Realms of the Raven

(Archives are on the website, if you want to read the offerings of past weeks)

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Death Whispers
(c) 2008 by Maura Anderson, all rights reserved

Kate wrenched open the bottom drawer of the ancient dirty-beige filing cabinet and tossed her purse in before shutting it. As usual, it refused to close completely until she gave it a solid kick.

“Ah the glamorous career of journalism.”

A heavy sigh and she reminded herself she was still just the intern. Pretty much the lowest of the low on the food chain at the Seattle Sentinel. Only three weeks to go on her three month internship and it was back to school to finish her degree, but with some experience at a newspaper on her resume.

Of course this job had been a learning experience in an area she’d never expected nor wanted. Maintaining obituaries and fetching coffee had never hinted that Kate would find herself embroiled in a situation that both terrified and fascinated her.

Her stomach churned as she pulled the wobbly desk chair out from under the dented metal desk. A vain attempt to brush the little bits of shed foam off the seat and she took a deep breath before sitting in the chair. Careful to not tip it over, she tugged herself up to the desk and the many-times-handed-down PC.

Her hands shook slightly. Kate gave herself a mental shake; she still had a job to do, weird coincidences or not. Weird visions or not. At least she could do the people in her visions a favor and make sure their obituaries were well crafted and complete. Their last hurrah would be a caring one.

At first it was just a feeling. An urge to work on the obituary for a person not on her list. Once she’d completed the assigned list, she’d given in to the urge and updated the obit for Shelley Siren. Kate had filed it away and managed to put it out of her mind until, two days later, Shelley had died suddenly in a traffic accident.

No one questioned the fact her obit was so up to date, they’d merely run it as quickly as possible on the paper’s website and been happy to have beaten most others.

But it hadn’t stopped there. Three days later, the same situation had repeated itself with a reclusive ex-athlete. Then another. And another.

By the third week of her internship, Kate knew she’d had to go along with whatever name came to mind and stopped resisting or pushing away the thoughts. Instead she tried to open herself, to see if anything made itself known.

But last week things had changed again. Instead of just a name, she actually saw something when she’d closed her eyes to concentrate. Along with the name of a famous musician, she saw just a flash of a metal and plastic.

A day later the body of rock star Darryl Davenport had been found, dead of an overdose with a syringe on the floor next to him.

Kate’s previous resigned acceptance became gut-wrenching fear. Since that day she’d tried to push away any intuition, any thoughts of a name. She couldn’t do this. Somehow it was more than her fatalistic nature could take, to see something along with the name.

You can’t ignore it forever. You only have a little while left before you’re back in school.

Not that she actually knew if leaving the paper would mean her strange intuition would stop as well. She could only hope. There was no way she could live with this long term.

Come on Kate, get it over with.

She’d chosen to come in really early, before the other intern that shared the office cum broom closet with her would be in. Maybe she could find a way to warn the person about to die?

“Yah, and have them think you’re a crazed stalker.” She muttered to herself, even as she realized she was stalling. Maybe she wouldn’t see anything, think of anyone. It didn’t always happen.

Kate laid her cold hands flat on the desk and took another deep breath. Then another. Slowly breathe in, slowly breathe out. At last she felt relatively calm and shut her eyes, mentally ‘listening’ for anything.

For a moment, nothing happened. Maybe it was an empty day. Just as a sense of relief began to sink it, she clearly saw a shiny chrome automatic pistol swing around and point toward her. Then she heard a name as the gun steadied and panic set in.

Katherine Ann Succaro

Her name.