“I lost it.” She said, clutching my hand with a chronically loosening grip.  But her eyes said more than her words.  They trembled, twitched, and bulged with tears; fear struck down to the roots.  In her other hand she grasped a piece of paper.  It had no words on it, just a streak of black ink staining the middle.  She tried to speak      again, but her words were gurgled as even more ink poured from her mouth.

     In the distance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man in the black suit smile and tip his hat to me.  “You told her…” he said, turning his back to the world to plunge his gaze directly into me.  In the moment his eyes caught mine, I couldn’t move.  They saw more than colors, more than lines, more than any of us had ever seen before.  They told me that no matter how much I tried, how much I cared, I couldn’t involve myself in this game.  And that Sarah, my hopeless combatant, had inevitably lost.  

     “I TOLD YOU!” I screamed at her, throwing my arms up in a wild rage.  “WHY?!  WHY WOULDN’T YOU LISTEN?!”

     If she was trying to respond, I wasn’t making it any easier.  I was beginning to see swirls of black in her tears.  The corners of her eyes too; slowly, slowly turned black.  The ink was infecting her, coursing through her veins with an ongoing persistence.  I wouldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it.  Stories like this don’t happen anymore.  Karma doesn’t come back by some mystical form to rain justice down on those who oppose her.  And yet, I stood there, watching in horror as her veins rose to the surface of her skin, swollen black with ink.  

     Sensing a presence behind me, I whirled around only to find myself face to face with the man in black.

     “There’s nothing you can do James.  Just leave before things get messy” he said, pointing his cane to the twisted black mass writhing on the floor.  Her body couldn’t contain much more, yet it kept coming, filling her to the brim with the very liquid she put to paper every day for the past six years just to make a living.  “To put things lightly James…” he continued.  “She’ll explode.”

     Words couldn’t describe what I felt towards this man.  It was a mix of hate, jealousy, and strangely enough, admiration.  I say that only because somewhere, in the back of my human mind, my taste for justice acknowledged that she had willingly taken this risk, and that this man hadn’t fallen short with her punishment.  

     Knowing that I felt anything but hate for this man just made me hate him more.  My brain started to reason with me, telling me that I don’t just hate him; that I also hated myself, but I didn’t want to hear it.  Grasping my temples in distress, I staggered back a few steps.  “Leave, James.  This doesn’t involve you.” the man said again, his voice more stern and disheartening then before.

     “SHUT UP!” I yelled at him, pulling my fist from my side to connect it with his jaw.  But as it pushed through the air, I saw him pull a gun from his coat, point the barrel to my forehead, and squeeze the trigger.

     I fell next to her, my blood mixing with the ink pooling on the floor.  The man strode out of the room, calmly closing the door behind him.  A suffocated “pop” could be heard from behind the walls, followed by a nauseating splatter, and then silence.

     Sarah Donovan had, simply, run out of time.