In a small local bar in downtown Manhattan, man sits at in the darkest and furthest corner from the front door. A football game played on many of the wide screen television on the walls, but he paid them no mind. He fiddled with a pair of yellow dice, moving them from his left hand to his right. Back and forth he passes the dice, all the while watching a woman who was seating the bar counter.
She was dressed in tight jeans and a low-cut tank top, clothing which was unsuitable for the freezing November weather. Perhaps she had a jacket amongst the many hung on the frail coatracks. The woman smiled and chatted with the female bartender, who looked a bit uncomfortable with the woman’s attention. The woman then slowly and deliberately reached her arm across the counter and placed it gently on the bartender’s arm.
The stood up slowly, clenching the dice so tight they squeaked against each other. Rage bubbled inside him, threatening to explode everywhere. He grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself and in doing so, the dice slipped from his grasp. They hit the floor once, then flashed with a sudden yellow light, before they hit the floor for the second time. The die came to rest, now colorless, in front of a pair of shiny black shoes.
The man watched the dice fall in shock, and when they came to rest at the shoes, his eyes slowly moved upwards. Black slacks, a white blouse, and a black blazer with a yellow daffodil in the breast pocket. When his eyes met the woman’s cold gray blue ones, he sat down very slowly. The woman reached down and picked up the dice, placing them in her pocket.
“What do we have here?” She smiled. “I didn’t think you’d actually have the balls to roll them. Looks like my assumption was wrong.” She took the seat across from him, tilting her wide brimmed black hat up so she could see him better. The man still wasn’t over how, otherworldly this woman looked. And it almost felt stranger to call her a woman. She looked barely 18.
“I didn’t mean to roll them.” The man muttered, and the woman cackled loud enough for other patrons to turn around and stare.
“Whatever you believe Tim, I don’t really care.” The strange woman’s laughing aura suddenly changed. She stared at him with her icy eyes. “I know what’s in your heart.”
The man, Tim, felt a chill. What’s in his heart? What was she talking about? The woman leaned back a looked up at the ceiling.
“When you rolled that dice Timothy, the desire in your heart is the one I have come to make true. That was the contract, right?”
Tim nodded faintly and looked down at his trembling hand. “I-I I don’t mean it anymore though-.” He stopped when the woman slowly began leaning forward. Her eyes glittered.
“Do you really though?” She asked innocently.
Tim looked over her shoulder to see the woman at the bar counter, his wife Allison. She was leaning over the counter, arms holding on for stability to the bartender on the other side. She seemed to be whispering into the other woman’s ear. Even from the other side of the room he could see her eyes, half closed, but alight with passion. The same look she used to give him.
Suddenly Tim felt the fiery rage again inside him, dispelling the cold the woman in the black hat gave him. He stood up slowly, as if he was being pulled up by strings. As he moved past the still seated woman, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He felt free.
The woman placed her black hat on her head again, pulling it low over her face. She walked slowly backwards, watching Tim and his wife as the carnage unfolded. Tim grabbed a broken bottle and she grimaced. That was going to hurt. The bartender grabbed a hidden pistol from underneath the counter. But the woman with the black hat was long gone before it was fired.
The woman glanced back at the bar, patrons now flooding out, screaming. She could see flashes of Tim’s body, bloody and still, on the floor. His cheating wife was out of sight, presumably behind the counter. As Tim took his last breath, the woman felt a string somewhere in the universe snap, and she smiled. She had finally broken the terrible loop of pain.
In her mind’s eye she Allison and the bartender hiding behind the counter, holding each other close. And as one string snapped, another one was reknit.
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