Dances with Death

If there ever existed a self-help group for people like myself, it would have to be a pretty weird. We. We would meet, after dark, probably on a Saturday or maybe a Tuesday, in a brightly lit community centre, with educational leaflets, and we would sit in a circle on brown plastic chairs, and one of the lights would keep flickering, just enough to annoy. Then, alcoholics anonymous esque, I would step forward and speak.

“My name is Frances Crowe, and I am a nullomancer.”

That’s right, my friends. I am one of the select few people who roam the back streets of this hell bound city on their nights off, with guns in their pockets, looking for people to make dead.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m no hired hitman. People don’t pay me to do this. It’s just what I do.

And I’m not a fashion victim, either. Not for me the white-painted face, the pewter pentacles, the pierced nose and lips. I know too many real dead people to want to look like one of them. I don’t think I look like your stereotypical nullomancer, if there is such a thing. I am lankily tall, a barely tanned half-caste, with hair that curls just past my ears, glasses, and a look about my face that can only be described as androgynous. (Which, by the way, is technically incorrect, but I think I’ll leave you guessing for a while more.) I like my coats long, and black. Okay, so I am now your very own stereotypical nullomancer. I look like the essence of original evil, yes? But most nullomancers don’t. Perhaps I should go into my story further.

The year, byeraleral consensus, is 2015 Anno Domini, in the year of our lord, but according to certain prominent extremists, we are twenty-two years into the reign of the antichrist, as promised by the book of revelations. In the early 1980s, a subdivision of the secret Russian department of biochemical technology was commissioned by a Christian fundamentalist group in America to appropriate a sample of the Turin Shroud, the only religious artefact verified to contain the blood of Christ. Approximately twelve years later, after excessive testing, they succeeded in producing a clone. That much is true. But according to these extremists, the clone proved vital to both the advent of the third world war and the appointment of Mel Gibson as Pope, along with various other happenings that can only be described as paranormal.

For years, sexual activity, and even the stimulation of certain nerve-centres in the brain had beenked ked with the practice of magic, and with the advent of the antichrist, gurus and practitioners of such magic increased in both their power and number. There was a time, about ten years ago, when if you looked hard enough, you could find people who could use those things to do just about anything. The new-age mystics claimed that it was the beginning of the age of transcendence. They were wrong.

In the time it had taken for the magic of life to rise, there had also come the magic of death, the power of non-being. Perhaps now is a good time for a metaphor. Picture this, a sparrow flies from the dark and the cold of a winter night into a warm and brightly lit room. For the split second that it takes the sparrow to fly through the other window, and back out into the dark, it experiences light and warmth and colour that it has probably never seen before and will never see again. That room represents life, their power, whilst the mighty dark and cold, the absence of those things in the room is symbolic of its opposite. You know where I’m going on this? Good.

While the sorcerers could be called indulgent, sometimes holding orgies of roman proportions, we nullomancers are minimalists to the extreme, and we are, of course, vastly more dangerous. Some of us do not even know who we are.

I didn’t.

It was the year 2013. I was fifteen years old.

It was the last lesson on a Thursday. The face gleamed and the hands moved, but my mind was only on the numbers of the clock. The page of my book was both blank and strangely profound; there was something about the way the lines intersected the margin that I could not quite discern. The girl across the table was smiling at me in a way that hinted that if only I were to look at her and acknowledge the fact that she existed, then she would make it worth my while. I deigned not to, and neither to violate the integrity of my paper by drawing upon it. Instead, I watched the hands turn as the face moved, clearing my mind of thought. She followed my gaze. Her name, I remember, was Stephanie, and she wore a thin blue metal bangle on her left arm, just under the sleeve of her school jumper. I waited for the bell to bring the end of the day so that I could go to my private wilderness just west of the old quarry and be alone. My solitude becomes my peace, and I craved it then as others craved food, or drink, or sex. The red second hand twitched past the twelve five times before the bell rang. I put my things into my bag, pulled my coat over one shoulder, and headed for the door. Much to my annoyance, the girl called Stephanie followed me.
“Hey there.” She grinned nervo.
I.
Irritated I might have been, but I am rarely uncourteous; even now, when the notion of chivalry is widely believed dead. “Hey.”
She held out her hand. The thin bangle was barely visible on her wrist. “My name’s Steph.”
I took her hand and shook it. She had soft skin. “People call me Fuse.”
“I know.” she giggled. “Cool name.”
“Thanks.”
We walked together of tof the school gates. I was unnerved by her attentions. I had never met a girl who fancied me quite so much. Part of me admitted that she was actually quite cute, while the other part; the other part wanted to run away, and sit alone in my wilderness until all of the angst that surged and shifted within me seemed insignificant and far away. I took a left turn down Godwin Drive and she tagged along. Every so often she would say something, and then I would make a reply. Sometimes she would laugh. The time was twenty past three when we arrived at the busy Hanover Road, only three roads away from my wilderness. Desperate for solitude, I made the crossing without a thought for the traffic.
The brakes of the truck squealed as it drove me down. Stephanie screamed. Then there was nothing. Only solitude, a strange kind of peace, almost happiness. There was no bright light, no heavenly gates. Just a feeling of having flown from a window. A moonless night beckoned to me, and I knew more in that one instant than I had learnt in the course of my entire life.

I was fifteen years old when I died for the first time.

My name is Frances Crowe. I am a nullomancer. These are my confessions.