Ethereal Engagement

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The ethereal embodiment of an eternal emerald flame lapped under the edges of the closed bathroom door as she sat on the chilled tiled trying to force her mental state into some semblance of deciphering reality from fiction. A flame as old as time itself...white-hot yet never consuming. It had been decades since she saw this prophetic sign of horror appear....so long that she had began to embrace the hopeful belief that it was a twisted piece of her imagination and not possibly associated with reality.

For generations her family had been the bearers of the knowledge bestowed by the flickering enlightenment. She had prayed countless times to be released of this burden, yet the flame would still find her out and hiss it's devastating secrets to her. Having the knowledge of tragedy to come was enough to bear alone without the additional toil and travesty of no one believing your revelations.....no one heeding your warnings.....you were helpless to watch them continue on oblivious to the oppression hurling towards them.

The secret knowledge that came this time was the burden of serial death....the full understanding of a depraved man bent on inflicting severe pain and degradation upon others, compulsively. A monster in a man's skin fully enthralled in being the human embodiment of ancient, ritualistic evil. Driven mad from deep within with the serial slaying through the generations, lifetimes after lifetimes culminating in the psychotic gaze of this corporeal fiend.

She could see his sharp, demonic features as clearly as if she were looking at her own image in the crystalline waters of a deep-forest spring, yet as the image became more and more vivid and in focus, that ethereal flame became more and more emboldened spreading across the bathroom floor and viscously licking at her porcelain skin. She could feel the rigid lump of terror rise from deep within her soul, yet she remained powerless to stop the vision of suffering that was headed to her reality. She could only stare on into the yellow-tinted eyes of a serial killer on the path of ferocity that was yet to unfold.

All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter,
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
-Tolkien