I’ve heard that our lives are strung from tiny defining moments-the daily decisions we make from birth to death. A single decision I was destined to make has haunted me forever, and I have thought about it everyday since. It about twenty years ago when I met Evelyn and everything changed, but I can remember those moments with perfect clarity. The simple decision to wander off the forest trail on a Saturday morning run changed everything.

This one special Saturday I was wide awake before the sun even shed its rays through my little bedroom window. My eyes had flung open and I felt energy in the air and an itching in my legs like the universe needed me to do something. Soon I was out the door, and didn’t even care about the menacingly dark clouds above. I ran faster than usual, with a bounce in my step all the way to the familiar forest trails where my dad used to take me on hikes before he passed away. Going through those dirt trails brought a subtle longing in my chest and a heavy grief weighing me down , but I kept pushing forward.

After winding through the trails for a while, I discovered a pathetic excuse of a building, made of rotting wooden boards and seeming as if it would cave in on itself at a given moment. I was oddly drawn to it, and approached it with a childlike curiosity. Stepping inside, I was greeted by the musty smell of mold and decay. In the corner of that one-roomed shack, a girl was perched on the edge of a weathered table, dangling her thin legs over the side and gazing through a window nearby. She was dressed in worn diaphanous cotton as if she couldn’t feel the icy breeze flowing through the room., I couldn’t help but think of a snowy bird when I first saw her because she seemed like she could fly away at any moment, except I’ve never seen a bird with freckles. Raising her hand, she pulled back a portion of her short brown hair and turned around to glare at me. After all these years, I can still recall how those ominous gray eyes bore into my soul, made me vulnerable.
“Hello…” I said, struggling for a sense of courage. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but what are you doing here?”

“This is my home, you ignorant-” she paused, a look of shock and wonder on her face. Her eyebrows pulled together in concentration, then she said in a softer tone, “You must be Derek.” For some reason, I didn’t ask how she knew me. Evelyn and I carried on in natural conversation, and I remember her having the most fascinating things to say. She told me she ran away and also possessed powers. “I like to think of myself as a healer,” she had said, carefully choosing her words. “It’s simple, really.I have the power to take away pain and bad memories. My healing touch can help anyone.”

A thousand questions were swimming in my head, but I said the first thing that came to mind. “Then why would you run away?”
She let out a small bitter laugh and replied, “Saving the world isn’t easy. The price I paid was all those evil souls are now buried in my own dark heart, haunting me. ” Evelyn’s tone had shifted, now demonic anger dripped out of her words. “I just wanted to help! But now I can do nothing right, it’s turned me into a monster.” An instinctual fear suddenly took over my body and I felt panic rising. I took a step back, unable to say a word. “Fine, just leave then!” she spat at me. “Ignore me like all the others did.” I couldn’t help but impulsively hurrying out of the shack, adrenaline pulsing through my veins.

It wasn’t long after returning home that I desperately needed to go back because I was obsessed with Evelyn, she was stuck in my head like a catchy but terrifying song. My muddled thoughts quickly became clear as I realized who she was. So I slipped a box of matches in my pocket, and trekked back to the shack. When I arrived, her tired, crazed face was just visible by the moonlight shedding into the open doorway.
When Evelyn saw me, a wide grin spread across her face. “I knew you’d come back. Just like your father, aren’t you?” She began to slowly walk in circles around me, surveying me like prey while I stood there confused and shocked. “He couldn’t resist helping a little girl in need, but I ended up healing him. I’ve learned the hard way that happiness doesn’t exist without pain. Maybe that’s why your old man died, he lost the will to live.”

“You don’t know anything!” I angrily retorted. “You don’t know my dad, he died of cancer.”

“I know him better than you, half his soul is mine. Care to join him?” With one hand in the bag I brought, I silently obliged to Evelyn’s delight. I felt her ice cold hands grasp the sides of my face, and she closed her eyes. As I felt my heart starting to drain, I quickly swiped a match against its box, creating a newborn flame. The burning smell caused my mind to flash back to memories of my father and his cigarettes, lighting one after another without listening to his only child plead with him to stop. I’m not like you, dad, I thought as I swiftly held the burning match against Evelyn’s shirt.

As the flames licked her pale skin, almost immediately she was consumed with a sizzling blood-red fire, and those haunting gray eyes were the last I saw of her before she was a pile of ashes at my feet. Those black ashes that smelled faintly like Evelyn, like sweet red wine; they were swept away in a gust of wind, out the door and gone forever. Or so I thought.