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Scream of the Butterfly
Part 1
By: T.G. Browning
He should have guessed, then. The salamander had known.
McKinley shut the computer down and wearily headed back to bed. He had about four hours of sleep he could manage before Pam would inevitably get him up, but that couldn’t be helped. For the first time in a week, he felt as if there was some point to his life and he could draw on that for strength, while he set things up.
He didn’t have much time. The cusp was six days off and he had to figure out how to achieve a random death, if that were even possible.
And then, he’d have a chance of completing whatever it was he had to complete before the next spin of the wheel. Then Pam could have her own chance.
2: Shutout
Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light?
Or just another lost angel?
”LA Woman”
Jim Morrison/The Doors
Pam regarded the fireplace for a moment before shaking her head. She missed the salamander that had once lived there. It had been such a joy to watch on cold evenings with the fire blazing away, the two of them, Kevin and herself, cozy and sitting on the couch, reading, talking, listening to music. The salamander’s firedance had changed with each song and Pam had been amused when she’d discovered that the damn creature had actually like both Country and Western and the Blues. She couldn’t see how that could be but Kevin had merely shaken his head and shrugged, explaining that salamanders were not the most stable elementals. At least, lower level salamanders such as this.
She’d gotten up in the middle of the night for no reason and gone out to the front room, the night the salamander had left, somehow alerted but by what she never knew. It had been hovering over the dying embers, slowly weaving a complex dance as if it had been killing time for some reason. As soon as she had entered the front room, it had stopped for a moment, as if to say that it was about time. And then it had darted through the air to coil and cavort around her head one last time. For the space of half a minute, she’d been bathed in the tingling fire that never burned her, only caressed and then it had, once again, flowed through her head, emerging from her forehead to hover in the air for a moment longer.
Then it was gone.
She stared at the fireplace, now so long empty, barren of the living heat that had dwelt there for a time and then shrugged to herself. She’d have to watch that. She was getting soppy as she got older.
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