Reborn

Footsteps in the dark wastes. Slow. Closing in.
“You’re not real!”
He hears himself whimpering the words over and over, a child trying to ward off some fading nightmare.
There she is, at the edge of the light, a deeper shade in a sea of shadow.
She can’t enter the light!
But she does. A small, shrouded figure in a hooded leather coat. Her face-
-but there is no face. A featureless mask. A ventilator covering the mouth. A black aura of hatred.
Desperate, his hook swings for her throat.
Her bullet ends his wasted life.
And hers begins again.