This Way She Comes

She watched from the window as the leaves fell from their trees. She watched as they turned a burnt orange before hitting the ground. She watched the children pass her house, their attire changing with the weather. She listened to their energized voices as they walked to school. She waited for her time of year. The time of year where she could go outside without recognition. The one time of year where she felt true happiness. She watched all year around as others lived in the open space, counting the days when she would get her turn. 

It’d been fifteen years she was stuck. Fifteen years she was forced to sit and watch, only able to leave her home on the one night of the year. It was her best option. Otherwise she would have to face what she had done. She hadn’t aged, which only added onto her reasoning. It made what she did worth it but raised the stakes for her possible entrapment. She was twenty then, a kid fearful of dying. She was afraid that one day she would die. She feared getting older and what that entailed so she set out a plan. She planned to find the fountain of youth and her actions on that day have followed her since. 

She made the news for what she did. However, no one knew the reason behind it. They thought she was a college kid whose mind finally snapped. They didn’t know the whole story and ever since have made their own theories as to why she done it. Why she had killed twelve people at the time and why she hadn’t ever been found. Her face was everywhere, newsstands, wanted posters, and the daily news. She knew that she couldn’t leave her hideout. A hideout that no one thought to look. The house of the very professor that gave her the idea. 

He told her a myth he heard about the fountain. While others believed a simple coin toss or a sip of its water would give eternal life, Dr. Borra had a different theory. He theorized that no one has successfully received their wish because they weren’t willing to sacrifice. He taught his class on the theories of ancient beliefs and that day in class she paid extra attention. She thought about his theory and it made sense to her. She questioned him on the belief of the coin, stating that in theory someone was bringing a sacrifice to the fountain. 

“But is it their last coin?” He asked skeptically and she thought his point was valid. It wasn’t a big enough sacrifice was the moral of the story that she interpreted. She began to hatch a plan of what could be bigger. She spent days thinking of what she could bring to the fountain that would grant her eternal life. 

During those days she didn’t pay much attention to the events that surrounded her. She attended her father’s funeral, cried at the ceremony, and picked at her plate as people came up to her. However, her mind stayed focused on the question of what to bring. Then staring down at her father’s obituary it hit her. To her it made sense that for life there must be death and she had a good idea of how to test her theory. 

Her father was killed, caught in the crossfire. She never could forgive those two men, making them prime targets for her to get her revenge. It took her two days. Two days to muster up the strength she needed to do what she thought was right. She took the suspect first. It was easy to get to him. He was already laid up in a hospital bed, it was easy for her to sneak in and take his life, quietly. She took one thing from him, something she didn’t think he would need. 

The other man proved quite difficult. A badge attached to his chest. However she found him, stumbling home one dark night. He mistook her presence as an invitation and she was the last to see him alive. Taking from him the one thing she needed to complete the set. She kept them both, each a different color but she played on the symbolism. 

“An eye for an eye.” She told herself as she preserved them. That is how it went on for the two years to follow. She convinced herself that twenty-two would be a good place to stop in time and if it didn’t work it would be a good place to keep going. 

She gathered her mementos, each part from one of her twelve victims and headed toward the fountain. She ignored the sounds of the children laughing as she walked by them, the sounds of her jars clanging together only providing a slight distraction to their holiday fun. It was the one day of the year where she could pull out a jar and someone would believe it was a decoration. 

She stood before the fountain taking in what she had done and she couldn’t help but to smile. She believed her dream was about to come true. She looked at it as the water flowed, it was practically glowing to her. She knelt down before the fountain placing each part into it with a slight whisper of the personal name. 

“Bobby.” She whispered as she placed the ear of her father’s corrupt business partner into the fountain. She stood over each part in the fountain and waited. She waited as the moon rose to its highest point. She gazed at the fountain as it shined brighter, presenting to her its own light. She smiled, believing that it was working. She gathered her things and headed back home. She stopped in her tracks as she rounded the corner, her empty jars in tow. There was a fleet of cop cars waiting for her outside her home. 

She didn’t know what to do. She ran to a place she knew would be empty. Partially because she had just put a part of him into the fountain and he had no living relatives. It’s where she stayed for fifteen years. Coming out on a day where others dressed in costume. At first, she was worried, stepping out of her house. That very first year she wore a disguise but was surprised to find reflections of herself. People dressed up as the ‘bereaved collector’, a nickname given to her by the press. She found it amusing to see girls dressed up like her caring jars of presumably fake body parts. 

Fifteen years passed as did the story of what she did. She hardly got recognized as being a replication of her own self when she stepped out the house. Some years she dressed up as someone else, amusing herself, but she always stayed on task. 

For every year following the night she placed those pieces in the fountain she hasn’t stopped. Every year she went to the fountain to give her thanks and she would bring something for it. A sacrifice she picked up along the way. This year would be no different. She stopped a woman on her way home from work. She was rushing to get her children’s costumes out of the car when she was approached. Her name was Madeline, the name presented on her uniform, dirty from the shift she just finished. Madeline didn’t see her coming, she turned to the approaching figure and it was the last thing she saw. However she survived. Before an axe could be raised to take a piece of the woman that shared her mother’s name, she froze. Caught by her own reflection in the car window. She leaned in as Madeline laid unconscious on the ground. She looked at herself and a tear fell down her cheek as a strand of her hair fell down in front of her face. It was a shiny shade of gray. 

Flash Issue 11