Chapter Eight: LIFE

She took me by the hand. She took my hand. She held my hand and drew her fingers on my palm, outlining my lifelines in blood.

I was wrong. She is not DEATH.

She is LIFE. She is the ORACLE. She can see PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE.

She smiles and her teeth are sharpened like razors. She does not speak. But I can see what she wants me to see.

I see a man. A writer of stories. He is filled with despair and will soon die without help.

She needs him to live. To write. The stories he writes are not important, per se, but they provide...solidity. I don't know what this means, but I don't have to. She wants me to find him and help him.

She already knows I will do this. She can see it in the blood on my palm. In my lifelines.

I want to ask about the WOMAN in WHITE.

She presses one razor sharp finger to her lips and shushes me. The WOMAN in WHITE can wait. The ORACLE can protect me.

She has seen my future, which means I have a future.

go, she writes in my palm and then pulls away. My head feels full of information, pregnant with possibilities.

I look at my hand and then back up, but she is gone.

I head out the door and don't look back.