All my life I’ve known I wasn’t the same as everyone else. That I wasn’t normal, whatever misconstrued version of the word you wish to use. While the other children were running about, playing on the jungle gym and minding their own, I watched as my third-grade teacher stood silent near the swing set. Had I not witnessed her gruesome death in my dreams the night before, I may not have been able to handle the trauma to my young mind. Her pale, bloody corpse distorted in the noon-day sun, a mangled muffler twisted around her thin neck as her shallow, blank stare pierced my innocence.

I managed to push past the fact that she wasn’t the first dead woman I’ve seen, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. I watch people die on a nightly basis. It’s my thing. When I shut my eyes I am transported into a front-row seat to view the life draining from their earthly body; a mysterious cloaked figure remaining by their side. He was always there, lurking in the shadows and never saying a single word. Big, tall in stature and confident in ways that were unimaginable for a human. I feared him. Frightened for the moment, he grew bored with my intrusion upon his endeavors and made me his next victim.

Turns out he just wanted to take me on a date.

His name is King; fitting since he rules over my nightmares. His sole mission after stumbling into my small Michigan town is to convince me I’m more important than anyone’s ever let on. Convincing me that I control him, and, in turn, I decide who lives and who dies; a catalyst in the Universe, itself. A Fate weaving justice throughout history. He and his two massive companions are plotting something big. Something that requires me to follow them wherever they go. Something I would never have agreed to in a million years had I not known someone else was after me, hunting me like a pig for slaughter. All because I held the key to total destruction.