• The wind tugged at her scarf, making it dance in the light, throwing a flickering shadow across the cold ground. Evelyn began to shiver, and quickly wrapped the black fabric back around her neck, sighing as the warm fabric blocked out the icy chill.
    Her boots crunched on the frosted sidewalk, and suddenly alert to noises now, the faint hammering from a nearby construction site began thumping at her temples. Pulling out her hair of its loose ponytail, she let the dark brown curls, a stark contrast to the white and grey world around her, slide over her shoulders to frame her olive-skinned face, hoping they may form a natural barrier between her and the noise.

    The bare skeletons of trees swayed in the bitter wind, clawing at the unforgiving grey sky, like the souls from hell reaching up in anger to the heaven that was denied them. Their shadows splayed out across the frost and decating leaves. And in those bare shadows was where he waited. He'd seen her, this girl, many times before. She wasnt from around here, her accent puzzlingly fimiliar yet annoyingly alien. It tugged at something inside him, but he didnt know what. He would have taken her by now. He never wasted such precious time with the others. But every time he went to take the step out into the cheerless sunlight, the one step that would draw her eyes to him and seal her fate, he froze. His body simply wouldnt respond.
    In his mind he reassured himself, saying he was totally in control, it just wasnt the right time, or his job wasnt that important; that it could wait. But as he repeated the same lines in his head, his heart told him that she was more than that. more than simply a life to be extinguished. She was something important. But he didnt know why.

    Sighing, Evelyn rose from the park bench, scanning the expanse of frosted grass and ice covered duck ponds. She slowly made her way across the expanse, and as she walked she noticed a child on the swing set, crying. Walking cautiously towards the child, she knelt down and looked up into the little girl's face. The girl noticed Evelyn, and took her hands away from her face. There was something wrong though.
    "Why are my tears red?" she whispered inbetween sobs. Her fear radiated through Evelyn's body, making the day seem even colder.
    She sat on the swing next to the girl and put her arm around her small translucent shoulders.

    "Because you're crying blood. All dead children do."