Welcome to Gaia! ::

Dark clouds framed a small town full of dark shadows; windows remained dark on every house, no streetlights illuminated the twisted streets and no moon showered the small alleyways through which I wandered with its omniscient glow.

But the darkness bothered me less than the quiet. It was a strange sort of silence, a guilty silence, the kind of silence that is less the lack of noise than it is the avoidance of it. I looked wearily into the windows, wondering how many people in this town had secrets. How many monsters lived in those houses of brick and stone?

I tucked my hands into my pockets and fingered the silver handle that rested inside; my fingers running up and down its length as I walked, tracing over the script carved in delicate, curled letters around the barrel. My bosses prohibited me from using such items, they were too obvious, but I carried it around with me anyway. My one and only sentimental indulgence, I supposed.

I felt something cold and wet land in my hair and I looked up, wondering if it was raining. But instead of thick drops of water my eyes were met with the sight of delicate snow flakes, drifting down into the dark alley way in which I stood and casting a bit of its inner glow in the darkest corners. I found myself slowing down despite myself.

Eventually I just stopped walking altogether and watched as the white flakes floated down around me, swirling through the night air, casting a luminous glow where there had been only darkness. I pulled my left hand out of my pocket and reached out slowly, palm up, to watch it gather on my fingertips.

But instead of piling up like small mountains in my hand, they melted quickly; unable to handle my body heat through the black leather, and after a few moments in my glove held only water.

I sighed, shaking it off and tucking my hand back into my pocket, my other hand still firmly grasped around the silver handle.

I had lied of course. I had more than one sentimental indulgence.

I forcefully broke away from my train of thought and continued walking, it wasn’t too far now, just across the river, and then I would be there and then I could leave this place. A thought that was becoming more and more appealing as time went on, the shadows in this town seemed to connect far too closely to my own shadows.


I halted once again when I reached a stone bridge, the last place I needed to cross before I reached my destination. The snow was falling heavily now, obscuring my vision, but I couldn’t help but notice a magenta colored something lying at my feet, quickly becoming smothered in white powder.

I picked it up and brushed it off. A purse.

Without really thinking about it I undid the clasp and quickly riffled through the contents: a tube of lipstick, a mirror, a credit card, some cash, and a driver’s license.

I looked at the driver’s license for a moment, a thin woman with lank black hair and muddy brown eyes too big for her face stared back at me. After only a few seconds consideration I grew bored of the picture and let my eyes roam down the card until they rested on the name: Melissa Woodstein. I blinked.

“Melissa Woodstein eh?” I said out loud, running my thumb over the letters. After a few more moments of consideration I returned the cash and the credit card to their original slots and pocketed the driver’s license. I redid the clasp and unceremoniously dropped the ugly purse back into the snow where I had found it.

That was when it occurred to me: why would a woman just drop a purse containing such important items in the snow, then leave? I looked up and squinted into the darkness, wondering if she was still nearby.

That was when I saw her, she was too far away to make out specific features, but I could see her silhouette pressed against the guard rails. I watched silently as she leaned forward into it, dropping her head over the side, letting her long hair tumble down over her into the darkness, twisting ribbons writhing against the night air.

I probably would have just ignored her then; she was too absorbed to see me anyway. But then she lifted her head and placed a foot onto the rail, then another foot, and she climbed up and sat on top. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, I knew what she was doing and for some strange reason, I cared.

Before I could tell myself it was none of my business, I was running forward, stumbling through the snow, in a desperation that I didn’t even know I was able to exert anymore.

“Hey!” I yelled, feeling strangely angry. And as her hands slipped off the rails and her body pitched over the side I saw her look at me impassively, as though she thought it was too late for me to save her. I skidded to a stop at the rails and grabbed her by the only body part that was still within reach, her long dark hair.

I grasped both my hands around it, twining it around my fists and tugging her firmly up towards me. She screamed in agony as I pulled, the sound echoing up and down the silent streets.
Not a single person rushed out of the houses, and not a single light turned on in the windows and a small part of my brain acknowledged that I was probably right about this town and its secrets.

She struggled against me, still screaming at the top of her lungs, and I let go of her hair in favor of a skinny forearm.

“Shut up,” I managed, somehow able to pull her upper body over the rails. I felt as though I was forcibly yanking a soul back from the underworld, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her go until she was safely placed on the snowy bridge, sobbing and shaking violently.

I looked down at her, panting slightly. Her scalp was tinged with blood and in my hands I held bunches of long black strands, but I was having trouble caring. In fact I was having trouble understanding why I had saved her at all.

After a few minutes of sobbing her voice died down and she looked up at me, her thin face folded in upon itself in an expression of utter despair.

“Why?” she croaked, that long hair of hers falling in untidy strands around her face. I should have left then, I should have walked away without saying anything, but I knew that if I left her alone she would just try to jump again. And, I realized, that really bothered me.

“Why?” I repeated, looking away from her, down into the water below. I fingered the letters of the silver handle absent mindedly, tracing the words that I knew so well over and over again.

“Yes, why!?” she snapped, but her voice was weak, as though she was less angry than she was tired.

I gripped my hand tightly around the silver handle, my fingertips halting for a moment over what I recognized was the large cursive ‘T’.

I stared at her intently, wondering if she was really related to the Woodstein that I thought she was related to.

“You know,” I said finally, slowly pulling that cumbersome piece of metal and silver out of my pocket, “My father was a police officer.”

I could no longer tell whether or not she was listening, because her eyes were firmly set on the silver barrel that I aimed loosely at her head, but I continued on as if she was.

“He was a very well respected police officer, won a lot of awards, saved a lot of lives. And my mother, one year, as a birthday present gave him this,” I waved said item conversationally, and Melissa’s eyes followed the movements, fascinated, “She had it engraved with my father’s favorite quote, as a personal touch. ‘The time is always right, to do what is right’. Martin Luther King.”

If she was dubious about where this story was going she didn’t show it, and I chuckled slightly to myself. For someone who had only minutes ago tried to kill herself, she sure seemed weary of my father’s birthday present.

“Of course that winter my mother went sledding with friends and got lost in the snow, they say she died of hypothermia, although I never got to see the body.”

Her eyes flickered up to my face for a moment, but I ignored her gaze, shifting the silver barrel back towards her forehead. Her eyes returned to their original position and I continued, “My father didn’t last too long after that, and one night, when I was asleep in my room, he went into the bathroom. Apparently he had turned on the shower to drown out the noise, stuck mother’s birthday present in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I’m told that he was smiling when they found him, although I had never seen his body either. I didn’t even wake up.”

“W-what does that have to do with me?” she croaked, her eyes rested firmly on my pointer finger, which was currently teasing the trigger.

“Do you have a family Melissa?”

“H-how do you know my name!?”

“Do you have a family, Melissa,” I repeated.

“Um, yes?”

“Kids? A Husband? A father? A mother?”

“Y-yes, yes, I do.”

“Do you love them?”

“Of course,” she whispered, her eyes the size of plates as I gently pressed the barrel to her forehead.

“Then my answer to your question is, Mrs. Woodstein, that saving you was ‘the right thing to do’,” I let my right hand drop and Melissa’s entire body slacked the moment I placed it back into my pocket.

“What are you?” she whispered, I looked at her seriously. What was I? I couldn’t quite decide whether I was amused or insulted by this terminology.

“Tell me Melissa, what is you husband’s name?” I said finally, both unable and unwilling to answer her question directly.

“Upton Woodstein, but what does that…” she trailed off as she looked down at my father’s birthday present, “Oh God, you, you’re a hired gun aren’t you? Oh please, please don’t hurt him! Our children, what will our children do without him!?”

She had started to cry, her tears running down her pale face and dripping down into the snow, leaving tiny holes where water met ice. I felt disgusted.

“For someone who was about to kill yourself, you sure seem worried about the well being of your family.”

“That’s different! It was only my life that was ending, I never, I never wanted….” She trailed off at the look on my face.

“How selfish of you. So you have no problem leaving them alone, but how dare they leave you?” I looked away from her and found my eyes following the slow decent of the snow, “I saved you because nobody has the right to decide to die when they please; nobody is the controller of their own universe. I only did ‘what was right’.”

“’What was right’ you say!? You’re a murderer!” she screamed, clutching her skinny forearms, shaking in the snow.

“And you’re a bad mother. We’re all going to hell aren’t we?”

“How do you live with yourself!? You say I’m a bad mother for trying to leave my children, but you’re going to take their father away from them! How is killing my children’s father, my husband, the ‘right thing to do’?” she hissed, her words rising like steam from her throat.

I ran the tips of my fingers over the words on the silver handle again, ‘The time is always right, to do what is right’.

“What is right for one person, is not so to another. To you your husband is a family man, a good man; to my bosses he’s threat and a nuisance.”

“And to you?” she whispered, the anger fading away from her face, leaving only a kind of resigned despair, “What is he to you?”

I smiled, “My father believed in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. But the truth is, I’m in no position to decide who is evil and who is not. I have no feelings about your husband either way, to be honest.”

“Then why kill him, why do you have to do this?”

I thought about that for a moment, still following the pathway of the drifting snow with my eyes, “I suppose that it’s comforting to me, that I have the ability to decide the ebb and flow of another’s life. It’s better for one to die by an outside force, an uncontrollable power, because that way, nobody can blame themselves.”

“Why does anyone have to die at all, why can’t you just go away?”

I felt a strange tug in my chest at the sound of her voice, and I recognized the emotion as pity.

“Every person on this planet has a reason to be killed, there is an evil that lurks in all of us, so if my bosses tell me that there is a valid reason for someone to die, I believe them. And I would rather end their lives myself, to let them go quietly and quickly, than let someone else do the job. Is that answer satisfactory?”

She was angry again, I could see her eyes glistening with outrage, and I sighed, wondering if this conversation would ever be over, it just felt like we were looping around and around in an endless circle. I should never have saved her in the first place.

“So what? You have some kind of God complex? You like pretending to be God, killing people to make yourself feel powerful? You’re really full of yourself you known that?”

“God complex? Hmm, there’s that. But no, mostly I’m just hung up on sentimentalities that I should have lost a long time ago. Honestly I don’t know why I’m….” I trailed off as something occurred to me, “You’re stalling. Aren’t you?”

Her eyes widened in fear and I knew that I was right, she had given up on convincing me not to go the moment she realized what I was.

I felt a small surge of anger, like a Bunsen burner being lit inside of me as I reached over and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her face up close to mine, so close that I could see the tiny icicles crusted over her eyebrows.

“I may be many things,” I whispered next to her ear, feeling her shiver in fright, “but I am not a coward. I do not run away from my duties. I’m going to kill your husband tonight, it doesn’t matter how much you talk or how much you cry, tonight you came out here to deprive your husband of a wife, I think it is only right that I should save you and deprive you of him instead.”

Before she could utter any kind of coherent response I pulled the long piece of steel out of my pocket and hit her against the temple, hard. I let go of her hair and watched her eyes roll into the back of her head as she fainted, her body collapsing against mine, about as heavy as a feather pillow.

I felt my anger dissipating as her consciousness faded, she was just too pitiful for me to despise the way I wanted to.

“It had to be done,” I said out loud, my voice deafening in the silence, “Wouldn’t want you chasing after me, or killing yourself after I left.”

I looked down at her for a moment, her lips were tinged with blue and her skin was covered in Goosebumps. I sighed, slipping off my trench coat and laying it down in the snow.

“I honestly don’t know why I’m being so nice to you,” I murmured as I lifted her onto the coat and wrapped it around her. After I had secured her firmly in the jacket I reached for the bulging right hand pocket and took out my father’s birthday present. Although I supposed it was more like his death day present really. A last gift to me. A gift I had never wanted.

I stood up and turned away from her, the coat was warm enough to ward off hypothermia until morning, when she woke up. And I could feel my conscious purr slightly, satisfied with this small act of kindness.

I turned away from her and took a step forward, hearing the squish of my feet sinking into the snow and feeling the ice crust over my hair. I gripped the gun tightly, the only source of warmth now that I had relinquished my coat.

I thought of my father again, and of my mother and that gun that seemed to connect my entire life together glistened in the darkness, as though it knew its time had come.

“I think,” I whispered, staring at the letters intently in the darkness, “I’ll use you tonight.”

i'm glad you liked it! I was actually a little worried about how it turned out, so thanks. And actually in my mind it was a guy but i suppose it doesn't really matter either way. Did the character's voice come off as feminine or something? Because if it did then I may have a problem that I have never noticed before.....