Hellish Obsession - Chapter 3：Last night

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Aveline shouted in disbelief, her fresh grassy green colour eyes swirled into altering vague with darkness as she glared at the man in the black zip-up jacket beside her.

“Is it written on my face that I’m stupid? You are saying that you are a grim reaper. But how can I see, no… actually, HOW can I talk with a grim reaper if I’m alive? I’m not that dumb! You can’t fool me, David.” Snorted Ave, her voice mixed in the music beats of the club, murmuring along with the instruments.

“How do you know my name, Aveline?” David Morgan glanced upward, averting his gaze from the glass filled with juice that was placed on the table. His mouth pursed but slightly open and loose.

“I can not believe I’m talking with you.” Ave voiced in frustration as she pointed out the nameplate on David’s cloak. The loud music was making her blood boil, portraying the rising frustration.

The next second, the sigh that escaped her lips was slow as if her brain needed that time to process what had happened. It was her best friend Ethy’s bachelorette party. On the way to the club, she remembered her car getting crashed against a giant tree in the jungle. But when she opened her eyes, David was driving it and from then something was ensuing to her. She was feeling weighted as if it was a foreign body and she was taking time to set herself in. The twanging sensation inside her head, it was killing.

Why? What? How? These questions were another piles of questions to her that crammed his cloudy mind like another cliffhanger.

David, in the most cold-blooded human-like form, gave her a sardonic smile as he tried to explain calmly. “Human dies when we, the Reaper sever the soul’s last ties to life and grant the soul safe passage to the afterlife. We do not ‘kill’ mortals, but merely guides their spirits to the next realm. But in your case, I don’t know what to do…” He trailed off as a long sigh escaped his lips.

The more he analyzed it the more his brain became a spinning top, always finding more questions than answers. “You were supposed to die because of the break fail of your car. But when I found your body and tried to cut the ties of your body with the soul. I couldn’t. Because of a different soul… in your body…”

What a Psychopath! Ave didn’t complain but anger boiled deep in her system, as hot as lava that she felt her blood started rushing upward from her toe to top.

But everything he said made no sense to Ave. Soul, body? How could a soul be separated from a body? And retrieved in another body? The fuck!

“Actually… This is…NONSENSE!” She scoffed at him.

David stamped his foot as a long sigh brought out all of his frustration. “You still don’t believe me. Okay… Let me prove myself to you first.” With that, he looked around and noticed a waiter plodding towards them, grunting as he carried a tray of a dozen glasses filled to the brim.

David waited for the waiter to come close so that he could prove himself.

When the waiter was just a step behind David, he shot out his foot into his path, outstretching it. The waiter walked slowly, and unnoticed he tripped over David’s leg. The tray he was carrying fell down, all the glasses on it broke into pieces.

Ave’s attention overhauled on him while he was trying to maintain his balance, holding onto the handle of David’s chair. When he was successfully able to stand straight, he looked relieved. But when his gazes found Ave, his eyes widened, he gulped. “I’m sorry, It will never happen again, Princess Ave.” He bowed and apologized in urgency.

“It’s okay. Not your fault.” Ave’s quick forgiveness curtailed his stress.

“I will get this cleaned up.” The waiter then glanced down at the broken pieces of glasses and squatted down to swoop them up.

Ave nodded and turned her head to David who was smiling mischievously all the time.

“You little lunatic. Why.. did…” She was about to denounce David but stopped as she heard what the waiter had said just now.

“I’m becoming clumsy day by day. How could I tripped over nothing?” He kept muttering to himself, picking up the broken pieces on the tray.

Ave watched him in disbelief. David’s leg was still there, unmoved. Couldn’t the waiter see that? He didn’t trip over anything but his foot.

Shortly, the waiter started reaching his hand to pick up the piece beneath David’s foot. If he wants to pick it up, his hand needs to touch David’s foot. And just then, in another second, the waiter extended his hand, ran it through David’s foot without any difficulty as if he was running his hand through thin air.

Colour drained from Ave’s face, it turned as white as paper. Her mouth dropped wide open in collisions and the adrenaline that coursed through her system shut down her ability to think logically.

The spot where David’s foot and the waiter’s hand mingled together, it looked somewhat obscured like an opaque paint. But both of their hand & foot were as visible as transparent colour.

Aveline’s body wished either to run fast from here or to scream or work to find weaponry, but instead, she stayed right where she was. Sometimes freezing is the best of the choices.

She stayed that way, frozen until the waiter stood up after picking up the glasses on the tray and David’s voice knocked against her head hard.

“Wanna see the real me?” David just took time to say that before his appearance turned to an animated human skeleton, draped in pitch black robes and a scythe gripped firmly in his hand.

Ave’s face turned paler, she realized she wasn’t breathing at all. “P… please. Change yourself into human form… You look… scary.” Her adrenaline surged so fast she almost vomited; she could taste the saliva thickening her mouth to a rancid paste.

The waiter who was passing beside her got confused. Wondering with whom she was talking!

David brought his human form back as easily as snapping his fingers, not scaring the fellow further. “So… Aveline. Do you believe that no one can see me? And I’m a grim reaper. Everything is clear, right?”

Ave who was aghast until now struggled to nod her head and swallowed her breath that was stuck in her throat.

David chuckled before he switched back to his professionalism again. “Taking out a living, breathing soul from a body isn’t a piece of cake. But finding out the body is our main job. If we can find the body of the soul you are carrying, we can make it leave your body as soon as possible.”

Slowly the tangled mess of her brain started to loosen. She took time to relax and then decided to trust her since there was no other way left. “What am I supposed to do now?” She asked, frowning.

David who was floating in his thoughts came back to his senses. “When the body of this soul will be close to your body, you will feel like a magnet pulling you towards it. All you have to do is to remember this And enjoy.”

“Enjoy what?” Ave gave him a confused look.

David got up from his chair and smiled widely. “Such is the life of the crown Princess of Qidan.”

Ave sighed. “Right. The unluckiest so-called Princess, Aveline Celeste.” She mumbled to herself in great dismay.

David exhaled a soft breath and looked at her. “No matter what it is. You should enjoy the new chance to live. You will find your phone and keys in your pocket. Your car is in the parking lot. One more thing, don’t let anyone understand your difference. Don’t talk with anyone about it. Now. I’ve told you everything. So I gotta go. I will see you soon. Goodbye.”

Before Aveline could react or even realize what he said, he was disappeared; he was nowhere in the club just like vanishing in the air. “David?” Ave glanced around frantically but couldn’t find him anymore.

How can he just leave like this? Her inner sense roared and she almost jumped when the phone in her pocket rang, announcing her best friend, Ethy Allen’s ringtone. The bachelor party! Ave forgot all about it. She took it out and answered it right away. “Ethy? Where are you guys?”

“We are all dancing. But it should be me asking… where the hell are you bitch?” Ethy Allen, her best friend, sounded concerned.

“I will see you soon.” A long sigh signalled her frustration.

After a long minute of silence, a lively smile was heard on the other end. “Come fast. Let’s have fun. Bitch, it’s my bachelorette party.” Ethy nearly screamed, the music thrumming loudly through the phone speaker.

Ave tried to smile. “Yeah, bitch. I am coming.” With that, she hung up and adjusting her clothes, she shifted her gaze at the dance floor.

There, among the drunken people, her friends were dancing on the northern lights; beneath the dry-ice smoke swirled an array of blues, acid greens, hot pinks, and gold. The music played over the floor as if it had intertwined with the bodies.

It was her best friend Ethy’s bachelorette party. She was getting married soon, to her boyfriend. But everything was messed up.

“Heck you, David!” She cursed underneath her breath, assuming no one heard her, but apparently, it was loud enough to make the guys standing in the corner stop talking and turn to catch a glimpse of her.

Well, not all of them, the man dressed in black didn’t bother to spare her a single glance as he continued drinking his wine while others stared at her with their mouths wide open.

“Woah….” She snorted at his misconduct; however, she couldn’t miss his charm at all.

He was a man of any girl’s dreams, having thick, tousled dark brown hair. His lips were so alluring that any girl on the earth would jump to taste them. He had a strong and defined face, features that looked like they were chiselled from granite with a moon tattoo just lower behind his ear, a few stars on a side of his neck.

Ave managed to snap out of the fascination when she noticed the girl beside him elbowing and whispering something. She threw a soft, mysterious smirk in Ave’s direction.

Irritated, Ave didn’t feel like wasting time, so she looked away, trying to find a place to sit and relax peacefully. Her friends would just have fun on the dance floor without her. Finding the mini bar, when she turned towards it, a wheezy, cackling voice rose from behind, stopping her pace. “Hey, there.”

She took a long breath and turned to take in the direction from where the voice succeeded. Having the tattooed guy staring at her, her lips slowly parted. His savage and cunning pitch-black eyes that perched above his hawkish and hooked nose pinned Ave with his gaze.

“Yeah?” She questioned in the response.

He gave her a shivering smile as he pulled himself up and his long legs moved towards her, closing the distance between them in a flash.

She could smell the alcoholic scent of his breath when he leaned close to her. “Free tonight?” He queried in a whisper.

And… From here, it started.