Of course, the second I thought things would go smoothly I was quickly proven wrong. Eleanor tightened the grip she had on my hand, which had already been vice like, until I could hear bone start to snap. And then she broke my arm. This was followed quickly by a bone breaking kick to the knee. Once I was on the ground, writhing in silent pain, because somehow I’d resolved not to scream, she stepped on my thigh. I’d never heard of someone breaking their thigh bone before. I was the first case I had ever heard of. It was excruciating.

Not only was she systematically breaking my bones in a progressively more painful pattern, she was using so much force that a lot of my joints were being dislocated at the same time. All in all, it was not a pleasant experience. I had agreed to this though, and it really only seemed right. Her son wasn’t around to do this to me, and Dante wouldn’t do this, but I deserved it. It felt completely justified. That didn’t mean I liked it of course. If possible, I would have liked for the ordeal to be taken care of whilst I was already dead, but she seemed to be taking that into account.

Eventually, of course, something finally snapped and I was out. I had yet to actually be beaten to death before, it took longer than I expected. When I revived I was in a sizeable crater, a little more sizeable that I would have expected, then again I had no way of knowing how long it had been since I had died. I couldn’t see Eleanor as I crawled my way out and back onto my feet.

“Is it out of your system yet, or do you want me to fight back for a bit?” I grunted as soon as I located her. She was curled up in the fetal position on one of the benches that had be knocked around in our ‘fight.’

“No. I’m done.” Her voice was stern again, or perhaps more than I’d ever heard it before. “I won’t get anything out of killing you again. It already means nothing.”

“So, how do you propose I identify your stalker if you’ve scared all the people away?” Talking about her condition was not my place. I was a necessity, one that she didn’t want to have to work with but she did. Very clearly I was not welcome to talk about her emotional state.

“I still need a little time.” Eleanor took a deep breath before unfolding herself. “Or maybe I need a little less. I never asked to be like this you know,” she sighed “a monster.”

“Don’t open up to me.” It wasn’t that I wanted to be on bad terms with her, I didn’t. But I wasn’t the right person to do that with. “You don’t want to give me that. Not that I’d take any satisfaction from it, but that won’t help how you feel in the long term at all.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed. “It’s just so hard though. I only ever had him.” She was going to do it anyway, and there was nothing I could do to stop her, I could tell. “For years I wandered around alone, looking for something to make of myself. I was a wanderer, then I saw him… I was a nurse working at the hospital where he was born. His mother was a Jane Doe who had died in childbirth, he had no one. But he was so perfect.”

“You adopted a baby despite what you are, I don’t think that makes you a monster. That need to care for something makes you more human than any contractor I’ve ever met.” Which was true. True human emotion was all but gone in every contractor I’d met thus far.

“I couldn’t bear it though. I needed to contract to stay alive, I had to kill people to survive, so as soon as he could fend for himself I spent as much time as I could away from him. I thought I was protecting him, but I was just breaking him slowly. I didn’t even know that normal human contracts like adoption papers would apply like a contract I could write or that they could make it so that he inherited my legacy. He was doomed the moment I signed my name.” She was slowly reverting into a more collapsed and sad figure.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What do you mean?” She was being vague, but it sounded like she was shifting the blame from me to herself.

“That stupid mirror. Talk about the price of vanity. It ruined me and it ruined him. I didn’t know he’d inherit it, the thought didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t even know it belonged to me. I’m not dead, so how did he even inherit it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know about any of that, not a thing.” I sighed and put my hand on her shoulder. She cringed immediately but didn’t stop me. “There are things you can fix, and things you can’t. Death is final, even though contractors think they can get around that. I know I wish my brother was still alive, I wish your son hadn’t gotten him killed. But that was more my brother’s fault for living such a stupid life. I got over that the day I heard the news, because I had to. You don’t cheat death by welcoming it into your life.”

“Why would you tell me that?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to make you angry so we can get on with this.”

“Very well.” She took a deep breath before standing up. “First things first, stand over here next to me while I break the wall down.”

“Break the what?” There were very clearly no walls around the center of the walkway where we were standing.

“The wall to the grotto.” She paused as if waiting for me to understand. I did not understand. “You didn’t honestly think I’d destroy public property just to satisfy a desire did you?”

“Honestly, yes.” I still didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but I was starting to get a grasp on what she meant. “So this place isn’t real?”

“No, it’s a temporary little pocket version of the mall we were in before. Technically we are still in that mall, just more like we’re in a secret room that is bigger on the inside than the outside. It’s sort of like the dens that most contractors use, but temporary.” She paused. I knew I still looked confused and I could tell she saw that. “Just try not to throw up when we pop back into the real world.”

“I’m used to that. Just don’t yank me around too much.” I put my hand back on her shoulder and waited for her to do her thing.

“What are you doing?” She lifted my hand off her shoulder. “That was fine when it was appropriate, because earlier it was a kind gesture, but I don’t want you to touch me like that.”

“But the grotto… wall…?” I watched blankly as she kicked at nothing with full force and the world around me fell flat like the set on a stage play to once again reveal the mall we had been standing in before. It took a while before I could wrap my mind around what I had just seen.

The random people were still walking around like normal, the benches were still in their proper place, walls were undented and the floor was void of craters. We still even looked normal standing as we were. I followed Eleanor to the bench we’d been sitting on earlier, now in its proper place, and stood in front of her silently while she gestured me to take a seat next to her.

“Since you insisted we do this first, what is your question?” The question came the second I sat down. “And if you feel like being distracted, please don’t hesitate to scan the crowd to get ahead of things.”

“Right…” I had to take a second to clear my head and think of what I’d had in mind. I had had something in mind when I made the bargain.

“Did you seriously not have a question ready this entire time?”

“I did, but dying does not help me keep track of my thoughts.”

“I wonder what that must be like.” Her smirk was casual… and easily upset.

“Yeah, you should try it.” My smile was vicious.

If we were going to have any kind of relationship, a safe and casual little arrangement where we take jabs at each other and occasionally she kills me wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe I’d even have a shot at killing her every now and then… I was stronger than the average collector after all. As I looked down at the vial of souls hanging around my neck, I remembered what I’d wanted to know.

“Found it.” I exhaled nervously. I wanted to be ready when she started explaining things.

“And?”

“Tell me, how do you become a contractor?”