The Sad Saga of College Corruptions
The movie droned on in the background, unoticed by the woman who was supposed to be watching it. Days always seemed to go by in a haze when Naomi wasn't working. Between the music gigs and the hits she was hired to do, the world moved by in a passing blur. Her food tasted bland and every noise was muffled. The color of her garden were muted. She simply didn't exist when she wasn't working.
The entire outline of her life had been shattered when she was only 22. To the outside world it seemed everything was going her way, but in reality it never fulfilled her. She had signed a contract with Samael, the Angel of Death, in her fourth year of college.
It was the worst year of her life, the first time her ability of sight had ever physically harmed anyone. Samael had approached her, as she lay in the floor clutching the knife the spirit possesing her friend Alyssa had used to murder all of her friends. Naomi had a gash in her side, and it was steadily pouring blood. Samael offered her a new chance at life, all she had to do was sign the contract. Work for them and they would give her everything she ever wanted.
She didn't conprehend then how little material wealth or fame would mean to her once she got it. Over 10 years later, she could never get rid of the feeling of their blood sticking to her skin. She would wash her hands ten times a day, she would rub them raw, and still she never would feel clean.
Each gust of wind would send shivers down her spine, the sensation reminding her of the moment the spirit surged into Alyssa. How her eyes changed when it got hold of her. How cold her skin felt when Naomi plunged the knife into her flesh. The spurt of blood that hit Naomi in the face, that seeped into her pours and leaked into her mouth. She tasted it each time she killed.
Naomi had destroyed her only chance at a normal life. If only she had stayed away from them, then maybe her friends wouldn't have suffered that fate. Each and every day she wished she had died with them. She wished she had died instead of them, for them. She wished she wasn't born.
She wished she was't as weak as she was back then. Wished she had the strength she now posessed. Not the puny music major who shuddered at a ghost passing by her window. If only she hadn't been as scared.
A knock at the door snapped her from her thoughts, and the buzzing of the television static tells her that her movie had been off for a long while. It's dark, but there are no crickets. Every animal that lives in the Texas country seems to have stopped making noise, and that can only mean one thing.
The sickly sweet smell of death and decay reached her, and she held back a gag. She'll never get used to that scent, or the smell of smoke and copper that follow after it. Samael has come with the name of another faceless person she has to kill. Just another name to add to her list.
She doesn't bother to unlock the door, Samael appears in her living room anyway. "How happy is this! Another man whose blood needs to be spilled," Samael says, with the sarcastic cheer in their voice that tells Naomi they don't particularly like this person. How happy indeed.
"Who?"
Samael doesn't reply, just hands her the slip with all the neccesary information on it. "You've done so well on all your past missions, maybe I'll give you a treat soon. You've always wanted children, maybe that will do. Not biologically though, since you lack an affection for the parts that would be needed to make that happen."
"I don't want children."
"Of course you do, you always spoke about it as a child. How lovely it would be to become a mother."
She had, at one point, dreamt of children of her own. Before she realised that men were not for her. Before she came to terms with her life in poverty not being suitable for a child. Before she realised her illness was contagious.
The thought horrified her now, how easily she could pass the Sight onto any child that stayed around her for too long. How she could ruin them as she ruined herself.
When she first got this job, when the success Samael promised for her music career started coming in and the money along with it, she thought about children.
Jane, a friend of hers that had died in the college massacre, had a child when she was 21. Naomi had been right beside her for the enirety of the pregnancy, but they both knew the child couldn't stay. The dorms wouldn't allow it, Jane didn't have family to take it in, nor did either of them have the money to care for it.
Claudia was the name they have her. She was born of a drunken one night stand Jane had after a barfight. She never really was a violent person, but when drunk she became agressive. Someone was clearly impressed by her fight, because 9 months later she had a child, and the father was no where in sight.
Jane was dead now, but in the back of Naomi's head she always thought about her and her child. Jane loved that girl, and she so dearly wanted to keep her, but the situation was impossible for a child to grow up well in. Naomi had considered tracking the girl down, hoping to give her a good life to make up at least partially for the sin of getting her mother killed only a year after her birth. She thought the better of it when she realised that she could easily spread her affliction onto the girl. Claudia would be better without her.