Dead & Gone

2

The girl fled across the desert.

She had bloodstains on her hands and on her clothes. She was certain that those stains were on her heart as well. On her soul.

As she ran, the girl prayed that they would not find her, that they would stop looking.

But they would never stop looking. Never.

Not as long as her mother wanted her dead.

Somewhere, out beyond the heat shimmers that hovered over the sandy horizon, killers were tracking her. Reapers of her mother’s Night Church.

They would never stop because they believed — truly believed — that tracking her down was their holy purpose. She was the sinner, the pariah. The monster that they hunted in order to rid the world of a dreadful impurity.

The reapers.

With knives and axes and bladed farm tools they hunted her.

Wanting to find her. Craving her death.

And so many of them were her friends.

From them, and from who she had once been, the girl tried to hide herself in the vastness of a cruel desert.