I took a deep breath as I walked out into the world of color. The earth seemed to tremble a bit in my presence as if it knew my secret. The sun was shining, beating down on me like a greeting from a long lost friend.

I had no particular destination in mind. I was simply letting the death energy guide me. It felt sort of like an insistent tugging in my gut, and the smell of charcoal stung in my nostrils. Somebody, somewhere near, was going to die today.

My heart seemed to beat a little faster as I turned the knob of a typical Spanish inspired Arizona abode. There was a distraught young woman sitting on the couch with her head in her hands, her tears forming a mask upon her face. She seemed to be about fifteen with her jet black hair tied back in a sloppy ponytail and her angled bangs falling into her face.

Calmly, I approached her until I was directly in front of her. She didn’t even look up. I reached up into the heavens and pulled down sharply, willing time to slow and darken. The world was still around me and the girl was locked in a despairing wallow. I pulled out a pouch from my inside coat pocket and reached inside, letting my instincts choose the correct charm that would counteract my spell for her alone. I placed a single red ruby on her forehead and lifted her head from her hands. Immediately she responded by locking eyes with me, but I knew she wasn’t seeing me. She was seeing a nondescript man whose face she would promptly forget after I finished my business.
“Lead me to him my child,” I said with a tinge of sympathy in my deep and power ridden voice. She stood a bit robotically; unaware of the black and white world around her, or that some random guy was trespassing in her house, unaware of anything really except getting me to her nearly dead father.

She led me down the hall into a room at the end. There were several people crowded around the edges of the room, but they were all in good health and therefore frozen in time by my intricately woven spell. An elderly Hispanic man was lying on the bed, looking up at me with a note of finality. His daughter walked over to him and kissed him on the forehead.

“I love you and I forgive you for not being around,” she said her voice surprisingly steady. The man looked at his daughter with large tears of regret in his eyes.

“Thank you mija,” he said; “I wish I could have known you, I have a feeling we would have gotten along,” he mused, with a newly found sparkle in his eyes. With that he enveloped her in his embrace and they both cried.

When they broke apart I placed my thumb over the old man’s left eyebrow and extracted a small piece of his barely existent life force and directed it into that of his only daughter, whom he was never told he had.

With that I led the poor trembling child into the hallway where she sank down to the floor and started to sob, but no tears fell. She had already cried herself dry. I sped up time in increments so as not to shock her senses. Once time had fully recuperated I sensed the presence of the departed old man’s spirit thanking me.
The cries rang out from the next room over. That was my cue to leave. I pointed the spirit in the direction of his light but I couldn’t have any say as to whether or not he went in. I left the now mourning house and stepped into the sunshine that had seemed so nice earlier but was now blistering and intrusive.

This is my life; I kill people.