Hunter of Souls

Michael flashed his beautiful wife Livia a charming smile. She was pregnant with their first child. Struggling to sit down, she was just days from having a healthy bouncing baby girl.

Livia looked at her husband from the corner of her smiling eyes, flashing her own meek smile. That smile meant one thing and one thing only, peanut butter and pickles. Michael picked up the car keys and exited the house never having said a word.

Driving down the road something flashed brightly in his eye. "What was that" he exclaimed to himself as he came skidding to a halt in the middle of the intersection? Looking closer there was nothing there. Moving forward again in order to get out of the towns busiest intersections he saw the flash of light again, slamming on his breaks he could have sworn that he had just hit whatever it was. Panic welled inside of Michael thinking he might have hit a child or someone’s pet. Jumping out of his vehicle door unaware of his danger, he slammed into the side of an oncoming truck.

Flames playingly danced across his fingers, his eyes like flint Venator looked for his next victim, a recently deceased soul.

Michaels eyes were haunted by his sudden death and even more sudden placement into this corporeal body. His new surroundings were pits of liquid magma and flame creating shadows in every corner or every corner not coated in black like tar. There was unbearable heat, a heat the soul could only categorize as HELL.

"How did a Christian living a good life end up like this, where was God and his forgiveness now". The shadows moved around him like snakes, but there was no true form, just a flowing from rock to rock as if swaying in a mating dance.

The flames started leaping excitedly from one finger to the next like a game of hop scotch, lingering a moment then quickly moving on as its master moved closer to his target. The small flame slowly forming into a bright red coal like amber to a flaming liquid ball. The ball frantically bounced from one clawed hand to the next, anticipating the strike as if it had a life of its own.

The soul moved forward with amazing speed, as if it knew the Hunters intent, or maybe to escape its existence in the shadows of the underworld. The Hunter quickly closed his hand over the ball mirrored by the souls own quick movements staying close to the shadows.

Michael quickly glanced back, he sensed something was not right but he was unable to place his finger on it. He continued to move forward in this new not so life like form. He felt pain continually but could not pinch himself to wake up from this hellish dream. Maybe if he ran the wind would cool his skin, nothing seemed real anymore.

Something moved in the distance, was it another soul like himself or just his imagination playing tricks on him? Should he go investigate or hold back, thoughts similar to these rushing through his head at rampaging speeds. His sixth sense was telling him to run, run irrationally for his life or as close to a life as someone who was already dead had.

Vanator stopped, this soul seamed to be gaining a quick awareness of his surroundings and the danger he was in. Good he thought, this shall make the game more challenging. With centuries of torturing souls under his belt he was hard pressed to feel challenged lately and that frustrated him more than anything else in this dark, hot, hellish place.

Moving closer, hand slowly brought back, liquid flame cradled in his palm; two more steps closer should do it.

Michael looked back again, his sixth sense telling him to hide......eyes dashing back and forth, sensing only shadows, catching a glint of something black as night in the distance....."What the hell is that" was the only utterance before a ball of liquid flame flew towards his exposed body. Michael had scant seconds before contact, stepping behind a rock at the last second, seeing flame burst where he had stood only moments before and hearing an unearthly scream from some unearthly creature out in the black tar like air simply out to get him.......

The Hunter screamed in glee, the hunt was on.....

Venator was his name; he was tall, liquid black, muscular, lithe, and dangerous. His hands flamed with desire to burn any ethereal creature they encountered. Each sinewy finger and taloned claw could crush a mans skull. His arms and back flexed with raw muscle as he moved silently through his world, called the underground. The souls just called it hell, cavern upon cavern of snaking black trails leading into sometimes just nothingness.

Venator muscular legs silently pushed him forward, in an almost ethereal silence. Michael glancing back and saw hell itself appear. Screaming silently, he knew that any physical sound would fix him like a target to what ever nightmarish creature had thrown that hot hellish flame. He felt the residual heat lingering in the air all around. He knew he had to move or chance being caught off guard again; something was hunting him that was all he knew. Sliding around a black hedged in corner, Michael crouched making himself as small a target as possible. Squinting in the dark, tasting his surroundings with his dulled dead senses seamed futile, yet. Something felt different as Michael reached his sense of hearing out, trying to catch any thing what so ever that might tell him where his hunter might be.

work in progress