Heads Of Luck, Tails of Sin

"The choice is yours." The cloaked figure exhaled as he hovered along the aged floor boards. The black robes danced around his body as if life itself seeped through the threads. 

"And what choice is that?" The young woman questioned, standing in the door frame. Her tone empty, indifferent. She watched, unflinchingly, as the tall figure's decaying hand escaped the thin veils of darkness to gently pour steaming water into a teacup. The tilt of the kettle releasing a cloud of steam.

"Is it a new life that you want? Or is the need to feel something; more important?" The figure questioned, seemingly unburdened by the woman's presence and lack of emotion within her inflection.

"I want to say they both hold some kind of value to me but I don't care enough for either; to choose wisely." She answered honestly, stepping into the small room, the weak floorboards screaming beneath her weight. She followed the weightless body to the center of the room, seemingly unbothered by its form. Or lack thereof.

Together they sat at the putrescent table a calm silence dancing over their heads. The eerily almost soundless creaking of old wind-swayed walls filled the blankness in the air as they contemplated the fate of the conversation.

“What does feeling something entail?” The creature asked, insouciantly, as if entertained by the conversation itself. The large ghastly hands, that cradled the weight of the cup with staggering delicacy, lazily brought the tea cup to the blackness hidden beneath the hood.

The movement drew the attention of the the woman. She found herself eyeing the incongruity of the dying hand and the action itself. She wondered what his face looked like.

“I am unable to understand emotions. I can’t experience happiness, sadness, anger, empathy. I don’t feel pain. Over the course of 6 years I’ve forced myself into life or death situations and I always come out on top. However I feel no satisfaction when I face victory or sadness with failure.” She said stoic and barren as she leaned forward, pressing an elbow to her knee so she could rest her chin on the palm of her calloused hand while the other draped across the decrepit square. 

“You seem very lucky to have been so close to deaths door, without ever having to meet him.” The creature mused. The deep richness; a sharp and undeniable contrast to the few visible features of the being.

“I must agree. Injuries have always been few and far between and never a hindrance. So I guess in that sense, I am lucky.” She said, eyes leaving the fingers and staring into the depthless black hole beneath the hood. “I was told you could help.”

“You’ve traveled quite the journey just to feel pain and sadness.” The emptiness, inquired. The woman could feel the weight of its stare as she lowered her eyes back down to the heat spiraling out of the white porcelain.

“Yes. I have. I did not expect such a grueling experience getting here would be. I also would have not expected to have ever come to Russia. The land is vast.” Buried deep in the Black Forest, the creatures black rotten door sat against a nameless tree, thick and old and graying. The bark falling off it’s trunk just as the beings skin hung from his bones. It was indeed, a grueling experience.

“Who exactly told you about me, If I may ask?” A heaviness filled the air, as if she had climbed the highest mountain. She peered up curiously at the cloak.

“A woman I met a few months ago during one of my more surprising near death victories. She said I smelled lucky and if there was something that I wanted to feel, you would be the person.”

“Hm. So have you decided what you wanted?” The air felt normal again, she could breathe, without her chest aching in struggle. She sat up and hooked her elbow to the back of her chair lazily as she faced the creatures whose head now tilted to the side almost quizzically.

“Life or feelings?” She pondered more so to herself as her eyes moved from the being and danced around the room. It was supposed to be a kitchen, she assumed. A tiny refrigerator, a small two burner stove, and enough counter space to fit a small electric oven. The place was dingy and yellowing with age. She took note of the rodent fecal matter scattered along the wooden baseboard until she once again made eye contact with the tea kettle. “I’m afraid, I will be unable to choose anything, as I cannot do more than conceptualize it. And that has never been enough.”

"Would you prefer to flip a coin?" The cloaked mass spoke. His tone gentle with a humorous lilt. His decomposing fingers that wrapped securely around the hot glass began to dance in presumable excitement.

"Flip a coin?" The woman questioned, eyes intent on watching the beings fingers tap against the glass. 

"Heads, new life. Tails, you feel something." The brief upward arch of where the shoulders should have been beneath the cloak was a sure enough sign that he shrugged. The nonchalance in his tone, all the more obvious. 

"Okay." The woman said settling back in the chair despite it's weakening frame. She watched as the figure pulled a gold coin from its cloak. The size and shape of it, made it obvious it wasn't apart of any current currency. As big as a tennis ball, though the beings hand was rather large itself. 

Again the two sat in silence as the coin was placed against the decaying thumb. Both waited patiently as the coin was forced high into the air, flipping forcefully against gravity all the way up to the ceiling. The figure sipped his tea as the woman leaned further back in the deteriorating chair until both of the front legs lifted off of the floor.

A resounding crack rang out through the small room as the coin fell onto the table with a loud clattering shriek, the woman falling to the floor as the back legs of the chair shattered into thousands of splinters. 

"Tails. Hm. Looks like your luck has run out." The once gentle susurration had become something so deeply embedded in darkness, the lights within the small room flickered until they blew out. A gut wrenching terror filled the woman’s belly for the first time in her life as two cadaverous fingers pinched the bridge of the hood, dragging it back and down to reveal a face only god could love. His tortured, decayed hands gently traced her face before he spoke in that dark chilling susurrate tone, "Welcome to Deaths door."