NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 167

There are beings that lie in waiting, for all who make the call, to take them to high places and prepare them for the fall. And that's why they came for me. At least that's what I want to believe, instead of just being the girl who downed half a bottle of pills. In fact, at this stage I can believe whatever I want. I can remember things the way I would've wanted them to happen, even. My mother was never Ebony-the-Great. Her sister never stole our castle. I never met anyone named Pete Falona. Lily never shot herself in the head. I was never born with smooth skin. Mary Pethiel was born like every other Dahlyxian, with rough skin that turned smooth when she hit her teens. And Matron Caine never gave me any eviction notice. What eviction notice? What Matron Caine? What Bunny House? I can reverse whatever bad thing I want. I can undo the way I still feel about every single thing they did to me.

I open my eyes again. The timer is at thirty-two now. In my mind, I jump off the cot and use my finger to draw a circle. Then I fill it with numbers but no hands. If I can reverse anything I want then I have become the hands of time. So I place a picture of myself in the middle of the circle to make it official. Then I break the hour glass and begin walking the way the witches taught me – anti-clockwise, imagining that I am killing, not me, but the Mary that Ebony created. First I awaken from the coma she put me in, the mindset that imprisons me. Once I am fully awake, the first thing I do is scrub all her precious camouflage off, the weakness she injected into my soul, the mask she specially prepared for me to wear, even when she wasn't around.

Each time around the circle pumps my balloon up. Now I have the strength needed for whatever comes next. All my darkness is fading. Soon the dawn will throw its cloak off to beam down upon the brand new me. Yes, the serpent smiles in approval; and we move on down the road.