Cold fire fills her lungs. Crushed between her heel and the rain drenched cobblestone, a cigarette hisses as she adjusts her sleeves over a man. A thing. A person crawling and leaking crimson on the ground.
The faces of her husband and daughter appear. They manifest in flames roaring, thrashing the apartment which belongs to her victim. Their spectral expressions reflect in her sweat-rimmed glasses, hollow eyes alight from the blaze. Waiting. Expecting. Knife in hand, she draws closer and crouches, low enough, even over the sound of erupting glass, to hear him. He is begging, but not to her. He knows better—he has heard the stories.
Soon the entire city will awaken. They'll find the sky set afire, vengeance filling the air with its stifling ashes.
The wife, the mother, bends to whisper words only dead men heard. And unto the conflagration's exhales she ushers another soul. Another parchment scrap which rises in the heat, disintegrating into a midnight smoldering anew.
Another name off her list—only getting shorter.
Edit as of January 3rd: This teaser has since been fulfilled, giving way to a very exciting project: The Mania Podcast!
