My Collection - Thorn / Shadow Stalkers / R.E: Misty Meadows

[Lex]

Hey guys! I found another three pieces of work, which were sort of part of this collection I had! All prose pieces and all featuring the names of characters from SS, but they're not SS characters, it's a completely different 'verse, just used the names and mixed and matched a bit! I don't know why I wrote them, but I did really like them so I thought i'd post them :)

Hope you enjoy.

Thorn

All they found on Petrina Thorn's body was a camera, my passport, a strand of red hair, and a business card. They told me there was nothing else, and these items were things I had never seen before. Now you're probably wondering who I am, right? Well, I'm the person they think did it...

It was on that morning, the sun had barely risen and I awoke to the stampeding force of the police bursting through the fresh day, and my bedroom door. They pulled me from my bed without remorse and reason, accusing me of killing my closest friend not two hours before the creation of the salmon sky. As they encased my wrists in handcuffs I was thrust against the wall and I listened to my rights retorting from a rotund officer. I was given the right to remain silent, but throughout the previous ten seconds I had done nothing else but keep my mouth closed and my eyes wide; stricken with a numb shock.

As I was driven away within the secured police car, passing the judging eyes of craning neighbours, I heard more about Petrina's demise; she had suffered a blow to the head with a lost object. It wasn't until I was bound by law to a metal table in an interrogation room that I was told of the four clues that would tie my fate to a small boxed room till the end of my days. As they were produced, my glazed eyes searched each one with a desperate futility; the visual aids, which were smothered in Petrina's blood, could not catalyse my memory, not even slightly. They weren't convinced. They gave several significant glances to an unknown superior behind the one way mirror. I lay my head on the table in shock, refusing to respond to any more hurtful accusations, scenarios, and insinuations until I had representation.

It was another fourteen minutes and twenty nine seconds before Christian arrived. He was my lawyer, and Petrina's widower. He looked like he hadn't slept much; his eyes had mourned. He didn't look at me when he entered, he only introduced himself to Detective Turnpike, the man who'd been interrogating me viciously up until that point, along with my spherical hunter. I kept my head low as Christian spoke slowly and officially to Turnpike.
"Have you charged my client?" "You shouldn't be here, Mr Thorn. You can't defend in these circumstances, you know that." This was Turnpike's smug reply. Christian looked down at this, still refraining from exhibiting emotions to Petrina's end, and that I, his close friend and client was branded his spouse's murderer.
"I'm not here to defend. I just want a moment with my client." With this stoicism from the emotionally dormant lawyer, Turnpike tapped
his thumb on the table with a distorted rhythm: annoyed. He gave me a look of disgust and stood. He indicated to the circular officer to keep watch as he left and joined his superior behind the pane of vanity and power to consort about Christian's presence. I looked to my only ally and spoke gravely. "Is he right?" Christian didn't answer. A tear fell from my eyelid; a mere drop in the ocean. "I didn't do it..."
"I know." Christian replied with clear certainty. He looked at me with belief and faith, nothing else. He knew something...

Petrina's death was only the beginning. As this memoir indicates, it is merely where my story begins. Being framed for her murder would be the first of many revelations I would discover in the investigation of Petrina Thorn's murder, which would settle like morning droplets of dew on woven cobwebs, and tumult my world into a hidden void.

[Lex]

Shadow Stalkers

I met one once. The folklore I heard, as an orphan, seemed too absurd to be a reality, but with my friends missing, I had learned to think with an open mind. I remember the day Torrent was killed, the first known death. He wasn't a friend, he was my nemesis, and made me look upon my time in the orphanage as an infernal limbo before the reign of adulthood. None the less, his death sparked an infectious fear in the village; no child was safe. I was the cause of the fear, it came from my story. It was I, Ashby, who witnessed Torrent's murder at the hands of the creature thought to be only local mythology.

It was the Night of Four Stars, and Torrent and I were walking back from the second village with provisions. The moons had provided a soft backdrop for the four proud lights in the sky, and washed the timid town in a reassuring light-glow. As usual on the Night of Four Stars, two children from Rittle's Orphanage followed orders to perform mercantile tasks in the neighbouring villages; this has stopped now, but for that final time, Torrent and I were the chosen two.
Torrent and I had barely spoken on our return, except for the brute's callous taunts regarding me, loneliness and abandonment, unaware of the hypocrisy in his childish banter. I carried in my hands a basket of leavened bread from the third village, the weight of it causing the stoned path to tear my feet. I did not care about the pain: it distracted me from listening to Torrent. However, long before this became tiresome, a new distraction hunted us; more footsteps.

I stopped and looked around, wondering what was lurking near us in the night. My wondering soon passed though as I looked at Torrent sharply, annoyed at his ghoulish tone in his rendition of the tale of the Shadow Stalker. "Shut up! I don't care about your stupid stories!"
"Ha! Used to, cry baby Ashby, cry baby..." I looked away at the beginning of his sentence. Being a year away from
adulthood, I had learnt to ignore Torrent, but this didn't stop him trying to demolish my barriers. I began scanning the relentless dark of the marshes as my mind pondered the noise once again. I saw nothing move, and heard nothing else. I turned back to Torrent and opened my mouth to reply to his provocation. My mouth did open, but in horror.

He was lying motionless on the ground, staring into me with bloodshot eyes; a serrated rip through his lifeless neck. My eyes passed from Torrent's corpse to the legendary killer. It stood on the path before me, snarling through greyed shattered teeth, and staring at me with an endless red glare. Its black cloak covered its body making it appear disembodied, and it swayed ethereally in a soft breeze as if not rooted to the ground. The monster did nothing, it did not lunge for me, or attack. It merely observed me, eyeing me with its gaze and watching my reaction...

This is normally where my tale would end, but I have a secret, an end to this tale that does not involve fleeing to the elders. This ending begins with me recognising Torrent's killer. It was not a creature of darkness, but a disguise.

[Lex]

R.E: Misty Meadows

I could be anyone. I could be anywhere. But tonight, I'm her, and I'm here.

The bass pounded its batons against my ear drums as I writhed and straddled the pole in front of Mr Artair. I declined eye contact but every time I glanced in his direction, I was reminded of his over-baked muffin top splurging towards me with an overflowing slouch and his podgy fingers wiggling at my limbs. Gross.
"Come on Misty, work it..." I smiled at his request. I was Misty tonight, Misty Meadows. Forgive the erotic subtlety behind it, but I didn't pick it; the C.I.A did.
I didn't mind, I liked this alias; she was easy. She didn't need guns, her weapons were hanging softly in a pink sequin hammock on her chest, a thin sheet of sweat lubricating them. I made her body meander in front of him; a serpent entrancing him. I had given Misty an electric pink wig. It was a personal touch, I liked pink. As he goggled me, I made her lean forward so the synthetic strands caressed her face, her breasts, and her body.
"You like that Mr Artair?" I teased him with Misty's soft accent. He nodded enthusiastically. It was at this point that I took over; Misty had done her part. I leaned towards him, using what Misty had taught me, and puckered my lips a few inches from his. As he closed his eyes, intoxicated, I sharply brought my forehead into his, knocking him out cold. As he fell back into his seat unconscious I smiled and reached into his trouser pocket.
"You got it?" A voice came from my ear; my handler. I looked at the key in my hand, and touched my ear with the other. "Yeah I got it..."
"Well done 'Misty', meet at the rendezvous point." I sighed. Sometimes they forgot to separate the alias from the agent, but this is how things had always been. I didn't complain, after all, this was Misty's assignment. I placed the key in her sequin hammock and I looked down at myself, then at Mr Artair. I left the room smirking. Mission complete.

I could have been anyone, but tonight I was Misty, Misty Meadows.