Beneath it All {Blake}

[HUNTER KNOX]

Luckiy, the body collapsed to the ground without much of a hassle or commotion. In the dark basement beneath the seemingly ancient apartment building, Hunter felt totally safe and secluded from any wandering eyes. This common bum who had whined to him for the last time was most likely alone and unwanted in the world. Standing in what had once been the homeless idiot's hovel of a home, Hunter felt quite justified. It wasn't often that he made house calls, but this had been a long time coming. The stupid idiot had been in the violent last throws of addiction, hardly able to make it out of these dank catacombs to get his fix. Hunter had been all too happy to oblige and make the travel to the damned idiot if it meant a little extra cash. Hunter was anything but uncaring when it came to money. It had all just been a matter of getting his cash. He still didn't even know the poor fucker's name. He didn't care, honestly. The best reaction the entire scene, with all its blood and gore, roused out of him was a moderately interested raised eyebrow, as he thought about the amount of work it was take to clean off his knife.

Sitting down on a nearby box, which he assumed had been used as a table or chair or whatever it was that the crazy ones did with theirfurniture. Really, he had better clean off the blade now, otherwise the blood would congeal, and he shudered at the thought of the amount of work and soap and hot running water it would take to powerwash dried blood off a blade. That shit would ead to a corroded blade, and he didn't want to waste perfectly good spending money on a new knife when he had a fully functional one with him. Frugality was both his greatest asset and his greatest bane, as he sat down in the horrible smelling little room to get to work.

At least he could count on being alone. The old addict had been good at one thing, at the very least. He had managed to find a wondrous little hidey hole for himself. The maze of heating ducts and water pipes that ran under the pre-war apartment building guearanteed some solitude. No one would dare enter the labyrinth of dark, dank corridors.

Whistling softly to himself, Hunter began cleaning off the knife on the dead man's shirt, regretting slightly the fact that he had lacerated the body in so many places. All the extra mutilation had done was spi blood all over the shirt.

[hedgiedeath]

Tonight was a busy night for Blake Damon. Well, as busy as it could be for the grim reaper in the city of New York. With such a large population, it was no surprise so many people died here every day. You would think that would cause a lot of stress who's been striking deals and ferrying them to the other side for about 15 years now, but ohonestly over those 15 years he's seen so much depressing shit that it really didn't matter anymore.

Plus he couldn't commit suicide because he literally could not intentionally cause death to anyone in any form. So he stuck with trying not to have ties with people in case they got into an accident or something and he had to do his job as per usual, without emotional interference. It would be so much easier if he didn't have to deal with emotions, but inside him there was still a human being.

Shit.

A vision came to him, which sounds like somthing out of an episode of Charmed, but that's just what he called them. It was only a faint picture in his mind, a bloody body hitting the floor, and a slight pull towards the place it happened.

Brutal.

His job would be so much easier if he could see the murderers instead of just the bodies, because then he could tell whether or not he/she has left yet. But he had nothing else to do, and the silent rules said he had to go check it out unless there was a prior and more important commitment.

Living was not one of those commitments.

He wasn't sure if he even could die or not, being the grim reaper and all. Funny, he hadn't even come into any 'near-death experiences' since his career began. Perhaps fate worked with death, which would make perfect sense, since...

Blake had too much on his mind. He needed to focus on the dead, since the boy was obviously (and brutally) murdered, and the cause could still be there. But as he made his way to the dreary basement of the apartment complex, ducking under pipes and vents and other shit that was piled on to the list things that seemed to be getting in his way today to really focus on being sneaky. He was silent, yes, as the grim reaper should be, but he wasn't really paying atttention to anything other than that.

So it was just his horrible shitty luck that he walked in right on the murderer, cleaning his life. He could have ducked back behind the water heater he had emerged from, but it was probably too late. His all-black suit attire that he wore at night could have hid him, but Blake was pale.

Life sucked when you were death.

notes; Sorry it's so fluffy. :/
tagged; Hunter!
words; 480

[HUNTER KNOX]

Hunter sat in silence, continualy wiping the same streaks on the blade. Sure, it was overly meticulous, but he wanted to be able to see his reflection in the cold steel by the time he walked out of the god forsaken system of catacombs he had found himself in. Frankly, it was this ritual of cleaning the blade that helped him calm down after the kill. It let him wind down after the flurry of violence and high levels of adrenaline rushing through his body. He was sure that these simple steps of picking up after himself were the few things that kept him sane in the high-stress job he ran. Unlike his customers, he was always having to keep his wits about him, always having to worry about whether o not anyone was going to squeal on him. It was nerve wracking sometimes, honestly, and without a cool down every once in a while he was sure he wouldn't be able to pull off the normal everyday human look to mingle with the crowds of people on the streets.

In his line of work, however, it was also almost a necessity that Hunter take in all movements and keep an eye on his surroundings at all times, especially when there shouldn't have been any movements about him whatsoever. Snapping his head up, Hunter kept his face blank as he stared at the figure that honestly had no right being there. The pale figure dressed so...formally was jarring in the current situation. If Hunter didn't know any better he would have thought the freaky man was a lawyer. He was certainly dressed like one.

It was a bit too weird for hunter. He was all too ready to believe that the man wasn't real. It was too out of place, too crazy, and yet at the same time hunter didn't feel at all high or sick or whatever. He would be the first to know if there were some weird drug induced visions going on. Still....he kind of hoped that there was some kind of gas leak behind the whole thing.

He waved the knife vaguely at the man, still not convinced he was real. He figured it would be easiest to assume not and then kill him later if it proved otherwise. "You here for somethin'?" He jabbed the knife at the spot on the floor next to him. "pop a squat, tell me what's up." No one would ever be able to say that Hunter was rude to his potentially chemically induced visions.

[hedgiedeath]

The man snapped his head up, and Blake flinched. This hasn't happened before. Normally, murderers booked it before anyone could find them with the body. He had never actually met a murderer before, and certainly not one who wasn't trying to escape or something.

To be honest, Blake started panicking when the man started waving his knife. Even though he wasn't sure if he could really die or not, he didn't exactly want to test his theories then and there. Or ever, for that matter. But he wasn't attacking, which was a good thing. For now.

Then, the man was... polite? This was getting weird, even by the grim reaper's standards. It was almost as if the man wasn't worried at all about Blake being there, or telling the cops. Which he never did, but you could assume he was going to.

"You here for somethin'? Pop a squat, tell me what's up.

Well, it would be rude to not sit down, correct? So he did, though a bit of distance away from where he pointed the knife. It's kind of ironic that he was acting like he was afraid of dying when he was death.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you why I was here," he said with an empty chuckle. He felt the victim's soul going through him as he was in this proximity, but tried not to react. Or, you know, make any sudden movements.

[HUNTER KNOX]

Hunter did his best to continue on with his work. Technically, if he were being exposed to some kind of gas leask which was causing him to hallucinate, he should REALLY be more focused on getting the hell out of there before he asphyxiated himself to death, but as it was.... why bother? He was in a calm, cool, position of power, and he had yet to check the body for any signs of cash or valuables. He could handle having a weird little pipe dream there to help or harass him or whatever. It was really no big deal.

He nodded slightly as the hallucination explained that he 'would believe' the reason he was there. For some reason, he wasn't even ticked off. Hunter was actually very mellow at the moment. He assumed it was the fact that all the adrenaline in his bloodstream was slowly starting to be reabsorbed, leaving him with that nice and calm post-kill feeling. Normally he would be rather annoyed with such a presumptuous little part of his brain, and he would stab it several times just for the hell of it because, HEY, killing things that were only part of your imagination turned out to be rather therapeutic, as a matter of fact.

As things stood, however, Hunter was rather fine with the whole situation. This guy seemed to be rather alright, and Hunter wasn't in any hurry to start stabbing things all over again. He would just go along with it, and see where this little trip took him. It couldn't be any weirder than being underneath an ancient apartment building with a dead body and a weird ass hallucination already was, could it?

"Listen bub, I'm the fucking reincarnation of a goddamn children's book character. I think that I would believe just about anything you said to me, got it? I'm not exactly a skeptic when it comes to weird things like that, Mr. Bad Trip Hallucination, now give me a hand and help me flip the body so I can see if there's anything in his back pockets."

[hedgiedeath]

Oh god, he seemed so... calm. Like he had done this before. Which wasn't surprising, seeing as to what he had done to the now officially dead man, seeing as his soul had passed through him completely, and the fact that he cleaned his knife with such ease.

Not to mention the location he killed him in, a very secluded place they only maintenence people would probably show up in and find the body, and everything seemed to be working properly anyways.

"Listen bub, I'm the fucking reincarnation of a goddamn children's book character. I think that I would believe just about anything you said to me, got it? I'm not exactly a skeptic when it comes to weird things like that, Mr. Bad Trip Hallucination, now give me a hand and help me flip the body so I can see if there's anything in his back pockets."

Blake would call him crazy if he was just a regular guy. But a man who became the grim reaper when he was ten couldn't really say anything about the supernatural.

Was he really asking him to help with the body, though? Oh well, it's not like Blake wasn't already a suspect in various deaths he seemed to be around in the New York area.

"Well then I guess you could believe that I'm the grim reaper," he said while he helped flip the body over. If the man belived he was hallucinating anyways, what was the point of not telling him?

[HUNTER KNOX]

Hunter couldn't help but laugh derisively, though he didn't know if it was directed at himself or the strange incarnation of the weird high he seemed to be having. Shit, he had seen some pretty fucked up stuff while intoxicated, but it was a rare day that he actually was so fucked up that he thought the spirit of death itself was there to greet him. He was sure that some psychologist or whatever would be able to find some meaning in this situation and say that it was a reflection of his guilty subconscious screaming to get out and utilizing a moment mental weakness to burst it's way to the forefront of clarity, but he didn't give a shit about any of that. He had been taught to just roll with whatever his mind decided to cook up on any given day.

Now that he thought about it though, he definitely needed to get a sample of whatever the fuck gas he was accidentally inhaling. This shit was working pretty damn well to get him high as fuck and he could honestly say, it was like that fuckin' creepy ass dude was right there with him. Yeah, he could see something that worked so quickly and well selling out like there was no tomorrow. There was never a shortage of people who just wanted a release from their mundane lives in a city as large as this one.

He snorted in laughter at the guy, unable to help himself. "Wait, so, if you're supposed to be Death or whatever, shouldn't you have like, a fucking scythe or a hood or some shit?" He ignored the body for a moment, looking the guy up and down. "You look dressed up way too nice. Are you going to some kind of business meeting? Is that it? You going to a meeting with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to discuss what the job's like?"

Hunter broke out into a burst of outright laughter, finding the entire situation to be just hilarious. Really, he probably ought to have been getting the fuck out of there if he didn't want to asphyxiate on whatever gas it was that he was inhaling so much, but he had to stick around for at least a little while longer, to figure out what this guy's deal was.

[hedgiedeath]

Blake really did not appreciate the man's laughter. After all, he was 'the fucking reincarnation of a goddamn children's book character'. Why was it so unbelievable? The Grim Reaper was a legend, after all, and were legends really anything but literature that was written in many different ways? Just because J. M. Barrie didn't make him up doesn't mean that he couldn't be one of those reincarnations he had heard about, yet couldn't really sense. Maybe he was a bit too preoccupied with death, yeah? Yeah.

This was getting a bit ridiculous. Blake was starting to get annoyed that he didn't believe him. What the fuck did he want? A certificate or.....?

"Wait, so, if you're supposed to be Death or whatever, shouldn't you have like, a fucking scythe or a hood or some shit?" He ignored the body for a moment, looking the guy up and down. "You look dressed up way too nice. Are you going to some kind of business meeting? Is that it? You going to a meeting with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to discuss what the job's like?"

"Actually, I do have a scythe. There's just no need to use it when the person's already dead." Blake pulled a black-handled pocket knife out of his pocket and pulled out the blade. It grew until it became the epitome of the classic reaper's scythe. "And I don't know where the Easter bunny and the Tooth Fairy are. Maybe hanging out with Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh." Blake's voice was full of sarcasm. This murderer had better believe him now, or he was going to flip.

notes; Uh, yeah. I think I'm turning that 'C WHUT I DID THAR' moment into a 'ohey, blake can sense reincarnations; he just doesn't know it' kind of thing. Like how he mention J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan. -nodnod-

[HUNTER KNOX]

Honestly, the humor and hilarity of having some well dressed, well-to-do man show up in the middle of a murder was starting to wear off. Hunter was no longer interested by what this mysterious man was doing there. He just wanted him to get what he wanted and leave. This was turning out to not be a bad trip, or a good trip, just a really fucking bothersome and poorly timed trip. He didn't have time for this motherfucker interfering in the very specific ritual of covering up the body. The sooner this well dressed bitch decided to finally leave the better.

The magically growing scythe was only a slight reconciliation to the whole 'grim reaper' appearance. Honestly, it wasn't helping Hunter decide whether or not he was seriously high or actually hooking up with another one of the reincarnates. Either way though, the guy was starting to piss him off. It was the comment that the fucking bastard made the pithy comment about Peter Pan that threw Hunter off. It was a bit too far for him to stand. No matter who this fuck was, the legit grim reaper himself or some uppity bitch from deep within Hunter's own brain, he was done. He didn't want to put up with any of the stupid ass shit this bitch had to offer any more.

"Okay, hey, well I'm not sayin' this hasn't been fun or whatever, but in case you haven't fucking noticed I'm a bit buys at the moment, so if you could just go file a lawsuit or whatever the hell it is you're supposed to be doing right now, that'd be pretty fucking peachy keen." Hunter turned his back on the suited up piece of shit and started to go through the guy's pockets once more. If he didn't hurry, he might get caught. If this lawyer bastard had found his way down here then chances were other people could and would as well. People don't tend to ignore when well dressed bastards wandered into a basement and didn't come out for quite some time. Hunter had to get what he was looking for and book it.