Contract

But this boy was something else entirely.
"Sign here," he said. A wisp of smoke escaped his eyelashes and curled into the air over his head. She didn't know how to say no to someone whose eyes were live coals. She took the pen. It was hot in her hand, warmed by his, and she wrote quickly so she could put it down again. Her palm felt very empty though, once it was gone.
"Congratulations," he said with a smile that could have melted icebergs. "You no longer exist."
"I don't feel any different," the girl said. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"
His eyes smouldered.
"What is your name?"
The question hung between them, heating the air, slowly sucking the oxygen out of her lungs as she came to realise what he meant. She didn't have a name - if she ever had, she could not remember it now.
"If I do not exist, then what am I?"
He patted her head condescendingly, and it took all of her willpower not to flinch away from the smell of her own singed hair.
"Whatever we turn you into." He held his hand over the piece of paper. It curled at the edges, and then into a tight scroll that he slipped into his pocket. "Follow me and we will find out."
She followed him, even though being so close to him was making her sweat. She certainly couldn't stay where she was, in that room that would have been unbearably cold without him there. She followed him through the doorway, and along a featureless corridor so long that she knew she could not walk its length in a lifetime. But they did, and at its end was another door, and when he pressed his palm against it the door shuddered itself open as if shrinking from his touch.
"After you," he said, stepping back with mock chivalry. The touch of his hot breath on her skin made her shiver. She passed him quickly, into a room as featureless as the first, and colder than the other had been, because after walking beside him for so long she had all but forgotten what cold was. He did not enter the room, but he did not leave either. Instead he leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms across his chest, watching her. When she turned she could feel his gaze on her, a trail of warmth like invisible fingers running across her skin.
"What will you turn me into?" Her voice began strongly but faded as she spoke. She cleared her throat and tried again, but every time she opened her mouth her words had less volume. Startled she looked at the boy, who laughed at her alarm.
"We're about to find out."
She could not have seen her voice being leeched from her but when her colour began to fade she could only watch as it slowly peeled from her skin and hair and clothing, floating away in swiftly paling streams that writhed like the smoke from his burning eyes. The silence pressed in on her, at first on her ears and then spreading until the pressure seemed to be on her chest too, and she could hardly draw a breath. Every desperate inhalation was sucked back again, until she was too dizzy to stand.
She did not feel herself hit the floor, although she was sure she could remember feeling it moments before, when her bare feet had pressed against the smooth, cold tiles. Now there was nothing, or nothing that she could feel, and when she put her hands on her face she could not feel that either, and when she turned to the burning boy he was still just smiling, watching as she faded away.
It was as though the girl floated inside herself, a shade of herself, unable to hear or see or smell or feel anything but her own erratic pulse. Frantically she held onto the sound of her heartbeat, and when it too began to fade she screamed soundlessly. She thought she was flailing against the floor, but when she opened her eyes she was not moving at all, not even twitching.