May Life Live

Karma Doesn't Ker

I was fourteen when I saw the man again. At first, I wasn’t sure. It was a long time ago. I’d been a child. I couldn’t remember the face clearly. But one thing I did remember was the tattoo on his hand. “tiendo malda.” Fear no evil. This man had that tattoo as well. But I had to erase any doubt from my mind. I followed him. Then I heard him speak. And then I knew. After all these years, the man from my nightmares was finally within my grasp.

There was no point in reporting it to the police. A case built on circumstantial evidence would fall apart, if it even made it to court. All it would do is strengthen the case against me. Just because he had escaped the law didn’t mean he had escaped me. Fate had granted me a favour, and I had no intention of wasting it.

I wasn’t going to kill him. That would be too easy. I was just going to make his life a living hell. I followed him. At first, I didn’t let him see me. Just enough  to give him the feeling that he was being watched. And then I left signs. A statue of Saint Michael, the judge, on his doorstep. And kńp, the symbol of the Greek Ker into his windshield.

Normal people don’t know Greek, much less what the Keres were. They were obscure creatures, sisters of death and the fates. So the stories go, they were Valkyries from hell, lurking on the edges of battlefields and collecting the souls of cowards. But on occasion, they would hunt victims as a favor to Nemesis, or Vengeance. The Romans called this form “Tenebrae." Doomed to fear.

I knew he wouldn’t recognise the symbol. He would have to look it up. He had just enough time to scan the wikipedia article before his computer crashed, courtesy of a virus I’d designed to do just that. That’s when he grew...unsettled. Which is how I wanted him.

Unsettled made him easier to spook. I laughed, softly calling his name. He tried to play it tough. He came running around the corner, to find the symbol I’d drawn. He freaked out. Especially when they were gone when he brought his compadres to check it out the next morning. Oh, did I forget to mention I’d used disappearing ink?
Things accelerated quickly after that. I let myself into his apartment and left another statue. This time, it was in front of the door, which I left cracked open. I can only imagine the terror he must have felt.

But I wanted to do more than imagine it. Listening to his running footsteps and watching his routines wasn’t enough anymore. So I allowed him to see me. Well, not me, exactly. I let him see what he wanted to see, or rather, what he didn’t want to see. A mask, carefully constructed, made for a perfect Ker. I almost got shot. I hadn’t expected him to fight back.

My mistake. The only one I would make. I realised to ensure my safety I needed to make him think fighting back was impossible.  A quick Google search later, I’d found a solution. Magicians often used mirrors in their acts to make object appear to move about. Next time he shot, nothing happened. His bullets cracked the glass, and when he examined it further, I appeared behind him (thanks to yet more mirrors I’d set up).

He went into a downward spiral after that. Drinking, muttering about being followed. His friends abandoned him, because they couldn't handle his paranoid ramblings. That's when I started following him in the daytime, without a mask. Oh, he recognized me. All I had to do was catch his attention, tilt my head, and smile. Well, that duck into an alley and jump into a dumpster. As soon as he left, I circled around the block ahead of him.

He really lost it then. He locked himself in his house, and refused to come out. At first, I enjoyed watching him cower. Then, like before, I grew tired of watching. It was becoming obvoius that he was going to stay there until he starved to death. My plan to break his psyche had worked too well. I hadn't broken it. I'd destroyed it completely. So now I had to rebuild it.

The human mind can't live without hope. So I had to give him some. I called him, making sure to alter my voice, giving it an echoing hiss.

"H-hello?"