Cixi closed Melisha's room door behind her and pressed her back against it. Martin's words still sat in her chest like a stone she could not cough out.
'Try to be less of an inconvenience to us. I do not like seeing unfamiliar faces when I return home.'
Unfamiliar? Does he think she was a stray that had wandered in through an open door? Cixi would have left the place immediately, then and there, if Marion hadn't insisted on her staying. She did not want to hurt Marion, so she swallowed the sting and moved further into the room.
Marion had set up a makeshift bed earlier, using a thin mattress on the floor beside Melisha's bed with a spare blanket folded on top. It was not much, but it was warm and safe. It was better than staying at her apartment, where the risk was higher.
She lowered herself onto the mattress and pulled the blanket to her chin, staring at the plain white ceiling, while storms of thought swirled in her restless mind.
Had the officer visited Nelson? Had he confronted him, taken his phone, and made him delete that video from every device he owned? Cixi had not received a single call from the officer with any confirmation, nor from Nelson with any new threats to meet him.
Silence was supposed to feel peaceful, but this kind of silence felt like a rope pulled taut, waiting to snap.
She pressed her lips together and shifted on the mattress. Her mind was then consumed by thoughts of Cassian Crown.
That man had walked into her apartment uninvited, opened the locked door, packed every piece of clothing she owned into the bag, and left a five-word note on the counter, thinking she would contact him. He had not even left her underwear.
'Pervert.' She swore at him.
What kind of man takes a woman's underwear and signs his name underneath a note that reads 'come and get it'?
With no choice, Marion gladly brought her a few new pieces of lingerie. Currently, Cixi was wearing Marion's old clothes, which no longer fit Marion. A pullover and a pair of trousers that fit her figure perfectly.
She nevertheless cursed Cassian more. What right did he have to act uncivilised? Was it because he had given her food, and now he believed she owed him something? Or was it because of the coin — that cursed coin sitting in her purse like a secret she could not bring herself to discard? Or was there a reason she was unaware of?
Before her thoughts could spiral further, toward how every strand had transformed from black to golden blonde overnight without a single drop of dye, the door creaked open.
Small footsteps padded across the floor, as if the person was making a great effort not to be heard.
Cixi turned her head and found Melisha standing in the dim light, already changed into her sleeping clothes. Her dark curly hair was gathered in one thick braid that fell over her shoulder. Both Marion and Martin were originally from Mexico, and Melisha carried their features absolutely — warm brown skin, round dark eyes, and a smile that could soften the hardest day.
"Are you asleep?" Melisha whispered in her small, innocent voice.
Cixi smiled. It was the first genuine smile that had crossed her face since the morning. She sat upon the mattress and tucked the blanket aside. "No, I am not. I was waiting for you so that I could read you a storybook."
Melisha's face lit up instantly, and she beamed with a warmth that reached her eyes. She padded across the room, climbed onto her bed, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and settled in with the eager patience of a child who had been promised something wonderful.
Cixi reached for a picture book on the small shelf beside Melisha's bed and read in a gentle voice, pointing at the illustrations so Melisha could follow along.
The story was about a little rabbit who lost her way in a forest and found it again by following the stars.
She turned one page, then another, and Melisha's breathing slowed. Her dark lashes rested against her cheeks, and her small chest rose and fell with the quiet rhythm. She had drifted off somewhere between the rabbit finding a river and the stars growing brighter.
Cixi kept reading for a few more lines, sitting on the mattress. Soon her voice dropped to a soft mumble until her own eyelids grew too heavy to hold open. The storybook slipped from her fingers and landed softly on the floor beside the mattress. And the room fell silent.
*
The hours crept past in the darkness. The clock on Melisha's shelf read 2100 hours, and the next instant, something pulled Cixi—not her corporeal self.
Her chest locked, and she gasped, but no air came in. And without warning, her body slumped onto the floor like an unconscious person as she watched it happen from above. She hovered near the ceiling, bewildered and weightless, looking down at her own lifeless form.
"No—NO—"
She clawed at the air, but her hands passed through everything—the mattress, the bed, the wall. She was translucent and insubstantial in ghost form.
And then an invisible pull came again. It was stronger and dragged her sideways through the wall, through concrete and wire and brick, out into the night. She was moving impossibly fast, skimming above rooftops like something carried by a wind that had no sound.
Then everything stopped abruptly. As if a leash had snapped taut.
She was floating outside the windowless, dark warehouse.
A taxi was parked at the far end. And she heard voices.
"Help! Some Help!"
Cixi's soul was pulled inside the warehouse against her will, and once inside, she witnessed a woman in her mid-thirties chained by both her legs and hands.
"Please let me go!" Her voice trembled, but she was trying to hold it together. "I have two kids. They are alone at home. They need me. Please, I beg you, let me go!"
The man listened to her plea with complete indifference. While she was pleading not to kill her, he was sharpening the axe against the stone.
Once he was sure it was sharp enough, he sauntered towards her.
"Please—please, I have children!"
She was sobbing now, mascara streaking down her face, and her blouse torn at the collar.
The man crouched down, bringing his face level with hers. He studied her the way a man studies a stain he is about to wipe clean.
"You know what I find fascinating? Every single one of you mentions the children. As if that's the magic word... if I hear 'children,' should I let you go unharmed?" He tilted his head, genuinely contemplative. "But it doesn't work like that. In fact, it gives me a thrill to meet them in person."
Cixi feared for the woman's life. She screamed and protested, but no one heard her. She once more cried for help. She tried to untie the chain that the woman was bound with. She threw herself at the man, lunging with both hands. But she passed through his body like mist through a doorway.
She attempted again, but all her effort was in vain, and he did what he wanted.
Cixi dropped to her knees beside the woman, feeling helpless yet her plight was nothing compared to the one suffering nearby who was getting heavy stabs one after another, screaming, begging him to stop, but he remained unmoved…
Cixi sobbed helplessly, watching the man's cruelty.
"I am going to visit your kids soon!" He then took her purse and saw the picture of her two kids, and on the inside, her home address was written.
The woman couldn't utter a word, but the look in her eyes conveyed everything. She loathed him, and the intensity of her gaze reflected a deep desire for his demise, all while she silently begged him not to harm her children.
Cixi looked at the murderer very carefully, carving his picture in her mind. And then the air shifted. Cixi felt it—a heavy presence around her. A form materialised before her, holding the scythe.
Grim Reaper.
So it was not a dream, but was her reality. She had indeed met the Grim Reaper and had been cursed by him—or her. It had truly happened! Was she really cursed?!
Her mind screamed for a logical explanation, but who knew that sometimes life is more than what human reasoning or practicality could encompass?
The Reaper stood impossibly tall at seven feet, perhaps more, holding a scythe in the right hand. The Reaper spared no glance at the killer, who was now cleaning his axe.
"Comfort the lady, Cixi McLore." The Reaper's voice thundered.
Cixi blinked. "W-what?" She questioned whether the Reaper spoke to her.
"The woman." The silver points within the hood shifted toward the crumbling figure. "She is between breaths," the Reaper stated. "The last ones. And she is frightened for her children and feels helpless. Go and give her comfort."
"I-I can't even touch anything, nor can they hear—"
"You will be now." The Reaper's voice was cold, and it definitely belonged to a woman. Now that she paid more attention to the voice, she realised it belonged to a woman. Cixi gawked at her at first, confounded, bewildered, and even though she was in her ghost-form, she was trembling.
Cixi didn't ask why, what was happening, or how any of this was possible. Instead, she followed the reaper's order.
This time, when Cixi placed her hand on the woman's shoulder, the dying woman's gaze locked into hers. The woman's lips moved in a whisper.
"Are—are you… an angel?"
The question made Cixi feel shattered. She was no angel but a cursed human. She swallowed the knot in her throat. "Yes," she lied, and the lie came out so gently that it sounded indistinguishable from the truth. "Yes, you can say that."
The woman's face changed instantly. The terror that had contorted her features for the last minutes of her life softened.
"Please protect my children," the woman breathed. Each word cost her a breath she could not spare. "Will they… will they be—?"
"They will be okay. I will keep them safe." Cixi's voice shook, but she held it together.
She had no power to promise anything. Not even divine knowledge to offer the lady. But she would keep her promise. She would inform the police once she was back in her body.
"Thank you!" A tear rolled sideways from her eye into her hair before she closed her eyes forever.
Then the Reaper moved. Her scythe swept through the air in a single, reverent arc. And the soul of the woman was placed on the tip of the blade, glowing gently, like silk drawn onto a spool. And the Reaper vanished before Cixi could ask anything.