REAPER - Chapter 1 (of 3)

  Sophie’s hair was pink and black, blowing unkempt around her face with the cold chill of the evening air as trucks sped past on the road behind her. She wore a very little black dress and leather boots with black and white striped stockings, leaning over the railing, the street below was pretty much empty, just still palm trees lined the quiet road; she leant there with a piece of paper in one hand, and wrote on it with a black pencil in her other. A tear rolled down her cheek and she sniffed, she wiped her nose with her writing hand, and finished the note:

  Mom, its not ur fault. I’m sorry, I know u want me to try again, but I can’t. Every time I go thru hell but, we just end up back here again. I’m making us both miserabel, and you don’t deserve wat I put you thru. This way u can make it on ur own. Maybe I can be with god now? I love u, mom
 

- Sophie

  Sophie folded the note around the pencil, then picked up the pink satchel at her feet. She put the note in it, then looked over the railing. The streetlight beside her wasn’t lit, and the dark street below scared her a little, but she looked left and right, saw no one around, then lifted up her leg and slipped over the railing. she managed to find her footing on the other side, and turned to hold onto the railing, none of the cars on the bridge could see her thanks to the dark streetlight and her black dress. She scrunched her eyes tight and after five seconds, she let go.
  Something grabbed onto her wrist and pulled back. Sophie’s eyes snapped open with shock and one of her feet slipped off the ledge, but her arm was being held tight. She looked at her wrist, it seemed to be stretched out, reaching into the empty air in front of her, and she couldn’t see what was holding onto her. She could smell the acrid stench of accumulated exhaust, could feel the cold and the wind and could hear the rustling palm trees below her and the sound of running shoes pounding pavement, but she couldn’t see what was holding her hand.
  “Wait!” called out a voice, and a teenaged boy wearing a grey hoodie poked his head out over the railing, and held a hand out to reach for her. “Come on, I’ve got you.”
  “What are you doing?” asked Sophie. She looked below her, and felt dizzy as she saw speeding cars. It was then she could feel a warm hand on her wrist.
  “I’m here to help you. Come on, don’t look down, look at me, grab my other hand,” said the boy. Sophie could hear a Spanish lilt to his voice. She shook her head, fresh tears streaming down her face.
  “No, let me go,” she said, her voice breaking with the tears as she spoke.
  “Hey, look at me. Look at my eyes.” said the boy. Sophie did, and she saw stern, brown eyes on a thin face. “Right now, you’re alive, and as long as you are I can help you. I know you think the other side is better than this, but believe me it isn’t. Just give me your hand, come here, and we’ll talk. Okay?”
  Sophie hesitated before reaching out her other arm, and the boy grabbed it as well, then repositioned his other hand around her to steady her.
  “There we go... alright, we just have to get you over the other side, now,” said the boy.
  “I’m sorry,” says the girl, frowning deeply.
  “No, there’s nothing to be sorry about. I understand. Here, just, lift your leg over.”
  “Why did you come and help me?” asks Sophie.
  “Because you looked like you needed help,” said the boy.
  “You don’t even know who I am,” she says. “What I’ve been through... why I want to kill myself.”
  “Alright, then, what’s your name?”
  “Sophie.”
  “Alright, Sophie, good to meet you,” says the boy with a smile. “I’m Jasper. Do you like ice-cream? Chocolate?”
  “Yeah...”
  “There, see, that’s worth living for. And anyone that likes chocolate is worth saving. Come on, I’ll help you get over the railing.”
  Sophie stared at the boy, more confused than anything else.
  “But why are you helping me? Who are you?”
  “I’m Jasper,” he says. “And I know what it’s like to be this close to death, so I want to help. Come over here and I’ll tell you all about it.”
  “Okay...” she says, nodding. Sophie puts both of her hands on the railing and lifts her leg.
  “Do you need a hand?” asks Jasper, grabbing her upper arm, his fingers grasping onto the sleeve of her black dress.
  “I can hop over, just don’t let go,” she says.
  She places her foot on the railing and lifts her other leg, but suddenly tips backwards.
  “Woah, NO!” screams Jasper, he grasps tight, but the lacy sleeve rips straight off the dress. “NO!!”
  Sophie falls and watches the bridge fly away from her as she collides with the road, spine-first.
  The pain lasts for a second, then disappears and she sees blackness. As she lies on the ground, she can still hear the cars above her, now much quieter from this angle, everything was black. She can hear the boy yelling and hears the sound of screeching tires as a car slams on its brakes. She lifts up her head, and the blackness disappears, she sees headlights. The car door opens and a man wearing a tie gets out, he looks horrified. He starts dialling his mobile.
  “I thought this would hurt more,” Sophie mutters to herself.
  “Don’t move,” says a voice. Sophie turns to her left to see a girl, but the girl, seems to be made of softly, glowing smoke. “I’m sorry that we dropped you, I thought we got lucky when I caught you the first time.”
  “Sophie!” a voice calls. Sophie turns to see the boy, Jasper, running down a set of steps from the overpass.
  “What’s going on?” says Sophie, pushing herself up off the ground.
  “I said, don’t move!” says the girl, kneeling down. “If you want to live, you have to stay there. I’ve seen him push it back in, before. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
  Jasper quickly looks both ways before running into the street.
  “Are you calling an ambulance?” Jasper asks the businessman. The guy nods and Jasper runs to kneel beside Sophie.
  “Is she alright,” Jasper says, looking at the smoke girl.
  “I told her not to move, you have to act quickly.”
  “Okay,” says Jasper, looking down. “Good grief... your body’s in a state, this is going to hurt when you wake up. But...”
  “What’s happening? Who is she?” asks Sophie. But she looks at the see-through girl, sees the man calling the ambulance. And it dawns on her that she stopped breathing forty seconds ago Sophie looks down to see that her torso is ghostly pale; and through it she could see her limp body, but her legs were still solid as her see-through form seemed to mould into the solid one. “Am I dead?”
  “Not if I can help it,” says Jasper. Gritting his teeth and rolling up the sleeve on his right hand, he places a hand on her chest and pushes her back down. As she lies back, she feels a pain in her spine, and her legs and her head. She shrieks and tries to sit up.
  “What are you doing?!”
  “I’m sorry...” says Jasper, “But pain is a good thing, it means you’re alive.”
  Jasper gives her a shove and instantly, the blackness comes back.
  Sophie opens her eyes and gasps for breath. The pain slams into her like a truck. Her spine ached, her feet felt cold like solid ice, but her legs were screaming hot. And she wanted to cry, but she felt dizzy with a throbbing headache like her brain was going to explode. She tried to scream, and barely managed a gargle. Sophie looked around, the ghost girl was gone, she was back. Jasper was still kneeling over her, as she stares up at the night sky, almost mockingly the streetlight on the walkway above becomes illuminated.
  “There we go, relax... just relax,” says Jasper. “The ambulance is coming soon.”
  It was then that Sophie lost consciousness.

#

  The paramedics carefully picked up Sophie from the road and packed her into the ambulance, and sped off for the hospital, lights and sirens blaring. The other witness had already driven off home.
  “That could have gone better, but I think we did good,” said Rosa, her ghostly form passing through a street sign as she moved to stand beside Jasper.
  “She’s alive, but she’ll be in a lot of pain. It looks like she cracked her skull...” said Jasper, watching the ambulance disappear off in the distance.
  “Well, we couldn’t just let her die, could we?”
  “I dunno... I mean, you don’t look miserable. Is it really so bad?”
  “I’m not miserable because I have you,” said Rosa, she grabbed his arm with her hand, closing her eyes and concentrating to make herself tangible. “I’m making the best of a bad situation. If I had the choice, I’d want to be alive again.”
  Jasper nodded and turned back to the stairs leading to the bridge.
  “Well, Sophie makes two now.”
  “Two what?”
  “Victims,” says Jasper. “Surely you remember Lisa, she was attacked around the Casa Boa apartments a week ago, that’s more than just a coincidence.”
  “She was attacked by a gang member, it’s not like the two are connected.”
  “No, I don’t believe that,” said Jasper as he started up the steps. “Lisa lived in Casa Boa, and that’s where I first saw Sophie. There’s something going on in those apartments.”
  “Lisa was attacked because the Santeros hang around there.”
  “No, this is more than gang crime. It’s more insidious than that. Those guys are thugs, but they aren’t known for attacking women, but now there’s two? There’s something more here.”
  “What makes you so sure?” asks Rosa. Jasper stops at the top of the stairs and turns to look into her ethereal eyes.
  “Because that’s what lead us here in the first place. I told you that I had a bad feeling when I saw that girl; it’s because when I saw Sophie, walking down South-West Third, she looked distant and uncomfortable. I didn’t know she was suicidal, but I knew something was up... because she reminded me of Lisa. We got really lucky finding Sophie before she jumped.”
  “So, you want to go snooping around in Santero territory? Based on a hunch?”
  “No, I want to stop innocent girls from getting hurt and killed.”
  “But if you’re right, then to do that we need to head into a gang’s turf.”
  “Yeah... yeah, we will,” said Jasper. “But that’s why it’s a good thing that my girlfriend can walk through walls...”