The Certainty Engine

My father missed twenty-four of my birthdays.

Then he mailed me an apology and a cursed thing.

It looks like a Magic 8 Ball. It isn't. There's no seam in it. The die inside has too many faces. And the instruction slip folded under the packing straw says it does not predict the future -

it decides it.

⚫ Twenty answers. No more, no less.
⚫ One question each, at the hour you were born.
⚫ Every answer must be paid for.

My assistant asked it one careless question on a Thursday evening. By Friday he was in a coma, and the little window read: IT IS ALREADY DONE.

My father worked out how it collects. It isn't money. It isn't years. It reaches down the shortest line between you and whatever would hurt most - and takes that.

Which makes a lonely person almost safe.

And me? I have a friend in a hospital bed, a father I haven't forgiven, and a man down at the harbor I've never once let myself want out loud.

I'm a very good battery.

There are nineteen marks cut around its shell. Two answers have been spent and the number hasn't moved.

It isn't counting what it's given.

It's counting what it's owed.

⚠️ Slow-burn horror romance. Updates daily.
⚠️ CW: grief, hospitals, parental death, brief body horror.