Murdered Paper Napkin

 

Murdered Paper Napkin                                  

 

            I was murdering my paper napkin. The thickness in the air and the darkness in the sky were growing by the second. He sat across from me at the pockmarked wooden table, finishing his lasagna, looking impeccably dashing in a clean, crisp shirt and little black bow tie, his cinereous hair slicked back. Dashing for a dad, that is.

            “Don’t you have to go?”I reminded him, trying to sound blasé instead of urgent and panicked. My fingers switched from creating a permutation with the shreds of napkin to drumming soundlessly on my thigh as I pictured another meeting with my greatest enemy, whom also happened to be my closest ally. My feet picked out a constant rhythm on the cold tile floor.

            “Pretty soon. It’s not too late.” His words echoed in my head, changing steadily from his low, gravelly, comforting voice to a higher, smoother voice that made me feel like I was slipping on an ice rink; the voice whose familiarity was becoming increasingly disconcerting. Not too late, it whispered, Not too late.

            It was almost time. If Dad didn’t leave before He came… he could get ensnared in the web I had been caught in. The thought was more than I could bear. I knew I had decided upon a life of fulfilling the needs of Satan himself, but my dad was still too important to me. I couldn’t let him meet Him. Not yet.

            After all, He had told me again and again that it was imperative for me to appear to be

innocent at all times. He didn’t want anyone to know that I was privy to such amazing, horrific secrets. And neither did I. I was already gripping the edge of the table in anticipation, even without the threat of being chased down and burned at the stake as a witch by close-minded, odium-filled mortals.

Concentrating, I drew borrowed power from the air, from the famous, deadly River Styx, just as He had taught me. The lights barely flickered, but Dad noticed. He looked up and saw the clock hanging on the wall above my head, which now read twenty minutes later than it had a second ago.

            “God!” he exclaimed. No, I thought wryly, Not really. “Bye Sweetie. I guess it is too late.” I shivered convulsively. “Cheerio!” Ha. Cheery. As if.

            Dad ran out the door onto the shadow-dappled streets of Mill Valley and hurried away. Right on time.

            And then He appeared, his white skin glowing, his black eyes hard and shallow, his blood red lips warped into a infected, angular smile, and I felt myself swoon and tremble at the same time.