The 1-2-3 Kid

Ch. 01: Estella Constantine

The 1-2-3 Kid

Ch. 01: Estella Constantine

Beauty is a silent killer. I’ve heard the crap about how ‘beauty is only skin-deep’ and all, but it’s a silent killer all the same. In my life, I’ve only met one truly beautiful woman. And the bitch almost killed me.

Really, I should be thankful that she didn’t kill me. As much as I rant about how awful she was, I know that she could’ve killed me. One look from a witch of her caliber could have dropped me like a domino. But instead, she stuck me with this curse. And after, there was no satisfaction. There was no smile. There was no taunt. Her dark eyes continued to bore into mine, broken and disconnected. And that was it.

Like I said, I think that my circle really started when I first really started to notice Estella Constantine. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen until it was too late. I was cursed and she was indifferent. In fact, as I would later notice, she didn’t care for much. Up in that lonely old mansion, she practically lived alone. Her mother, a human, traveled the world for work. I never saw her father.

At sixteen, she seemed trustworthy enough to leave alone for the weekend, maybe the week. I mean, it wasn’t like she had a social life or anything. I had seen her with one friend in the six months since I moved down the street – exactly two-hundred feet from their property line, don’t you know – and I wasn’t even sure that you could consider them friends. And even that had broken off recently.

No, I think that Estella liked to wallow in her despair on her own time, in her own space, alone. But she was never truly alone. At exactly nine o’ clock, before she would draw her blinds and fulfill her nightly routine, she would open the window and slid onto the windowsill. One leg would dangle out the window, three stories from the lavish garden below. And she would talk, thinking nobody could hear her.

I would watch her. Cooped up in the safety of my own bedroom, certain that she could not see me, I would listen to her secret conversations with the stars. With my preternatural sight, it was not difficult to see her from the distance. Dark hair tumbled over her thin, pale shoulders. Eyes, dark like slates of onyx, were brimming with tears as she watched the rain fall. There was no color in her pale face.

With her wand in hand, she made the raindrops dance. Left and right they twirled. It was almost beautiful – but I don’t use that word so loosely anymore. “Rain, rain, go away… Come again another day…”

The rain suddenly vanished, as if it had never been there in the first place. This caused her to smile. Leaning back against her wall, she made herself more comfortable. I could see the small, blue pillow at her lower back. It matched the powder blue of her nightdress. The skimpy material clung to her lithe body, showing a little too much of her thigh when she shifted once more. It didn’t bother me much.

“Star light… Star bright… First star I see tonight…” the familiar mantra fell from her silken lips. It was always that rhyme, always the same wish. “I wish I may… I wish I might… Have the wish I wish tonight.”

She tilted her head back, inhaling the fresh scent of the fallen rain. “I wish that he would come back to me. I wish… I wish…” and then her voice died away, carried off by the wind.

“Who are you wishing for?” I asked aloud, confident that she wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“It’s been six years. I…” here she looked down shamefully, and her wand fell to the floor, suddenly too heavy for her hands, “I still dream about you. You, the perfect nightmare.”

It was always the same words. I should have been tired of it, but I wasn’t. Every time, the suspense nearly killed me. And every time, I always got the same response. “Who?” I asked, a little louder this time.