Her Dark Sins Read online

  The child hummed and shrugged their shoulders.

  “Everyone goes through negativity differently. It’s how you control the trauma that you experienced. Whether you embrace it or control it… You’re one of the lucky ones, Hira.”

  I snorted. I don’t feel so lucky. I lost important people in my life, and now the world was becoming even more horrid by people manifesting their darkest insecurities.

  “Why is this happening?” I peered at the young child.

  They tilted their head to the side as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

  “...Perhaps that’s just the way things are meant to be. There is no possible way to avoid it, so you’ll have to face it, but… There is a way you can prevent humanity's demise. Don’t you want to see good in the world and punish those who try to destroy it?”

  I stared at them, unsure what they meant, but there was a heavy pressure that weighed on me.

  “How?”

  “By helping you wake up and do what needs to be done. You can have the power to stop the creatures of Apathy from feeding off victims and spreading Apathy Syndrome. You can help redeem humanity to its rightful glory. Isn’t that what you want, Hira?”

  My stomach churned when my name was spoken. I gripped my hands together. There was nothing I wanted more than to t dispose of society’s cruelties.

  “But—”

  “I promise you, Alessander will be fine. It will take him a moment to recover. The same goes for the officer, but you can save them if you agree to these terms.”

  “What do you get out of this?” I asked, despite my desire to aid society in the best way that I could. I’ve seen television, and watched anime,; even if this looked like a child, there was an air of mystery surrounding them.

  “...As long as you find your true path. So,” the child said and held out their hand. “What do you say?”

  I hesitated. Is this really a good idea? I wondered if any of this was true or if I was good enough to accomplish this. But after a moment, I took their pale, soft hand. At first, nothing happened. Then a tingling sensation crawled up the length of my spine. Vibrations pulsed from our linked hands,

  my vision grew darker, and my body started to become weightless. I rested back on the bed. I blinked several times, seeing the young child near my face.

  “Remember, the truth will prevail, Hira. We will meet again.”

  The child’s voice ebbed away as my consciousness faded to black.

  Chapter One

  Tugging my blue peacoat hood was over my head, I dashed across the streets, my scarf covering my mouth to hide my identity.

  With my hands warm in my pocket, I trudged through the early October's brisk cold. The houses on the side of the street were worn with front lawns and fences.

  I was on the other side of town when I found the Apathy Current, a purple and blue smoke that tracked victims of Apathy. The Apathy Current stopped in front of a blue house with a silver gate, I looked up at it. It needed a quick fix; the lawns were overgrown, graffiti decorated the side of the house, glass windows were missing, and shutters blocked anyone from seeing inside.

  My gloved hand pulled the gate open. It made an eerie screech—a curse slipped past my lips. It was pretty late, and I didn't want anyone to call the cops because they saw someone sneaking around.

  Walking to the house's front door, I carefully kneeled in front of it. Geez, this is breaking and entering; you could get arrested, I removed a bobby pin from my hair and wiggled it around. Glancing back, making sure no one saw me, but the dark streets didn't show a soul in sight, not even a car.

  The inside of the lock made a click.

  I stood and pushed open the door, creeping through the doorway and peered inside the dark house.

  My nose wrinkled at the smell of piss. I walked into the room, stepping onto plastic. The living room was bare except for a few boxes and a couch.

  I wasn't sure if the person inside had just moved in or if they were moving out. I walked through the adjacent doorway to the kitchen and saw several papers on the island. Even though there was hardly any light, the large red letters 'EVICTION' jumped at me. Tilting the letter toward the moonlight, I could see the rest:

  "Dear Ms. Peterková, this letter encloses that you have one week, from the day of this note, to pay the listed amount due or you will be subject to move out of the premises. Failure to not pay the rent due on time or vacate the premises in the allotted time frame will result in forfeit of lease and under institute proceedings with the statute will be able to recover the possession of said premises… "

  I stopped reading, and beside the eviction was a photo of a woman with dark blonde hair. She was smiling at the camera, holding a little boy with matching hair wearing a Toy Story shirt.

  My stomach flipped as I rubbed the photo before putting it back on the table. There were custody papers beside it as well.

  When a victim underwent the process of Apathy, it was usually caused by something negative or traumatic. It made them manifest their emotions into physical demonic creatures I called Fiends.

  The Apathy Current led me up the winding, wooden steps of the house.

  At the top of the stairs I saw the Current had stopped in front of a doorway. I slowly crept toward it, and as usual, I was not alone. Standing over to one corner of the room was the woman in the picture. She looked exactly the same except black veins were sprouting from her neck, and her skin looked a sickly gray.

  "Ma'am, are you Ms. Peterková?" I asked, removing my hoodie. Raising my hands in front of me, I stepped closer to her. She seemed to react to her name by looking at me, but that was the only 'human' response I was getting.

  Her eyes were cloudy, almost white, and her mouth was slacked lazily to the side as she mumbled something incomprehensible.

  Behind the woman, a black mist slowly started to form behind her, and a six-foot-tall gangly creature appeared. The Fiend had dark ashy skin, their face was oblong and twisted, their mouth sewn together, and they swayed from side to side with their scrawny arms hanging low, and feet wide apart.

  Its bright red eyes glared at me for a long moment as it whispered into the woman's ear.

  "Please! You have to snap out of it!" I shouted at the woman.

  She did nothing to stray away from the creature.

  They… take everything… The creature hissed. It was unable to speak, but it could use telepathy. Society cares for no one... Not me… Not my son. All I want is my son… .

  I knew that the Fiend was feeding her Apathy. It was like the two shared a symbiotic relationship where one couldn't live without the other, and at this point, the woman couldn’t survive without the Fiend’s negative energy.

  "I know, it sucks, and it feels like you don't want to keep going. It's like the whole world is against you, and the government doesn't do anything to help anyone. It seems like everyone else is making it, and you're only scraping by," I told the woman, or at the very least, her Apathy. "The world can be an unjust place, and when you try doing the right thing, you still get nothing in the end, and doing the wrong thing only gets you in trouble. There isn't a middle ground but… Despite that, you have to keep fighting it! It isn't worth driving yourself into the darkness where you can never get out, where you can never fight for your son. What about him?"

  The woman's jaw moved, and she stared at me with her gray eyes until she managed to speak clearly: “J-James…”

  I thought I was getting through to the woman, but the Fiend shrieked at its influence being broken. I backed away, knowing it would try to get rid of me now that I’d managed to get through to her. There was only one way to free this woman, and that was to reap the Fiend that was causing her Apathy.

  The Fiend grabbed the woman's head with its gangly hand and began to inject its tentacles into her. The black veins on the woman's neck pulsed.

  "Let her go!"

  From my right hand, a surging sensation tingled my arm when I manifested a whip that consisted of a meta
l chain with a heavy iron weight at the end.

  My whip struck out toward the Fiend and the metal chain securely wrapped around its arm. I yanked it toward me, pulling its spindly arm from injecting whatever fluids into the victim's head.

  I hadn't realized, however, that the woman had moved from her current spot. From my peripheral, she was a blur as she landed a punch square in my jaw. My body collided to the wooden floor hard and the force caused me to bit down on my tongue, tasting copper and hissing from the pain.

  "Damn it—"

  The woman leaped on top of me, screeching, her arms holding me down as I tried to struggle out of her grasp. The Apathy inside of them made the victims twice as strong as an average human.

  I gritted my teeth and tried to thrash out of the woman's clutches, but her hold on me was tight. In close quarters like this, I summoned a dagger to appear in my right hand. I tightened my grip around the handle and pivoted the knife around, so the blade faced the woman.

  I brought the edge into the woman's hand, and she shrieked when it sunk deep into her flesh.

  The woman pulled back her bleeding hand, finding nothing but a hole where my knife had been. Without my touch, my weapons had no tie to the material plane. I brought my arm back and punched the woman in the face. She staggered, falling over.

  The Fiend gripped its arm, feeling the effects of the blade.

  "I'm sorry," I said to the woman who might lose everything.

  With the dagger summoned to my hand and charged for the Fiend, sinking my blade deep into the creature's chest, and watched as the creature disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

  My hand let go of the blade and it disappeared from reality. Panting, I dropped to my knees. My heart pounded wildly as I stared at the creature that had only just vanished.

  In her current state, trying to find somewhere to live and fighting a battle for her son, it must’ve all been too much.

  Sniffling, I wiped my cheeks before rubbing my jaw where she’d punched me. It stung immensely, and my tongue throbbed from where I bit it.

  The woman started mumbling, but it sounded more human.

  Hair was sprawled over her face, and she was still clutching her bleeding hand, but it didn't look like I had caused much damage.

  Crawling over to her, then gently grabbed her shoulder and brushed her hair aside to see her neck. Sure enough, the black veins had started to fade. I sighed heavily, running a hand through my hair.

  But it wasn't time to relax.

  Using the house phone in the kitchen, I called 911 to report a break-in.

  ***

  In order to avoid questions from the cops, I fled before they reached the neighborhood. Taking out my phone so I could have a Lyft pick me up, I saw that I had missed calls from my brother and mother.

  "Damn it."

  I stopped walking when I reached a bus stop on the corner of the street, far from the house. My Lyft said it would be here in a few minutes. Just then, my phone started ringing—Omari was calling.

  "Damn it, Hira, why haven't you been answering the phone? I had called Garvy, and he said you left the bookstore a little while ago."

  Thank you, Uncle Garvy, I thought to myself. He always had my back. Because he was the only one who knew about my secret.

  "Yeah, I'm sorry, Omari. I saw that Barnes &Noble was having a sale and I just wanted to look around before it closed. Time just got away from me."

  There was a moment of silence, and the wind’s chill made me shiver. I tugged my peacoat's neck collar close.

  Lying was a constant part of my life now, and I hated it. .

  "Fine. Anyway, Mom and I have been trying to reach you… "He said, another pause. I wasn’t feeling anxious, but I wondered what Omari was hesitant about.

  "Omari, was it?"

  "It's Alessander," he finally said, and my heart pounded in my chest hearing my boyfriend's name.

  "The doctors said there was brain activity. They thought it was impossible... but he might be coming out of his coma."

  My brother's news was so jarring that I didn't hear him calling my name, or the Lyft driver beeping their horn at me.

  The only thing I was aware of was that my boyfriend was alive.

  Chapter Two

  The drive to Genesis Angelstone Hospital took a little over twenty minutes. I jumped out as the Lyft driver yelled, ‘Don’t forget to give me five stars!’ The sliding doors of the hospital opened, and the cold breeze of the A.C. hit my face.

  I ran to the front receptionist desk. A woman with her hair in a bun and thick silver glasses smiled as I approached. She pushed her frames down her nose some to look at me.

  I breathed heavily, “Y-Yes, my name is H-Hira Night. I’m looking for A-Alessander Drake?”

  The receptionist nodded and typed on the computer before looking up at me.

  “Your party is on the third floor in the waiting room. Please take a pass here from the basket, and you can take the elevators to the right.”

  I grabbed a pink hospital tag, clipped it on my shirt, and headed toward the elevator.

  As soon as the doors opened, I jogged toward the waiting room where my brother and uncle were sitting on the green plush chairs. They stood up from their seats when I came close.

  “Hira,” Omari said, pulling me into a hug. I knew he was still mad at me for not answering the phone, but he also knew I had been waiting for answers about Alessander.

  A man wearing a black vest over a white button-up shirt had his hands in his black slacks. He was in his late forties, and his ebony, pompadour-styled hair still had a bit of sheen.

  “Uncle Garvy.”

  “Hey, Kiddo,” he greeted in his British accent. His thick brows knitted together in sympathy and reached out his arms to wrap me in a hug. “Be careful next time,” He whispered in my ear. I nodded, letting him know I was grateful he lied for me.

  We let go, and I faced the two of them. “Is Mom here? Did any of you see Alessander yet?” I was growing frantic, and my heart hadn’t stopped pounding since Omari had first called me.

  “Mom couldn’t get off of work, but she said that she would be here as soon as she could.” Omari’s lips pulled into a small smile to answer my next question. “There’s nothing physically different about him, doctors said his vitals are more active than normal. His parents are in the room with him now.”

  My breath hitched as I tried to contain the tears building in my eyes. I would finally be able to hold and kiss him again.

  “I have to get back to the precinct; will you be okay, Hir?” my brother asked, taking my shoulder in his hand to lend me support.

  “I’ll stay here with her,” Uncle Garvy said, patting my brother on the back.

  Omari grinned back at me before leaving.

  Garvy peeked around the corner to make sure that no one else was lurking around the halls. He leaned forward to whisper,

  “What happened? Your clothing looks torn, and there’s blood on your collar.” His dark gray irises drifted down to my coat.

  Tugging at my collar, I saw he was right. It was lucky that Omari hadn’t noticed, or at least didn’t think anything of it.

  I hunched my shoulders. “It was just the same thing as it always was; nothing to worry about.”

  He sighed. My uncle shook his head.

  “You know, if I’m going to help you keep this secret, Hira, I atleast expect you to be more careful and to be craftier with your lies. I can’t always jump when you forget to tell your brother what you’re not doing.”

  I bowed my head and looked down at my feet. He was right; I was careless and selfish. I had been surprised when Uncle Garvy actually saw me fighting an Apathy Victim one night. He can’t see the Fiend, no one who doesn’t have powers can. Still, he knew something was wrong with the person, and t had been the one who diagnosed them with Apathy.

  I wasn’t sure how far I would’ve gotten without him. He and my father always had each other’s back when they’d fought in the war together, and
I knew that he’d do anything to protect me for his best friend.

  “It’s alright, Kiddo, just please be more careful.” He pulled me into a hug. “Now go on, I’ll be out here if you need me.”

  I headed toward the room that Garvy said they were keeping Alessander. In front of the doorway, a woman stood with a gold and brown Dhuku head wrap around her dark brown hair and a dashiki to match. Beside her was a man wearing a similar dark blue and gold garb as they talked to a doctor in a black pantsuit and white lab coat.

  However, my eyes drifted toward Alessander, where he lay on the bed connected to an EKG monitor. The machine beeped rhythmically as it kept tempo with his heartbeat.

  I grabbed the edge of the door as fat tears blurred my vision. Memories kept coming back of Alessander and me, and I had to wipe my eyes free of the tears that continued to pour.

  “Hira?”

  I pulled my attention away from Alessander’s bedside and focused on his mother, Amancia, and his father, Dajaun.

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Drake, it’s good to see you.”

  Mrs. Drake pulled me into a hug, rocking me side to side.

  “I am so glad to see you. If Alessander feels your presence, he may wake up faster.”

  I didn’t know about all of that, but I hoped it was possible.

  “Did Juniper get here yet?” I asked, looking for his sister. I knew she would’ve made the twelve-hour trip to see her baby brother.

  Mr. Drake shook his head. “I called her a few hours ago. She said she would be leaving the first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Maybe, with everyone here, Alessander will know that no one gave up on him.”

  As I spoke, a heavy pressure settled on my shoulders. I turned to look at the doctor who approached. Her painted red lips smiled, and she slowly walked over to me, the sound of her heels clipping behind her.

  I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable around this woman. I was sure I’d seen her from somewhere.

  “Hira Night. I see you’re doing well. You don’t seem to remember me, however.”