Blaine almost stayed home from school the next day. He was sick to his stomach, and didn’t know how to deal with this loss. Daniel wasn’t his best friend, but it still affected him, like a dagger sticking out of his back. What made it wall the worse was the fact that it was predicted in Jane’s diary.

‘She must be using some devil’s power or something,’ he thought to himself. He was sore all over from running and lifting weights: two things he did only when really upset. His stomach heaved again, and he fought down the urge to throw up. He passed through his classes, he heard the teachers talk, but it never registered in his mind what they had said, nor did he care. All he wanted was to leave and talk to Jane about what she wrote and why she wrote it. What went on in her head.

She was standing and talking with a few friends. He started walking up to her, getting closer with each step. He hoped he could get her alone and demand how the things happened that she wrote down in that diary of hers happened in real life. He would admit that he looked into it and saw everything that she wrote. Well, maybe just that entry.

But before he got close, Karen surprised him from behind again. “So, how’s it going?” she greeted him, giving him her usual accommodation.

“Okay, actually,” he lied. She meant too much to Blaine for him to drag her into this voodoo business. “I’m just… really tired.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked him, patting him on the back. “I’m really sorry about Daniel, I truly am. Is it bothering you?”

He nodded. “I guess so, and I’m mostly confused,” he told her, pulling her into a hug to comfort himself. “But stuff happens, and I won’t let it affect us.”

After they let go, Karen said, “I promised to meet the girls and talk about the weekend. Will you miss me?”

He smiled joylessly. There was nothing to be smiling about. “It’s okay, run along.” He waved goodbye as she left.
All Karen was thinking was how devoted she was to Blaine. He had been most of her life since freshmen year. They were such a good match, and everyone knew it. Before they had met, she had felt empty, but now she had someone to catch her, most times literally, whenever she fell. As she walked away, she was a little worried when she saw him talking to Jane. He had been spending a lot more time with her ever since she arrived, and she didn’t know what to think. Was her love seeing her behind his back? Jane was obviously smitten with him, but the look on Blaine’s face gave her dark consolation. ‘At least he doesn’t look like he was enjoying himself,’ she thought to herself.

Jane heard about how Blaine didn’t leave the bedside of Daniel Evans until they knew he was dead, and this disturbed her slightly. This wasn’t what she foresaw, even though the main event took place like it should. Everything should go literally by the book. But when Blaine asked her to talk in private, those worried feelings vanished like sand in the wind. Was he about to make the move she’d wanted him to make ever since she saw those deep blue eyes of his? They were so cold, and they sent chills up her spine whenever she looked into them, on those rare occasions.

Finally, they reached a secure location behind a vending machine against a wall. Now there was virtually no way to see them unless you walked behind it. To the casual observer, it was just a vending machine. What a secure place for him to bring her. Jane was overwhelmed with pleasure, and just anticipating what she wanted him to say almost made her swoon.

‘But, what he’s about to ask isn’t a shock, seeing how gorgeous I am,’ she credited herself in her thoughts. She did cut a striking figure, with long and brown hair, slender figure, and grey eyes. Batting her eyelashes made many guys look twice before going about their business, but they never forgot her. She used her looks for her benefit whenever she felt like doing it.

“So,” Blaine started, but didn’t continue for a moment.

There it was, that moment’s hesitation! Jane was almost bursting with impatience. She was ready to throw herself at him and do whatever he wanted. She knew, though, that at one point, it would be her controlling him if he was out of line or became boring.

“Yes?” she squeaked in an octave higher than her normal tone.

What was she all excited about? Blaine did not know what was going through her head, and he was sure he would never know. There was nothing to be excited about. There was only pain and despair, and this girl was feeling neither.

“Who are you?” he asked. “How come Daniel died, and how did you know that the Miss Clarkson was going to be in a car crash with four broken ribs and a broken arm?”

Had she heard him correctly? The fuzzy feeling was vanishing quickly. Why was he asking that? There was no possible way he would know. “Sorry?” she said. “What did you say?”

Blaine inhaled and exhaled, trying to control his own impatience. “How come,” he said slowly, “the things that you wrote in your diary came true? Why is Daniel dead?”

He knew! How could he possibly know? Unless, when she left him in her room while she went to help her mother he found the book and picked it up out of curiosity. That gave her all the reason to kill him now. No one could know, otherwise the influence the diary had on people would wane. She had to do it before the diary became utterly powerless.

‘But I can’t, he’s so handsome…and cold,’ she thought leisurely in her head. Then, an idea began to form. She could turn this situation around, and have Blaine at her side. She could gaze in his eyes and get lost in that cold ocean of blue forever. That gave her all the encouragement she needed to regain her footing.

She looked down, and it was obvious to Blaine she felt guilty. “Well, I’m really, really sorry about that, and I actually didn’t mean for him to die,” she told him, her bottom lip trembling ever so slightly. “All I wrote was…he is going to get a heart attack, stuffing his face. I didn’t know it would take me literally. It was a…casual statement.”

To Blaine, it sounded sincere. Those grey eyes wouldn’t betray her, nor would her voice. She was a first-rate deceiver. “But you know heart attacks kill people,” he said.

She nodded. “I was betting on him to survive, the diary only says they’ll die if I write it,” she told him. Again, another falsehood. She knew the rules, but he didn’t.

“So you admit to having a demonic book,” he declared.

This is where she would hook him, and draw him to her side. “Yes, I do, and everything I write in it comes true,” she replied, smirking. “I control anything and everything within this school. Mostly I do it for me, but…” She moved very close to him. “If you wanted, if there’s anyone you hate, I could teach them a lesson for you,” she said softly. “If you be my boyfriend.”

So that’s what she was getting all hyped about. ‘Now the whole thing makes sense again,’ he thought. ‘She likes me.’ “But why do you kill people?” he asked her. Maybe she just didn’t know the game she was playing.

“Simple,” she answered. “I’m above them all. I have power and they don’t know it. If they treat me bad, well, play with fire and you get burned.” She grinned evilly. “As a matter of fact, Cyndi the cheerleader is about to get burnt herself. I guess she doesn’t know that stomping on a full carton of orange juice is stupid. But what do you say, Blaine? Would you be my boyfriend?”

What kind of demon was she? And what was that nonsense about his friend Cyndi? “No, I can’t,” he replied flatly. “I’m sorry, Jane, but I’ve been kinda going out with someone for a long time. And I never date more than one girl at once.”

She smiled genuinely. “Well, that’s good, and I hope you two have a good relationship,” she beamed. “Well, I guess since you know about my little secret, I better tell you that if you tell anyone about the book, the diary writes itself. And it writes your ending. A little heads up for you. See ya!” She left without another word.

Blaine didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t let anyone else die, but he couldn’t tell anyone or else he would die. ‘How the heck am I supposed to save people that she hates?’ he thought. ‘If she really wants me, she can’t push me away by targeting my friends…Karen’s on the list, I know it! I’ll have to tell my friends to keep our relationship on the down low!’

She said her next target was Cyndi. He had to go prevent whatever would happen. He started running.

“Whoa, Blaine, what’s gotten into you?” His friend, Jake, pulled him over halfway through the lunch area. “There’s no fire, but your face looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I didn’t, I saw a demoness. Now, where’s Cyndi?” he said without stopping for a breath.

“Tsk, tsk, guy, whatever happened to Karen?” Jake chided him. “First Jane, now Cyndi?”

“Jane!?” he asked, slightly outraged. “What are you talking about?”

“Girls you’ve been seeing in private,” Jake answered, elbowing him. “Well, she’s over there. Oh, look, one of those idiot footballers is going to jump on an orange juice carton.”

With no time to spare, Blaine made a mad dash, dragging Jake along, much to his complaint. There was Cyndi, with a group of footballers, chatting it up about sports.

“Cyndi!” Blaine exclaimed.

She turned around. “Oh, hi, Blaine. What are you two metal-heads doing here?”

Blaine didn’t really know how to explain. What was he going to say to her? She was about to have some sort of fatal accident? “Well, uh, actually…” he started.

Cyndi raised an eyebrow. “Come on, spit it out. I don’t have all lunch, you know.”

Jake leaned in and whispered. “You’re dying here.”

Blaine really didn’t need to hear the word “die” or anything related. “Oh, well, we’ve got a rehearsal for our band, and we were thinking of making a music vid. Just wondering if you would wanna help out,” He managed to say before he ran out of breath.

Cyndi shrugged. “Why not just ask Karen? Hello, are you paying attention?”

Blaine was looking around his feet to see a juice carton. “Oh! Well, she wouldn’t want to do what we’re thinking of, but you could.”

Jake gave him a look. “What video?” Blaine elbowed him. “Oh, that one.”

“Well, I can’t talk anymore, I have to go to pick something up. Toodles.” She waved before walking away.

Jake turned on Blaine. “Do I have to follow you up every time?”

Blaine nodded. “Yeah, you do.”

“Oh, by the way, does Jane know Karen?” Jake asked.

“No, why?” Blaine responded.

“She asked me about your girlfriend.”

Blaine’s security net fell from under him. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know how she likes you, but you’re so slow you never catch on,” Jake answered saucily. “She asked if you were seeing someone, and I said you were dating Karen. She seemed happy for you.”

Blaine felt like there was a black hole consuming his being from the inside out. “Oh, God no, why did you tell her?!” he screamed at his friend before storming off.

Jake shrugged. “This kid’s really upset. I wonder why?”

As the bell rang, Blaine turned around to see Cyndi walking to class. Out of the corner of his eye, some kid threw something over his shoulder and landed right where she was walking. Blaine watched everything in slow motion as Cyndi stepped on the object, slipped, and skidded forward.

“Jake!!” Blaine yelled at his friend, who was only a few feet from her.

He spun around to see Cyndi sliding towards him. They collided, knocking Jake onto the ground. Cyndi careened to the other side and hit her head on a planter’s edge.

Blaine raced over. “What’s wrong with her?” he screamed as her body went limp.

Jake picked her up and inspected her. “I think she hit her head and is suffering spinal trauma! I’ll get her to the nurse’s office!”

Even in the heat of the situation, Blaine was confused why his friend was talking like a medical science geek. “How would you know that!?”

“I’m guessing!” he called over his shoulder as he carried her to the office building.

Blaine walked over and picked up the object Cyndi had slipped on. To his horror, he realized that the object was a juice carton. He had been too late.

Jane watched the entire affair, her pretty face contorting in anger a little more as the scene progressed. ‘Why can’t he stay out of my way, even when he fails?’ she thought to herself. ‘Stuck-up people should be rubbed out. Everyone should treat everyone else with respect, why can’t he see what I’m doing? If they’re nice to me, they get rewarded and stay alive. If they’re mean to me, I kill them. It’s simple.’ She put the diary into her backpack and sauntered off. She knew just how to get Blaine on her side.



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Now that Blaine was aware of the diary and its demonic, cursed power, he always felt a stirring in the back of his head before something happened. If he closed his eyes, he could see colors flashing, from red to purple to black to grey, but he could never distinguish who it was or how it was going to happen. At least, not all the tragedies ended in death. Some were mere humiliations, such as someone getting hit in the face with pizza, or spilling their drink in their lap. Others were more extreme, like hitting their head into the wall, falling down the stairways, or getting something broken.

Weeks went by, but to Blaine, they felt like years. To everyone else, these things merely happened. Everyday stuff to the general populous, but to Blaine, the only one who the cause of this, felt pain right along with them. Nineteen serious injuries, four concussions, and a death in just the last two weeks, and everyone moved along. No one knew. It weighed heavily on him, even though he knew it wasn’t his fault or his cross to bear. He was just someone that knew, but could never help. He would reach whoever it was just a second late. It would be them getting a foot punctured by glass when he just noticed it, or he would be right out of arm’s reach when someone toppled over the side of the second story.

He felt as if there was no way in which he could help, as if fate demanded their lives to be taken, but he had to keep trying. Always work towards thwarting the diary of Jane.

That night, Blaine tossed and turned in his bed, trying to figure what was going to happen tomorrow. He didn’t know why Karen hadn’t become a target already, after a month’s worth of Jane knowing about her. He was already being overprotective of Karen, now that her name was on the list. Was she going to die? Was she going to be horribly disfigured? Would she get kidnapped, locked in a room, and tied up until she suffocated?

There was only one answer for that. He would have to look into the diary of Jane and see what the future held.

So he got out of bed, put on his shoes, and ran down the street to her house. The Duress’s had gone out for bowling night, like every Thursday night. Jane left her window open.

He quickly scaled the tree and jumped to the roof, from there entering her room through the window. He stepped lightly and started looking for the book. He opened all the drawers, he went through her closet, and even cracked the code to get into her small vault, but found nothing but pictures, movies, and jewelry. Not what he was searching for.

He finally found her backpack and unzipped it. Inside the corduroy pack was the cursed book. He read the opening entry to it.

‘April 17th, 2004,’ he read. ‘I just got this book from a big kid named something Hunter. I don’t know who he was, but he told me that it was a special diary that when you wrote in it, things happened if you made a story. I think he was just making it up. Well tomorrow’s my birthday. If it works, I’ll say this. Tomorrow, my grandma’s going to give me that new Barbie Doll I’ve been wanting since last year and my cake is going to be strawberry. Mom changed it from chocolate last minute.’

And the entries continued, becoming more and more dangerous, but still remaining with only one benefit: to please Jane. It was simple things, like the handball hitting someone in the face or they fell down and got a scratch, but then it evolved. She had had five boyfriends, and four of them died, killed by the diary. The other one moved out of the diary’s influence radius: the neighborhood and her school. The Medieval poster of dancing skeletons seemed to be moving on its own accord, but Blaine blamed it on tiredness and lack of realism.

A screech of tires snapped Blaine out of his dream world, and he turned to the last entry. He heard the keys turning in the lock downstairs. With no other choice, he ripped the entry out of the diary and shoved it into his pocket. He rolled out the window and into the tree. Once he thought they were in the house, he jumped out of the tree and made a dash for his house. From there, he would read the entry, and in his sleep, he would try to find a way to escape the fate of the diary of Jane.

Jane didn’t know why her diary was sitting on the table or why her poster seemed to move, but she didn’t spare anytime to think about it. Wait, why was an entry missing? Hadn’t she written one before they went to go bowl? Jane thought she must have forgotten to. But she remembered all of what she was going to write down.

‘I’m sorry, Blaine,’ she thought maliciously as the pen scribbled across the surface of the page. ‘But sometimes in order to have you make the right choices, I must break you first and put you on the path myself.’

Blaine could barely sleep. He kept on dreaming about Karen’s fate, and he didn’t know how he was going to cheat it. He kept on seeing himself behind bars while watching Karen fall, or become impaled on something, or attacked. He didn’t know how to prevent it. In his mind, something in the form of Jake appeared to him.

“Don’t check the entry until you think something is about to happen,” he advised him. “If you look at that continuously and Jane spots you, she might figure it’s the page you ripped out.”

When morning came, and he was on his way to school, he formulated a plan: he would keep close to Karen at all times, keep his friends close, and avoid Jane whenever possible. He had to find the reach of her hand and where he could hide.

He got to the entrance of the school and looked around for Karen. Where was she? He found her group of friends where she usually was until he arrived. Could she be gone already? Was he too late?

No, it couldn’t be. He never felt anything stirring in the air. She had to be safe for now. He walked up the stairs and onto the second level of the school, diary entry in his pocket. Wrapped in that entry was a folding blade, just in case.

There, he saw her in the hallway, walking slowly to the other side. He walked quickly to her, as if getting close to her would prevent any damage that was about to happen.

All of a sudden, he felt the strange stirring, that danger sign. He closed his eyes and saw those bright colors flashing before him. But also, in the depths of his mind, he felt something else: A huge emotional upheaval. He was feeling extremely passionate. There was something he needed to say to Karen. He completely ignored the buzzing in his skull and left the entry in his pocket.

“Karen, sweetheart,” he breathed as he swept her into his arms, pulling her tightly against himself. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Karen turned her head and faced him. Her face was tear-streaked. “What do you mean, Blaine, haven’t you been cruel enough already?” she told him, trying to back away.

“Yes, I have, I’ve ignored you and haven’t been with you enough,” he told her. He didn’t understand what she was saying. “And I have to tell you now. I love you, and I don’t ever want to leave you. Ever.”

“How can you say that after what you’ve done?” she asked him, backing herself against the wall and trying to scoot away. She was scared by this. What was he saying, after everything he had done to her?

Blaine got down on one knee. “I haven’t done anything, I swear,” he told her. There was a little voice in the back of his mind, screaming at him to get out of there. But he ignored it. He was at an important step in his life. “The only thing I’ve done is loved you.”

Karen had enough of this pain and hurt. She slapped him across the face. “After all the time I gave you in these last two years, you cheat on me!?” she yelled at him. “And with that sophomore, Jane!? Jake told me all about it this morning! I can’t believe I devoted myself to you and you do this! I’m done here!” With tears in her eyes, she dashed off in the other direction.

The passion was gone, and Blaine’s mind had cleared. He stood there, dazed, confused, hurt, and in pain. The red mark would disappear, but the feeling wouldn’t. Why had she said that? Where did Jake come in? Why would Jake say that?

Anger rose within him, demanding he grab Jake by the neck and shake him until he owned up. But he couldn’t at the moment, he was still in shock from what had happened. He just lost the love of his life.

Five minutes had passed and he didn’t move. Then, reason reentered his mind. ‘There was that buzzing in the back of your head, and you ignored it,’ it chastened him. ‘Those were not Karen’s words, and you know it. Check the diary entry.’

And so he did. In the first small, neatly written paragraph, there it was, the entire fight played out on that paper, and he had unwittingly been a part of it. Needless, though, he ran down the stairs and found Jake.

“What did you say to Karen?” he yelled at his friend. “Why did you say I was cheating on her with Jane!?”

Jake put his hands up, looking nonplussed. “Hold it, man, what are you talking about? I haven’t said anything to your pretty girl since yesterday!”

Blaine didn’t buy it. “She said you talked to her this morning!” he replied, balling his fists up. “And you told her I was cheating on her!”

Jake shook his head. “You must have hit your head, kid, because the last thing I said to her was about you witnessing Cyndi’s bloody death,” he told him. “Besides, why would I want you to break up with Karen? There’s no reason for it!”

Blaine had to grudgingly admit that was true. Jake wasn’t interested in Karen, or any other girl at the school. His girlfriend was somewhere else. Jane must have manipulated Karen and Karen used any random name to come up with who told her.

Blaine had a score to settle, but first, he still had to protect Karen. Make her see that he never did waver.



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Third period was a gossip fest when word got around. He just ignored it and refused to answer questions. He told them that he was not cheating, and Karen was just misunderstanding. Even Jane told them that she wasn’t doing anything with him except the chemistry project.

“But I am sorry about your breakup,” Jane said softly while coloring the poster. She obviously didn’t mean it, but Blaine wasn’t concentrating.

He wanted to bite back and tell her that she planned every bit of that. But he couldn’t. He would reveal his secret. He would just take her foothold from under her. He would make her feel guilty. “How do I know you didn’t write that so you could get closer to me?” he asked her, eyes riveted to the project. He refused to look at her.

She opened her backpack and took out the cursed book. “I’ll prove it to you,” she said, opening the diary and showing him the blank page. “I haven’t written in it since yesterday, and the entry is about yesterday. I haven’t done a single thing in it. Now you have to believe me.” She snapped it shut and put it back.

He didn’t know the rules of the book, but he was sure everything he wrote on the paper from that diary would come true. But he couldn’t afford to deny it, or she’d figure it out. “Well okay, guess. You’re clear for now, but if anything happens, I’ll know.”

“But even if I did,” Jane said, “Don’t you want payback for what she said? I mean, after two years, you would think she could trust you alone, but she says that kind of stuff to you?” she patted him on the back. “I think she needs to be taught something, don’t you?”

That’s all Jane knew. Control and punishment. She had almost never rewarded someone by writing good things about them. Whenever she did, it was to make a path clear for something else she wanted. The only person she wrote something good about was her best friend Terra, and that was only twice. As the bell rang, she watched Blaine go in his desired direction. What the poor darling didn’t know was that she had ripped out the entry before she showed it to him. She could write it again and again. The diary’s pages never ended.

But after she rewrote the entry, paranoia grabbed a hold on her. ‘What if he manages to mess this one up?’ she thought to herself as she twirled the pen between her fingers. ‘He just might be able to, after two months of knowing.’ An idea hit her, and she uncapped the pen. ‘Why don’t we have something extremely heavy fall on dear Karen? There is no avoiding that fate.’ She smirked to herself as she began to write.



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That entire day, there was no sight or sound of anything suspicious. There was no stir, no colors, or anything that stank of death. Sure, someone didn’t land a front flip and hurt their rear, but they laughed and shook it off. Blaine still didn’t know what to do, or what was coming. His friends tried to console him about the loss of his girlfriend. He told them it was a misunderstanding and they just had an argument, but his friends merely shook their heads and said that he was in denial.

Karen was also a wreck. She spent most of the day in the hallways, crying to herself, wishing she never said those things to Blaine. She didn’t know why she said it, and she didn’t know why she said Jake told her, because she hadn’t talked to him since yesterday. She wanted to apologize to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to face him. She had to compose herself.

It was the end of the day. School was out, but Blaine stayed behind. He knew Karen hadn’t left the grounds, because he would have seen her. The campus emptied until it was only him and her left.

He wanted to find her and tell her he was sorry about what she thought and that he could prove to her he was loyal. There was only one way to.

He checked the diary entry and scanned down the small page. He saw what was going to happen at 2:15. He saw what would befall Karen if he didn’t get over there now.

Only one minute left as he rushed at full body speed to the hallway in the second building. There was Karen. If she walked another four feet, behind that corner was the end of her life. He ran as fast as he could. She was still going.

‘I can’t let her go!’ Blaine screamed in his head. ‘She must not pass that corner.’

He was way down the hallway. “Karen!” he screamed. The worst mistake possible.

From behind the corner came the psychopath that the entry had written. The one that was going to stab Karen in the back and kill her. He had a jagged kitchen knife. Karen turned around and was face to face with her death. She ran the other way, as Blaine came closer and closer. The psychopath raised his knife, the killing intent written all over his eyes.

As the knife flashed downwards, and Karen was living her regrets, she felt herself being pulled out of the way. Blaine had pushed her away and the knife sunk into his shoulder.

Karen shrieked as she backed herself against the wall as she watched the scene unfold. She was terrified, and she couldn’t move to save her life. Blaine had to save it for her.

The knife was yanked out of his shoulder, and he felt his blood running down his arm. Buzzing with adrenaline and the will to survive, he slammed his fists into the attacker’s gut and head, knocking him down. He was about to turn away when the knife slashed through his calf, causing him to crumble and howl in pain. He kicked out with his good foot at his attacker, breaking one of his ribs. With a surge of strength, he took out his own folding blade and rammed it into the throat of his assailant.

Karen was screaming bloody murder as Blaine rolled over and the killer’s life drained out from his throat. She was crying from shock and relief.

Blaine was alive, and he loved her.

He wouldn’t risk his life to save her, otherwise. She cradled his head while tears flowed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry I said those things to you,” she told him through the veil of tears. I didn’t mean them at all.”

“I know you didn’t,” Blaine told her, trying to get up. He could barely stand, because of the slash in his calf. “I’m just glad I got to you in time…we’ve got to leave…”

“Why?” she asked, wiping her tears away and helping him get to his feet. “How did you know that was going to happen?”

“I read it in a book,” he told her.

Those words began known consequences. He remembered exactly what he was warned of. That’s when he recalled what he had learned about the diary’s radius.

If only he could get her far away enough. “We have to leave, now. We have to get off campus.”

She nodded. With Blaine’s arm around her shoulder to keep his balance steady, they made for the rolling gate at the school’s entrance.

Just as they we going for the last stretch, the sixty paces before they were out of reach, Blaine saw colors flash in his mind’s eye. Something was going to happen. With the last bit of strength, he shoved Karen through the opening before the chain on the post became untied. The heavy aluminum rolled down and smashed him between itself and the concrete. He couldn’t scream, yell, think, or move. All he could feel was pain and watch as the spots before his eyes turned from a random screen into a formed picture he saw hanging on a certain girl’s wall: an animated Danse Macabre.

Karen looked back and saw what happened. She froze on the spot with the image of Blaine’s broken body on the ground, blood pouring out of his mouth. He was dead.

The picture of him lying there, blood quickly spilling from his insides was filling up her mind until that was all she could see and all she would remember for a long time to come. As she sunk to her knees, crying and screaming in horror and shock, all the thoughts of their futures and their past were shattered as she saw what had happened to him.

But then, Blaine raised his head. “Go!” he shouted weakly. “I’ll live, but only if you get help. Get the police and the hospital. Now!”

Karen didn’t need a second bidding. She dashed off and made for home. She was grasping at an invisible ledge which did not exist. The one that assuaged her that if she hurried as fast as she could, she could save him, and that he would once again be with her.

Tears dripped from her eyelashes as she recalled one of the final things she said to him, in the hallways this morning. She said things she couldn’t take back, and those words forever swirled around her head, mocking her. ‘But I will get help, and I will save him!’ she yelled in her mind as her feet pounded across the sidewalk.

Blaine lie there, spinal cord severed at his lower back and blood everywhere. He knew that he was dead the moment the gate hit him, and that there would be no miracle rescue. He sent Karen off because he didn’t want her to see him die, because it would only cause more despair than what he wanted. All he wanted was for her to be happy.

In his last efforts he dipped his fingers in his blood, and on a clean section of concrete began to write. His final message. He closed his eyes and his hand dropped as he finally accepted death’s embrace, his life cycle finally complete.

On the other side of the campus, the diary was writing itself, and Jane pulled it out only to find words appearing across the page. Her breathing became heavier and quicker with each sentence she read. Ignoring the fact that she hadn’t finished her test, she dashed out of the class and to the other side of the school. She saw the gate, and underneath it, she saw a pair of legs soaking in a pool of blood.

Her heart raced faster and faster as she fumbled with the chain and slowly pulled the gate up. Bit by bit she worked it upwards, revealing Blaine’s middle, upper torso, arms, and finally, his face. There was the barest hint of a triumphant grin in his expression.

She noticed something in the corner of her eye, and she walked over to inspect it, and she saw what he had written in his blood.

“Now you make me feel guilty,” Jane said, brushing a tear from her eye before she walked slowly away. “How dare you. You’re the one who’s cruel, cheating what I predestined.” She walked away, trying with all her might not to look back at the events gone awry and out of her control.

The words he had written were ‘free will.’

Part IV: Endgame


“So in the end, no one lived happily ever after,” a kid in a black Armani suit said to his guest. He reached over to grab his drink and sipped it lightly. “At least you had a good harvest, Death.”

The Grim Reaper waved away any drinks his host had to offer him. “Your little invention, Mr. Hunter, is definitely interesting, but it didn’t harvest the souls I wanted.”

“Mister Hunter?” inquired the kid. “I think the phrase is Master Hunter. Would you like to know what happened?”

“Of course,” Death said. For the past month, he had been sitting in this dark room, doing nothing while the diary did the work for him. He did not prefer it.

“Well, the school was shut down after so many injuries and deaths,” he explained. “The total was sixty-one injuries and five deaths. That last one, Blaine, triggered the shut down. Why he wrote ‘free will’ on the ground in his blood was a mystery to the police. So was the fact that Blaine’s folding knife was found in a killer’s throat, until Karen elaborated on how he saved her life, which turned Blaine into a hero.”

“What became of Karen?” Death asked.

“She simply was transferred to a different school. After such a traumatizing experience, she’s never had a normal relationship, and I doubt she ever will. I feel sorry for her.”

“And what of Jane?” Death pressed him. “Surely she’s still out there causing despair.”

Master Hunter shook his head. “Actually, three days later, they found she hanged herself in her own backyard, the diary dangling from her hands. They opened it and found it was blank, though. What a wretched end.” he brought out the book from his pocket. “Why she chose to hang herself, I do not know. Yet, the diary of Jane does some extraordinary things, doesn’t it?”

Death leaned forward to inspect it. “Is that all it does? Kill and control?”

His host shook his head. “In the right hands, it makes the world better through persuasion. Jane just didn’t use it in that way, that’s all.”

“So, as your guest, I believe I have the right to know your name. Who are you exactly?”

The name Death received in reply was quite a title for one that looked so young. “Jacobious Vescovo Kynagós, but sometimes, in this world, I go by Icarus the Hunter, by those who know of my existence,” he explained to his guest. “But the real issue here is the diary.”

“And so it is. What are you going to do with it now that Jane is gone?”

Jacobious smiled. “I think I’ll give it to Blaine.”

“He’s dead.”

“If I turn back the tides of time, then he won’t be,” he smirked. “Nor will anyone else that has died in the years of Jane. She’ll never use it, so who knows how she will turn out.”

“The diary will corrupt Blaine, and what if I do not permit the souls I’ve gathered to leave my realm?” Death asked him.

His host merely smiled. “Even death has to follow the rules of time. I don’t see how you have a choice. And you will get them back in the end, so what do you care?”

“You play a dangerous game, Jacobious, bargaining with death.” Death stood up, grabbed his scythe, and made to leave. “This plays no profit for me, but no loss either.”

“Please,” his host chided him. “Don’t call me that when I’m testing my experiments. Call me Jake Kidd.”


End