8 to ∞

8 to ∞

“So you’re the one they called the Reaper, huh? Well, at least they got the gender right… ” The stranger spoke with a spine chilling voice that only a woman could deliver over. It was the same voice Rox used to whisper into her victim’s ear. It was the voice she used to speak the last words her targets would hear and now… it was her death that was using this voice.
Rox withdrew her pistol that she had grasped from moment she entered the bar. The rubber grip beginning to burn blisters against her hands. “Who are you?” She demanded feeling her voices eager to tremble and stammer. She couldn’t recall what was happening to her though it was the essences of her art, fear.
The blonde woman only laugh-once, obviously mocking her and Rox tighten her finger over the trigger seeing the hammer pull back.” Who are-” “Who am I? You of all people should know who I am, Rox or should I say, Reaper?” Her blood red lips twisted into a smile, her hat and hair still hiding her eyes and face. Rox kept her aim and kept it steady despite the mutilating urge to tremble. “Stop the bullshit and say your fucking name!” She demanded raising her raspy voice, and instead of verbal answer the woman put those long skeletons like fingers with blood painted red nails to her hat and flicked it up. Her white blonde hair still covered half her face. Yet, Rox stared into a dead blind eye on that ghostly pale skeleton face with painted with skin, “Everyone said Death was blind.”
An as outrages as it sounded Rox was finding it impossible to deny. “Oh so now your silent? Are you not going to demand some proof? If only this convinces you, then I can only imagine what would happen if I revealed what lied beneath my other veil.” She ended her statement with something of an evil innocent giggle gesturing her words with her hands and fingers that glided through the air effortlessly.
“Shut it! I never said-” Again the woman cut her statements dead knowing what followed each word, “Oh honey, you don’t have to say it.” She paused hopping gracefully off the table not making a single hint of sound, “I can see though I’m blind…” She paused starting to walk, like a lady one front in front of the other, toward her.” I can smell it, taste it…” She keep on walking and the closer she got the closer the farther the trigger pulled itself back when suddenly the woman stopped. “I can even feel it.” She rose her arms, outstretch, leaning her head back, “Oh, this feeling can be so… arousing, Rox. I know you enjoy this feeling just as I do. This fear and death…lurking upon your finger tips waiting escape and to take another life…to add to the eight you‘ve stolen from me.” The woman emphases only parts of her web of words though it was unnecessary, even without her hinting voice it would still have taken Rox by stunning surprise.

How could she have? Rox mind question knowing her composition was flawless, but still she saw right through her. It was as if she was broken painted glass and what did she mean, add to the eight you stolen from me?

The woman leaned her head forward that awful smile still on her face, “My sweet Reaper, Death may be blind, but Death knows all. And I am afraid your time is up.” She said so softly, but every word was heard and cut through the lady assassin. The woman took another step, but Rox didn’t pull the trigger any further. Just who was this woman? Then she took another and another till she was almost touching the gun. “You might as well put it down. I know you’re not the one to shoot out of fear. And yours, I could drown in…You shoot only to kill and you know it won’t kill me if I’m already dea-d” The woman stammer to a stop putting her dead hand to her chest feeling where the bullet had pierced through her. The wound bleeding black through the skeleton fingers leaving her voiceless, “Your right.” Rox said, “I don’t shoot out of fear.” She fired again, “Two, three, four…” She counted, slowly, with every shot, firing in the exact same place and the woman could no longer taste fear, but madness. Then firing stop at eight, but the shots continue to sing in their ears, unless it was it true that death was also deaf.
The woman still stood there with a dead empty look on her face and Rox sheath her gun. “8 shots for the eight times I’ve seen death. Amazing its how only eight in my line work, Death, or should I say…” She leaned in close to whisper in voice of seduction into her ear, “Mommy…” Rox smile kissing her mother’s cheek before she pulled back. It wasn’t fear of Death that had taken her, but that of child coming face to face with a parent for the first time which was always a scary experience even more so when your parent was Death. It seemed as the entire situation had change and Death only smiled that same smile as before, “How did you ever guess?” Rox return the smiling gesture, “Did you think those eight stolen murders were accidents? I took them from you with the almost intention.” Rox licked her smiling lips closing the distance between their faces till their lips were gently brushing against another. “Make my weapon go from eight to infinity and I’ll be your Reaper mother…” Death, the woman, her mother smiled closing her eyes putting one hand on her shoulder. Her other she raised to her hair slowly wrapping her fingers around its mass, “Rox” She spoke her name simply as she pulled back her hair to reveal the decaying maggot infested monster's identity as the left side of her face. She jerked Rox forward opening her mouth to an impossible human width filled with demonic fangs biting down on Rox’s face as she screamed. To petrified to move or struggle as the monster, her mother ripped flesh from bone before dropping her daughter’s body to the floor. She closed her mouth devouring what had been torn smiling as she wiped the blood so elegantly off her mouth. She kneel down to the faceless body, “No one steals a kill from me, daughter, without paying the price…” She smiled as Rox’s hand grabbed hold of the woman’s blouse. Death laughed at the monster she created, at her new Grim Reaper.