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When Alice turns back to the cultist laying immobile on the ground and turns away from Robin, the vague promise of a treeline in the far distance, and the hope of leaving with no blood on her hands, she already knows that she is going to regret what she does next.
Nevertheless, ignoring Birdie’s quiet protests, she stalks back to the car, bat in hand.
It’s a lucky thing, the notice on her handheld radio that tells her she’s lost her signal. It’s another lucky thing that the man on the ground is still passed out, although blood leaks in a lazy stream from his temple, and a pitiful moan of pain manages to escape his lips. He is deadly quiet, though not quite dead yet.
Alice raises the bat high above her head, almost like a med ball, and with a slight burn of her muscles, begins the painfully slow arc towards the cultist’s head.
His eyes flutter open.
In the moments before the collision, confused eyes meet determined, and Alice can see a life in them. A first cry, first step, first word. His years in school, his loves and losses. She can see every decision he made, every syllable ever spoken that brought him to this moment. The goods, the bads, the imperfections, the bacteria swimming in his gut. Biological or philosophical, qualitative or quantitative, Alice stares deep into every single thing that made this cultist into the man he became. It is beautiful, and it is so tragically incomplete, and yet, as the bat makes impact, it is over.
His brain is rattled in its cage, and whatever made him himself, whatever details there were to finish his story become no more than splattered, blended remains.
He is not, however, dead.
Maybe brain dead, sure, but his heart still beats. Alice can hear it, more loudly than her own, and it hits her that she is not yet done. Tears stream down her face. She raises the bat, and cracks it down again, and then again, and again, until the only pumping in her mind is her own, and she knows with a kind of chilling, unnatural finality that the man before her is gone.
Somewhere in the distance, footsteps and metal things begin to clatter. Alice was not exactly quiet. She drops the bat, tries to ignore the reddish stains spattering her lower half, and prays that Birdie will as well as Alice takes her hand. They begin to run, run away from the monsters behind them, and for a moment the Reporter wonders which is worse. The hungry men and women, or the sated beast?
-
A few minutes later, Mr. Clark dies, although not from Alice's manipulations. A gun, rather. She had gotten her signal back at some point that night, though she only realized that once the bullet that had gone through the bastard above her’s chest lodged in her radio, and it made a little ding to alert her she was offline.
A similar kind of sensation went through her body, a kind of vertigo. Something had changed, something big, though Alice did not know what.
She would brush it off that night, file it in her mind as the realization that a dead man was collapsing above her.
It would take a long while for her to recognize, let alone accept, exactly what that feeling had really been. To have it start affecting her, though? All that took was two weeks.
–
Alice was just settling back in at home from the hospital when it filtered into her head.
‘Hunter Clark, 2:37 PM on the third of June. Blunt force trauma.’
The thought was no more than passing, noncommittal even, in spite of, or more likely even because of the fact that June third was the current date. It wasn’t like Hunter, or blunt force trauma, weren't things that often crossed Alice’s mind. And sure, it wasn’t the right time, but nothing like a hospital stay to knock off your internal clock. She brushed it off.
Until, of course, Hunter died.
The news dropped on the fifth. Exact time wasn’t noted on the broadcast, Alice knew. She had watched it back over about ten times, trying to find an inconsistency with the thought that had crossed her mind. There were none. It was the same day, same person, and although it wasn’t explicitly stated that the cause of death was blunt force, there weren’t many other things to die of when bashed atop the head with a lunch tray.
That night, the Reporter tossed and turned, trying and failing to avoid dedicating any thought to the death of her former classmate.
Another thought hit her.
‘Kylie Bride, 9:27 AM on the fifth of June. Murder.’
Two days later, a eulogy appeared.
Alice went a little insane at that. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be. No one can predict death. And yet she could. Maybe she even caused it. Maybe Hunter had prolonged exposure on her broadcast, maybe Kylie had had some tea about her at some point in her life that Alice just couldn’t leave out. A small voice in the back of her head told her not to be so self-important. It was not her voice. She ignored it, and then any sense of cliche, and decided to keep people at an arm's length just to be careful.
After a week of this, two interventions took place.
-
“Alice.” Robin called out lightly into the girl’s room.
“Yeah, bird?” The Reporter responded, trying to appear casual as fear quickened her heartbeat.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” Alice lied.
“Okay. You’ve been a little distant recently, is everything alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
A touch of agitation colored Robin’s tone, though concern pervaded most of it still. “Then what’s up? I’ve hardly seen you the past week, and I know you’re going through a lot–”
Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was the new thought of death already ricocheting through Alice’s head. She got pissed, and she cut her girlfriend off. “Yeah, I am, Robin.” She near-sassed. “I got chased by fucking cultists, after I broke into their compound to save you, and a man died on top of me and because of me. Forgive me if I’m not cuddly.”
There was silence for a moment, as if neither of the girls could quite comprehend what was just said. Alice had never even dreamt of speaking to her partner like that. And yet.
Before she could apologize, tears already began to flow down Birdie’s face. “Sorry to be such a burden.” She said bitterly, and took her leave out the door.
Alice thought about letting her have her time, but then a more chilling thought crossed her mind.
‘Robin, 6:02 PM on the fourteenth of June. Car crash.’
The Reporter’s eyes flew to the clock, reading 6:01, and she heard the front door crash closed.
In a moment or less, she was on her feet, sprinting for the door, then down the front steps, and towards the retreating figure of Birdie. A girl whose eyes were so blurry from tears that she almost surely couldn’t have noticed the car heading straight at her until the grill was merely inches away.
The impact would’ve killed Robin.
If not for the arm that yanked her back towards the sidewalk, just moments before the truck cruised by.
“Oh Birdie thank god, bird, I’m so sorry, god-” The Reporter’s half-sobs were cut off as her girlfriend went still in her arms.
“That was gonna kill me.” Robin whispered.
With sickening certainty, Alice replied. “Yeah, it was.”
-
Eleven that night, Birdie was safe in bed, staying for a sleepover, out cold. Sleep didn’t find Alice, though. Not as those few moments before her hand found purchase on Robin’s hip played back in the Reporter’s mind. The feeling of her world falling apart, trying to conceptualize what a world without her bird would look like. The blinding relief that she wouldn’t have to find out.
And then, suddenly, a voice.
“Sorry about that one.”
A dark, chillingly familiar voice.
It felt almost silly to say. “Death?”
“That’s the name. Hello, Alice.”
“Why- why are you here? I killed the cultist. I finished the ritual. We’re supposed to be done.”
“Well, see, the ritual? It was to give me an avatar of sorts. Someone to flow my powers through, exert my will, et cetera, and that avatar was meant to be Mr. Richard. In spite of my influence over death, though, I don’t control the dead. He’s no use.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Alice asked, certain she already knew the answer.
“Funny enough, you’re next in line. It’s like the royal succession, kind of. Since you killed the final sacrifice, you’re becoming what Richie was always meant to be.”
“But, I don’t want that.”
“That’s tough, Al. Can I call you Al? You can’t just turn down the title. Hell, the process has already started. Nothing short of death would stop it.”
Already, the girl was panicking, her breath coming short.
“It’s not all bad. You get some nifty powers, a cool title, you-’
“I don’t want to kill anyone!” Alice shouted.
“Anyone else, you mean.” For a moment, shock washed across the girl’s face. “And that’s the kicker! You don’t have to.”
“What?”
“Do you really think I’d bet it all on Alabama? No, of course not. I have a few of these little cults throughout the world, and each one serves a different purpose. I don’t need any kills from you, Al. Just somewhere to store some of my power, so I can take a form in front of these guys without killing them. As much as I love death, it’s really inconvenient, after such hard work.”
“So all you’re gonna do is let me tell when people around me are dying?”
“Not just that! There’s some summoning, something about memories, I could do a death note if you really wanted, it’s good stuff.”
“Could I stop people from dying?” Hope inflated Alice’s lungs, and she held it there as she awaited an answer.
“No.” It hit like a brick wall.
“But, Birdie-”
“Your little songbird was a fluke. She’s supposed to be dead, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But do you really? I mean, yeah, you saved her from those cultists, but that wasn’t supposed to happen, you understand. And if I didn’t step in, things like the incident earlier today just would’ve kept on happening, in greater and greater magnitude, until the balance was righted. Your girlfriend is supposed to be dead. So for your cooperation, killing poor Raymond and all, I’ll keep her here until she meets a natural end. She’s the only one I’ll cut such a deal for, though. So don’t go all groundhog day on me with this.”
“Groundhog day?”
“You haven’t seen-? Never mind. Don’t go trying to save people. And don’t kill yourself. You’re gonna die either of natural causes, or when I stop needing you. Whichever comes last.”
“When are you gonna stop needing me?”
A glint of a grin hinted in the creature’s voice. “I guess you’ll see. Do we have a deal?”
When Alice takes the hand darting out from the shadows, turning away from Robin, comfort, and the concept of a normal life, she already knows she is going to regret what she does next.
Nevertheless, ignoring Birdie’s quiet snores, she shakes.