Mistress of Death

By Annette Siketa

She is beautiful and seductive and possesses an extraordinary weapon.  She could kill anyone, and yet her only target seems to be men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annette Siketa
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393552703

Annette Siketa

For those of you who have not yet made my acquaintance, my name is Annette Siketa, and I am totally blind. Were you aware that most blind and visually impaired people are extraordinarily perceptive? To sighted people, this ability must seem like ESP, and I suppose to a certain extent, it is. (I'm referring to the literal meaning of Extra Sensory Perception, not the spooky interpretation.) To compensate for the lack of vision, the brain and the other four senses become sharper, so that we can discern a smell or the identity of an object. I promise you there's no trickery involved. It's simply a matter of adapting the body to ‘think’ in another way.Being blind is no barrier to creativity. Like most things in this world, life is what you make of it, and after losing my sight due to an eye operation that went terribly wrong, I became a writer, and have now produced a wide variety of books and short stories, primarily of the ghost/supernatural/things that go bump in the night genre.So, how does a blind person write a book? On the practical side, I use a text-to-speech program called ‘Jaws’, which enables me to use and navigate around a computer, including the Internet, with considerable ease. Information on Jaws can be found at www.freedomscientific.comOn the creative side...well, that’s a little more difficult to explain. Try this experiment. Put on your favourite movie and watch it blindfolded. As you already ‘know’ the movie – who does what where & when etc, your mind compensates for the lack of visualisation by filling in the ‘blanks’. Now try it with something you’ve never seen before, even the six o'clock news. Not so easy to fill in the blanks now is it?By this point you’re probably going bonkers with frustration – hee hee, welcome to my world! Do not remove the blindfold. Instead, allow your imagination to compensate for the lack of visualization, and this will give you an idea of how I create my stories. Oh, if only Steven Spielberg could read my mind.

Book preview

Prologue.

Constable JOHN HAYDEN walked with measured steps.  Ships and freighters swayed in the gentle swell, the water lazily lapping the hulls.  The air was mild and the sky was clear.  Indeed, it was a perfect night for a stroll with a lover.  And yet Hayden was uneasy.  He had long learned to trust his ‘copper’s’ instinct, and something about the docks did not ‘feel’ right. 

He glanced up the deserted street.  Deep dark shadows lay between the street lamps, and tall warehouses reared up like monolithic monsters.  His eyes rested on the opening to an alley.  He had gone down it hundreds of times, and yet tonight he was hesitant.

He shrugged his shoulders and silently berated himself for his cowardice.  Even so, as he entered the alley, he kept a firm hold on the torch in his pocket and an even tighter grip on his truncheon. 

A few steps later he stopped.  He had ‘sensed’ rather than ‘seen’ a movement.  He pulled out his torch and switched it on.  The light danced over scummy cobblestones, broken and up-ended wooden crates, and piles of stinking refuse.  And then the beam caught a heavy-soled boot and the hem of a trouser. 

Cautiously, almost reluctantly, Hayden approached.  The body lay face down in filth, one arm flung forward, the hand clutching the handle of a truncheon.

Oh my gawd!

As Haden squatted beside his fallen comrade, a faint, exotic tang assailed his nostrils.  But, barely had he registered the smell when his blood literally froze.  The dead man’s hand was dark brown and shrivelled, the fingernails black as though dipped in tar. 

Hayden touched the discoloured hand.  The skin ‘crackled’ like dry leaves in autumn.  Then, as the word ‘mummified’ flashed into his mind, his own skin began to prickle.  There was somebody else in the alley.

Hayden pointed the torch straight ahead.  Barely six feet away, two brown rats were staring hungrily at the corpse.  Hayden picked up what he hoped was a stone and threw it at the vermin.  As they scuttled away, he saw there was nobody else in the alley, and yet he was absolutely sure he was being watched.

This time he did not hesitate.  However, as he shifted position to extract his whistle, his foot caught the head of the corpse, turning it onto its side.  It was a ghastly sight.  Like the hand, the face was also brown and shrivelled, with the cheeks abnormally sunk.  The lips were pulled back in a snarl, and the tip of the nose was almost gone.  But it was the eyes that almost caused Hayden to scream, for they resembled two white marbles. 

Fighting nausea, he blew three long blasts on the whistle.  Seconds later, the sound of footsteps echoed in the alley.  Hayden jumped to his feet and whirled around, the torch shining on a man and a woman.

The woman was respectably if shabbily dressed, a red shawl covering her head.  Is anything wrong? she asked in a sweet though concerned