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From: The Storyteller
Date: 28 Nov 1999
Time: 12:29:21
Night had fallen over the dark city, and the fluorescent panorama of skinlands Dallas was an invisible contrast to the cryogenically colorless light that fell over the shadowed world of the dead. The streets were filled with the angry and the drunk, and the sirens howled their spectral screams through the darkness of the shadowlands as well. All was as it always were.
But on this night, a shadowy figure walked with a regal poise through the ephemeral darkness. The mortals on the screaming streets paid it no heed, as it was a part of the twilight world they would all reach in death, the realm they could only dream tortured dreams of until their time came. It was swathed in black, snaking robes that seemed to writhe around him as he walked. The blackness concealed his face as well as whatever limbs protruded from his body, the only visible thing apart from the robes being the bent, gleaming scythe that it held as to balance its walking weight.
Crossing a particular street, the cowled figure seemed to take a step up, into the empty air. Like ascending an invisible staircase, he rose above the clamor of the cars in the street below, and crept with soft steps up to a window on one of the higher floors of the white building. Reaching the window, the figure glided smoothly through the thick stone wall and into the space beyond. The room was utterly dark, but the single large bed and clothing cupboards revealed it to be the bedroom of a stylish apartment. The sheets on the bed were silken and deadly white, and beneath them lay Leila's peacefully sleeping form. She turned around from her side onto her back, a sudden blast of cold, dusty air having followed the alien form into this her sanctuary. The black shape sat down on the edge of the bed, not weighing it down even the slightest, and let the scythe rest against the palely colored bedroom wall. A white, wrinkled hand appeared from beneath the robes, and it motioned to stroke the pillow in a circle around her head. The scene was silent like the grave, until a church bell tolled once, letting its mournful peal echo through the streets and over Leila’s sleeping brow.