To settle the score right here, right now, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear: I hate poetry. Perhaps it’s a personal thing, as I am a lousy poet. Some things in this world can only be described by people with a modicum more command over the English language than I. Colors to the blind, music to the deaf – things like that.

Floating weightlessly is a unique feeling - especially when one has no body to accompany it.

“Just get it over with.”

Isaac sighed lightly, and looked down at his ‘patient,’ with a narrow look of concern. “I do not understand why you insist on being conscious for this.”

“Because it’s my arm,” was the strained response.

“That is precisely why I would think you would prefer to be unconscious,” Isaac couldn’t help but smirk slightly at the humor in the situation. Well, humor by his standards, certainly. He cinched the tourniquet tighter around his employee’s upper arm and picked up the surgical saw. The sound of the blade sliding across the metal tray brought back memories – none pleasant. The pungent odor of the sterilizer didn’t aid at all in keeping his mind on the moment at hand. Other matters for other times, he supposed. He turned his attention back to the man lying recumbent on the metal table – it had been a great many years since he had played the doctor, and it would take his focus to do this correctly. “You are positive you do not wish to be more heavily sedated.”

“Somebody has to be awake to install the wires…”

“With the amount of pain medication you are currently under, do you honestly believe that you will be successful?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?! Have you ever done this before? I certainly haven’t!”

“A fair statement.”

“Just do it.”

Isaac placed the saw to the man’s flesh, and paused, giving the younger man another chance to change his mind. With a resolute stare being his only response, he sighed again. “I am sorry… truly sorry, my friend.”

“Don’t apologize, just do it.”

And with that, blade bit into flesh, and the screams began.

There is a perfect stillness that comes with the darkness of winter. Nothing seems to move for fear of breaking the thin veil between the silence and the noise - between life, and death. The snow on the ground turns a gaunt blue in the pallor of the moonlight. The ice crystals frozen in that top layer glitter back the stars and there seem to be only shades of blue in the color pallet of the world. The trees, blacker than the night sky, cut jagged shapes out of the freezing air and ground just the same.

You could almost join in the lifelessness if you held your breath. That cold, peaceful, motionless nothingness that hung in the air like a palpable force. For just a second, you could almost share in the feeling before the beating of your heart broke that almost otherworldly stillness.

She didn’t exactly have that problem.

She didn’t exactly have a heartbeat.

For her, it was far too easy to feel that perfect stillness. Sometimes, she would hum a tune or whistle - something - anything - to avoid the frozen world. Tonight, it just felt wrong. So, there she sat atop the carved stone that juts up from the frozen ground, she had nothing else to do but take in her surroundings. It seemed even the wind had died in its tracks - afraid to pop the bubble of nothingness that took over the moment.

I wonder if this is what it’s like being in space. Except with more stuff. She thought to herself.

Stones - black against the sparking white and blue snow - stood amongst the trees like so many chessmen. Winter, death, cemeteries, they had so very much in common. They were silent, cold, uninviting, and absolutely perfectly still.

Suddenly, this particular graveyard had about two out of four.

“Boss, I swear, she won’t stop kicking me in the shin, and if she does it one more time, I’m gonna - ow, you little!” Victor snarled into the face of the blonde girl he dragged behind her. She had the same ridiculous pattern. Tug, tug, kick - tug, tug, kick - he was getting used to it until she decided to break up the pattern with a sharp jab to his calf. It didn’t really hurt him, mind you - but it was getting really damn annoying.

“Victor, be silent.”

“But, boss, it’s-“

“I could arrange it very easily for you to take her place.”

Victor let out a puff of air, which, unlike the others, did not turn to steam in the freezing air. “Fine,” he grumped and continued to drag the woman along behind him. “Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it,” he finished under his breath.

Four men trudged a path through the ankle-deep snow. Crunching their feet loudly through the top layer of frozen ice, they cut a path through the winding stones and trees as they moved deeper away from the streetlights that dotted the road.

Correction: four men and the previously noted woman, although it was obvious that the woman in question had no desire to be present. Hands bound behind her back and a piece of duct-tape carelessly slapped over her mouth, she was being yanked along by the man in the back of the small group. Despite her best efforts, he had no difficulty pulling her along.

The woman dug her heels in abruptly, wrenching backwards and kicking violently at the man who had her upper arm in his grip. With one loud growl of frustration, Victor roughly jerked the woman around and gripped her by her upper arms. Using his height to his advantage, he loomed over her and flashed a perfectly charming, bright white smile. The only thing debatably marring the smile was a set of pointed, dangerous fangs.

“Okie-dokie, sweetheart. No, really, kick me one more time an’ I’ll have to make this much, much worse on you.” He cheerily rolled the last few words out slowly and blew a strand of his highly-styled blond hair out of his eye. Pointedly flashing his fangs again, he finished with a chipper, “Kay?”

The woman only squealed behind the tape.

“Yes? Great! I’m glad you see things my way,” he said with another charming smile.

“Will you please stop stalling?”

“Yes, boss,” Victor said begrudgingly. He had the tone of voice one gets only when you’ve said something many times before, and are likely to say the same thing many times again.

The four men gathered around a table-top tomb, the blond - Victor - dumping the young woman unceremoniously atop it. He began to whistle idly as he started to lash the girl to the tomb’s marble legs with some rope he fished out of his well-worn black leather coat. The man standing at the girl’s head - the ‘Boss’ - removed his thin framed rectangular glasses from his nose and pinched its bridge in exasperation.

Victor stopped whistling and paused in lashing the woman to the stone to look up as the latter replaced his glasses. “What?”

“Never mind.”

Isaac stood and watched as his ‘employees’ moved to stand around the table-top tomb. The woman tied on her back to the cold stone was frantically thrashing, and he all but ignored her. Reaching into the inside pocket if his long, dark grey wool coat, he pulled out a simple ivory-handled pocket-knife. Giving it a clean and practiced flick, his attention shifted to the girl. His expression remained detached as she began to scream through the tape with renewed determination.

One man - standing easily head and shoulders over the rest, and nearly twice as broad - snorted then ran his hand back and forth over his bald head. He eyed the blade incredulously. “What, no curvy blade or something’? No candles or-“ The man paused as the girl screamed louder, muffled through the tape. “-or chanting? Just a pocket knife?”

Taking the kind of tone one takes when trying to explain something to a chid, Isaac turned his attention from the girl on the slab to the behemoth across from him. “Mal, we’ve been over this. It is quite simply all about the will involved. The tools are immaterial. The power is what gets the job done.”

“Mmmff!” screamed the girl.

If the huge man picked up on Isaac’s tone, it seemed not to bother him. “Oh. Still, one of those… squiggly-like, curvy blades woulda looked cooler, ya think?”

“Kris.”

“Who?”

“Mmmf!”

A pause. “It’s called a kris. The blade to which you are referring,” Isaac replied dryly. He prided himself on his control over his outward emotions, but his grasp on his temper was becoming tenuous at best.

“Oh. Right. I’ll shut up now.” Mal cupped his massive hands in front of his mouth and blew into them in an attempt to keep them warm.

“Mmmmph!”

“That’ll last,” Victor sneered up at the bigger man. Mal growled at him angrily, and Victor’s sneer quickly turned into a yelp as Mal gripped him by the front of his white button-down shirt. The bigger man’s fist dug into the silk as he hefted the smaller blond vampire off of his feet.

“Listen to me ya scrawny, frilly-shirt-wearing, prissy little smart ass, I’m gonna break yer sorry little neck if you don’t-”

“Quiiiiiiiiiiiiet!” croaked the fourth man. He rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, snuffling through a clearly congested nose. “You’ll make them angry. They get angry really really easy. You don’t want them angry. And besides, then you won’t be able to kill the piano king. Cheater uses too many hands. It’s no fun if you cheat,” the man let out a frantic giggle and looked down at a large jar that he held under one arm with a fierce protectiveness. “Isn’t that right?”

“Oh, look, great, you’ve got Ezekiel going on again. Good. Good job there Mal,” Victor grumbled as he pushed away from the bigger man. Dropping down hard onto his feet, he took a small step to catch himself. He muttered to himself quietly, lamenting his constant mistreatment as he attempted to fix his carefully arranged hair and straighten his clothes.

“Mmmmmf!”

“Yeah, well, if your face didn’t so desperately need a pounding, maybe he never would have started goin’ in the first place!” Mal cracked his knuckles against the palm of his other hand, glaring down at Victor.

“Silence. Please.” With only a simple shift of his tone, it was clear that Isaac was done with the show in front of him. The other men fell silent obediently, knowing better than to test him. Isaac adjusted his thin-framed glasses back up his nose with the push of his ring finger. “Let’s just get on with this.” He held the knife over the struggling girl, then raised the blade up to the sky.

“Isn’t it just a titch late to be playing ‘sacrifice the virgin’?” piped a rather cheery female voice from behind him.

Isaac nearly dropped his knife in shock as he whirled around to find the source of the interruption. He opened his mouth to speak, but simply shut it again, finding no words. Whatever he had been expecting, what faced him was not it.

A twenty-something young woman sat on the top of a tombstone behind him, grinning mischievously. A section of bangs from her shoulder-length, unruly dark blue hair hung in front of her face. Blowing it out of the way, she began to talk through a snicker. “I mean, really. It’s what, three am? Your parents are probably all worried sick about you.”

“Jack and Jill went up the hill… and… then Jack went stabby-stabby-stabby-stabby-“ Ezekiel began to croak. Victor grabbed hold of him and covered the chubby little man’s mouth, pointing down at him to shush him. Ezekiel whimpered once and went quiet. He looked down at the jar and petted the side of it almost feverishly.

“Shit girl, aren’t you cold?! I’m freezing my ‘nads off, and at least I’ve got a goddamn coat.” Mal wrinkled his nose a bit as he thought about it. “An’ come to think of it, you got a fuggin’ death wish, coming up on us like this?”

Isaac, frustrated that Mal found his tongue first, took the moment to settle himself. After a long and measured breath, he turned his attention to the girl in front of him. “He has made a rather apt point, child. You should not be here.” Isaac lifted the knife slowly and twirled it between his fingers, letting the steel flash in the moonlight. He clicked it shut with a small, practiced flick of his wrist.

“Neither should you, so, there you go,” she replied, clearly incredibly amused with what was going on in front of her. “I think it’s illegal to be in graveyards after dark, or something.”

“What we are doing here is of no concern to you. It is in your best interest to leave,” Isaac said, his deep voice taking on a dangerous tone. Isaac was a patient man, but there were limits to everything in this world.

His threatening tone had no effect on her. “Why, so you can go back to cutting up the chick for - what reason again?” Narrowing a heavily-lined eye at the men in front of her, the girl hopped off of the stone. Her knee-high black boots barely made an impression in the icy crust. That was odd. Isaac narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as began to put together what was happening in front of him. His train of thought was cut short as she suddenly snapped fingers excitedly and stepped towards them. “Oooh, I get it! I get what you’re all doing!”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“You really are playing sacrifice the virgin, you sickos. Here I thought I just walked in on some weird-ass amateur porn movie. You’re going to slice her up to - what - summon demons or something? You guys some sort of weird… cult thing?” The girl cracked a laugh at the prospect. “Nice vest, by the way. Good job. Goes well with the coat. I mean, nobody really sports the three-piece-casual-suit-thing anymore.”

That was about all Isaac could take. His frustration began to leak into anger. Patiently crunching through the snow toward her with measured steps, he spoke just as slowly. “Propose we are. Propose we are standing here in this graveyard to ‘summon demons,’ as you put it. Here we are, four dangerous men, ready, able, and willing to kill… and you, a single, misguided goth girl-”

“Ooh, she’s gone and done it… she’s made him mad,” Victor whispered up to Mal. If Isaac heard, he didn’t react.

“-Find it wise to simply walk up and interrupt us? Do you truly have, as Mal noted, a ‘death wish’?” Isaac stopped, standing just barely in front of her. Her sardonic smile remained unfazed as she looked up at him.

If what he was saying was supposed to scare her, it was clearly doing little good. “Death wish.” The girl laughed hard, and then let out a wistful sigh. “That’s funny. Look -“ she shrugged “- that’s charming and all. I’m really scared. I promise I am. No, really, you’re freaky, I get it.” All humor faded from her face. “But you really oughta take your chick and go home. Cut her up somewhere else if you’ve got to, but not here.”

Isaac laughed. The unsettling noise rang out through the cemetery, breaking the silence in the yard like glass. Finally, he was making progress. If for any other reason than the girl had just given herself away, his frustration lessened. “You mean to tell me what to do? I haven’t had a good laugh in a long time. Thank you, child.” The dark-haired man smiled with a thin twist to his lips.

“Seriously, just go somewhere else. I don’t care if you kill her or not. Just not here,” the girl said again. The imposing man in front of her was starting to make her nervous, and it was creeping into her voice.

“And what gives you the power to tell me what to do?” Isaac said calmly, his grey eyes staring into her blue ones. “What stops me from simply breaking your spine?” His hand snapped forward suddenly to grasp her around the neck.

She pulled back sharply. “Hey! Now… no, don’t go doing that. It’s not a smart idea.”

“Oh?” He wondered if his knowledge of the situation reflected on his face. He doubted it.

“I’m warning you.” The girl did her best to sound firm, although the effort was wasted.

Any remaining humor faded from Isaac’s eyes. “You have annoyed me for the last time.” Moving to grab her, Isaac watched as his hand passed straight through her body. She seemed to swirl around like disturbed incense smoke, only to reform around him, despite his hand having absolutely no business being there.

The girl shrugged.

“Told you so.” Stepping forward, she suddenly passed straight through him, re-emerging on the other side like he was simply not there. He clenched his fists to keep from convulsing as a feeling like static electricity crawled up his spine.

She walked towards the group with her back to Isaac and waved her hand a bit dismissively as she approached the other men. They all took a quick step backwards, staring at her wide-eyed and in various stages of shock.

“What-” Mal began, wide-eyed.

“Am I?” The girl didn’t even bother to look at Isaac as she interrupted him. “See, I can’t have a death wish. On… account of the fact that, well, I’m already dead.” She snorted at her bad joke. “Man, that was corny. Ba-da-bum, ha-cha-cha. Oooh, I’m so clever it hurts.”

“You’re… dead? Like really dead-dead?” Victor had horror clearly written across his face.

“Yep. Dead-diddly-ead.” The girl stepped through the table - and the blonde still tied to it - to come out on the other side in front of Victor. He screamed and staggered backwards as he suddenly lost his balance and fell. Tripping over one stone, his head bounced off of the marble of another marker. He let out a long groan of pain and gripped his head in both hands.

The blue-haired girl turned towards Isaac. “You should probably get some friends who’re a little less… jumpy.”

Isaac had gone terribly still, staring at her with a sort of removed fascination. He began to walk towards her again, taking his time. The girl ran her hands through her unruly hair, watching him approach. She did her best to ignore the weird look on his face. “So, really, take the girl and go,” she finished. Her realization that whatever power she may have had was indeed worth little, registered clearly on her face.

Isaac slowly walked around the table. His sharp grey eyes were staring at her like he was taking stock of her, thoughts attached to some obscure line of reasoning no one else could track. “You are an unusual creature.”

“Em… thank you?”

“We did not come here to raise demons, child.”

“Man, I really did just spoil the hottest porn movie ever, didn’t I?” She grinned wide, unable to help herself. Mal started to laugh loudly, but, at a sharp glare from Isaac, he did his best to cut it short and turned away to hide his laughing.

Isaac shut his eyes for a moment and let that one pass before opening his eyes again. “We came here to raise spirits.” He took a step forward and closed the distance between them. Lifting his hand, he let a silver necklace dangle from his fingers. Hanging from it was a shining onyx stone the size of a half-dollar, clasped in a strange, decorative, cage-like casing.

“Oh.” She took a step back. The look on her face was that of someone who thought she had the best hand at the table, only to discover someone else had smuggled in other cards. “What… for?”

Without answering, Isaac thrust the pendant into the young woman, the stone flashed, and suddenly let out an explosion of bluish-green light that illuminated the graveyard. The other men turned their faces away from the sudden blinding light, but just as soon as it had come, the light vanished - only a dull glow remained in the stone until that, too, faded. The blue-haired ghost was gone.

“Time to leave,” Isaac said simply, stuffing the necklace into his pocket and walking back towards the street lamps flickering in the distance.

“But, Isaac - what about her?” Victor chimed, pointing at the girl on the slab. Her eyes were still locked wide, and her skin was starting to pale. She was staring sightlessly in shock, shivering against the restraints.

“No matter. Let her freeze,” Isaac replied without even turning around. Shrugging at each other, the other three men simply followed him into the night.