Nereza
Legacy Name: Nereza

My name is Nereza.

I've learned much over the many years I've muddled through this dreary and tireless existence; some I've learned through my own experience, other knowledge I leeched from my various victims, but in the beginning, this was one of the few things I knew: I am Nereza.

It was all I had. One single word that encompassed the entirety of my being. I am not aware that I had any form, though I suppose to a creature such as you, I may have appeared as an orb of light. A specter, something right out of one those fantasy novels you humans seem so fond of. I had no past I could recall. My mind held only random, fleeting flashes of jumbled colors, blurred together in a hazy mash of something that may have, at one time, been memory. They held no interest for me.

The present itself was empty and gray, no more than a vast expanse of nothingness, and even less relevant than my incomprehensible past. I was not touched by the present, nor by the passage of time, nor by any concept of the future. This simple, inexplicable version of me had little understanding of such things. I simply... was.

I was a clean slate, free in a way humans can only dream of. I was not bound by morals, weighed down by emotions, or laden with the burden of a guilty past. I was pure, instinctual, with only the humble power of a name to separate me from the blanket of gray swirling around me.

Who are you...?

Nereza...

~~

It wasn't until I met her that everything changed. Katie. Poor little Katie. She was a hand-me-down child; she had been tossed about from one relative to another for most of her life. None of them really wanted her. She managed to stay out of the orphanage for the majority of her childhood, but only by the skin of her teeth, and the widow Muriel's good graces.

Muriel... The thought of her still twists my insides. Even now, I can only regard the ragged creature with a mixture of loathing and pity. She was a gangling ghost of a woman, with sickly yellow skin that scarcely clung to her bones, a voice that snarled rather than spoke, and six sons that more resembled a pack of wild dogs than human children. Katie was living here, with these damned creatures, when I found her. Or, rather, when she found me.

Looking at her, you wouldn't have known there was anything special about her. She was a freckle-faced child, with wild masses of amber curls, muddy brown eyes, and a nose that was a bit too large for her narrow face. But I knew she was special from the moment I heard her tiny voice. I listened to her soft sobs echo across my gray plane, and for the first time, I was touched.

"Mommy... where are you? I want you to come back. Please, Mommy, I miss you. An-and... I hate it here. Mommy...?"

I felt myself drift towards that voice. It pulled me out of the darkness with all the weight of an anchor, like a magnet tugging on steel. I didn't fight it, and, at that point, I don't believe I could have. I was nothing more than insubstantial wisps, while Katie was... well, to this day I'm not quite sure what Katie was. I've met only few like her. She ran on a different frequency. Even as a child, she was more in touch with the supernatural. Had she been born in today's world, she might have been a spiritual leader, perhaps even part of the occult, though I would have hated to see her waste her talents on that lot of fools.

Whatever she was, she held power over me. The influence in her voice, as it tugged and echoed through my core, could not be denied.

I knew when I crossed the line between planes, because the colors blinded me. Even the dirty browns and dull yellows of Katie's makeshift room were horribly disorienting. Everything seemed to spin. Edges blurred. Colors swirled together like a twisted nightmare. The smells, too, were overwhelming. But it was the small child, huddled like a wounded mouse upon the floor, and the familiar sound of her sobs, that held my attention.

"Are you my mommy?"

Such a simple question, and yet, I found myself befuddled by it. With a tilt of her head, Katie turned her watery gaze upon me, sniffling as I gripped through the veil of haze clouding my mind, searching for an answer to give her.

I don't think so...

The girl's lip quivered, and tears threatened to spring anew. For a moment, there was silence between us, as Katie struggled with emotions I did not understand.

"Do you know where she is?"

This, too, gave me pause. I considered, thinking back through my time in the gray and even further, into the blurred images that formed me, probing for the faintest hint of a creature that might resemble this child's mother. My recollections were fuzzy and wild, like a badly knitted quilt, with not even a common thread to bind them into coherency. There was no sense to be found there, and certainly nothing plausible or... solid enough... to be dubbed Katie's mother.

No...

The girl sniffed. "Then... are you an angel?"

I don't know...

Her gaze flickered up and down, studying me, as I floated before her. "You know, you kinda look like one."

Do I...? I pondered, confused, even concerned, by this new possibility. Was I really an... angel? I didn't feel like one. In fact, I felt very little. There was pity, for this forlorn child I barely knew, and a sense of bafflement, but they were no more than tiny droplets of emotion floating in a vast sea of stoicism. I mostly felt... nothing. Was my natural, albeit minute, sense of sympathy, and my lack of ill intent, really enough to constitute being called an... angel?

I don't feel like an angel...

Katie's shoulders slumped, and I stumbled back over our conversation, wondering if perhaps I had said something wrong. She looked crestfallen, as if our meeting had brought her nothing she desired. Her sadness was strangely diminishing, and I waited for her to send me away, back into my colorless existence amongst the gray.

She should have.

Instead, she hopped to her feet with sudden vigor. I gazed after her as she pattered away from me, rummaged in the depths of a shadowed corner. When she returned, there was a frayed doll cuddled tenderly in her arms, and the timid stirrings of a smile tugged at her lips.

"Do you... want to play with me?" She gestured to the doll. "Her name is Sally."

Play...?

"Yeah, play. See?" Katie twirled in a quick circle, a miniature tornado of rags and dust, with the doll in her outstretched arms. "Sally likes to dance."

Thus, my first lesson in dancing came about, as well as my first tea party, and first dress recital. We drank from pearly white cups that clinked just so when they touched, and adorned ourselves in the finest of satin dresses. All imaginary, of course. It was a confusing experience for me, but not one that I found particularly distasteful. Katie's happiness was infectious. When she smiled, the simple innocence of her joy outshone our dreary surroundings, and we were beautiful, for nothing more than her presence.

I felt... lighter... when she was smiling. She grinned up at me as she offered Sally another glass of tea.

"What's your name?"

My name...? I was faintly pleased. Finally, a question I could answer easily! My name is Nereza.

Little dimples formed in her cheeks as she giggled. "Ner-EE-zah. Nereza. That's a funny name!"

Is it...?

"Well, I've never heard it before!" Her laughter was pristine, like the quiet tinkering of bells, but the sound of it was suddenly cut short, and her dimples were replaced by an unsure frown. She twirled a lock of frizzy hair about her finger, as if she was worried her laughter had offended me. "It's really pretty though," she offered. "My name is Katie."

Is that a good name?

I never heard her answer, for at that moment, Muriel's voice beckoned from some distant corner of the house, sounding not unlike the cawing of an angry crow. "Katie! KATIE! Come here!"

"I have to go," Katie squeaked, and the pastel world of dreams we had created vanished like smoke in the wind. She seemed to ache for its passing almost as much as I. "Will you... come back and play with me tomorrow, Nereza?"

I don't know if I can.

"Auntie and the boys... They never play with me." She looked down at the doll clenched tightly in her hands. "Will you try to come back? Sally... She really likes you."

I'll try. You should... call for me.

"Okay, I will," she promised as she turned her sad back on me, and I began to fade into wisps. "I'll see you tomorrow."

~~

I could finally feel it... The anger I had been holding onto for so long.

Imaginary...

It had sat inside me like a weight, always there, in the pit of my stomach. Holding me down, holding me back.

Just imaginary... Just... nothing.

I let it go. I made no effort to stop it. I let it surge through me, unfettered, a fiery inferno of strength and rage. I felt it as it coursed through my veins, searing me, changing me. I didn't care. I was changing. I had changed. I was no longer Katie's little guardian angel. I was a monster, a child made of razor sharp teeth and butchered wings. I was a force of nature. The gray could no longer hold me. I clawed my way through it, ripped it apart with savage pleasure. A crimson moon hung in the starry sky, bathing the mortal plane in scarlet light, the color of my wondrous fury. How fitting.

I would go to Katie. Go to her, show that I was real, and that I loved her.

I loved her, and she left me! She left me! All alone in the gray, forever! Alone! How could she leave me alone?!

My little hands twisted like talons, quivered in the violent light. I didn't need her to call me anymore. I knew I could touch her. My anger was power, and it was red, like everything else.

It was more than anger. It was wrath.

She left me, she left me, SHE LEFT ME!

~~

"You killed her. You killed Katie."

The sound of your voice drags me back to the present. There is a whole new brand of horror etched in your features, and my face splits into a grin as I eye you with black eyes. "Yes. On the night of the red moon, I went to her. I killed her, and she became part of me. As she always was."

"What are you?"

"I’ve entertained many possibilities. An angel, fallen from grace, as they say. Or a demon. I've certainly killed enough to be considered a demon," I shrug. "Or perhaps I really was Katie’s imaginary friend. A figment born from the mind of a peculiar, lonely girl with a strange power, who desired nothing more than to see an angel."

"I leave such decisions to you. I no longer waste my time on trivial matters. I am what I am, and can be no more or less."

"You are disgusted by me. Good. Do you hate me? You should. But know this: all that I am, everything I've done, can be laid at Katie's feet. I am what she made me, when she abandoned me, and everything else that made her special."

LOOK WHAT SHE MADE ME!

"Then what about the others? Why kill all the others, if everything is Katie's fault?"

"Those I kill... they become a part of me. Their knowledge, their memories... are always with me, and they make me... more solid. More real."

And they can never leave me, like she left me...

"So, what are you going to do now, Nereza?"

...

"A scythe? Seriously?"

"Typical of the grim reaper, and I've guided many people to their deaths. I assume it will suffice for me."

...

"Oh, come on! Why do you think I spent all this time explaining everything? You know as much about me as anyone, and you still understand nothing!"

...

Don't you know me, yet? Don't you know... exactly what I came to you for? Crimson moonlight licks the glittering edge of my scythe, and you cringe, frightened and unsure. I think the more appropriate question is... what are you going to do?

Gather your courage!
Take the scythe.

You're not going to take this. No. No, no, no. You're not going to be eaten by some psychopathic, crazy demon-kid... thing.

Enough of this.
Run away.