Intro

We meet Andi, our protagonist, and are introduced to her uniquely complicated situation.

         Twelve boots covered in crime scene booties filled Andi’s skull with blunted thunder as they stomped around on the floor near her head.

         “Lay off the donuts,” she bemused. Congealed blood glued her muddy-pearl blond hair to her scalp and she found herself wishing she could blink. Dead eyes can get mighty dry. An overweight detective turned green as he stood over her, struggling to breathe deep.

         “Hey buddy, I’d kill for some Visene,” she thought in his general direction, but he didn’t react. Another officer handed him a red plastic container filled with black grit, and he inhaled deeply. They took turns sniffing the coffee grounds, trying to drown out the stench of the dead girl. Mentally, Andi rolled her eyes. “Wimps,” she thought, really wishing she could still push her thoughts like when she was alive. Even if only so she could freak out Tubs 1 and Tubs 2 here. She knew she wasn’t exactly fresh, but give a dead girl a break. It’s not her fault it took them 3 days to find her here.

         “Whatt'ya think coulda done this, Joe? Some kinda animal?” the larger officer said to the other. He used a pen to lift a tuft of Andi’s hair, exposing the deep gashes that had been ripped from the back of her skull all the way to her nose.

         “What kinda animal you know that can walk through locked apartment doors?” the taller of the two replied.

         To them, she’s just The Dead Girl. The Deceased. Her. As she laid prostrate on the floor surrounded by blood and broken glass, she could sense this image of her solidifying in their brains as just a faceless, pungent part of their daily grind. She was just another unsavory moment they’ll sigh about during dinner. Then they’ll quietly kiss their wive’s foreheads, thanking whatever deity they do or don’t believe in that it hadn’t been them, lying stiff and jagged on a dirty green shag carpet with half her face torn off. But it could have just as easily been them, either of their wives. It could have been anyone, really.

         Andi remembered when she was someone that people cared about like that. She remembered being loved. They weren’t romantic, she and Adam, but they were still soulmates somehow. He had Lucy too, of course. She obviously came first on the romantic front. She was his wife. But Andi was still someone that he thought about and cherished, like a sister. He tried to hide it with sarcasm and feigned anger, but he was always glad she was okay when he got her out of trouble. The three of them, she and Adam and Lucy, had a pretty unique dynamic, but it just worked. She missed the simple days before all the shit (literal and proverbial) had hit the fan. It seemed like forever ago as she lay there, rigor mortis having long since settled into and back out of her limbs.

         “It’s my fault really,” Andi thought. “I had it pretty good. I was special to someone. I was someone he missed when I wasn’t around. The one he expected to see when he was at the grocery store and smelled a familiar perfume.” Or at least she was before she killed him. If things had been different, she was sure she would have always been his someone, and he’d have been hers. But she was someone different now. Something different. And so was he. Lucky for him he’d never have to know that. He was dead. He could clutch the snapshot of who she once was as he and his pretty little box decayed in the soft dirt. Andi didn’t have that luxury, to lay there and dwell on how things used to be.

         “Alright," she sighed internally. "I’ve laid here sulking long enough. I have a demon to find.” Luther really should have been there by now. He must have gotten held up or lost her scent somehow. Again, she knew that was her fault. She went off-script. She didn’t stick to the plan. And now Adam was dead, and Luther apparently couldn’t find his way to her in order to release her. But she knew if she didn’t do something soon, she’d end up on a slab in a freezer, and the chances of Luther finding her there were slim. She laid there, calculating and mulling over different possible scenarios in her head.

         And then - she heard something. It seemed familiar but out of place - like hearing a child call "Mom!" in an airport, but you know they can't be calling you. It was muffled at first, as if it was coming from the apartment below her. She wished she could angle her ear to the floor to hear it more clearly. Then it got much closer, and quite a bit more distinct.

         Suddenly, she could hear the voice as intimately as if someone’s lips were misting her ear with hot, unwelcomed moisture. She felt their breath, and it was black and putrid.

         “Fall,” the voice whispered, and her dead eyes took on the colors of a poisonous tree frog. She felt her pupils contract into sharp, black diamonds surrounded by pulsing sunflower irises. At that, the floor beneath her disintegrated. Darkness enveloped her senses as the bottom dropped out of this reality, and she fell straight into Hell.

         “Well this just got a lot more complicated,” Andi said aloud, startling herself with the sound of her own voice unexpectedly escaping her lips.