Mirrors Part Three

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“Melissa and Amanda can check the upstairs while Marty and I look down here,” I say, Jessica’s voice wavering from the internal damage I’ve caused it in order to get tears to flow. Right now I have torn pectoral muscles, lifted from bone, which stings with every movement. Fresh tears well at the side of my eyes as I sniffle back the snot dribbling from my nose. Marty has another cigarette, this one freshly lit.

I look over at Marty from his seat on the couch. I’ll have to deal with him before he realizes that something is wrong with their friend Jessica. I choose to take a moment to revel in the warmth of the body, rolling about within her chest as I absorb the heat her inner organs are generating. Jessica’s body sneezes, the heat leech that I’m performing is causing her to slowly grow ill. She must not have been in good health in the first place if my possession is causing this much of a problem. I might have to switch hosts…

Bringing myself back to the here and now, I clap my hands together. “All right, let’s split up and meet back here in twenty minutes!” I say, nodding to the girls who are going upstairs to head on up. Marty is already looking at me when I look over at him; I smile and get up from my place on the floor next to the unconscious Carlos.

“Let’s get to looking shall we?” I say, motioning for him to lead the way.

“Ladies first,” he says.

“After us trying to summon a ghost and then this happening, nuh-uh. Men lead the charge.” I say, trying to tap into Jessica’s memories with a sharpened probe to her soul. She’s proving remarkably resilient against my machinations, but she’ll leak what I need to know soon enough.

Marty marches in front of me, leading into the hall where Amanda got the tablecloth. I can feel that they’ve just reached the stairs and are hesitating… good, let them take their time. I need a perfect moment to get Marty, and he isn’t giving me a lot of options.

“Let’s check the kitchen,” I say, thinking of all the things I can knock over onto him in there. The fridge alone is an old steel model, probably two hundred pounds. One flip onto Marty and he’ll go splat.

No, wait… I can’t do that. The other girls will question it. Holding a hand out with my palm facing down, I send out a pulse and magically seal the windows and doors, locking them for the next eight hours. A good deal of warmth is used up from me doing that… I can feel the chills washing back over me like an unwelcome tide.

We walk into the kitchen, the linoleum rotten and torn apart revealing bare concrete. The fridge sits in one corner next to the oven and across from the pantry. I stare at it for a while, thinking of how I can do something to subdue Marty. Inspiration strikes in the strangest way, and in the strangest form. Cocking my hip to the side, I slide my arms around Marty from behind, leeching my dark tendrils into his chest and wrapping one around his heart. He stops where he’s standing, choking on his cigarette as I slowly begin to drain the life from him, savory drop by savory drop, washing Jessica’s body in much needed warmth that simply floods my senses, bringing a twinkle to my eye and a better view of the house around me. The girls have made it upstairs, and are searching room by room for a medical kit.

I know for a fact there aren’t any in the house, so I know they’re wasting their time looking. I quickly enact my plan. Reaching out with one hand, I summon a dulled knife from the chopping block into my hand, slowly turning Marty around to face me, my hand still over his chest.

“W-who are you…?” He rasps, his teeth chattering.

“To you? I’m the Reaper himself. But to the others, I’m just a hapless victim like the rest of us here. There was a big man in the kitchen, one that you valiantly tried to fight off. Sadly, he was able to stab you in the chest with his knife before dragging you into the basement.”

Punctuating my statement I sink the jagged metal into his chest, through his ribs and into a frost rimed lung. He chokes, his breathing becoming labored as blood spurts from the wound, spattering my front in his lukewarm blood. I tighten my grip on his heart, pulling more of his heat into me as I lick my lips.

“Now to the basement,” I say, turning him around, leaving the knife in his chest and marching him to the door leading downstairs. I open it with a wave of my hand and force him to walk into the darkness, eight inches of iron sticking out of his chest, just to the left of my dainty hand over his heart. As we reach the bottom steps, I send a pulse of frigid energy into his body, creating ice crystals in his blood and let go of him, knocking him to the ground.

He looks up at me, a look of disgust on his face. “I-I-I don’t know what you are, b-b-but I’m going to k-k-kill you.”

“I’m sure you will,” I say, lashing out with a tendril of energy and pulling a shelf cluttered with rusty gardening equipment down over him, a clatter that echoes up into the rest of the house. I school my features into that of someone terrified for their life (a look I’ve often seen) and race up the stairs to make it to the landing of the stairs in time for the other girls to come around the corner and see me.

We all scream at once, them in terror, me in jubilation. Two more meatbags worth of heat to go...
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