead as she finally placed where she knew him.

Second Year University, Tuesday morning lecture, two rows in front, and one seat to the right. A quiet guy who always got his work done on time, and always received distinction marks. A rather cute, dark haired guy that, at one point in time, she’d had a crush on.

“Avery Jones.”

0.0

The single storey house had a new family living in it, and the bricks on the outside had been cement rendered and painted a purple-grey colour to match the black roof tiles, yet it was definitely the same house that Talon remembered; the house in which he had died.

‘No, it’s the house that the person that I was copied from died in,’ he corrected himself, yet that didn’t change the fact that he still felt like this was his old home. The memories seemed very real, and staring at the house, he could remember the smallest of details, like the smell of the jasmine bush that used to grow under the lounge room window, or the way the house would creak on cold nights.

How could he be fake when he had such memories? He remembered his mortal life, and everything that had happened. Didn’t that make him real? Talon didn’t have the answers, and his brain was hurting from trying to think everything through. Eventually he came to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter, as he was who he was, and his memories were real. He was sure of it.

Staring at the house, he could picture it the way that it had looked that night. The front lights were off, yet a glow from the kitchen could just been seen as Talon parked his car in the driveway. Locking the doors, he slipped his keys into his jeans pocket and strolled towards the front door.

He had stayed back late at the University that night, as he and several other people had been planning a memorial service for a girl who had died the previous week. Talon didn’t know her very well, yet she had been in his Tuesday lecture class, and from what he had heard about her, she had been a fairly popular girl.

‘And very pretty too. Such a shame,’ he thought as he reached out to open the front door, yet it was already ajar. Curious, he gave it a push and watched as it swung open with a slight creak. ‘That’s odd. I wonder if mum forgot to close it?’ Talon’s father had died when he was four, and having no other siblings, it was just he and his mother who lived in the three-bedroom house.

His mother’s room was at the front of his house, and as Talon stepped inside, he turned his head towards the bedroom doorway. It was dark, and Talon couldn’t see much of anything inside.

“Mum?” he called out, before taking a step into the lounge room and stopping dead in his tracks. Even in the dim light Talon could make out the figure of his mother sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood soaking into the carpet from a gunshot wound to the chest.

A clatter came from within the kitchen, and Talon looked up in shocked slow motion at the man who stood in the doorway with a stuffed bag held in one hand, and a pistol in the other. Talon barely had time to register the fact that his home had been robbed, and his mother killed in her attempt to perhaps stop him, when the gun went off and Talon fell to the floor.

He couldn’t breathe, and the pain was overwhelming. He could feel hot blood soaking through his clothes, yet he couldn’t move and his body was going numb. He blinked in shock at the ceiling that was growing darker with every blink, before his eyes never opened again.

Talon blinked as the tears prickled his eyes, dragging his thoughts back to the present. The family was in the front lounge room, and Talon could hear high-pitched laughter coming from the two little girls that could just been seen through the window. For a brief moment he wondered if they knew that they were watching television in the very same room that a double murder had occurred in two years ago? He doubted that the kids did, but perhaps the parents weren’t so oblivious. Either way, it didn’t really matter anymore.

Jogging away from the house, Talon increased his speed using his super human abilities to appear as nothing more than a blur. It was one of the benefits of being what he was; heightened reflexes and increased speed, mainly used to avoid being seen whilst on the job.

There was a pub that Talon used to frequent in his mortal days, and of all of the places in town, it was there that he ended up. Taking a seat at the bar, he ordered a schooner of beer and took a mouthful, before setting the glass back down on the sticky bench. The bartender gave him a strange look, as if he were trying to place Talon’s face, yet the young man ignored him.

He had nearly drained the schooner glass when he felt his skin prickle. For a moment he thought that he was sensing another Reaper, yet the energy felt wrong somehow. Turning around on his bar stool, he saw that a girl with long golden curls was looking directly at him, and it was from her that the strange energy was coming; the energy of a Guardian.

‘That girl,’ he mused as his crimson eyes went wide. ‘She’s the one who died a week before I did!’

“Avery Jones,” the girl said as her blue eyes also went wide, and Talon felt a jolt at the name. Yes, he remembered now; it was his mortal name. The Reapers had given him the name of Talon, yet his true name, or at least the name of his original soul, had indeed been Avery.

0.0

The pub is almost empty now, yet the two immortals are still seated at the bar. They have just finished telling each other their stories, each taking turns at telling the tale, as both stories turned out to be a half of a whole.

It seems that we’ve been influencing each other’s lives this whole time,” Tabitha says, and Talon nods with a slight grin.

“It’s hard to believe, but it seem so,” he replies, and Tabitha gives his shoulder a slight nudge.

“But what should I call you now? Avery or Talon?” she asks, and Talon shrugs his shoulders.

“I’m happy with Talon I guess, as I wouldn’t feel quite right using Avery. Technically, I’m not Avery; just a very good copy,” he answers, and Tabitha snorts.

“Copy or no, you’re Avery to me,” she says, and Talon raises an eyebrow at her. “But I can call you Talon if you prefer,” she offers, and the young man smiles.

“Thanks Tabs,” he says, and she smiles at the pet name. She can’t remember the name ever being used after her death, and it makes her happy to hear it used once again.

“So,” she starts, “what are we going to do now?” Talon shrugs his shoulders.

“I haven’t really got any plans, apart from not going back to the Reaper world,” he answers, and Tabitha nods.

“And I can’t go back to the Guardian world until Gabrielle returns my wings,” she adds with a sigh, before looking awkwardly at Talon. “Hey, I’m sorry about the family in that house,” she says in a quiet voice, and Talon frowns for a moment before he understands what she means.

“It’s okay. It’s because of that that I started to remember about Avery. Although I do hope you’re not going to make murder a habit?” he asks, and Tabitha fidgets slightly.

“I guess I probably shouldn’t make it a habit, but he did have it coming to him,” she points out, and Talon concedes that she has a point, yet that doesn’t make it right in his mind.

“How about we go somewhere?” he asks, and Tabitha raises an eyebrow at him, her blue eyes sparkling in curiosity.

“Where did you have in mind?” she asks, and Talon shrugs.

“Anywhere. We can go wherever we want,” he answers, standing up and holding a hand out to Tabitha. She looks at his hand for a moment as uncertainty overcomes her, wondering if it’s all right for her to go with him. Yet when she looks up into his strange crimson eyes she smiles, and slips her hand into his.

“Sure, let’s see where we end up,” she says as she stands up, and the bar disappears around them as they start walking at a speed that no mortal could ever match.

The Replica and the Angel; bound together by fate, influencing each other’s lives, and saving their souls one little step at a time.

The End

Author’s note – So there you have it! I hope you enjoyed this, as it’s something that I’ve been toying with for quite some time. Actually, Talon and the Replicas have existed for close to 7 or 8 years, as they are something that a friend of mine came up with, but never got around to writing. Talon’s opening piece here was more or less the original piece that I wrote for her all of those years ago, and Tabitha’s opening piece was written back in 2004. That’s how long these two have been around for!

Anyway, please review and let me know what you think, and also check out my other piece that goes with this – “The Angel And The Reaper”. They’re two short poems that tie in with this story.

Also, please check out the Tabitha fanart that my best friend did on DA! I think her usual watchers got scared off by all of the blood, as no one but me has commented on it! blackcattlc.deviantart. com/art /Tabitha-71554783 Just take out the spaces. Enjoy!