The Magician
Reverse: the use of power for destructive ends. Bad luck
I hadn’t and I didn’t even notice.
I ran out to the porch and screamed her name again and again, but didn’t hear anything in response, only the eerie silence of the night. Then I heard a creaking sound from the old tree in the back yard. I strained my eyes to see in the dim light from the stars.
I saw a shadow hanging from the lowest branch.
I ran down the back steps, and stumbled through the dark to the tree. I jumped up, and grasped the branch. I used my weight to snap it, and heard the sickening sound as its adage dropped with it. I kneeled over the now grounded form, and that’s where Isabella finally caught up to me.
Crying over Pumpkin’s corpse.
She looked down at me, but I just stared at the body before me. Her once lively brown eyes now were empty mirrors, reflecting me as a shadow. I sobbed and chocked for air, my heart felt as if beating was just too hard, and that it was breaking apart. I bent my face to hers, and I felt her half clotted blood on her head as I scratched her between her ears.
She had always loved that.
When finally I couldn’t cry any more, as if every tear in my body was now evaporating into the night air off her fur and my cheeks I straightened. Gently I closed her eyes, and then stood shakily, using the tree for support.
That’s when I felt the letters etched into the tree.
I squinted to make out the letters, and then as I read out the single word I just laughed. I Doubled over and laughed, the chokes for air shaking my body. I was so scornful, and I knew I must have looked half deranged, but I didn’t care.
Humans, such vile creatures, they would do anything to “protect” themselves, losing all their “humanity” in the process of saving themselves. How pathetic. How ignorant they are, yet the truth show in this ignorance is hilarious.
Demon
And as the word echoed in my head the blood began to thaw and boil with every disdainful fit of laughter that rippled through me. I could hear Isabella retching at the sight of the dead mutt, but I just kept laughing. Those idiots, those mindless, selfish, hypocritical imbeciles. They fail to see their own monstrosities.
Well I’ll show them.
Show them what happens where you anger a real demon.
