Lightning

June 6

When I told Dr. Thurzo I was grudgingly starting this journal, he smiled and encouraged me.

“That’s a great idea, Elizabeth,” he said. “Journals can help you work things out. I’m glad you finally see it my way.”

Lord knows he’s right and I need all the help I can get. My memory’s shot. It’s all jumbled in my brain and is difficult to pry out. Most days, I can’t even remember breakfast! Not that I’d want to remember bland, scrambled Egg-Beaters and soggy toast. But I’d like to get out of this dump if at all possible, and the only way to do that is play ball with Dr. Thurzo.

I was struck by lightning once, the day after my father disappeared. He was the first of a long string of disappearances. My rich and powerful suitors seemed to vanish as well. But Daddy was the first.

I don’t remember much of what came before.

The tremendous surge of energy through the body short circuits the brain, and most never fully recover from the trauma of being struck. Sometimes it causes mental illness.

My mother said once, before she died of cancer, that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than being struck by lightning, and if you are struck, God is probably angry at you.

After I was struck, I researched case studies of my fellow victims. The outlook is not good. Lightning has a way of messing up people for life, creating living hell for those who survive.

God is good to punish me.

June 7

Today, after the ward’s daily thorazine shuffle, Dr. Thurzo came up to me and told me to write about Daddy.

But I can’t.

Blurred images of him melt together in my mind and confound me to distraction. I struggle to make sense of what I see, but the frenzied colors and shapes escape reason, kind of like a Picasso painting. My long term memories are better, but they are fleeting and fast, like they are mere flashes of lightning. I feel like a victim of Alzheimer’s who may never recover.

June 9

Dr. Thurzo’s on my ass to write about Daddy again, and he said if I don’t try harder this time, he’s gonna force me to stay in my room for a week, and I won’t even be allowed out for group therapy.

So here it goes.

Daddy went missing the day before I was struck. I remember that pretty well, but it’s the only thing. It seems to me that the whole world flipped out because he was gone. I guess that makes sense. When the owner and CEO of Bathory Inc. – the same Bathory Inc. that makes most of your common household items like soap, bathroom and kitchen cleaners, aspirin, etc. – drops off the face of the earth, all of Wall Street flips out and stock values plummet.

How can one man be so important?

Daddy had a few friends, and a lot of enemies, but none so threatening as me.

He made sure that I’d be his worst enemy when Mother died. His midnight invasions of my room saw to that. He had a way of taking what didn’t belong to him.

The night he vanished, he snuck into my room during an ominous thunderstorm. The world felt like it was ending. In retrospect, maybe it was beginning.

Anyway, the next morning, he was gone and I was in the field above Bathory Manor, covered in mud.

Most of my memories about him bleed together and only a few things stand out. Dr. Thurzo insists this is normal and that I should be more patient with myself. After all, it’s been seventeen years since I was struck and he disappeared.

Easy for him to say. His success in this cluster-fucked hospital doesn’t depend on his powers of recollection.

When I try to think of Daddy in the days before he vanished, I see nothing but him creeping towards me, the lightning outside wild and angry.

June 10

A man came to see me during Activities Hour. He reminded me of Matthias, that self-important son-of-a-bitch. Out of the blue, he sat down at my chess game and ran his hands delicately over the black pawns. Matthias liked to do things like that. He liked to touch all my pictures, my knick-knacks, my books. He had no sense of boundaries.

This guy even looked like him, with those slanted coyote eyes taking in everything and missing nothing.

When he identified himself as Matthias, I almost lunged at him, but Dr. Thurzo was watching, so I behaved. But I knew he was lying. Matthias didn’t have gray hair.

He wanted to see how I was doing, as if he knew me. His condescension annoyed me, so I banished him from me.

Matthias or no, I wouldn’t suffer another would-be suitor who thought he actually knew me. And if he did know me, he would know I drew my line in the sand against all men seventeen years ago!

Moron.

And just who the hell do I talk to about this lax visitation policy?

June 11

That guy’s visit yesterday got me thinking of Matthias again. He started coming around Bathory Manor the day after Daddy vanished. He was always poking around the place, looking at my family’s stuff like he was gonna get it all someday. All my suitors were like that. Only interested in money. Or power. Or sex. Or any perverse combination thereof.

Matthias was especially fascinated by my family pictures. He would pick up a frame and stare intently at it for several minutes, as if he was trying to solve a puzzle.

He asked a lot of questions, feigning interest in my life. Damn man always insisted on acting like a bloodhound on the hunt.

I wouldn’t even have let him come around, but some part of me kind of liked his routine visits. I saw lightning in his eyes and heard thunder in his words.
I wanted to play with him the way Daddy played with me. I still do.

Matthias never realized that I’m a lot like my daddy. If he saw something he wanted – land, political support, women – he’d reach out and take it. He’d squash out any competition and wipe out any adversity. I am no different.

I lost track of how many times he snuck into my room at night and forced me to submit to his will while the servants pretended like they didn’t know.

I fought, like a wildcat he used to say, but he always won. Daddy was just too strong. He was just a better conqueror.

But if nothing else, I am his child.

June 12

There was a nasty thunderstorm today, and I thought of the day I was hit by lightning. I remember how they found me in the vast field behind Bathory Manor. I’ve been told I was caked with reddish mud and laying half-conscious in the long yellow grass sporting unusual burns on my fingers, with white residue singeing the edges, the skin melted like candle wax.

My senses, all five, were in and out, drifting, like the ocean tides.

But I remember the bolt clearly, how it entered uninvited and coursed through me, probing every vein and organ, caressing me in the rain, conquering me, holding me paralyzed in its jagged clutches before it finally exploded out of my feet.
I blinked once, and I vaguely saw Matthias standing over me. My eyes had trouble focusing, and his voice was garbled, like I was underwater.

I struggled to speak, but at last I croaked: “Call 911.” Blink. Now a slew of paramedics crowded around me, hooking me up to EKG monitors and blood pressure cuffs and several other gizmos I couldn’t identify if I tried. I remember my skin the most, how delicate it was, how it burned to the touch like I had the worst sunburn of my life.

June 14

Today I sat at my bedroom window and stared through the meshed wire embedded in the glass at another raging thunderstorm. The lightning entranced me. I traced its path down the sky using the photo-negative burn it left on my retinas.

Last night, I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about lightning. Scientists used slow motion cameras to capture the birth of a lightning bolt, and found it puts tentative feelers, faint preludes to the real bolt, down before it strikes. The feelers look for a streamer on the ground to connect with, and when it makes a connection, the bolt races in all its glory to the earth. Survivors of lightning strikes are human streamers, not victims of God’s wrath like Mother had said.

I long to be a streamer again.

June 17

Nurse Ratchet – her real name’s Denise but she’s a bitch so I call her Nurse Ratchet – almost took away my journal because I screamed that I didn’t want to take my meds today.

I hate her. She hates me. She really hates that I call her Nurse Ratchet, which is almost funny because I thought she was too stupid to get my inference.

Someday, I’m gonna show her the white light I’m made of.

Anna, my live-in nurse back in the days after I was first struck, was like a mother to me who nurtured me back to health. She certainly wasn’t the domineering cow I have to put up with now.

Once, a long time ago, she was scrubbing the master bathroom adjacent to my bedroom. It got terribly dirty fast, and she was always perplexed by my ability to muck it up. It did seem to

be smeared with reddish mud a lot. But that couldn’t be helped. I was constantly trekking around the northern field where only weeds grow, toting heavy shovels around, and my shoes and clothes always got caked in sludge. It’s difficult digging holes to plant things.

Anna had emerged from the bathroom holding up a bar of purple and white striped soap.

“Can you explain to me why this is half brown?” she had asked and I shrugged at her.

“Probably mud.”

“I don’t think so,” she argued with me. “It’s awfully red. It looks like rust.”

“How many rusty things do I come in contact with in a day?” I had asked.

Now she shrugged. “Matthias is very interested in you,” she said.

“And?” “Well, it’s just that one of my friends had to deal with him, and she says he’s like the Energizer Bunny because he never quits.”

I didn’t answer her.

She was right. He was persistent.

But streamers reach out of the ground like electrical arms to grab for the bolt. I was a streamer. If Matthias was the Energizer Bunny, I was energy itself.

June 19

All those years ago, I found a taser in my toolbox of all places, and it didn’t belong to me. At least, I don’t remember it belonging to me. And what a strange tool it was. It made controlled lightning. It was like a streamer, or at least it was capable of making me a streamer. I liked wielding all that power.

June 20

I started my period today, and Nurse Ratchet, huffing and puffing in her usual blow-hard fashion, made it abundantly clear how inconvenienced she was by me.
It was like the time Anna, who had been gathering up my laundry from the hamper in the bathroom, came out clutching my jeans. Her face was terse, like she was somewhere between annoyed and angry.

“For God’s sake, Elizabeth! I understand that a woman’s period can come unexpectedly sometimes. But at least soak your clothes in cold water so they don’t stain! Or at least tell me and I’ll pre-treat them. It’s going to be a miracle if I can get this all out.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry, Anna.”

“Look at all this blood,” she muttered. “I think I should make an appointment with the doctor for you because I don’t think that’s normal.”

She stormed out, clutching my muddy, bloody jeans, grumbling about pre-treating them.

June 25

When there’s a thunderstorm during my sleep, I have nightmares. I know the lightning causes them because that’s the only time I dream. And I always dream of Daddy.

The smell of the storm somehow mingles with my brain and triggers thoughts of him. The fresh, electrical scent of ozone smells like his aftershave.
Then I see him, opening my door in the dead of night when everyone else is sleeping and creeping in uninvited. He did that the night before he disappeared, and I begged God to make him go away. But he creeps to my bed anyway and rips down my covers like a serial killer. I scream.

Then I wake up, drenched in sweat and unable to go back to sleep.

June 26

I remember I fell asleep at night. It was one of the few times. And the sky stormed so obnoxiously that it woke me up. Confused, I wandered around my big, drafty house and made my way to the basement. There, on my workbench, I made a troublesome discovery: used syringes stained with blood.

They were long, thick needles, the most diabolical needles man ever invented for giving shots. They had to be used for something sinister, something like shooting heroin.

I banished Matthias from my house permanently. I knew he had to be the one who brought the needles in. Besides Anna and me, he was the only one who’d visited Bathory Manor since Daddy vanished, and I trusted Anna.

He raised an eyebrow at me and left without argument, but I knew he’d be back, men always come back, just like Daddy.

June 28

There was a thunderstorm today. The monsoon season must be here at last. I took my usual spot by the window, the wire-meshed glass obstructing my view, and stared out as always.

There, I saw my father; as the blinding lightning crashed violently into the earth, over and over, I thought I saw him caged behind the jagged streaks. It wasn’t immediately apparent, and I only caught him out of the corner of my eye. But the brilliant light burned my retinas, and as the world faded from a photo-negative back to normal, I could have sworn his intimidating body bloomed behind the lightning bolts and faded as quickly as a ghost.

June 30

Dr. Thurzo wants to know about the day I came to the hospital.

He already knows this story, and has certainly reminded me enough to prove it, but I think he wants to take my mind off the approaching thunderstorm outside by forcing me to do mindless busywork.

I was sitting in the antique rocking chair by my window, watching a storm. Movement on the grounds outside my house caught my eye. Below a man dashed through the rain. It was Matthias wearing a black windbreaker with yellow words, I couldn’t make out what they said from the second story, printed on his back. He had a dog, some sort of a bloodhound. And other men ran across the yard, also wearing black jackets with yellow letters. They all clutched pistols in their hands.

He had rounded up a gang to come get me! He was gonna take me, take my secrets, take everything!

I stumbled out of my chair and shoved Anna, who was standing beside me. She crashed against the wall as a flash of lightning illuminated my room. The clap of thunder that followed was deafening. I screamed as I bolted from my room.

I soon found myself in the basement, and I locked the door behind me. I was safe there.

A few seconds after I reached my fortress, Anna was there too, pounding furiously on the door, begging me to open it up.

I ignored her and looked around at the room. A large woodstove stood in the distant corner, slightly warm. I had used it the night before. I used it every night I snuck down here to play conqueror. If Matthias wanted to play games with me, I would be prepared. I quickly built a fire in it with blood-spattered logs.

“Elizabeth!” a new voice bellowed as I worked. “This is Detective Matthias! I have a warrant. Open up!”

I noticed a lot of stuff scattered on the carpenter’s workbench. I saw my tools – muddy shovels, needles loaded with Rohypnol, the taser, some fireplace pokers, a few scalpels, a bone saw, and a rib cage spreader – carelessly left out. There was the large drum of lye from one of Daddy’s factories. It was amazing how the skin bubbles and disintegrates when lye is sprinkled on it. It melts, like candle wax.

“Elizabeth! Detectives are searching the property with a cadaver dog. Open up!” I remember his yelling sounded like thunder.

I frantically threw all my tools in the fire, and I can vaguely remember the men, my would-be suitors, they were used on.

Senator Daly’s son…he was a party-hard playboy until the spreader snapped his ribs open with a wet crack.

The lawyer whined like a little girl as the pokers stabbed him in sensitive areas.

And the doctor…he was stunned when he was gutted like a fish with his own scalpel! Someone should’ve taken a picture of the look on his face!

Ah, yes. The pictures! I was sad to see those go. They were like art.

I destroyed them. I had rushed to the wall beside the door where there was a loose brick, and I slid it out. Inside was a small box filled with Polaroid pictures. The Energizer Bunny wasn’t gonna run his hands all over these pictures. These memories were mine! I flung them into the fire a handful at a time.

Matthias tried to kick the door open, but the trusty oak wood withstood the attack. My house was built back when houses were built right.

I came to the last picture at the end of the pile. It was Daddy, bound and gagged, completely at my mercy. The date on the picture was from the day before I was hit with lightning. God must’ve approved of my work, and sent me proof when he struck me with lightning.

I threw the picture in the fire just as Matthias busted down the door. I lunged at him with my taser. My lightning vanished into his body and his muscles contorted, stunned, like all my victims were when I struck them. I watched with pleasure as it ventured through him, probing him, violating him, and dragging him down to the floor. His eyes, full of electricity, gazed at me in horror. I threw back my head and laughed.

It was just how Daddy looked when I killed him all those years ago.

It’s time to put away my journal now. Dr. Thurzo just walked by and told me to go get my meds from Nurse Ratchet before therapy. It should be a very interesting group session today. I just began to see flashes of lightning in the distance.

In Hora Mortis

For Edgar Allan Poe

For 12,145 days, the woman Bianca lived as all the mortals live, with no notion that every moment is one moment closer to the last. On the following day, I knew it was time to pay her a visit. You, who walk still among the living, you who fear me, should not think me heartless. I am satiated only when I devour a soul as duty prescribes; no one will argue this, I think, but I do not always take joy in my work.

Bianca was young and healthy, but she was occasionally stricken with chest pains. She reasoned that the cause was stress and nothing more. Never once did she suspect I someday would call. Never once did she contemplate my existence and what a frail thread she truly was in the grand tapestry of the universe. She, like most humans, was oblivious.

Bianca possessed a good mind for a human but also had one peculiar shortcoming: a fondness for fortune-tellers. Few mortals understand and believe in those who peddle riddles from Beyond, like the crazed Delphi Oracle who spewed out half-coherent prophecies and the unscrupulous televangelists who promise to reveal the plan of God to their followers for a fee, but Bianca both knew all the signs from studying astrology, astronomy, folklore, mythology, and religion, and she suspected she had once or twice stuck her head out of the cave and perceived the truth through those same signs. In her search for divine knowledge and for God she was sincere, and she read the likes of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas to learn. And yet, though she studied the religious texts fervently, I still eluded her every thought. Life and afterlife dominated her mind, but she always overlooked me. Intrigued, I watched her for years due to my peculiar shortcoming, a fondness for humans who try to rise above the rest of the miserable lot, and I resolved to reveal something of the truth to her as well.

It was nearly ten o’clock on Halloween evening when I encountered Bianca at a traveling carnival. I stood by a large sandwich board with silver letters painted on it that read Tarot Readings: $20. Wearing a long black hood, feathered mask, and dress, I yelled for merrymakers to come and learn their fate. As I expected, most passed me by with not so much as a look. Those that did look saw a haggard and harmless old woman, undoubtedly a scam artist, trying to rope fools into spending more money at an already expensive carnival. They gazed at me with contempt before they moved along. Bianca, however, found me while she waited for some friends, and, slightly drunk on beer, begged for a reading. She, like me, was dressed in accordance with the holiday. In a white gown, with white makeup on her face and powder in her hair, she resembled a ghost. She gripped my hand and shook it hard.

“My dear Bianca,” I said after she enthusiastically introduced herself, “this is a good night for a reading. The spirits are in a frenzy.”

“For twenty dollars, I hope so,” she replied.

“On Halloween, the living is terribly close to the dead.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied impatiently. “I know all about Halloween. So where’s your booth?”

“I have a trailer, actually,” I explained. “But I am not sure you really want me to do your reading.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am not confident you will be satisfied with the outcome.”

“Is that your way of telling me you’re a scam artist?”

“No. But, I warn you, not all endings are happy.”

“But you haven’t even done my reading yet.”

“I see far.”

“Oh, please,” she begged. “There’s a ton of stuff I want to ask. I’ll pay you double.”

“I could not possibly take your money.”

“No, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she argued. “So, it’s settled.”

“Very well. This way,” I replied, pointing towards the west.

Bianca beamed and took my hand once more, and pulling my hood further over my head, I let her lead me towards my trailer on the outskirts of the carnival. Arm in arm, we waded through the happy, jostling crowd of reapers, devils, angels, and ghosts with the brilliant lights from the Ferris wheel illuminating our path. Bianca, amidst these laughing strangers, suspected no malice from me.

“What do you know of Halloween?” I asked.

“Well, it used to be a Celtic harvest celebration. Samhain. It was thought to be the day the dead could cross over and converse with the living.”

“Yes, the dead were able to cross over, and so was the thing itself.”

“What other thing?”

“Death.”

“Oh.”

“ The Celts welcomed them all with open arms, and they even set places of honor for them at their dinner tables. Death was treated like a king.”

“I suppose so.”

“Does that bother you, Bianca?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really believe that people sat around having dinner with ghosts, let alone the Grim Reaper. But it is fascinating how superstitious the Celts were.”

“Perhaps they knew something we did not.”

“Every religion thinks they know best.”

“Every religion has at least one correct idea.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I am much older than I look,” I stated firmly. “The Celts, for example, accepted Death but did not fear it, and they gave it a place of honor in their society. To them, it was the beginning and the end of things. Samhain roughly means ‘the end of summer’ in Gaelic. But is it not interesting that it was also the beginning of the Celtic year? Life is not linear, but cyclical. An end is also a beginning. The Celts understood that better than anyone.”

She said nothing in reply and walked in silence thereon. As the crowd thinned out at the edge of the fair, Bianca stumbled on the frayed edges of her costume, the effects of the beer she drank earlier affecting her gait. With a loud thud she hit her face on a dirty curb, groaning and clutching it with both hands. A stream of blood oozed between her fingers and dripped carelessly on her white costume. I did not have to see it to know she had a bloody nose.

“Ow,” she muttered as she slowly drew her hands away. Her warm blood trickled down her lips and she dabbed at her nostrils with her pale fingertips.

“Oh, dear, you are bleeding,” I said. “I will help you to the first-aid tent.”

“No,” she snapped. “It’s just a bloody nose. I won’t die from it.”

“I suppose not,” I agreed. “But we really must go to the first-aid tent,” I insisted. “I would not feel right if the paramedics did not at least see you.”

Bianca looked at me in annoyance. “That’s ridiculous!” she muttered. “That’s the problem with everyone anymore. They get so worked up over every little thing. It’s just a bloody nose.”

“If you do not have your health, you do not have anything.”

“Can we move on? Please? The bleeding has already stopped.”

I sighed reluctantly. I wanted her to take the way out. I would rather kill the willfully blind than those who try to know the unknowable. But in the end, my victims have their free-will to guide them to whatever fate they choose. “Are you sure you want to continue on?” I asked.

“I’m sure. Let the paramedics in the first-aid tent worry about real injuries.”

“Very well.” I offered my hand to her, and after lifting her up, we continued. She was relaxed by my side. Maybe on some level, she had contemplated her fate, and she was unafraid. Although Halloween lost its religious implications in this commercialized world many years ago, it still had the power to stir morbid revelation in the most perceptive individuals’ hearts. Then again, perhaps it was the beer stealing her inhibition.

The carnival was large and the trailer, seemingly a permanent part of the traveling troupe, was nearly a mile from where I first met her. Nestled in the trees of some deciduous forest teeming with gnarled oaks and elms, it was surrounded by an abundance of birds. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed over the raucous merrymaking behind us.

“Is that a crow?” she asked. “They make me nervous.”

“That crow must be saying the same thing about those of us here at this carnival,” I replied. “Many ancients believed crows carried dead souls to the afterlife. I believe it is an animal to be respected.”

“Let’s pray that it takes whoever’s soul it’s here for to Heaven,” she said and I nodded.

We arrived at the trailer a few moments later and found the offending crow from earlier perched on the wooden stair rail leading up to my door. It seemed to blend perfectly with the Halloween decorations; paper skeletons dangled in every window and candlelit skulls sat on every stair up to the door. On the door itself, a rusty old sickle was mounted. Its handle was short and the leather grip was worn with much use.

“I like your Halloween decorations,” Bianca commented. “And that –“ she pointed to the sickle – “is so realistic looking.”

“That is my favorite one,” I said as I stroked the crow’s head before I squeezed past it.

“Where did you get it?”

I looked at Bianca and chuckled. In many ways she was so innocent. “The truth be told, my dear, I do not quite remember where I got it. It seems like I have always had it.”

“Wow,” she said.

“Hurry in,” I said as I opened the door. She gazed at the crow apprehensively before she shuffled past and over the threshold. I closed it behind her. “Please, sit down,” I told her as I pointed towards a small table with two chairs around it, and she obeyed. “Would you like a glass of wine while I do your reading? I make my own. It’s almost like De Grave, but not as sweet.”

“Sure, why not?”

I nodded grimly as I produced two deep rounded wine glasses from a cupboard and poured them half full. As I placed them on the table, I slid a pack of tarot cards from my dress sleeve into Bianca’s hand. Having done this before, she automatically shuffled the deck and returned them, at which point I fanned them out so she could not see them. I instructed her to choose three. She did so almost nonchalantly while she took a long drink.

“That is pretty bitter,” she remarked. “Good, but bitter. How do you make this?”

“That, my dear, is a secret.”

“I promise to take the secret to the grave,” she vowed, holding up her right hand in an oath.

“Of this, I have no doubt. But do not worry about that. Lay down your cards.” She did, and I announced each one: “The Fool in reverse: you have ceased to operate in the real world. The Tower: you are experiencing a great upheaval and change in your life, and your plans will be disrupted. Judgment: you must let go of something that you have been hanging on to.”

“But none of that applies to me,” she argued.

“I beg to differ. This is your fortune, Bianca, your future. The future is sometimes closer than you may realize.”

“Listen, you’re doing this all wrong-”

I looked up at Bianca and saw a film glaze her shocked eyes as she clutched her chest, unable to breathe, and a moment later, convulsions gripped her and threw her to the floor. Her wine glass broke beside her. “Help me!” she weakly choked. She lay on her back, helplessly clawing at her chest and struggling to breathe. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

“My dear Bianca,” I began, “you do not look so well.” I placed my chair beside her, sat down, and gazed upon her. “Would you like to go to the first-aid tent? Would you like to speak to the paramedics? No? I did not think you would.” I sipped my glass of wine.

“What…what did you do to me?”

“You should be thankful, Bianca. Not everyone gets to experience me the way you have tonight. I am not always this nice.” I set my glass on the table and stood.

“Who are you?” she asked, tears streaming down her face and taking the film from her eyes, but I refused to answer. She started to cry harder. The white paint on her face streaked. “Please,” she begged. “Why are you doing this?’

“Were you aware you had a hole in your heart?” I asked, knowing she was not, as I opened the trailer door and retrieved my sickle.

“I’m sorry,” she whined, ignoring my question. “If I offended you somehow, I didn’t mean to.”

“Usually, that kind of hole goes unnoticed by the poor soul it afflicts,” I continued. “It seldom amounts to anything. But your hole, my dear Bianca, is another story entirely. Over the years, I have become adept at guessing what will kill someone. Yes, my dear, death is a mystery to me at times as well. God keeps me in the dark too. He has made me its master as well as its student. But experience has put probability on my side. I am occasionally surprised, however. Not with you. I knew about the hole in your heart from the day you were born, and I knew that it would someday bring me to you.”

I took another sip of wine, and Bianca’s face suddenly raged with fiery anger. “God damn you! You won’t get away with this.” She bawled harder.

“Would you like to hear a secret?” She did not answer so I continued. “Sometimes, I disobey my duty and spare a worthy soul.”

She writhed on the floor and clawed at her heart as if she could wrench it out of her chest entirely. Soon, the spasm passed though, and she croaked out, “I’ll give you everything I have.”

I sighed. “I am very disappointed in you. Everyone offers me money. It makes me feel decidedly unmerciful. I expected more from you.”

“Don’t hurt me. I swear I’ll give you everything you want,” she sobbed as she rolled onto her belly.

I knelt down beside her and petted her powdery brown mane; it was damp with cold sweat. “But Bianca, do you not know yet that the only thing I want is your soul?” Her blue eyes widened in realization and she closed her mouth. Drool dribbled down her chin as she struggled to look at me. I met her stare and nodded. “Yes, now it is all becoming clear,” I whispered. “Now you know who I am, do you not?” A resigned expression crossed her face then and for a moment, her chest pains stopped completely. I smiled and raised my sickle over her. A small shriek escaped her when she saw the rusty blade poised over her. Panic and pain set in once more. “Oh, God!” she screeched.

“Bianca,” I began. “God is not here right now. He prefers that I do my work in solitude.”

And with that, I let down my hood and threw off my mask. In her eyes I saw that one moment of illumination, the moment she stepped into the sun and it was too painful for her to behold. Tears streamed down her face, and she gasped, not out of fear but out of surprise at my radiance.

“The light,” she muttered. “Oh, God, the light.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I am the light. And the darkness. I am the balance.”

She watched me then as I slashed through her heart with my sickle and induced a heart attack. A moment of shock seized her and she arched her back as the agony coursed through her. Her skin and lips turned white, a genuine paleness that had nothing to do with makeup. She choked and gasped for air while cold sweat streamed down her face. Her iridescent soul swirled anxiously inside her chest.

“The real fortune-teller will find you soon, Bianca,” I explained. “But as for me, I must be leaving you now. You may take care of your defective heart now and live. It is my gift to a gifted soul. But I warn you, the next time we meet, I will not disobey again.”

“Why bother to let me live?” she struggled to speak as she clutched her arm so hard her finger nails cut little crescent moons through her costume and into her skin. Bloody semi-circles stained the cloth.

“Because the world would be a far less interesting place without you. Fortunately for you, I have free-will too.”

She gazed at me with a hopeful expression in her pained eyes as I bowed my head benevolently at her. Then I hid my sickle in the folds of my cloak and stepped out of the trailer without another word. The crow still sat on the rail and cawed unhappily at me. “Leave this one in peace,” I commanded. “It is not her time to go.”