The following reading was intended for a second Necat novel. However, I don’t know if I want to continue the story. Consider this an afterword, if you will. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read it.

Kyle was, unequivocally, your average young adult in his second year of college. He was sitting on an old brown chair staring at an overly-sized television. Next to it on the wall hangs a framed picture of him sitting on the same chair as an infant with a smile that filled his entire face. His mother and father are smiling as they surround him on each side of the chair. Their hands met in the middle on top. Until now as his life flashed before his eyes, he couldn’t remember that it took a few dozen pictures which included him crying, looking in the opposite direction, or grasping for his mother to end up with this final result that is now displayed for all visitors to see.

There was a knock on the door. He ignored it at first. “Fucking Mormons,” he thought. The knock happened again, but more frantically. “One minute!” he yelled as he stood up.

He walked towards the door, opened it, and a short woman with dark hair appeared. “Kyle!” she took a leap forward and pressed her head against his chest, holding him tightly. His eyes widened as he looked from side to side.

“Um?” was all he could mutter as he blushed. Who was this beautiful woman? Why does she know me? He thought. She slightly pushed him away and looked up at him.

She had a v-cut shirt on and he could see some kind of vine of some sort weaving in and out of her breasts. One arm displayed a raven sitting on skulls, while the other was a phoenix, a mythological bird, arising from the flames of hell.

“Do I know you?” he asked confusingly.

“You have no idea what it took for me to get here,” she said exasperatingly. “What are you up to?”

“Umm..” he muttered as he turned around to look at the television. A beautiful brunette appears fully nude on the screen, staring at herself in the mirror just as tall as she is. 

“Nothing,” he says quickly as he attempts to block the view from the woman at his door and the television. 

“Oh, okay,” she says with a chuckle. Her eyes began to widen and her face became serious as if a fear crept up her spine. “We have to close the garage door!” she ran inside, pushing Kyle to the side and she took a left in the living towards the garage. Kyle could hear the garage door closing. He was confused. How the hell did she know where the garage was? It was like she had been to his house before. He didn’t even know the garage door was open. How did she? Though, she did come from outside.

“How did you know?” he asked as she started walking back towards him. She continued past him and headed towards the kitchen. She opened up the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, popped the cap, and sat down at the small circular dining table just next to the fridge. 

“You may want to have a seat for this,” she explained. 

He nodded and headed towards the table to sit across from her. As he began to sit down he asked again, “who are you?”

“I”m Medea, and this is quite a story you won’t believe, but you need to.” She leaned in towards him to get a kiss, but he moved his head back as if he was disgusted by something he just read. 

“Sorry. It’s a habit.” she sighed.

“You have a habit of kissing random people?” he chuckled half-jokingly.

“Just you.” she looked him dead in the eye with complete seriousness.

“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Not this one, no.” she offered him a sip of beer and he declined it. “I’ll start from the beginning.” Then she spoke about the world of Necat: the white room, the weapons they had, the demons that they killed together, the life that they began to have together as a couple, watching him die, then using her points to escape.

He grabbed her beer and drank half of it. 

“It does sound unbelievable, but why are you here now?” he asked.

“You were going to die tonight. This is why I shut the garage door.”

“If I died before, then why am I here?” 

“That’s where the long story begins.”