“Sir, do you really want to know what happened? Because you probably wouldn't believe me.”

For weeks I had heard the same death knell in my dreams. It specified a man, age twenty-one. Yet, from that dream, I would only get flashes of images. A bit more each night. First, it was a man in red, with a strange-looking cross tattooed on his arm. Then a dagger. And then one night, approximately one night before the murder, I saw the victim - my friend Marco.

He had been visiting his sister that night, and like usual he stayed over, only to return to his apartment by way of Westlake road in the morning. Or, perhaps that was the plan.

That morning I had trailed him. Making sure that if anything, I could at least be there when the reaper took his soul. So he wasn't alone in his final earth moments.

When I got close enough, the red-clad man had seen me. And I suppose he felt threatened by my presence as almost within seconds he plugged the dagger into my friend's chest. And afterward, all he said was, “Speak nothing of this, Seeress. His death was warranted,”

Then he left. And I attended to my friend in his last few moments of life and took his pendant to return it to his sister. But, you came and stopped me.

•••

The death knell began again. This time it rung for a female, nineteen years old. The flashes of blond hair and lifeless brown eyes. Me.

My eyes opened to see a flabbergasted Sheriff Greenbrook staring back at me. “Why not do something?”

I sighed. “Fate is fate. You can't change it. We'll die some way, somehow. And no matter what, it'll be by the same hands.” I looked up at the sheriff. “Why don't you go home to your son?”

The man seemed ready to protest when my sorrow-filled voice rung out once more. “Please. I only wish that you give Marco's pendant to his sister and go home.” I smiled. “My time has come.”

|•••| Author's Note |•••|

Death Knell - The tolling of church bells which signal someone's impending death (but also when someone has died and their funeral). In some places it rung a set about of time for a man, woman, or child and also may have rung to indicate age so that people within small communities could immediately figure out who had passed.