This is incomplete draft of a short story I was writing months back. That's kinda why it cuts off so abruptly. But I wanted to give you guys (for those of you who never got the chance to see my other account before I took it down) a taste of my original writing.

Also, I wasn't sure if this was even remotely decent, plot-wise or idea-wise or character-wise, so I was hoping I could get some feedback on it.

Well, that's all, I guess. Hope you guys enjoy what I've written so far!

Fickle Fate is fickle.

Redundant? Yes. But repetition is the best method, in my experience, for imparting grossly important facts upon an individual.

Here, I'll clarify: Fate, the mystical notion that everything we do is preordained and our futures set in stone, typically personified as an avenging, reproachful woman, is fickle. She plays favorites; she strikes down the innocent. One day you're on top of the world, cradled in her good graces; the next, you're bottoming out in a ditch somewhere, literally, watching the tires of your overturned car keep on rolling like there's asphalt still gliding beneath them as everything slowly goes to black. Like a bad movie fading out, only worse, because in this movie you're a background character Fate's cast aside in favor of the hunky hero.

So, yeah, Fate is fickle.

And I'm her favorite plaything . . . by which I mean errand boy. _____________

I had no name.

I was Thing One out of a thousand Things (probably more like Thing Five-Hundred and Seventy-Six out of a million, but who's counting?). I was "That Guy" or "You There" or, my personal favorite, "My Favorite Little Devil".

No name, whatsoever.

I'd been born without a name, would breathe my last nameless, so hearing someone ask "What's your name?" was . . . frightening.

I panicked. Possible answers scattered throughout my brain like debris from an atom bomb. Unintelligible. Disintegrated, you could say, into a fine layer of ash of once-coherent thoughts.

How do you answer a question that doesn't have an answer?

Oh. Right. You lie.

I knew that.

"Elijah," I said, because I liked how it sounded vaguely southern. Because I knew giving myself a YA novel-worthy name would only hurt me in the long-run, no matter how tempted I was. Something like Chase, or Rider, or Edward would be too suspicious considering how long I'd paused before answering, and because this kid looked like he read a lot of YA. What else was there to do in a hospital room tuned to soap-operas twenty-four-seven? Cry?

The boy smiled, and his cheeks dimpled. "Hey there, then, Elijah." His voice was thick with illness, rough, as though each word from his lips was a breath from becoming a cough. "Nice to meet you. I'm Carter."

He didn't ask why I was in his room, how I'd gotten past security. He just smiled. Apparently, he didn't get many visitors. Something about "containing the infection". I didn't heed the warning, obviously, but it wasn't important that I did so. Human diseases weren't much of an issue when you weren't human.

The room was quiet, which I hadn't been expecting. I was sure the moment I stepped in here I'd be assaulted by some multitude of obnoxious beeping, doctors barking orders, someone shouting "Clear!" followed by the muffled thump of defibrillators slamming into a boy's chest. This boy's, to be precise, and from what I could see of his thin, haggard frame, that thud might've just cracked a few ribs. But it was just Carter filling the silence with his death rattles.

Carter didn't seem too perturbed about my ignoring his greeting, the same way he wasn't bothered by my sudden appearance while he slept hostilely. I would say peacefully, but the kid had looked like he was trying to hit the hay in a warzone. Writhing around, his jaw set, face contorted painfully into a grimace. The perfect picture of disquiet.

"Look," I said, because the time for idle chit-chat was over, "Carter, I'm going to be straight with you. You're-"

"Dying?" he supplied.

"Yeah, dying," I agreed. He wasn't the first to guess what Fate had in store for him, nor was he the first to appear so at-peace with it. But he was the first to do so while clutching a blanket embroidered with what I thought might have been the stuffed bunny from The Velveteen Rabbit.

Seriously . . . how old is this kid? I wondered, absently curling my fingers into the folds of his paper-thing bedspread. I held no remorse for what I was assigned to do; I felt nothing at all, honestly. This was just another tedious job I was meant to carry out for oh-so fickle Fate.

Still. A child's death weighed heavily in the hearts of humans, and that resonated with me, giving me sharper clarity for just what it was that I was doing.

"Are you an angel, then, Elijah?"

"Angel?"

"Since you're here when I'm dying, I thought-"

"Oh, no, I understood what you were asking, I just . . . The ridiculousness of the question just caught me off guard for a second." I forced my lips apart in a toothy smile; Fate had always told me I had a smile that could mend hearts, though it didn't matter if it was true or not in anyone else's eyes. "Sorry, not an angel. Not a devil or a demon either, in case you were worried."

Carter vigorously shook his head in denial, but he cut the motion short as his eyes spun wildly in his head and he collapsed backwards onto his mound of pillows.

So he hadn't been worried. I'd guessed that from the start, what with his seemingly casual acceptance of my inhuman characteristics, but I was almost grateful for the physical reassurance.

"I'm a servant of Fate," I told him like it was the most obvious thing in the world. For me, that was true, and with the way he unreacted, it might as well have been the same for him. "Kinda like that Grim Reaper guy people always dress up as on . . . Hallow's Eve? No, wait . . . Halloween! That's it, Halloween. Kinda like that guy. In this case anyway," I added, because I was nameless being of many hats.

Too many hats, I tacked on tiredly.