Proctor: Angel of Death (Part 2)

Who am I? It was a question it had taken Proctor severalyears to form and another tenyears to say out loud.

With its birth came pain and fear. Emotions that confused her for she knew initially,notwhat they were, only that for the longest time, they filled her with a dark foaming displeasure of all things, most particularly herself.

It was the last prey that had done this to her. They were told never to call them anything but ‘prey.’ That was what they were. To be hunted and tracked to ensure the greater plan was maintained for the greater good. Proctor rubbed her forehead, a pain staring at the point between her eyes and radiating out to her nose and mouth was beginning to pulsate. She wanted to curl into a ball, to sleep but there was so much still to do. The sense and direction that was her task told her this. Why and for whom she did what she did -she had never questioned until now and how long had it taken her to arrive at this point of near rebellion?

Proctor looked steadily at herself in the mirro of the apartment The Enforcement Unit had provided her with. A bed, wall unit and high resolution TV merged into the wall. Proctor’s eyes were frightening and wonderful. One the colour of deep blue sea when touched by a perfect sky, the other the darkest green laced with fire. A genetic deformity that hadgiven her a uniqueness others of her kind did not have.

She pushed the red hair back from her pale skin and sighed. How long had it taken her to question? Fifty - perhaps seventy years.

Proctor looked at her image. The body andbeauty of a twenty five year old engineered to be so in order to enforce the law forever.

What was the law?

To see that those who were sentenced to life continued to live - no matter how painful, how humiliating their punishment was to live and suffer until a pre-ordained time when finally their sagging seeping bodies might be released - if she so decided for she was the Angel of Death.

Only the Angel kenw when it was time. The Angel became the shadow behind the sentenced criminal, walking just behind, always out of sight.

That is how it had always been.

How Proctor had been told it always would be.

Suddenly the tortured faces of a thousand flashed before her - her thoughts instantly unraveling she buckled and fell to the floor gasping for air.

"What is happening to me?"

It seemed an eternity to Proctor that her mind swam and her legs remained paralyzed as she squatted on the floor but when she finally steadied her nerves and looked at her watch, only seconds had passed.

Sluggishly she got to her feet, cursing her latest prey, Arnette - and then she stopped in her tracks. Emotion of dislike, hate - they had never before been part of her nature. She had observed such things in others, part fascinated, part repelled. Proctor stretched out her hands, thin, long elegant fingers bruised raw and shaking.

Noiselessly the front door to the apartment slid open.

The sudden flash of colour at the corner of her line of vision and change in temperature had Proctor reaching instinctively for her life gun.

"Proctor." The voice was strangely familiar, a vast corridor of time unraveled before her as she gazed at the old man in his emerald robe.

One of the great philosophers.

She fell to her knees and bowed automatically.

The Philosopher smiled without passion as he said, "come Proctor - it is time."