Reaper II: Neophyte (7 page)

Oh shit.  What to say?
  I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Avril Lavigne.”

“So, Avril, are in high school yet?”

“Yes.” I told her. “Grade ten.”

“What do you plan on doing, once you’re done with school?”

The sound of sirens approaching made me smile.  “Actually, lately I’ve been thinking of becoming a police officer.”

Which, of course, I had—even more, since the night of my attack. 

That night had changed me, in so many ways...

I saw the white, red and blue lights of two squad cars approaching us at high speed, from where they had turned unto Sergeant Avenue and I found myself smiling with satisfaction.  The police had responded quicker than I had expected.  I hadn’t known they would get here so quickly, but the Dark Thing had seemed to know. 

Somehow, it had known.

“Oh,
dios mio
, what has happened now?” The nice elderly lady asked, of the approaching cars and their flashing lights. “The street gangs to the North of us, no doubt.”

I watched the cars with her, in silence. 

They slowed as they passed by us and I saw the cops in the second car glance at us briefly.  They would never in a million years suspect me of the murder – me, a fifteen year old girl sitting next to an elderly woman at a bus stop eating Mentos. 

Yet I couldn’t mince words, not even with myself.

It was
murder
that I had committed, compelled by the Dark Thing inside of me, compelled by a need to correct a grave injustice.

Murder
no matter what my reason, my justification and ultimately, my choice to commit. 

The nice Hispanic lady looked horrified, as the squad cars turned off unto Carter Street.

While I was impressed by their quick response to the call I had put into 9-1-1, I figured that it was a good thing I hadn’t lingered at the dead man’s home. 

“I know people on that street.” Luisa’s voice was concerned. “I hope that they’re all right.”

“I’m sure they are.” 

A bar of lights above a large vehicle a few blocks away heralded the slow, steady arrival of the bus that would take me back in the direction of my home. 

When the bus finally stopped in front of us, I gestured for her to board first.

“Nice meeting you, Luisa.”

“Nice meeting you, dear.”

I boarded after her and took my seat beyond the few other passengers, at the back of the bus. 

As we rode past Carter Street, I saw the two squad cars parked outside of house sixty-five, their bright lights flashing off the walls of the blue and white house.  The officers were already somewhere in the house, the front door of which I had left wide open for their easy access.

In that moment especially, I envied those police officers, envied their access to the criminals of the City. 

How many evils did they encounter daily?

How many resources were at their disposal to help them track and detain criminals?

Thinking of how I intended to right some of the many wrongs going on in the City, I decided that being a police officer might be one of the easiest ways to affect those changes.

It was a great way to learn all that I could about the criminal element that plagued out City.

It was then that I decided, with certainty.

In a few years’ time, I was going to become a cop.

-2-

The Dark Thing inside of me seemed to need to feed on corrupt blood and that, in part, is why I found the prospect of becoming a police officer to be an attractive one.  I would have access to many resources that could keep the Dark Thing in its supply of guilty blood and make the world a safer place for the innocent, at the same time.

The Dark Thing, I knew, would be a benefit to society.

There would be no escape for criminals of even the worst sort. 

What I couldn’t accomplish as a police officer legitimately carrying out good deeds in the legal system, I could accomplish as a vigilante acting alone with my dark gift to guide and empower me.

That first night, the night of my attack, I had walked home half-naked, holding my torn top closed with both hands.  I had been able to make the organic second skin of the Dark Thing disappear merely by hoping that it would fade away. 

Much to my amazement, it had obeyed and left without a trace, retracting itself back into my body, the very site from which it had come.

For that, I was glad—I could hardly go home with black claws coming out of my fingertips, after all. 

Nevertheless, I had ended up on my parents’ doorstep with my clothes torn, bruises forming where I had been slapped in the face, not to mention, grabbed and restrained. 

My mother and father had of course wanted to know what had happened. To avoid a scolding, I didn’t tell them about cutting through Lincoln Park.  Instead, I told them that someone attacked me on my way home, a block from our house and that I had gotten away by kicking my single attacker in the face. 

Of course, the truth was quite a different story.

All three of my attackers had died at my hands.

My vengeful exoskeleton covered hands.

After an interview with a police officer, they took me to the doctor, who reassured them that I was okay, that there was nothing broken but my split lip and of course those few small abrasions from where their hands had treated me roughly.

My hymen was intact – I was still a virgin.

My parents wanted me to quit my job at Bo’s Ice Cream Parlor, but we compromised.

I could keep the job, but one of them would now pick me up and drop me off, to and from work.

They especially warned to stay away from the park now, after dark. There had been three grisly murders in that area the night I was attacked and the killer was still
at large
. 

The police had no leads, save but for the account of one eye witness, who claimed that the murders were the work of a demon, with blades for fingers and burning black coals for eyes…

Given that the eyewitness was a transient old man living in the park, with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, his account of the murders was somewhat less than credible.  His claim that the cold-blooded killer was a demon made his story less than credible, still.

However, the tabloids had loved it and ran the story as front page news.

The police were less than impressed, what with their lack of a real lead and all…

When, at the age of sixteen, I told my family that I wanted to be a police officer, they had mixed reactions.

My adoptive father, Paul, initially thought that I should go to law school, if I wanted to play any role in the justice system.

My brother, Darren, younger than me by twelve years, thought it would be cool if I became a cop, since he wanted to be one too. Then again, he was only four and still had full respect for law enforcement officers back then.

As for my mother, Lillian –
Lil
to her friends – she was completely horrified by the prospect of me becoming a police officer. Since she was always fearful for me, this news was of course nothing new. My mother was constantly terrified for me and had been my entire life.

I finally had a nuance of her support when I decided to start taking Tae Kwon Do, three to four times a week, at the martial arts training and fitness center near our home.  Mom was of course worried that I might injure myself or someone else in pursuing the sport, but she was even more worried that someone would attack me again – and so, taking martial arts lessons was the lesser of the two evils, in her eyes.

I, for one, enjoyed my Tae Kwon Do lessons. 

It was definitely a challenging sport and I was passionate about learning the different patterns, strikes and kicks that could be done.  I thoroughly enjoyed the hand-to-hand one-on-one sparring that we did under the watchful eye of our Master, who was always ready with guidance of one kind or another. 

Master Kim pushed us hard, but I pushed myself even harder. 

I think he recognized my dedication to the sport and I believe that I was one of his favorite students, because of it. My dedication and enthusiasm didn’t matter to my mother because I’d often come home with bruises from sparring against someone more skilled than I, which would also upset her.

She was oft to say, “Samantha Lian Bennet, I fear for you – really, I do.”

Despite her many fears, I left Master Kim’s two years later with a black belt and graduated from high school at the top of my class, still intent on becoming a police officer. 

I applied to the City’s police academy immediately after graduation, but they rejected me because of my young age and lack of what they referred to as
life experience
.

Their career counselor told me not to be surprised, since applicants under twenty had to fight tooth and nail to be taken seriously, due to their lack of
life experience.
I was told that those who actually made it past the testing and interviews were put on a waiting list until they were twenty-one, anyway.

It seemed like sheer ageism to me. 

If they only knew how well I could fight tooth and nail – or talon and blade, for that matter – I was certain that they would have felt differently about their decision…

So, I went to college, which had been my back up plan anyway, taking Criminology, much to my mother’s disdain. 

She had been hoping that I would give up on my law enforcement goals.  Paul still had hoped that I would go into law school if I wanted to be part of the justice system, but a lifetime perusing thick legal texts wasn’t really for me and the idea of spending day after day in court bored me. 

While I excelled at school, I was not passionate about it. 

My true passion remained elsewhere, in my excursions with the Dark Thing…

How many nights had I snuck out of my bedroom and hit the shadows of the City, answering the call of the Dark Thing?

Its hunger for evil blood seemed insatiable.

Together, we made quite the team…

We punished, we avenged, we retaliated against the malevolent denizens of society.

Together, we were unstoppable.

At twenty-one, I finally moved out of home upon securing a job as a bartender. 

Three years of college had been enough of a post-secondary education for me, for the moment.

I was out to get that
life experience
that the police academy had been so intent on and I figured that bartending was a great place to begin.

Surely I’d find my share of low lifes there, connections to the underworld that I sought to exploit for blood to feed the Dark Thing.

Surely bartending could help me learn of ways to liberate our fine City from the criminals who plagued it, tainted it. 

When I told my parents that I was ready to move out of home, my mother had quite the fit. 

“You’re leaving me, just like your birth father did,” she sobbed to me one night, after perhaps one too many glasses of red wine.

I didn’t know what to say.

My mother hadn’t brought up the topic of my birth father since I was a child, since before she met and married Paul Bennet, the man to whom I could attribute my last name and sound upbringing. 

Before Paul, Mom had spoken of my birth father often, frequently reminding me that he had left her all alone in the world as a single parent to raise me.

A single parent who had the support of a great family who helped her in every way that they could with the raising of little Samantha, but a single mother all the same. 

“He told me that he loved me,” she reminded me. “But you don’t leave the ones you love.  You don’t just leave them behind!”

Sometimes I
do
think about my birth father. The rambling man my mother claims left her after their last intimate encounter together.  This, I had learned from the tale she had told me as a young teen about how my birth father had loved her and left her, all in one night.