Before we jump into Chapter 12 of Heart of Eternity, I’ve launched a comic! Go check it out at goomachine.substack.com and here’s a little teaser of the first page. (the rest are at that link, go subscribe, I’ve got new pages coming out all the time)
And now on to the book. As always, you can read it below or listen to me read it to you. Don’t forget to comment and share if you’re enjoying these.
Death’s Seer chapter 12
Millie’s dog Frank was not intentionally destructive, but was nonetheless the cause of many broken things. Frank was a Saint Bernard with a ton of energy and no situational awareness. He was constantly sliming people’s legs with his ever-present string of viscus drool hanging from his jowls and his tail had a mind of its own.
Millie’s tail also had a mind of is own, but in a more literal way because Millie’s tail was a 6 foot tall private investigator named Herb. Tonight was like most nights, the four of them were on a walk; Frank with his tail, because it was attached, and Millie with her tail, because he was being paid to follow her.
Normally, the people Herb followed didn’t realize he was following them, but it’s hard to be inconspicuous when your jacket is on fire and you have a red hot glowing piece of rebar sticking out of your chest, especially at night.
Herb wasn’t actually impaled and ablaze at the moment, but he would be at some time in the future.
Millie didn’t know when Herb was going to die, but she knew what he’d look like when he did and that is how she saw him: at his moment of death. That is how she saw everyone all the time.
Most people do not see the moment of death more than once or twice in their lives. You may sit by an ailing grandparent as they pass or be unlucky enough to witness some horrific accident, but for most people, this was a rare and traumatizing event.
People thought Millie was awkward or shy. She seemed to cringe when people made eye contact and had trouble focusing during conversations. But the armchair diagnosis of Millie’s friends and coworkers were too mundane to be accurate. Millie wasn’t an introvert or on the spectrum. Millie was Death’s Seer. She always saw everyone how they would look at the moment of their death.
This wasn’t a big deal for those who would die in their sleep because they just looked older with their eyes closed. A couple of them had a smile on their face. It was everyone else that was hard to look at. Those purple faced, bugged-eyed people who would choke to death, those gaunt souls who would starve, the murdered, the maimed, the emaciated, the shot, the beaten, the burned…
And so she saw Herb on fire with a red-hot stick of rebar embedded in his chest. He looked middle aged and was stuck in an eternal, agonized scream. She could also tell when he was near because of the smell of burnt hair, clothing, and meat. Sometimes, the smell was the worst part.
Honestly, this seems like the premise of a quirky sci-fi channel tv show in the 90s, but it wasn’t quirky, it was horrendous and it was ruining Millie’s life. She struggled to hold a conversation, maintain relationships, and her attempts to warn people caused a lot of problems.
There were times when she’d warn someone about their impending demise and they’d take her seriously. She could always tell if she was being taken seriously because she would see them change.
Years ago she was talking to a friend who looked very near his current age, bug-eyed and blue. She convinced him that, for his own good, he needed to slow down and chew each bite of food.
He decided to take her advice. She watched him change. His eyes closed, his facial muscles relaxed, the veins and tendons of his neck stopped protruding, and his skin turned a normal color, then began to wrinkle into old age. He would die in his sleep decades later than he would have otherwise.
The mob informant that had turned state’s evidence also appreciated the warning, but the mob did not. “Excuse me, sir,” Millie had said to the man, “sir, I don’t know how the say this, but I think you’re going to be tortured or something.”
“What?! Who…”
“I don’t know sir. I’m sorry.”
“Keep your voice down. Tortured?”
“Uh, yeah. Or something. I’m sorry. I see, er, I get premonitions.”
“Okay, and I’m supposed to get tortured how?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly, but it seems like your legs and fingers are broken and… uh…”
“Spit it out girlie,” the man said urgently.
Millie threw up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she avoided looking at the man. “I’m sorry. It’s so gross. Sometimes I…”
He grabbed both of her shoulders and leaned down to look her straight in the eyes. “Take a deep breath doll. Tell me what else. It’s important.”
She took a deep breath, cried as she looked at his mangled face, and blurted, “The side of your mouth is cut open, your eye is gone, and your ears are… I don’t know, like mangled or dead mostly pulled off or something?”
The man cursed under his breath, “When!”
“I don’t know. I never know.”
He was looking around frantically. He spoke into his chest, “I’m blown. Do you hear me pigs?! I’ll put you all in the ground before I let The Tool Man use his pliers on me.” And Then his appearance began to change as he said, “get me outta here. I’m going into protection.”
His legs straightened from the of angles that they had been. His fingers bent back into place with multiple pops and snaps. His eye and ear grew back in and he aged slightly. His clothing changed from a brown leather jacket to a button up flannel. He was wearing a trucker hat and holding a snow shovel. His face, now whole, was contorted in pain. As he turned towards the car that just showed up, Millie saw two small holes in the back of his flannel as dark red blood blossomed staining his shirt.
“Mister!” She called. “Don’t shovel your driveway.”
“What?” He was getting into the car.
“Don’t use a snow shovel.”
“Okay,” he said resolutely. He changed again, no hat this time and slightly older. His hairline receded and the blood from a bullet hole in his forehead began to run down his face as he shut the door and the car sped off.
“Hmmm, I bought him a couple of years, I guess,” Millie mumbled to herself as she gingerly stepped around her puddle of vomit. On the other side of the street a hulking man crammed into the driver seat of a small sedan growled as he adjusted his gold chain. He snapped a couple of photos of Millie and wrote down the address of the building she just walked into.
Her flaming tail Herb was waiting outside her building the next morning.
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