“Alexa, play Dave Matthews Band.”

I’m sure Thomas Lanning would have chosen something cooler to play had he known those were going to be the last words which ever came out his mouth. 

Thomas didn’t know that I was hiding in the closet in his living room when he came home from work. He didn’t know that I was fully geared up to kill him and discreetly disposed of his body. He didn’t know I was capable of violent things. 

What he did know was he had murdered my sister Tina six years before. I’m sure it was one of the last things he thought of before I strangled him in his living room. 

-

I bought a bottle of whiskey I couldn’t afford as soon as I was sure Thomas was responsible for my sister’s murder and planned to open it once he was dead. I cracked the bottle open and poured a glass once I finished disposing of Thomas’ body somewhere no one would ever fucking find it. 

I was on my second sip when an email flashed across my phone which stole my attention. 

Subject Re: What you did to Thomas

The title made my entire body go cold even though I had just taken drinks of warm whiskey.

I know what you did to Thomas Lanning. There’s more that happened with your sister than you realize. Things will not end well for you. However, there is still a chance you can make it through this. Please visit me at Mountain Fortune Palm Reading as soon as you can. 

Krystal

The message was unbelievable. Yet, I couldn’t argue against something that seemed to know exactly what I had just done. 

I drove out to Mountain Fortune Palm Reading, which in fact was at the foothills of the mountains. A dumpy house covered in moss and algae with one pathetic sign. It didn’t instill confidence in me that I wasn’t about to be murdered. 

The rich scent of cheap perfume greeted me when I walked up onto the rickety porch and rang the doorbell, which didn’t work. The door opened just after I took my finger off it anyway. 

Krystal looked just how I thought she would - saggy face, crispy blonde hair, dressed in what looked like a pile of blankets. She reminded me of the women you’d find smoking cigarettes out in front of the bars in my rural hometown, just a little younger, probably in her 30s.

She ushered me into a dark room with a cheap crystal ball in the middle and I wondered if Krystal was her real name or if it was some kind of unoriginal fortune teller double entendre. 

I sat down on a broken futon covered in a red blanket and started grilling Krystal about what this all about. I think I caught her off-guard. I think she thought she was going to be calling the shots. 

Her explanation was simple. She was an actual psychic and she knew what I did before I even did it and what was going to happen to me and for whatever reason she decided she wanted to help me, but now she regretted it, given my attitude. 

I got frustrated and started to leave. 

“Your sister was going to kill Thomas,” Krystal said before I got to the door. 

 This sounded ridiculous, yet, it compelled me to stay and keep hearing her out. 

“Thomas came to me because he cheated and wanted to see how his future looked when he broke it to Tina. I knew he was coming. The intense future of him and Tina had struck me from across the town. Things happen that way with me. I’m like an animal before an earthquake arrives, when something big happens in this town, I feel it coming,” Krystal explained. 

I sat down again. 

“I saw what your sister was going to do after Thomas told her he had cheated on her with one of her friends. She was going to kill herself. She was going to seamlessly make it so Thomas would get blamed. She mapped it all out,” Krystal went on.

I hated it but I couldn’t say it didn’t sound like my sister. She was calculating. She was vengeful. I loved her, yet there was no denying that was the kind of thing she might consider.

“It was too late for Thomas by the time this all came together for me. Your sister was up in the mountains, ready to kill herself, and set it up to make it appear Thomas had done it. His only choice was to try and get to where she was as fast as he could,” Krystal explained. 

I obviously had some follow up questions to this. Krystal could see what happened. Thomas went up into the mountains where my sister had taken Thomas’ car and his hunting shotgun and was putting together how exactly she was going to shoot herself and fall down a cliff. There was no way Thomas wasn’t going to be blamed for her death, if they ever found her body all the way at the bottom of the ravine.

Thomas got there just before Tina was about to do it. She panicked when she saw him, and she slipped off the rocks by accident. There was no way Thomas was ever going to be able to prove that though. 

Krystal also knew something else. She could see that my sister wasn’t actually going to go through with it all. 

“Wait. Wait. My contact with the police department told me they had Thomas through D.N.A? The 23 and Me database thing,” I rebutted Krystal, finally.

“You think these local cops got anything figured out? I already know what happens. They don’t have enough to convict him. They never did. They always had his D.N.A. That doesn’t change much,” Krystal said. 

Krystal started to appear annoyed. I started to feel uneasy, in the big picture and the small picture. Was she going to harm me right then and there? What was going to happen to me now that I had killed Thomas? How had I not thought this all out? 

“Everything was going to be what it was. Thomas was never going to prison, but he was going to spend the rest of his life sad and regretful. Now you messed that up and you’ve messed yourself up,” Krystal said, trailing off at the end.

I started to get the feeling Krystal didn’t want me there anymore. I didn’t like it but I was also worried about what she might do. 

I started to leave, but stopped myself at the door. 

“What happens to me now?” I asked Krystal, who had walked up behind me. 

She hesitated and looked away. I hated that. 

“I don’t know now. You’ve altered the way things were supposed to be,” Krystal said. “It takes a while to reset, and it might not at all. I may have lost the thread.”

I was going to ask more. 

“I think you should go now.”

-

I couldn’t sleep. I kept waiting to hear sirens approach - see those red and blue lights through the cracks in the blinds in my windows. I felt the impending doom of my life suffocating me. 

How had I been so greedy and stupid? Even if Thomas did deserve it, and apparently he didn’t, how could I have thought I could just get away with revenge murdering another person?

I got in my car and drove back to Krystal’s in the middle of the night. 

I didn’t knock on the front door. I didn’t even go onto the front porch. I thought the back would be a better way to break in. I didn’t remember seeing any cameras or security systems. 

There was a window open in the back. No screen. Low enough and large enough for me to slip through. 

Soon I was in the darkness of Krystal’s home. Unlike her with me - I knew my own plan and future. 

What she didn’t know was that I had a gun. She also didn’t know that I had found her bedroom and slipped inside. She didn’t know I was standing right next to her bed as she slept. 

She didn’t know anything until I slipped a handcuff onto one of her wrists, the other of which was attached to mine, and she stirred - slowly waking up. 

She woke up with my gun in her face and orders from me. I needed her help to aid me in doing everything I could to correct the mistakes I had made and save my future. 

She kept claiming because I broke the proper chain of death that she couldn’t tell me my future. I didn’t believe her. Try harder, please.

She said she started to get bits and pieces. I was going to get caught for killing Thomas because his body was going to surface. She knew I had buried him at sea. This was a great sign. Only I knew that and was worried I hadn’t done a good enough job. 

I got in my boat and went out into the sound where she told me he was going to be found. 

Krystal told me Thomas’ body had been caught on the line for a crab fishing pot out in the sound. The crab fisherman would pull him up with their line in a week and it would lead to my unraveling and eventual imprisonment. 

That was all she could see. She couldn’t see anything else. Being on a boat in the frozen night didn’t help any of this she said. 

We pulled the crab pot up and she was right. Thomas was attached to the bottom of it, some crabs trapped in the pot had even already started to go to work on him. 

We got him up into the boat and I quickly improvised a new location that would be even harder to have him wash up from. It wasn’t easy though, especially because Krystal got sea sick and vomited all over my boat. 

I felt confident I had done everything the right way this time. I felt as well as I could as we got back into my car to drive home. 

Everything seemed relatively okay until I noticed Krystal was crying. 

“I fucking hate you,” Krystal muttered, quietly, but loud enough so I could hear. 

She started to break down too hard to say any more, but I could feel an anger radiating inside the cab of the car. 

“You’re a fucking asshole.”

At first I thought she was talking about being mad at Thomas. Then I felt her hand latch onto my side. She squeezed my body hard, to the point it hurt. 

Krystal was magical and skilled. I got a rush of vision while driving as she dug her nails into me. I saw Krystal and Thomas kissing. I saw them fucking. I saw them lying in bed together. In love. 

I felt Thomas’ guilt. I could see him. It was back when he was young. When he was with my sister. I heard snippets of Krystal and Thomas talking. How he was going to break it to Tina he cheated on her. 

Except Thomas had cheated on her with Krystal. Krystal was the other girl. 

Krystal and Thomas had fallen in love, but she was heartbroken. She could see the future of it all. 

But here’s what I felt from her I don’t think she meant to share. I could feel that Krystal could affect these outcomes - she could influence minds. Case in point, I could feel her trying to get myself to drive up into the mountains and kill myself. 

I fought it. It wasn’t easy. She was strong. She had put so many things into motion. It turned out she may have been the monster in all these things or at least the catalyst. Greedy. I think she just fell for Thomas and wanted it to work out and was willing to make it happen. 

Stop. Stop. I had to keep fighting her. And that I did. I pushed her hand off of my side and slowed the car. 

Then I felt the car start to speed. I looked down and my foot was mashed on the gas even though that was not my intention. 

Krystal had her hand on the back of my neck, squeezing hard. I could feel the control of my body slipping away like she was strangling me to death. 

I just let go of the steering wheel - I let Jesus take the wheel, per se. 

Jesus crashed us into a tree. 

-

I blacked out for a few seconds and woke up behind the wheel. Krystal was in the passenger seat - I couldn’t tell if she was knocked out or dead or wide awake. 

I didn’t care. I didn’t waste time and ran away from the scene. 

I did shoot one look over my shoulder and thought I saw Krystal stirring out of the car. 

-

I went home. I thought I was going to die, and for a lot of reasons. 

I met up with my friend in the police department. We talked about how I was going to be able to safely get myself out of what happened. 

It appears it worked. It’s been years. Everyone was sure Thomas killed my sister so his disappearing felt perfect for everyone in the community. Everyone wanted him dead. No one cared. 

Krystal went missing. I don’t think anyone noticed. The shitty little fortune teller building at the edge of town was abandoned and fell into disrepair. No one gave half a shit. 

I went on with my life and have felt a little more normal every day that went by. But there is always something tickling at me. 

I’ll feel like I lose control sometimes. I’ll feel like I want to jump off a bridge or drive into traffic or go turn myself in for what I did to Thomas. 

And I’ll know where it is coming from. Krystal is out there somewhere. 

I’ve searched the internet up and down and again and found no trace of her, but I know she’s alive and I know she’s the only one who knows what happened. 

And she might be the only one who knows what happens for me from here.