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CHAPTER 1

She never hoped to escape from who she was.

The thought of escape never even crossed her mind.

She is Shana Johnson and she is a Crier.

Not that she cries in the literal sense. No, far from it.

She was more of a messenger, between the realm of the Living and the Dead. She was a link the Creations had put in place to balance the injustice of untimely death. Yes, an untimely death was most definitely an injustice.

Shana once had a Message from a thirty year old single mom who was raped in an alley on her way home from work. She was working her ass off to come up with the money needed for a bone marrow transplant for her son suffering from leukemia. The money was complete and she was to visit the hospital the next day to make the deposit.

As the fates would have it, her car broke down and she had to take the alley. She never got to make the deposit, never got to see her son again. Abigail never made it out of the physical trauma alive.

Most victims of accidents leave the world with unfinished business and what Shana did, like many other Criers before her, was to finish whatever business it may be. Long story short, she sees the Dead-ghosts as they were popularly known. She did not go about seeing ghosts randomly but she sees the ghosts that had business with her. She was not the only crier after all.

For her, it was not scary. In fact, it was fun for her and it encompassed the major, if not all of her life but it was emotionally draining.

As long as she did not encounter a vengeful ghost, in which aspect she had been lucky so far, her life was as right as rain.

But the grey area of it all was how she got her messages, something even her old grandmother never fully unravelled before her death. It always started with excruciating pain that accompanied her periods at night-always at night.

Not all her periods, and she never understood why her messages accompanied menstrual cramps-weird shit.

Her first message happened when she was fifteen, eight years ago. It was the Dead of a ten year old boy, crying for the safety of his little sister. Shana had woken up disoriented and weak after her trance-like sleep and her grandma had come to her rescue.

Waves after waves of shock had rocked her system when the full course of her Awakening had been reached and her grandmother had taken her time to explain what had happened to her while her body burned hot like a furnace. Shana had finally seen the little, translucent image standing behind her door with tears in his equally translucent eyes.

She had screamed, then swooned and her grandmother had waited patiently for her to come back to her senses.

She had woken up again, thinking she was still dreaming, waiting for the crude intrusion of reality.

But it never happened. What was before her eyes had been the reality she had so much wanted to be a dream, her unfaltering reality and it still was.

The Messages come to her in a sleep that lasted for days and she never got a warning about them. The Dead could appear in her dream, taking her through steps of what to do concerning a Message or it could be after an Awakening.

So she never just fall asleep in random places. Always in her own bed.

This means she never experienced a night out, a sleepover at a friend's, a camping trip, an excursion, staying in a campus, not to talk of having a roommate.

All these also meant she did not really have a friend, as expected of someone that never got to do any of the above. The only one who witnessed her go into a trance was her high school friend and she had freaked out at the grotesque position in which she had fallen asleep. Debby had tried waking her and when she could not, had gone for her parents.

They had freaked out, thinking she was dead, considering the fact that Shana Johnson never even had a heartbeat to start with, but that they did not know.

An ambulance had been called, her grandmother too and according to her, the doctors had taken a look and pronounced her dead immediately.

Thanks to her dormant heart and freakishly pale skin, she would have passed for a walking dead on a normal day, not to talk of being in a trance.

But what the doctors could not explain was her cause of death and why she was in an awkward position.

Long story short, her old grandmother was able to get her 'dead' body and her grandmother saw it as no deal to leave her to waltz right back to school, where she freaked out her friend.

And that was the last she and Debby were friend. After that, she started calling her a freak and telling people what she was capable of but no one believed her.

Everyone loved being secured in the knowledge that the world was occupied by only humans. But that didn't stop the bullying that followed her through high school.

What she was was a  secret she was willing to die with.

But that made her a loner.

But she still got to have temporary friends in some ghosts before they go to rest.

Contrary to popular believes, ghosts did not just roam around except those that still had things to do on earth.

But one thing Shana was forever grateful for was that her Hypnosis never happened when she falls asleep during the day. She could not begin to imagine what her life would be like if that was the case because she doze off a lot during the day, since she never really had a peaceful night rest.

Shana was one of many of her kind. Criers were not a species on the brink of extinction or anything of that sort. They were probably more then the population of the Lycans but most of them never go through a full Awakening so the curse, as Shana saw it, laid dormant inside, like their hearts.

Her grandmother had also been a Crier before her, she passed away a few years ago. Her death had left a space in Shana's life she was sure can ever be filled.

She had gone through university, and done well at it and could land any dream job if she wanted to but having a real job was not for her, she had learnt that the hard way.

Fresh out of college, she had gotten a high paying job with a prints company, believing her abilities as a Crier should not limit her in life and hoping her grandmother for once, had been wrong about her going to the uni for nothing. Then she had been laid off when she was indefinitely absent from work on two different occasions. Her employers couldn't deal with that and throw in the fact that she did not even get the permission to abandon her job.

If only her trances gave her warnings that weren't her periods. She couldn't take a leave every month when she had her flow, could she?

But she was OK, stuck with a waitressing job in a small cafe not too far from her cottage in the remote part of town. Her life revolved around those two locations and there was nothing much she could do about it.

Her grandmother would say being a Crier was an honor and an opportunity she should be grateful for but to her, it was a curse but a curse she was content with, as long as she led a good life not attracting "a vengeful dead"

They were ghosts that get attached to vengeful, badly behaved and psychotic Criers. She was only human-if with a little extra powers so she had had to be very careful all her life about how she reacted to the way people treated her.

Shana made her twenty minutes walk to the café, like she had done everyday except her hypnotic ones for the past three years. It was basically a form of exercise for the extra fats she wanted gone from her hips and buttocks.

But so far, the walk to and fro the cafe had had no effect in that regard.

She pushed open the cafe door, happy the place was toasty warm and she observed she was not the first one in as it was on most days. A customer was already seated at a table sipping a cup of expresso while he flipped throw the papers. He was one of their regulars. He looked up and gave a nod in her direction, she did the same.

Her happiness soon went to the gutters when she saw the other waiter behind the island.

If her top notch memory served her right, she was supposed to be on with Marco, a cute Italian part timer, not Eve. The lady represented all that rang the red alarm in a person's personality and she wanted to stay far away from her

"Good morning," she said in a small voice she tried to inject some warmth into but failed woefully. Eve barely spared an absent nod in her direction but not before scanning her with a haughty look from the top of her auburn hair down her five foot four inch curvy frame to her old ankle boots.

Shana did not need anyone to tell her she was a failure on the fashion front but pretty and fashionable Eve never failed to remind her of that daily.

"Can't you do something about the bird nest?" She made the statement with her hand twirling around her perfectly straighted hair.

She absolutely disliked Eve. She went to the locker room and changed into the drab outfit. She would admit she knew next to nothing about fashion but she knew well enough that the uniform needed more work but she was not about to mention it to her boss who thinks it was the best in the whole town.

Halfway into the morning rush hour, her cheeks ached from constantly pasting a smile on her face for the customers and her feet ached.

Then she started smelling something burning. She looked around her and there was nothing causing the acrid smell. A minute later the smell persisted then she noticed Eve was not with her.

Shana went to the kitchen to investigate and behold, there she was before the burner where she was brewing coffee and at the same time, making a phone call.

She was so involved in the call she did not know her waist length blond hair was resting on the burner and getting singed.

She made no move to tell her about it, and she didn't move from her spot to help her.

Eve turned to her and mouthed. "What!!"

Shana didn't say anything in warning but turned on her heels back to attending to the growing line of customers.

Eve's screams two minutes later told her her nemesis finally caught on but it was probably too late. She could almost picture Eve with her hot temper and literarily flaming hair.

Shana went back into the kitchen to confirm the image in her head and she saw Eve at the sink with the faucet opened over her hair. Her award winning shiny hair, the highlight of her beautiful face was not just burnt but looked completely damaged by the heat. She wondered how she didn't know her hair was burning then knew immediately she must have been talking to her current boyfriend. She had a new one every couple of weeks and she was always absolutely devoted to them.

"You bitch!," Eve gave an outraged cry and lounged towards Shana with her dripping damaged hair, looking like a soaked wool.

Shana stepped out of her path just in time as her hand flew through the air like a maniac.

"You knew my hair was burning and you bitter witch couldn't tell me and you have the affront to stand there and watch me suffer."

"I..," Shana stuttered, trying to find words to defend her actions but finding none and she couldn't add lying to one of her grievous acts that same morning. She had been wrong and she did not even want to justify herself so she made the sensible move.

"I'm sorry," she said in a quiet undertone.

But Eve wasn't about to let everything go with just an apology.

"You ugly, crazy freak. I've seen the way you look at me and I know you wish you had my body and my face and my hair and you just go on pretending like you don't care. You pretend to be nice but you are just an ugly thing. I hate you," Eve finished with her eyes flashing looking like she was going to attempt striking her again.

Now, Shana could not deny some of the things Eve said. She knew her looks were a whole lot below the average and her auburn hair was a very dull shade and she had most definitely been pretending to be good all her life. She had never fought back when she was supposed to, never spoken up when necessary and had always had to be nice to people treating her in an unacceptable manner but she had never wished she was Eve.

Never wished for her pretty face and killer body because they would all be useless.

She watched as Eve ran her fingers through her damaged tresses then crumpled to the floor and broke down, hot tears streaming down her face with her mascara staining, making her look almost comical.

But she could not find it in her to laugh because the implications of her childish act finally registered.

She had been vengeful.

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