So, through the creative writing classes I've taken over the last few semesters in school, I've been fleshing out a story that does have a shapeshifter, just not your typical one. Kass Andrea Nix is a Fury. She's unassuming until you piss her off...
Check out the beginning of her story:
Kass Andréa Nyx bristled as she waited on the cracked sidewalk to meet her contact. Where was he? “Freaking Kreios,” she grumbled at the pavement, “anytime now!”
She tensed as a cop patrolling the area stopped. He stroked his weapon of choice, the nightstick, and gave her the eye. “Everything ok, ma’am?”
Great, someone’s tax dollars hard at work. “Yes, officer, just waiting on a friend who’s late.”
The flatfoot nodded, “Okay, be careful out here.”
Kass swallowed back a foul word and spit out the obligatory, “Yes Sir.”
Thank Dionysos the copper moved on without incident. Thanking Zeus, with his overinflated ego, not a good idea. Hades? Nope, never going to thank him, that hell-beast wanted to make her his whore. Her refusal and subsequent flight sealed the deal on her banishment. It also meant a torturous eternity here on earth collecting the dead.
Dionysos, on the other hand, extolled the virtues of wine and revelry. Yep, there’s something to get behind. Even if she had never reveled in her exceedingly long life.
Where the heck was Kreios? You’d think after working together for centuries he’d attempt to be on time. How hard could this professional relationship be? She would bring Kreios the freshly dead, those destined for the netherworld, a place lost to her, and he would take them there. Not a difficult task. Why, then, did he screw it up every time?
A fury’s aggressive personality made time spent in the company of sinners about as much fun as a visit to the proctologist.
These reprobates provoked her in ways they always regretted. Kass longed to torment criminals, especially the dead ones. However, in the last hundred years or so she’d forced herself to garner some semblance of control. Without the protection of Erebus, home of the Furies, unrestrained vengeance could cause her all kinds of trouble. Torture and murder were frowned upon here topside, and if she was caught and sentenced to death how did she explain her immunity to all forms of capital punishment?
Now, she could, for short amounts of time, retrieve the newly dead, those not bound for the Elysian Fields, and deliver them to Kreios—the ass—without going postal. If, of course, he bothered to show up.
Kass sensed her composure wearing thin as the calm leaked away and the rage seeped in.
Behind her dead sinner guy spoke.
“Hey!”
She never asked their names.
“Yo, honey, back here.”
She didn’t want to know anything about them. These people did despicable things and rarely paid for their crimes—at least while they lived. Their afterlife, though, would be rife with anguish and beautiful cruelty…
“What the hell is going on?”
She didn’t want to personalize them.
Her composed demeanor slipped further from her grasp. The wrath reached for her, skittering up her spine. If only this guy would stop talking…
“Bitch, I’m talking to you.”
Gah, whipping around to face him she hollered, “SHUT UP.”
The wide eyes and the ashen color on his dead face spoke volumes. No longer did he see a plain young woman.
To the dead, she looked like a fiery demon and a hungry one at that—an apt assessment considering her soul-deep hunger. Hell, ravenous would better describe her need.
In a lightning-fast move Kass got nose to, yuck, open mouth with the dead guy “Listen up, worm food, I would strongly encourage you to close your sinning mouth and give me some peace or I will make you beg to suffer the burning agony of your recent gut wound once more.”
Dead Guy promptly snapped his mouth closed and nodded appropriately.
Beside them stood an old woman with a small girl peeking out from behind her skirt. Both gaped at her like she had recently escaped from the booby hatch. Of course, to be fair that’s probably exactly how she appeared. To the living, she would seem to be talking to an “invisible” person.
“All right, move along,” she said, “Crazy lady is done, next show starts in five, tell your friends.”
As the old crone clutched the little girl and ran, Kass heard a deep baritone voice say, “Boy, Grandma sure can move.”
Kass turned on her heel, looked at the incredible man standing before her and said, “Kreios, you son of a…”
~~~
Keep warm and have a wonderful weekend!
Serena
