Broken Fate

by Jennifer Derrick



  Broken Fate

  By: Jennifer Derrick

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  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Broken Fate

  Copyright ©2015 Jennifer Derrick

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-63422-166-5

  Cover Design by: Marya Heiman

  Typography by: Courtney Nuckels

  Editing by: Cynthia Shepp

  For Jimmy. I may be a writer, but I can never put into words all that you mean to me.

  And for Mom and Dad, you started me on the path and I am forever grateful.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Snip. Dead guy. Snip, snip. Another dead guy and his wife. Snip. Along with their son. The dog’s dying tonight, too, in the raging house fire that’s killing his owners, but at least executing animals isn’t my responsibility. My shears hover over the next lifeline and I pause for a moment, doing some quick math in my head. The son was my sixty-six billionth kill. I’ve reached another milestone in my career tonight.

  I don’t celebrate, though. Snip. While adding another billion to my total is impressive, I stopped celebrating after five-billion kills because it just seemed like spiking the ball in the end zone in front of the other team’s players when the score was already eighty to nothing. It’s rude. It’s not like killing is difficult for me or that the humans can challenge me in any way. Snip, and you’re dead. It’s a job, not an accomplishment. Snip, snip, snip.

  I’m the McDonald’s of Death. I really should get a light-up sign for the front yard that says, Billions and Billions Killed. Just like McDonald’s serves as many people as it can, as quickly as it can, my job is to put ‘em on the assembly line, kill ‘em, and serve ‘em up to Hades. The difference is that McDonald’s pays their workers. I don’t get anything except immortality, which, when you consider the monotony of an infinite lifespan spent doing the same crappy job, isn’t anything to get excited about.

  It’s been an unusually busy day for me, and I’m up to my calves in lifeline pieces. There’s a war going on in the Middle East, a train derailment in Japan, a bomb in a hotel in Germany, and a cruise ship sinking off the coast of Florida. Not to mention all the humans simply dropping dead from natural causes and accidents. I chop through a fistful of lines and wonder what possessed my sister, Lacey, also known as Lachesis, to mark this many humans for death on this one day. She knows this kind of carnage forces me to create horrible disasters so I can kill the most humans in the least amount of time. I don’t enjoy it, but killing hundreds at one time is the only way I can keep up on days like this. She was either seriously pissed off at the human race or at me the day she drew up this schedule. Knowing Lacey, I’m betting it’s the latter.

  I’m finally nearing the end of this miserable day. I have one person left to kill, and she’s the one I’ve been dreading the most. Amy Brickhouse, the most popular and cruel girl in school, is going to die tonight when she wraps her car around a tree. I’m not dreading it because I care about the girl, but because her death is going to make my life a living hell at school for a few days and I don’t need any more drama in my life.

  I glance at the digital clock hanging next to the door. The large red numbers read 01:33:45 AM. Amy is scheduled to die in a little over five minutes. Once I kill her, I can finally go to bed. While I wait, I sweep up some lifelines and put them into an oak box with a picture of my shears burned into the lid. I haul the box to the back of the room where I pile it with about a hundred others just like it, mentally reminding myself to put them in the chute and send them to Thanatos before I go to bed. He needs to start picking these souls up tonight and escorting them to the Underworld. Otherwise, there are going to be a lot of ghosts terrorizing the humans tomorrow.

  That’s what ghosts are, you know. They are souls that haven’t yet been escorted to the Underworld. Thanatos usually does a good job of keeping the ghost population down, but sometimes he gets behind. Or lazy. Those souls left behind wander around, looking for the remnants of their old lives. They’re just lost, but the humans freak out and scream about being haunted. We who run the death business try to keep the freak outs to a minimum, but we’re not perfect. Sometimes, Thanatos likes to mess with the humans and leave a few ghosts around intentionally. When you do the same monotonous job for thousands of years, you start to do strange things.

  Walking back to the front of the room, I check the clock again. One minute. I pick my shears up off the table and snip them twice in my hand, trying to work out the growing cramp brought on by overwork. It’s a wonder I don’t have carpal tunnel syndrome by now.

  Amy’s lifeline whizzes into place before me, thanks to the computerized racks that are programmed to bring each lifeline to the front of the room when it’s time for me to cut it. I move my shears into position over her line and watch the clock. Three. Two. One.

  Snip.

  Amy’s line falls to the floor, landing on the heap of lines already there. Reaching up, I unclip the other half of her line from the rack and drop it onto the floor, too. I’m done for the night. Sweeping the remaining lifelines into piles, I check under the desk and in the corners to make sure I don’t miss any. I transfer each pile into a box and lug the boxes to the back of the room.

  Dropping the boxes I’m carrying atop the closest pile, I thread my way through to the back of the room where a small, metal door is set into the wall. I open the door, place two boxes into the opening, shut the door, and push the green button on the wall. A loud whoosh sounds, and the boxes are on their way to Thanatos.

  I repeat this process until there are no boxes left. Finally, I can head to bed. Placing my shears carefully in their protective box, I lock it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I open the door to my workroom, stepping into the larger workspace that Lacey and my other sister, Chloe, also known as Clotho, share. It swings shut behind me, and I turn to make certain the security panel blinks red, indicating the lock is engaged.

  It’s a long walk, the equivalent of two city blocks, from my workroom to the stairs that lead up into our house, and I massage my aching hand as I walk. I trudge up the stairs and into our kitchen. The fridge is right in front of me. I think about getting something to eat but decide I want my bed more than food.

  I tiptoe past my sisters’ rooms to the bathroom and dry swallow two aspirin, hoping they will ease the aches in my hand and head. Crossing the hall to my bedroom, I flop onto the bed, still fully dressed. Morning will come soon, and, with it, the fallout from Amy’s death. I need rest before I can deal with either.