I was surprised because, sure enough, we found a bunch of guys lying on the ground. It might be a very dark night, but it couldn't be more obvious that it had been a massacre. For starters, a lot of them weren't in one piece.

“Talk about not having an easy life. Why do I only find trouble? I'm serious. It's weird. Someone hates me and a lot.”

“There's no problem. It's already over.”

She was saying it very confidently.

“Yeah?”

“There are no... living organisms... nearby.”

“Hey, wait a minute. You detect... living organisms? All this time? And you didn't say anything? You're very useful, but screw you.”

She deserved every word, but I still should have kept my mouth shut. I wasn't dealing with some kind of pet with lots of tentacles, as much as it sometimes seemed that way.

I was dealing with a lion that would devour me without leaving even the bones, metaphorical bones, as soon as it left its cage.

Fortunately, I didn't pay for my insolence or anything like that. More silence. It went in one ear and out the other. Better that way, but it made her seem even more disturbing than she was. More inhuman. I couldn't imagine her looking angry.

Not properly, at least. Anyone could tell there was something off about her if they looked too closely at her unnatural expressions.

I should choose my words better. Anyway, that was the point, noted. But I didn't get a chance to put it into practice.

I started to get a strange feeling.

Familiar, but strange, given the fucked-up circumstances. And how intense it was. I'd never felt anything so intensely, nothing in life, but even less something as trivial as that.

“What's wrong with you?” Plague asked. Of course, she didn't seem worried or anything.

“I think I'm... hungry?”

But a hunger too intense, a ravenous hunger, as if I hadn't had a bite to eat for a month. Or at least that's what I imagined. As fucked up as my life had been, we had never been truly hungry.

It was a feeling so intense that it brought me to my knees. In front of one of the many corpses.

Then I opened my mouth wide.

Okay, that wasn't enough. I opened my mouth as if my jaw snapped open. To the limit and beyond. Then some sort of ethereal light burst out of the corpse and into my throat.

I wasn't ready to deep throat one of those mystical shits, so it wasn't.

I wasn't prepared to deep throat one of those mystical shits, so it wasn't a pleasant experience.

I writhed on the floor like I was suddenly underwater, coughing, struggling to breathe. And reconsidering that idea that I couldn't be any deader than I already was, because I felt like I was dying anyway.

Fortunately, the agony didn't last long. Even the discomfort passed soon after.

Ghosts might not have tear ducts, but it wasn't raining and my vision was blurry and my cheeks wet. It was clear it had happened. Embarrassing as it was.

The madness hadn't ended there, though. It had only just begun.

An almost translucent white spear, as if it were made of glass, circled around me quickly several times. Then it plunged into my chest and there disappeared without a trace.

That didn't hurt.

It wasn't uncomfortable. It just happened.

“That was fucking weird. I hate my life.” After maybe a couple of minutes of gathering my strength, that was the first thing out of my mouth.

I had to try something, though. It had gotten inside me. But had it really just disappeared? I focused for a while, even though Plague's gaze was locked on me silently.

In the end I got it. The spear appeared in my hands. I wielded it against the nearest tree and not only did it not shatter like glass, but it made a good cut.

“Convenient, now I hate my life a little less. But weird.”

——

Putting it back in was harder than taking it out, but I managed.

I pulled it back in and out, of course. Just to test it. Just to make sure I could do it. But I did that while I was moving, a couple of times. I hadn't been able to stop myself from dawdling, the feeling had overwhelmed me, but all the more reason to hurry. I still didn't know where the fuck to go, though, sadly. The portable weapon was cool, but it didn't answer my real problems.

It had been an offhand suggestion at the time, but even after thinking it through, that soul market thing seemed like a good idea. What could one of those things want with my soul, of all possible things, the soul of a thirty-four-year-old bald criminal, who was neither in nor out of shape?

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Something illegal. Trafficking it. It seemed logical to me.

So, with that in mind, I decided I would try to find a city.

If the reaper was in this world for that, he'd have more business opportunities in the big city, I figured.

It wasn't much of a plan. In fact, it could hardly be called a plan at all. But it made me feel better.

It was hard to remain optimistic in the face of such a huge task without even having some direction. We found a city, one of many, before the sun came up. How did they say? Every journey started with the first step, or something like that. It was stupid because it didn't need to be a saying, anyone knew that.

But, well...

I hoped this was it.

The first step I longed for.

——

It had been a while since then, but I hadn't set foot in the city yet. That was because I had sent Plague to buy some clothes with the stolen money.

In the meantime, I had sat behind a tree, waiting.

Mostly imagining the countless ways she could screw up even such a simple task. Not because she was incompetent, but because she wasn't human and that couldn't be fixed or worked around.

But there she was, coming back to me. And in new clothes. Which only meant she'd gotten them.

Just that, but no more. It was too soon to start celebrating or congratulating her on a job well done. Which I wouldn't do even after confirming it, because I got the impression that the Plague didn't give a shit about such things, both praise and rebuke. But hey, it's the thought that counts?

“There were no problems, were there?”

“No.”

My eyebrow twitched. Very slightly. Somehow, I had imagined she'd answer like that. I imagined she would have even if it wasn't true.

“I'm serious. Trouble you took care of right away counts.”

I had no trouble imagining that Plague hadn't handed over enough money and the clerk had corrected her, causing her to become impatient. Causing her to, well, split them open like a melon.

Yes.

It was one of the many ways things could get fucked up that I had imagined in this time.

I had a very active imagination.

“I paid. They gave me the clothes. I changed. That's it.”

She sounded sincere. I guess. And if she wasn't being sincere, well, I wasn't going to get through to her either. Better to give up here, that's what I thought. If she'd messed something up, as unsubtle as she was, she probably would have come with the police hot on her heels. Or the city guard. Whatever it was called in times like these, in this world.

“Okay. I'm glad.”

“I still don't understand why it's so important.”

She still wanted to insist. Hadn't had enough. I repressed the urge to sigh.

“So you don't stand out so much. The smell of blood is gone, though.” Not the stains, but they were pretty subtle now. At least at night. “I don't know, I really don't know... what's so hard to understand about that.”

Plague gazed back at me silently. Blinking slowly and exaggeratedly.

Yeah, right. Typical.

“Do you think I'm on the right track? Is this a good idea?” I had to talk to someone. Share ideas.

Maybe not the best choice in the world, but she was what I had and I had to make do. That, now that I thought about it, described my life in many ways. My sister was the one thing I couldn't fault.

“I hope it is. Otherwise, I'd be not only still hungry but angry on top of it.”

Had that been an attempt at a joke? No, Plague had been completely expressionless, both her face and her tone. Or maybe it had been, in spite of that.

Did this creature even understand humor?

Every question gave rise to ten others.

Better to put it aside.

“Yeah. Okay. Thank you for... Thanks for your support.”

We went into the city. Now that I thought about it, I still didn't know what it was called. I hadn't seen a sign or anything. Good thing it was highly unlikely that anyone would ask me what city we were in. Only someone more or less as lost as I was would.

I couldn't stop thinking about the first step.

What it meant and what it would be.

It might still be night, but the city wasn't sleeping. Plague had found a clothing store - why wouldn't the less reputable stores be open too? Just hidden enough that the law could look the other way and pretend they hadn't seen without it being too obvious they were fucking liars.

“You... You know, do you smell something?” I asked.

“I'll tell you when I do.”

“Sure.”

And her way of warning would be her tentacles flying towards me, after me, as she wanted to be the first to reach my soul. To reach it and devour it without a trace.

We circled the city, avoiding the main streets, of course. Plague may not have attracted as much attention as before, but the same didn't go for me, and the solution wasn't so easy. I couldn't just buy some clothes and disguise myself as a normal person.

The darkness of the night helped. I had to count on that.

That no one would look too closely. Or for too long.

It was a gamble. Among the rather long list of things I'd been forced to just assume, I was assuming that a ghost would cause a major panic.

The receptionist had been surprised, but she had also wondered what did a dead dude wanted money for.

Ghosts were rare even here, but not that rare, I wanted to say.

So maybe...

Maybe wasn't good enough, though.

Nobody saw us, no fuss was made again. But we didn't succeed either. Of course we didn't. Needless to say, my soul wasn't going to fall into my hands just like that, even though that was precisely where it belonged.

Life didn't work that way. God wasn't kind enough for that.

What did fall into my hands, well, more precisely onto my wrists, were heavy iron chains. I didn't realize it instantly, of course. In the first moments I thought... I don't even know what I thought. That fatigue was taking its toll on me, in the end? In any case, I looked down and realized. Hard not to, if the sound of the chains grinding against the floor hadn't been warning enough.

“What the fuck is this now!”

I've always been very eloquent.

The chains, which had come out of fucking nowhere, began to drag me backwards.

Towards a sort of black hole in the alley wall behind us, to be more precise. But it wasn't just that. The black hole was surrounded by some kind of.... Pentagram? No, that was a different shape, but good. Magical symbols that glowed in a creepy way.

Everything was creepy. I didn't want to get eaten by it.

“But what the fuck. Seriously, this is bullshit.”

But it seemed I had no choice. I tried as hard as I could, but not for a second was I able to disappear like before. So the chains remained firmly around my wrists. Were these chains designed to hunt ghosts?

And this thing that was happening to me...

Did someone somehow know I was coming here? Or had it been pure chance, my bad luck coming to the fore again? Either way I was in deep shit.

Fuck.

Plague ran towards me. Couldn't let go of her food source so easily, of course. She tried to break the chains and I thought I was saved, that was all there was to it. We had spent very little time together, but because of all the nonstop danger it seemed like I had known her forever ago.

And somehow or other I had gotten used to that thing being able to tear down every problem in my path.

Alas, it didn't happen. Not even a creature feared by all mankind, apparently, could break those chains. At least not in such a short time. Because the chains dragged me too fast into the hole....

“Thanks for the help bitch!” I shouted as I went in.

As I passed through to the other side.

At that moment I was freed from the chains, but it didn't take me long to see with my own eyes that there was nothing to celebrate. Looking around, I saw that I was in some sort of luxurious casino, probably filled to the brim with illegal stuff. Exactly the place I had been looking for, in a sense.

What I hadn't been looking for were the dozens of people surrounding me.

Eyes flashing like hungry wolves. It was the kind of atmosphere I had swum in from adolescence to the end of my life.

But that wasn't good news.