The Shine

She knew

I eventually nodded off. I woke up feeling like I got no sleep at all. I decided I was being silly. I decided that I was getting worked up over nothing. I decided that this girl is not dangerous. I decided that she just learned a little magic and was doing what teenagers do. Lying about everything.

It's easy to assume the worst about young people. You remember all the awful stuff people did to you at that age and you think "yeah, teenagers are monsters". And then if you add in power, real power on top of that? Utterly despicable you assume. But that's not fair. They're just trying to learn how to be people. They're not violent sociopaths.

Deciding that made me feel better.

I was wrong.

She came to pick me up in a 2019 Range Rover. She said it was her boyfriend's. Not the one who took her to my show, a different boyfriend. She said she has lots of boyfriends. She took me to a little bar and grill. We sat down and asked me how many people I had killed. I thought she was just trying to shock me, same as before.

She knew. I don't know how she knew but she knew. She talked about how great it was that I had found her. She had never killed anyone before but I could teach her.

A few years ago I stole a tool called an awl punch. I had been attacked a couple times and wanted a weapon to make myself feel better. One day when I got to the apartment building I was squatting in, a guy was waiting for me. He grabbed me from behind and got me around the throat. I had the awl punch in my pocket. I stabbed him three times in the side of the neck.

He fell down holding his neck and looked at me with the strangest look. Like he couldn't believe what had happened. I ran and never went back there. I don't know what happened to him but he probably bled to death.

You get stabbed in the neck and you're not near a hospital, you're probably going to die right? When I think about it sometimes it doesn't even seem real. Other times it seems like the most real thing that has ever happened to me.

She didn't know details but she knew about it somehow. She knew what I did. She thought that I killed people to do magic. I told her that I didn't because that was wrong. She just laughed. She said that she knew I was playing it safe until I knew if she was serious. She was going to show me how serious she was.

I don't remember what I said exactly, I said something questioning her magical abilities. She moved her hand and a waitress collapsed and shattered a tray of plates and glasses. She was knocked off her feet like she had been tackled by a linebacker. It was so easy for her. I couldn't have done anything like that in a million years.

She told me to meet her tomorrow night. I agreed. I didn't know what else to do.

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