I woke to the sound of pebbles tossed against my window. I looked at my clock. It was two in the morning. Who would wake me up this way at this ungodly hour? I got out of bed and opened the window. At first, I didn’t see anyone in the front lawn.

“This isn’t funny,” I said in a suppressed voice. “Your prank worked. You got me out of my bed. Now show yourself! Don’t be a coward!”

“But I’m here, don’t you see me?” a tiny voice whispered back. “Wait, I’ll put my light on.”

Something started to glow in the dark shadows of the boxwood. I blinked my eyes when I saw the creature that was responsible for interrupting my sleep. I felt the urge to pinch my arm.

“This must be a dream,” I said to the creature. “You don’t exist.”

“Everything you can imagine is real,” the creature answered. “You imagined me when you were younger, therefore I’m real. Can I come up to your room?”

“Maybe it’s better if I come downstairs,” I replied.

Carefully not to wake up my parents, I took the stairs down. In the kitchen, I poured a glass of cold water and took a large gulp that made me shiver. I was almost sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“It’s me, Animandrill,” the creature said when I opened the front door.

“I know!” I said, and I took a closer look at the product of my imagination. The animal had the body of a monkey, the beak of a bird, the ears of a rabbit, and the tail of a kangaroo. Its belly could glow like the lower abdomen of a firefly. I was five when I met Animandrill for the first time; but that was twelve years ago.

“How long has it been since we last met?” I asked.

“Six years, five months, three days, and seven hours.”

Clearly, Animandrill had been keeping count.

“That must have been right before we moved here,” I said.

“Actually, right after you moved,” Animandrill answered, “but you immediately made friends in your new school. You no longer needed me.”

Animandrill was right. There was a time when I was happy here. I forgot all about him once I had real friends to play with.

I suddenly felt guilty about ignoring him for so long, but I didn’t want that to show.

I pretended to be tough: “To what do I owe the honor of your visit after such a long time?”

“I’m here for two reasons, but the most important one is to ask you how you feel.”

That was a question I hadn’t expected. It threw me off balance. I wasn't sure what to say.

“I… I feel OK, I guess.”

“Don’t be afraid to tell me how you really feel,” Animandrill assured me. “I won’t tell anyone. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I only exist for you.”

I couldn’t remember when I last had to suppress a laugh.

“You’re still as funny as I remember,” I said.

What did I have to lose? Animandrill, if he really existed, had never betrayed me before. And if he didn’t exist, well… than it wouldn’t hurt telling him the truth, would it?

“I’m being bullied at school,” I said. “It started as a prank by one of my former friends, but I didn’t respond well to it.”

“Maybe it was a bad prank,” Animandrill said.

“Everyone else in school thought it was the best of pranks,” I admitted. “They said I overreacted, and then I made it worse by having a fit.”

“It escalated.”

“I felt betrayed. Now nobody wants to be my friend anymore.”

“You felt hurt, and no one understood your pain.”

“That’s it,” I said, “but I never managed to put it in words.”

“That’s OK. You shouldn’t worry about that. Words come easier if you can talk to someone you can trust.”

I nodded. What a relief to finally be able to tell someone how I felt without having to explain why I felt that way.

“That’s my answer to your question about how I feel,” I said. “What's the other reason why you’re here?”

“I’m here to save my own life.”

“Save your own life? How so?”

“In your darkest thoughts, you’re creating an organism of a new species. Once it’s completed, it will be as real as I am, but it won’t be your friend. It will be a monster, and it will devour everyone in your life who is kind to you; only your demons will remain.”

“But that’s terrible!”

“It is,” Animandrill sighed. “Especially since I will be its first victim.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know my dark thoughts could do that.”

“Fortunately, it’s not too late,” my old imaginary friend convinced me. “I’m here to help; you can reverse the process.”

“Please do tell me how.”

“Just let me back into your life for a while,” Animandrill said. “It will be like in the old days. I’ll stay with you as long as needed, not a day longer.”

At first, it felt awkward. I questioned my sanity more than once when Animandrill went from class room to class room with me, making fun of teachers, letting me in on gossip that was going on around me, helping me how to defend myself in a smart and witty way. Little by little the embryonic monster that had been growing inside me, shriveled until there was nothing left.

After a couple of weeks, I no longer understood why I had been so unhappy with my life. When I told Animandrill how I felt, he smiled.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said. “Have you noticed how Peyton is looking at you when you’re talking?”

I hadn’t. Not because I didn’t want to look back at her, but because I didn’t dare to.

“I think she wants you to ask her out on a date,” he confided me.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

The next weekend I took Peyton and Animandrill to the movies.

Halfway through the movie, Peyton grabbed my hand and leaned towards me. We shared our first kiss and missed the rest of the movie. When the lights went back on, Animandrill was gone.

I haven’t seen him ever since, except maybe in the corner of my eye, the times he wasn't fast enough to hide himself while watching over me.

“Go away!”

“But I’ve found the way that leads to life!” the woman argued. “I’ve been searching for it all my death. You must let me through. I want to be reborn!”

The angel at the gate crossed his arms and stood in the way of the poor woman who was desperate to escape out of heaven and get another chance to screw up a life on earth. I could tell she had been dead for a while. Her skin was wrinkled and leathery from wandering in the sun for too long. Now that she had finally found the exit, a guard was adamantly blocking her way out.

It’s unfortunate but true: the great beyond isn’t the happy place everyone expects it to be. It’s like being on a cruise that is put on quarantine for eternity. You don’t have to work, they serve good food, but after a while you get tired of the orchestra playing the same tunes over and again. A major difference with a cruise, is that you cannot sin in heaven. All wine turns into water. Any prank you try to pull ends up being a good deed. You won’t find any juicy gossip in glossy magazines; they bring nothing but pictures of Saints and matching Bible verses.

That’s how I discovered the existence of this exit. No one ever reads the articles in such magazines, but browsing through a photo special of the fab four —depicting the four evangelists with their gospel— my eye caught the verse Matthew 7:14: “Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

I was lucky. I didn’t need to search as hard as the woman in front of me had, nor was I already as bored with heaven as she was. I had only been dead for half a year. Still, that was long enough to know that I enjoyed life more than I enjoyed death.

“Why did you send her away?” I asked the angel after he had banned the woman from the premise using an angelic spell.

“She wanted it too much; it was all she could think about.” the angel answered. “She should learn to accept our hospitality and allow her mind and body to heal while she is our guest.”

“I understand,” I said. “I, for one, am fully at peace with myself.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” the angel acknowledged. “Is that the reason why you are here?”

“Sort of,” I replied. “I like being in heaven, but I think I can be more useful on earth.”

“How so?” the angel asked with a golden smile. I knew I had struck the right chord.

“I think I can make a mother happy by becoming her newborn child.”

“I’m sure you will,” the angel affirmed, and he helped me through the narrow gate.

On the other side, I heard the anxious voice of my future father.

“Keep pushing!”

Yesterday

“I see that your name is Karma,” the old nurse said. “That’s an odd name.”

“That’s the name my mother gave me, nurse Fletcher,” the young woman answered.

“Your mother, eh? Didn’t your father have a say when it came to choose your name?”

“My father wasn’t around anymore when I was born, nurse Fletcher. He left my mother the moment he knew she was expecting.”

The old nurse looked up from Karma’s resume.

“That’s a shame,” she said. “One wonders what type of man would make a woman pregnant, and then refuse to take responsibility.”

“I grew up asking myself the same question, nurse Fletcher,” Karma replied.

“You’ve never had a father figure in your life?” nurse Fletcher asked.

“I’m afraid not. Is that a problem, nurse Fletcher?”

“I guess not. You’re not to blame for what your father did.”

“Thank you, nurse Fletcher. Not everyone thinks that way.”

“Don’t worry about it. Us women have to stick together, especially when it comes to dealing with men,” nurse Fletcher reassured the girl while she took another look at the CV in front of her. “You certainly have the right qualifications.”

“I also have a letter of recommendation from my previous employer,” the young woman added, and she handed the document to nurse Fletcher. The woman only read the first couple of lines, and then looked at the name under the signature.

“You come highly recommended. Do you know what your job will entail if we decide to hire you?”

“I would have to take care of mister Ratched while you’re out of state attending to your sister who has fallen ill recently.”

“That’s correct. It’s hard work, but it can be very rewarding. I have been looking after mister Ratched for almost twenty-five years now. I was hired right after he had that horrible accident that left him paralyzed.”

“I read that it was a hit-and-run accident,” Karma said. “Is that true, nurse Fletcher?”

“The car that caused the crash was found, but they never found the owner, nor the person who drove it. It’s such a shame. Mister Ratched had such a promising career.”

The two women remained silent for a moment. Nurse Fletcher broke the silence with a question.

“You know that the job is only temporary, don’t you? You’d be here only to replace me until I return from helping out my sister.”

“I am aware of that, nurse Fletcher, but I’m happy to accept the job anyway, if you would have me,” Karma answered. “I hope your sister recovers soon.”

“Thank you. I hope so too.”

Today

“Hello mister Ratched, my name is Karma.”

“Well hello,” mister Ratched said. “What a sight for sore eyes you are! Are you the girl old nurse Fletcher hired to keep an eye on me while she’s away?”

“I am, sir,” Karma answered.

“You look very young. I feared nurse Fletcher would have hired an old bat just like herself. I’m surprised she did me the pleasure of hiring a pretty young thing like you. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-four, going on twenty-five, sir.”

“That’s indeed young,” mister Ratched smiled. “Tell me, what do you have in store for me today? A visit to a museum? A walk in the park? Some wild sex, maybe?”

Karma smiled down on her employer.

“Be careful what you wish for, sir,” she teased him, the top buttons of her outfit undone to show cleavage. “You might get it.”

“Ooh-la-la! The girl has spirit! I can hardly wait. Tell me more!”

Karma put on a pair of rubber gloves she took from her pockets.

“I’m going to torture you all day long, sir, until you beg me to kill you,” Karma said with her coldest voice. “Then I’m going to grant you a night to think about your sins. Tomorrow, I’m going to torture you some more, and you’re going to beg me some more. We’ll keep on doing that until I can find enough mercy in my heart to finish you off.”

“Wait, what?” mister Ratched gasped. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

Karma didn’t answer. She took the suitcase she had brought with her and opened it so that her victim could see its contents: a complete knife set, pliers, hooks, a bone saw, a pin wheel, and tools mister Ratched couldn’t even imagine what they could be used for. Nothing good, as he would soon find out.

Twenty-five years ago

Vanessa welcomed the physical pain of labor. It made her forget the pain of her broken heart for just a moment. She was about to give birth to the child of a man who had dumped her the same day she told him she was pregnant of his firstborn.

She had cursed his name: Bill Ratched. He had promised her the world, and she had believed him. He had showered her with presents; he had even bought her a car —from some shady second-hand car dealer, she realized afterwards. Ironically, she used that gift to accomplish her revenge.

She had hoped to kill him, and to die in the accident herself. As by wonder, she survived the crash she caused, and with her, the child inside her. She dumped the car, leaving no trace that could lead to her.

No one knew she had been dating Bill. He always claimed he didn’t want people to know to protect her against gossip. The tabloids would ruin her life if they knew she was dating the son of one of the wealthiest families in the world. It was better to keep their relationship a secret. At least that’s what he wanted her to believe, and she had been naive enough to fall for his story. How could she have been so stupid?

The day after her attempt to end both their lives, she read in the newspapers that he had survived the collision too. Bill Ratched would never recover from his injuries, though. He would be paralyzed for life.

“I call it Karma,” Vanessa shouted as she pushed the baby out of her body.

The midwife who helped deliver the child thought she was talking about the newborn girl that cried her lungs out.

“What a nice name,” she said, and she wrote it on the wristband for the baby.

“Tonight at 9 PM, electricity will be shut down in large parts of the country until 9 AM tomorrow. It was a hard decision to make, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We can do this! We shall not allow the Threat to destroy us. We shall overcome. God bless America!”

There was only one news anchor left in the studio. It was time for him to say goodbye for the night to the viewers who had been asked time and again to stay at home and remain inside while the Threat was still out there.

“This was a rebroadcast of President Newman’s address to the nation earlier today. In a couple of minutes, we’ll go off air. I wish you and all of your loved ones a safe night. We’ll be back in the morning with more news on the Threat and the current events.”

The screen went blank; seconds later all lights went out in the living room of the Fine family.

“That’s that,” Jessica said. “Now what?”

“We light candles,” her mother answered, and she struck a match.

“Thank you, Mrs. Fine,” Anna said. “I like candles; they are very romantic.”

Luke winked at his girlfriend: “I think so too; it’s a pity we aren’t alone, just the two of us.”

Jessica threw a sullen look at her older brother, ready to spew out some scornful comment, but she swallowed her words when she saw her mother’s angry face.

This was neither the time nor the place to revisit the argument on who could spend the night in the same room with whom, Mrs. Fine thought. She had been very clear about what was agreed with Sean’s and Anna’s parents when they allowed their respective son and daughter to stay at the Fines. Luke would share his room with Jessica’s boyfriend Sean; Jessica would share her room with Luke’s girlfriend Anna. Times may be desperate, but they weren’t that desperate for Mrs. Fine to break her promises or give up her principles.

“The WiFi just went down,” Sean said. “I have no roaming internet either.”

“We should do something fun,” Anna proposed. She was always the one cheering everyone up, despite the circumstances. “Do you have any board games?”

“We do, but I veto Monopoly,” Jessica said. “I hate that game. It’s so boring.”

“And I don’t want you to play Risk,” Mrs. Fine warned the children while she lit more candles. “You kids always get in a fight when you play that game.”

“It’s dark outside,” Luke said. “We are sitting in the flickering candlelight. Anna, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I am if you’re thinking of the Ouija board!”

“Are you talking about communicating with spirits?” Sean asked. “That’s not a game, is it?”

“Do you believe in spirits?” Luke laughed.

Sean blushed: “No, I don’t!”

Jessica defended her boyfriend: “Playing with a Ouija board isn’t fun; it’s creepy!”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t fun,” Sean said. “I just said it wasn’t a game.”

“If you don’t believe in talking to ghosts, then it’s not serious,” Luke argued. “And if it’s not serious, it must be a game.”

“To me a game is something you play to win,” Sean answered.

“Playing isn’t always about winning,” Anna said. “Isn’t that true, Mrs. Fine?”

“You’re right, Anna,” Mrs. Fine said. A game no one could win or lose was a game that couldn’t end in an argument, she thought.

Jessica could kill her wannabe sister-in-law. She was always sucking up to her mam, and what was worse: her mam always fell for it.

“I veto the Ouija board,” Jessica grumbled. “It’s too creepy for me.”

“Come on, Jessica,” her mother said. “No one in this house believes in ghosts. Let’s do this, just for fun.”

Luke had already left the table to fetch the spirit board.

“We all put our finger on the arrow,” Anna explained. “No cheating! We let the ghost control where it moves to.”

Luke lowered his voice: “Spirits among us, we summon you. Give us a sign if you are here.”

Nothing happened.

Luke repeated: “Spirits among us, we summon you. Give us a sign if you are here.”

Someone —or was it something— knocked on the table.

“Who did this?” Jessica screamed. “Luke, I swear, if you did this, I’ll kill you!”

“It wasn’t me,” Luke said. “My hands were above the table. I couldn’t have knocked without anyone noticing.”

“Then who was it?” Jessica asked, looking around, suspecting Anna to be in cahoots with her boyfriend.

Suddenly, the arrow started to move; first to the letter M, then slowly towards the letter E.

“It wasn’t us; it was a spirit!” Anna cheered. “Spirit, can you tell us your name?”

The arrow moved fast now. It spelled W, I, R, E, N, E, W…

“T-That’s the n-name of our p-president, W-W-Wire N-N-Newman,” Sean stammered.

The arrow continued to move: M, A, N.

“That’s the name of our president all right,” Luke said, “but the man isn’t dead. We just saw him on the news.”

“Maybe it’s someone with the same name,” Anna suggested. “Although that would be quite a coincidence. We could ask him to make sure.”

“I have another question first,” Jessica interjected. She really couldn’t stand her brother and his girlfriend anymore. “Dear Spirit, who did my brother cheat his girlfriend with while she was on vacation last Summer?”

“Jessica!” her mother admonished. “That’s not funny, you shouldn’t…”

The arrow moved before Mrs. Fine could finish her sentence: M, A, D, I, S…

“Madison?” Anna yelled. “You cheated on me with that bitch Madison?”

O, N.

“That’s not fair!” Luke protested. “Jessica moved the arrow on purpose.”

“No, I didn’t!” Jessica shouted.

“Children, stop!” Mrs. Fine intervened. “Let’s call it a day.”

“OK,” Jessica said. “But I’m not sleeping in the same room as Anna.”

“I don’t feel like sleeping in Jessica’s room either, Mrs. Fine,” Anna said with tears in her eyes.

“Let her sleep in my room,” Luke begged. “I want to explain that there’s nothing she should worry about.”

“No,” Anna cried. “I don’t want you anywhere near me tonight.”

“I could move into Jessica’s room,” Sean tried.

“Enough!” Mrs. Fine raised her voice. “We stick to the plan! I want everyone in bed in half an hour!”

“But mom…” Jessica opposed.

“I don’t want to hear another word from you, young lady!”

Half an hour later, everyone was in bed, and Mrs. Fine made sure it was the right bed.

The next morning, there were nothing but long faces at the kitchen table. The dog had been barking incessantly since 7 AM, and everyone had gotten up early, except for Anna who decided to stay in bed to postpone seeing Luke.

Luke didn’t dare asking his mother if he could go and comfort Anna. He still blamed his sister for what had happened the night before.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Jessica said. “I didn’t move that arrow! It moved on its own.”

“Yeah right,” Luke said. “Blame it on President Newman.”

“But the President isn’t dead,” Sean weighed in.

“Not now, Sean,” Jessica told him.

At that moment the electricity went back on, and so did the radio. It was 9 AM, time for the morning news. Without a tune, without any heads-up whatsoever, the voice of the vice-president filled the room.

“My fellow Americans… Today is a black day in history. It is with deep regret that I inform you that our President is no longer with us. Last night, the Threat breached the White House. There were no survivors.”

No one moved. No one said anything anymore. The unspeakable had happened. The Threat had become almost tangible.

Everyone was still holding their breath when the kitchen door opened. There was Anna.

“What’s happening?” she asked when no one greeted her.

After a moment of silence, Luke took her in his arms: “I’m sorry, Anna, I’m so sorry, but it’s true. I did cheat on you with Madison last Summer. Can you ever forgive me?”

My grandmother, the mother of my father, used to be the most beautiful girl in the village. Every boy was jealous when she chose my grandfather as her boyfriend. He was an outsider to them because he had gone to college in the city.

There was even more envy when the young couple married. They bought themselves a Ford Mustang for the occasion —an American car that clashed with everything the British countryside stood for. The villagers frowned upon the newlyweds, but the couple didn’t care about what other people thought of them. They were happy, and that was all that mattered to them.

A couple of weeks after the wedding, my grandfather was even happier when my grandmother told him she was pregnant. He was confident that the future was theirs. He thought that nothing could go wrong, and then, nine months later, everything did.

The contractions started late in the evening. It was a matter of hours before my grandmother would give birth, but it was clear it wasn’t going to be an easy delivery: the baby was in breech position.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” the midwife told my grandparents. “You’ll have to go to the hospital in the city.”

At flying speed, my grandfather drove my grandmother to the city. They would never reach it.

“He was driving too fast,” the villages said.

“He was trying to avoid an obstacle,” the police wrote in their report.

The Mustang rammed a pole about a mile away from their house. With great effort, my grandfather managed to free himself from the car. He told his wife not to worry and staggered to the nearest farm in search for help. There was no phone on the farm in those days, but the farmer and his wife, a middle-aged, childless couple, acted swiftly. The farmer drove my grandfather to the scene of the accident; his wife took her bicycle to alert the village doctor.

Help came too late for my grandmother; she didn’t survive the crash. As for my grandfather, he never knew the village doctor succeeded in saving my father from my grandmother’s womb. Overwhelmed by grief, he ran into the fields, raised his hands in the air, and changed into a tree.

This was the miracle the childless farmer and his wife had been praying for all their married life. They adopted my father, and to their great joy, he agreed to take over their farm twenty years later. He started a family of his own with a village girl. That girl became my mother in the early nineties.

As a child, I spent many hours in the field, sitting under the lonely tree that —as the legend went— was my grandfather. He protected me against all elements: the sun in the summer, the rain in the fall, and the snow in the winter. In the spring, my grandfather showed me how life was reborn. I entrusted the tree with all my secrets. I had a marvelous childhood.

I never doubted the story I was told about my timber ancestor. When I reached the age at which a child becomes an adolescent, and therefore no longer believes in myths, I didn't have the time to question the metamorphosis of my grandfather. Growing up, a man has other things on his mind.

I didn’t follow in my father’s footsteps as a farmer; instead I found myself a job in the city. That’s also where I met the love of my life. When I introduced her to my parents, she couldn't hide her enthusiasm: “What a quaint, idyllic place to live! Why don’t we look for a place over here?”

We married with our parents' blessing and bought ourselves a small cottage at walking distance from my parents’ farm.

“I think we should decorate the nursery first,” my wife told me when we moved in. I was going to be a father soon!

With all those small wonders going on in my life, I hadn’t been thinking about my grandfather in a long time. That changed when I received a letter from America.

“Dear grandson,” it read. “I know you were told that your grandmother died in a car accident, and that I absconded out of the village after her death. I started a new life overseas. To be honest, I don’t think anyone missed me; I was always the odd duck in the pond. The only thing I regret, is that I wasn’t around to see you and your father grow up. You probably don’t remember, but I’ve met you once on one of my rare visits to the old country. You were still a toddler. It was a beautiful summer day. You sat under your favorite tree and you told me that this tree was your real grandfather. I didn’t contradict you. I was charmed by the way you’d found to remember me. You made me very proud that day.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. My grandfather was still alive. He wrote that he had planned a trip to the place where he was born —where we all were born. He wanted to meet me. If I wanted to meet him too, he would be waiting for me under “our” tree at four in the afternoon on the last Friday of January.

The letter didn’t mention any e-mail address, only a postal address on the back of the envelope. The letter was stamped ten days ago in Casper, Wyoming. The meeting would be in a week. Even if I immediately replied to his letter, it would never reach him in time.

I couldn’t wait to finally get to know my real grandfather after all those years. Now that I was about to become a father myself, I had so many things I wanted to ask him.

I didn’t tell anyone about the letter. On the last Friday of January, I used an excuse to leave work early. I was nervous and curious at the same time. I stood under the tree much earlier than necessary. I waited for several hours in the cold until my wife eventually called me to ask where I was.

With a mixture of anger and disappointment, I drove home. I had been waiting in vain; my grandfather hadn't showed up.

That evening, I showed the letter to my wife.

“Maybe someone pulled a prank on you,” she said.

“If it was a joke,” I replied, “it was an extremely tasteless one.”

A week later, I received a second letter from Wyoming. This time, it wasn’t sent by my grandfather, but by the executor of his will.

As I read the letter, tears welled up in my eyes. The first letter had been real. My grandfather hadn’t metamorphosed into a tree; he had indeed migrated to the United States shortly after my father’s birth. When my grandfather wrote me, he must have known that the end of his life was imminent. It was his dying wish to meet me one last time, but alas, he passed away before he could make that happen.

The day after my son was born, I drove back to the lonely tree in the field. I told it about the miracle of the new life our family had been blessed with. A wind blew through its leaves. It was as if my grandfather whispered how happy that made him, as if he congratulated me for adding a small, but promising twig to our family tree.

Unnoticed, I made myself scarce from the room. There were 11 people in the jury who were convinced that the defendant deserved the death penalty. If I continued to oppose them, the case would result in a mistrial. The pressure of my fellow jurors weighed heavily on my shoulders. I took advantage of the discussion whether we should get pizza or burgers to disappear to the restrooms.

I forced myself to look in the mirror. I still can’t reproduce the full story of what happened to me on the day I started hating myself, twenty years ago. I remember seeing a robin in the morning and a nurse introducing herself as Marian in the evening. Everything in between is a blur. I couldn’t tell the police what the man looked like, but I knew I would recognize the tattoo on his right wrist anywhere.

That’s how I discovered him last year. My barber had just retired, and I was in desperate need of a haircut. Choosing a new barber is a delicate matter. I had postponed finding one until further delay was no longer justified. By a dark twist of fate, I walked into that man’s barbershop. My body froze when a pair of scissors hovered above my head. I couldn’t keep my eyes from the crescent moon shining in front of me. It belonged to the man who had ruined my childhood.

I don’t know how I managed to get home that night, but I woke up the next morning determined to confront my demon. I waited until he closed his shop and followed him home. Like a thief, I sneaked into his backyard and looked through the kitchen window. Much to my surprise, I saw a woman pointing a gun at him. She pulled the trigger before I could utter a single sound. As the body fell, I stepped back, triggering a garden light sensor. The next moment, the woman and I looked into each other’s eyes. She lowered her gun and opened the kitchen door.

I could only think of one thing to say: ‘I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what you did.’

‘He deserved it,’ she said.

‘He certainly did,’ I answered.

We didn’t need more words to understand each other.

‘I should probably call the police,’ she concluded. ‘It’s better if you go now.’

We shook hands and I left her with the body of her dead husband on the kitchen floor.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. I didn’t flinch during the “voir dire” when asked if there was any reason why I wouldn’t qualify as a juror. She kept her lips sealed about finding out —after all those years being married to him— that her husband was a child molester.

I repeated my argument one more time in front of the mirror: ‘What about the footprints in the garden? There must have been a third person involved.’

And so the debate continued.

Unnoticed, I made myself scarce from the room. There were 11 people in the jury who were convinced that the defendant deserved the death penalty. If I continued to oppose them, the case would result in a mistrial. The pressure of my fellow jurors weighed heavily on my shoulders. I took advantage of the discussion whether we should get pizza or burgers to disappear to the restrooms.

I forced myself to look in the mirror. I still can’t reproduce the full story of what happened to me on the day I started hating myself, twenty years ago. I remember seeing a robin in the morning and a nurse introducing herself as Marian in the evening. Everything in between is a blur. I couldn’t tell the police what the man looked like, but I knew I would recognize the tattoo on his right wrist anywhere.

That’s how I discovered him last year. My barber had just retired, and I was in desperate need of a haircut. Choosing a new barber is a delicate matter. I had postponed finding one until further delay was no longer justified. By a dark twist of fate, I walked into that man’s barbershop. My body froze when a pair of scissors hovered above my head. I couldn’t keep my eyes from the crescent moon shining in front of me. It belonged to the man who had ruined my childhood.

I don’t know how I managed to get home that night, but I woke up the next morning determined to confront my demon. I waited until he closed his shop and followed him home. Like a thief, I sneaked into his backyard and looked through the kitchen window. Much to my surprise, I saw a woman pointing a gun at him. She pulled the trigger before I could utter a single sound. As the body fell, I stepped back, triggering a garden light sensor. The next moment, the woman and I looked into each other’s eyes. She lowered her gun and opened the kitchen door.

I could only think of one thing to say: ‘I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what you did.’

‘He deserved it,’ she said.

‘He certainly did,’ I answered.

We didn’t need more words to understand each other.

‘I should probably call the police,’ she concluded. ‘It’s better if you go now.’

We shook hands and I left her with the body of her dead husband on the kitchen floor.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. I didn’t flinch during the “voir dire” when asked if there was any reason why I wouldn’t qualify as a juror. She kept her lips sealed about finding out —after all those years being married to him— that her husband was a child molester.

I repeated my argument one more time in front of the mirror: ‘What about the footprints in the garden? There must have been a third person involved.’

And so the debate continued.