Reaper II: Neophyte

by Amanda Holt

  I started with the internet.

  There was no mention anywhere on the World Wide Web of the vampiric pliable yet diamond hard black exoskeleton of organic scales that had covered my body, that could reconstitute and restructure itself at my silent command.

  There was no mention of any real or factual person ever being able to grow razor sharp talons out of their nail beds with a single thought.

  A Google search with the keywords talons vampiric living exoskeleton had only turned up snippets of paranormal fiction and entries on insects.

  Another search redirected me to superhero and comic book websites.

  What was the Dark Thing?

  What was I supposed to do with it?

  Fight crime?

  Right wrongs?

  Exact justice as I had in the park, the night that I was attacked?

  Was I to kill killers, then?

  Be a vigilante?

  It seemed as though the enigma was going to be shrouded in mystery until I stumbled across a resource or person who could give me some direction on my situation.

  In the mean time, while I waited for the answers to my countless questions, I couldn’t just sit idly by and do nothing when I must have been gifted with the Dark Thing for a reason.

  It had come to me in my time of need.

  I had the living exoskeleton to credit for my narrow escape from certain death.

  Where had this Dark Thing come from?

  I had no idea.

  It had itched and burned its way through my skin to the surface of my body when I was being attacked by those three men.

  So had it always lived within me, like a ticking time bomb, just waiting for a life-threatening situation to activate it?

  Had it been laying within me, like a predator laying in wait for a suitable prey, waiting for an opportunity to present itself, so that it could feed on the blood of corrupt men?

  Was it genetic?

  Some kind of mutation?

  An infection?

  A possession of some kind, by an entity?

  Was it something…alien?

  Something terrestrial that lived inside of people?

  Why had I never heard of such a thing before?

  Why wasn’t it in movies, in books, in bedtime stories to keep children in curfew?

  I had so many questions…and so few answers.

  I was certain of one thing – it could be used as a weapon.

  A very lethal weapon, at that.

  If my first encounter with it was anything to go by, the Dark Thing seemed to serve little other purpose.

  Whatever it was, wherever it had come from, I was certain that it was meant for violence.

  It had, after all, fed greedily on the blood of those three men in the park and seemed to draw me to areas like the ghettos, where I could be certain to find criminal activities.

  Where initially it had appeared only because those three men had attacked me, I soon learned that I could summon the Dark Thing at will, by merely wanting it to appear.

  It didn’t hurt, burn, or itch to summon it forth – not like the first time, when it had first appeared.

  That had been such agony!

  I never wanted to experience anything like that ever again!

  I cautiously began to experiment with summoning the Dark Thing forth.

  I did this many times, though at first in the privacy of my bedroom, usually when my parents were away from the house, so as to avoid discovery.

  I marveled at it for hours on end, trying to understand how it functioned, what the possibilities and limitations of it were.

  Curiosity got the best of me as I experimented as much as I dared, learning to wield it as a weapon. Interestingly enough, I seemed to be able to call it forth and control it at will for the most part, just by thinking about what I wanted it to do.

  I never tired of watching it spread over my exposed flesh, appearing on my skin first as a fine dark dust, no different perhaps than a cosmetic eye-shadow and then as a second skin that could be spider-web thin or armor-plate thick.

  At my silent command, it would cover my body with a thick, tough, leather-like hide, or I could wish it to contort to only the thinnest film covering me, so that the ridges of my fingerprints could even be seen through it.

  I could turn the exoskeleton outside of my fingers into blades as long as swords and hone the second skin into a variety of different shapes and textures.

  I was pleased to find that it didn’t hurt, itch, or burn to transform now, as it had the first time it appeared. It just felt…weird when it moved, repositioned, or reconstituted itself, seeming to slither into place somehow while still being an inseparable part of me…

  Much to my delight, I could even cover my clothing with the second skin, creating an even thicker barrier between my flesh and the world.

  Then there was the evening that I experimented with a Bic lighter, to see if I could feel heat through the Dark Thing. Surprisingly enough, the damned thing seemed to be fireproof as well! As I held the lighter beneath my transformed arm, running the flame from wrist to elbow to test my theory, I felt only a small fraction of the heat of the lighter through the second skin, just enough to sense that there was a heat source there.

  So, it was fireproof.

  How useful would that be?

  I imagined it would come in handy in the event of a forest fire, or if I had to slay any dragons, which of course would never happen.

  Then there was the day that I took a pair of scissors, a filleting knife and an Exacto knife to my room and locked the door to guard against any interruptions. I willed my belly to thicken with the second skin. I tried everything I could do to gouge, cut, stab or otherwise inflict injury to myself through the skin of the Dark Thing.

  I had no such luck in damaging the skin, which was fortunate for me.

  So, I was stab proof, too while wearing the second skin.

  Wonderful.

  It couldn’t burn.

  It couldn’t be cut.

  It had to be a weapon.

  At the very least, it was a shield.

  A shield that could cover my entire body…

  Was it meant to be some kind of suit of armor then?

  The only thing that worried me now was bullets.

  I didn’t want to find out the hard way whether or not the Dark Thing was bullet proof. I had a hunch that it might be, considering its durability, but I wasn’t going to push my luck by firing upon myself or daring a heat packing drug dealer to shoot me.

  The secrets of the Dark Thing were new and for the most part unknown to me, which was also why I was going to start small, as far as my crime fighting endeavors were concerned.

  I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew, not even with this strange and nebulous new gift and its remarkable abilities.

  I would fight crime with this dark gift, prevent terrible things from happening to good people, just as a terrible thing had very nearly happened to me.

  It was a powerful gift that I was learning more about day by day.

  A gift.

  A dark side.

  A Dark Thing that seemed to crave the blood that would make it stronger, the blood of guilty men, perhaps even guilty women. I could feel the Dark Thing’s demand on me, making my skin crawl and even my teeth itch.

  I recognized it’s gnawing sensation as a sense of hunger.

  Yes, it seemed to crave the blood of the corrupt.

  Somehow, I knew this, just as I knew I had been right to attack those three men who had intended to rape and kill me.

  Soon, I would have to answer the Dark Thing’s call.

  Finally, about a week after the attack in the park, I felt I was ready to go out, hunting and see what I could feed it.

  The call was upon me, the urge strong.

  Where was I to go?

  Somehow, the Dark Thing seemed to know.

  My new instincts told me head south.

  I boarded a south-bound transit bus t
hat was destined for the direction that the Dark Thing was pushing me toward. We went slowly through a bad part of town, an area rife with the criminal element—thugs, pimps, drug dealers, other baddies.

  I wondered if this was where the Dark Thing was leading me, but no – it was guiding me, by intuition, by instinct, toward a part of the city I’d never been to before.

  I trusted that it would not lead me astray.

  Keeping a look out to stay oriented, mentally, while being drawn instinctively, I continued in the direction that my new intuition led me, riding the bus through the ghetto. The Dark Thing didn’t seem to want anything here either.

  This was where drug dealers pushed their poison chasing the almighty American dollar in their twisted version of the American Dream – ‘get rich or die trying’.

  It was ironic then that this was their mantra, since few dealers in this region got rich by selling their wares.

  Many more seemed to die trying, according to the newspapers headlines, the television news ticker...

  I wondered why the Dark Thing didn’t want me to stop there.

  Even from the safety of the bus, I could see, on street corners, questionable people – dealers, certainly. Others still looking like thugs who reminded me a lot of the men who attacked me in Lincoln Park. Some of those people standing in the shadows were carrying poorly concealed weapons.

  I had heard once that guns didn’t kill people.

  That people killed people.

  This was a violent part of the city.

  I could taste the venomous quality of the place, like a taint of some kind on my tongue.

  Why didn’t the Dark Thing want me to stop here?

  What was waiting further south?

  What could be worse than this?

  What was more treacherous than these shady characters?

  Settling into my seat, obeying its sense of direction, I let the Dark Thing and the bus, carry me on.

  “I’ll see you later,” I told the gangsters under my breath, promising justice at a later date.

  The bus carried me further and further, until we reached a residential area that put all of my senses on alert.

  I felt the Dark Thing humming beneath my skin in anticipation.

  It was almost buzzing with excitement, sending vibrations through my skin, through my very bones. I felt its surge of adrenaline begin to course through my veins.

  Again, I experienced the sensation – almost of invincibility – that I had the night I was attacked.

  The Dark Thing was augmenting my strength.

  This residential area seemed middle class to me, hardly enough to cause one alarm, yet here I was on the edge of my seat, peering out of the window trying to see what the Dark Thing had drawn me to.

  Here, all the houses seemed to look the same, as though built by the same contractor, their only differences being the shades of paint on similar bungalow constructs. These cookie-cutter houses all had the same shape and were organized in neat, orderly rows.

  What does the Dark Thing want here, on Sergeant Avenue? I had to wonder.

  The place that it wanted me to go to was near here, walking distance, my strange new instincts told me…

  And so, I got off of the bus at the next stop. I began to make my way down the sidewalk, taking in my surroundings, watching to be sure that no one noticed me.

  The people in this neighborhood seemed to take a lot of pride in their modest homes. Many of the walkways adorned with decorative stones, or lined with shrubs. Many others had flowerbeds full of nothing but topsoil. The flowerbeds likely teemed with blooms during the summer months, but were now bare, in preparation for the long, cold winter.

  It really was unsettling, somehow, the way the houses all looked alike.

  Row upon row of bungalow clones.

  If not for the numbers on the houses, I imagined that it would be easy to get lost here.

  The Dark Thing urged me to take a left, at Carter Street and so I did, cutting across Sergeant Avenue to get to the other side. I was getting closer to our destination and the closer I got, the clearer my intuitions became.

  Suddenly, I saw the house that the Dark Thing was guiding me toward.

  It was yet another bungalow clone, much like the others that lined Carter Street.

  This one was white, with blue trim and blue shutters. In the middle of the yard was a collection of dead leaves raked neatly into a pile, the rake discarded nearby, like a task forgotten.

  Brass numbers marked the front of the house, house number sixty-five.

  It wasn’t much different from the other homes on this street, yet something about it did stick out like a sore thumb – the way that it made my skin tingle, my senses heighten, the way that it made the Dark Thing gnaw at me with its growing hunger.

  What exactly does the Dark Thing want with this place? I wondered as I steadied my nerves for whatever lay ahead.

  Obeying its insistent urges, I allowed the second skin to spread around my clothes in a thin layer, arming me with its protection, its strength, its seemingly impenetrable armor.

  My muscles felt strong, certain, beneath my skin.

  My body was made taut somehow, ready for anything.

  Made fearless by the Dark Thing’s influence, I wasn’t too worried about being discovered, as I walked up the sidewalk, heading for the front door.

  The streetlights didn’t quite reach this house and everyone seemed to be in their homes, no one out walking dogs on the sidewalk or otherwise milling about the quiet neighborhood.

  It was early November – you couldn’t blame them for wanting to stay indoors.

  There was frost expected in the weather report, after all.

  The Dark Thing urged me up the walk to the front door, to the Welcome mat that lay at its entrance.

  It couldn’t be this easy, I thought, as I lifted the mat and discovered a dusty key.

  Apparently, it was going to be that easy to gain entrance to the house. I tried the key in the door and found it to be a perfect fit. Would there be an alarm system to contend with? I hadn’t thought of that…

  As I turned the key, the lock obeyed and I was soon turning the doorknob to open wide the front door.

  The hallway beyond was dark, but I could see just fine, my night vision uncannily accurate.

  The Dark Thing seemed to have imparted the strange new night vision as a gift to me too, ever since it first appeared, the night I was attacked.

  It was a trait that would come in handy for moments like these. I could wander around strangers’ homes like a cat burglar in the night.

  Seeing no one in the hall, I slipped inside and gently closed the door behind me.

  There was someone here, instinct told me, but not within hearing distance of my footsteps.

  I thought it best to be cautious, anyway and so I kept close to one wall, listening carefully for any signs of life in the house. I could hear Trent Reznor, singer from the Nine Inch Nails loudly crooning something about fucking someone like an animal and the clattering of something that sounded like fingertips on a computer keyboard.

  The noises were coming from beneath my feet and were the only sounds I could discern in the small bungalow home.

  I didn’t know the floor plan, but the Dark Thing seemed confident of the layout of the house, leading my gaze to a doorway just a few meters down the hall from the front entrance.

  A basement door, it was certain, conveying the message to me by instinct alone.

  I walked with soft footfalls to that door and put my hand on its cold brass knob. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. I could barely resist the Dark Thing’s yearning for me to rush down the stairs and attack the unseen person or persons below.

  What exactly am I walking into?

  It was better not to rush into the unknown. I willed the Dark Thing to arm me in an even thicker layer, starting at the tips of my fingers, spreading up over my hands, wrist, arms, crossing my breasts with its impenetrable second skin.r />
  I also willed it to cover my clothes in entirety – even my fall jacket - and as it did, I felt lifted off the ground ever so slightly as it coated even the soles of my shoes.

  Fully protected now, I carefully turned the doorknob and, willing the Dark Thing to cover my face and hair in entirety, I opened the basement door.

  The basement stairwell light was on.

  Shit.

  There was no way I was going to be able to descend those stairs without a risk of whoever was down there seeing me.

  The framed cross-stitched Home Sweet Home picture hanging over the stairs drew my attention.

  I saw my reflection in the glass of the hanging craft and was, for a moment, taken aback.

  The Dark Thing was covering my entire face this time and it looked so strange to me – seeing myself there, my face darkened by its organic second skin. There was a slightly reptilian pattern of scales in the skin of my lips, cheeks, nose and forehead. I looked a bit like the gargoyle I had seen in a brochure my mother had brought back from Paris.

  My eyes were completely black, with no white sclera, no colored iris – just pure black lenses that gleamed in the dim light. My hair, too, was covered in the Dark Thing, clumped in bunches of darkness that looked much like dreadlocks, which I supposed was more efficient a barrier of protection than covering every single hair individually.

  I looked like an alien of some kind.

  A creature of darkness.

  Something from a horror movie.

  I was sure it was the perfect guise for scaring the shit out of any criminal I would come across.

  The music stopped downstairs and then started again, pulling me out of my reverie.

  Whoever was downstairs typing at their keyboard so I was certain that they would be oblivious to my descent anyway. From the speed and consistency of their typing, they seemed very preoccupied and would likely be startled by my intrusion no matter what my appearance.

  Now, I hoped that there was only that one person to contend with.

  I descended the basement stairs slowly, though another Nine Inch Nails song was playing loudly enough to cover any creaks made on the wooden steps.

  As I crouched to survey the basement, my eyes could hardly bear and believe the sight before me.

  It took a minute to register exactly what I was seeing – though the Dark Thing gave no indication of surprise.