Entwined in This Infinity

17. Darkness - Queen

Your brother is a terrible influence on you, despite you being the older sibling. How else would you have ended up here?

“Please give me your hand,” you say, extending your own palm-up. “The first step is to slice your wrist.”

The customer recoils. “Why are we cutting my wrist?”

You smile and keep your proffered hand steady. “My predictions depend on your blood. Unlike the tarot or your palm, the pain you suffer to bleed onto my table carries an essence of your character that allows—”

“Okay, wow, I lost interest in that immediately,” he interrupts. He runs a finger over the inside of his vulnerable wrist. “You’re not an enchanter, so stop peddling this fake magic like it’s the real deal.”

Your hand remains steady. “I never said I was an enchanter, or that I was using magic.”

“Then why am I wasting my time when I can pay someone who knows what they’re doing?”

“They,” you emphasize, “make guesses based off what they can scrounge up of your past and personality. I do much better than that.”

He presses his lips together and glances at your hand. Intrigued, in spite of his dissing. “How’s that?”

“I can see the nature of the nuts and bolts that tie you together.”

A bird calls outside. A candle flickers. He doesn’t look up from the table any longer.

A handful of drops is needed, the smallest wound made to accommodate that need. It continues to amaze you that you have delved into the workings of hundreds, yet each time you are submerged you are startled by their striking similarity to yourself. It should be impossible.

This man is nothing like you, yet he is everything you are. They all are.

You and he are cloaked in darkness. Together, you are hesitant when a decision rises to be decided upon. Twisted and wrong on a fundamental level that sets you apart. A great love for life. A tragedy of bitterness that keeps you awake at night.

Connected, the end etches itself out.

His end is your end.

For a split second.

“Your impulsiveness will kill you if you let it. The dark road sounds promising at first, but it will betray you in the end.”

“What kind of cryptic nonsense is that?”

“There’s still time for you.”

Haloed in a nothingness, your end is his, except you have already stepped too far. The void wraps your skin in stars.

“You’re demented, lady.”

“Perhaps.”

Your brother would be proud of you.