All hope is gone as she slumps. One leg stretched before her, the other bent back beneath the chair like a mannequin awaiting display. Moments before her hands gripped the chair’s arms like claws. Now they lay unfurled and limp.

Blood flows in rivulets from the thin, white line carved in her forehead. Red against shiny white bone and pale, translucent skin. Shimmer-black hair falls about her face; strands caught in the blood. He considers brushing them aside to examine the incision, but he’s lost his taste for her. He doesn’t like the way the face muscles have slackened and her skin droops; how the eyes lay open, staring at him. Above those windows to the soul, white muscle and bone shine through.

As he studies his work he sees his mistake. The hole above her brows, slightly off center, not neat enough. Wrong. Or perhaps not wide enough. The pink-beige flecks of brain matter mingle with the blood. Wrong. The incision is also too deep.

Her fault.

She’d moved, even after he’d explained—in detail, always in detail—why she should be still. Usually they listened. Sometimes not. His concentration had wavered and allowed her to move. He grew stronger with each one though, and soon his control would be absolute and he wouldn’t need to bind them.

A long sigh escapes his lips. The need remains, tearing again at him like a climax almost there, but fades away. He wanted, so wanted for this to be The One.

He sighs again. No matter, he tells himself—even though this does matter—The One is in this city somewhere out there. He senses her like a hum in the air.

He leans over her, the girl he thought, hoped, would open the door to home. From her brow, he wipes a drip of blood, which hangs like dew. Squeezing and smoothing the blood between his fingertips he thinks back to the bus ride. Something is there behind the curtain of his mind. A strange, little catching lingers, scratching at his awareness, crawling into his subconscious, seeking a memory, a very distant memory.

Now hovering there before him.

The redheaded bus driver.

Could this really be him?

What an ironic twist.

Maybe, maybe, this one now just blood and bone and empty flesh, is a sign, a glowing flashing marker. Not The One, but fate’s message sent for him. He rolls the idea around inside his mind like the last peppermint in a packet, to be savored, considered.

In that slippery, sliding moment, his disappointment begins to heal. If the bus driver has appeared at this moment, this very day, then there is a reason. All he needs to discover is why. He’ll take his time. He’ll watch. Surely the reason will be revealed.

Reasons usually do.

2

You could blame what happened on the weather.

If not for the sizzling and humid summer evening, the moisture hanging heavy in the air, clinging to everyone's skin, heralding a storm flying toward us, I might never have done what I did.