Happy Birthday
They slid the cake across the table to Rose, who didn’t seem happy to receive it. Birthdays are something most people looked forward to when they’re younger, then dread when they get older. Past a certain age they’re met with joy again, or perhaps an amused indifference. Rose met hers with fear.
All around her were the smiling faces of those she loved. Behind them she imaged the faces of those she didn’t love enough. She’d learned later in her life to accept the things she couldn’t change. If only she’d done so when she was younger she wouldn’t be in her precarious position.
“Aren’t you going to blow out the candles?” her daughter asked, smile still plastered to her face. She didn’t know – no one knew. No one left alive, at least.
Rose didn’t remember who’d found the book first, or whatever happened to it, but they’d all used it, she and her friends. A book of magic and wonder, of spells and creatures. She didn’t believe in all that hocus pocus nonsense at the time, but she played along, if only not to feel left out. Soon, she was a believer.
Her friends called them the Black Fairies. If you said the magic words they would take care of your problems; things you couldn’t handle yourself. Rose asked them to punish her cheating ex-boyfriend and the girl he was currently seeing, expecting them to fight and break up, or something of similar nature. What happened was far worse.
Tom, her ex-boyfriend, was found in his car, in pieces. They said it looked like he’d exploded inside, such was the mess, but the car itself was perfectly fine, aside from the blood stains which would probably never come out. Detectives could find no evidence of foul play but suspected in nonetheless. The girlfriend – Rose forgot her name – was found crammed in the upper shelf of her locker – barely a cubic foot of space – over a week later. Her hiding place was given away by the smell of her decaying body.
Rose and her friends were shocked and horrified. The fairies were real! After this they all agreed never to use the book – swore upon it – and not to speak of it ever again.
Taking in as deep a breath as she could, Rose blew out the candles, fearing the worst, her eyes darting all around. She always felt that the birthday was declared upon the blowing out of the candles, that this was the moment they would wait for. Now they would come for her.
That was the consequence of the Black Fairies; each ‘favour’ you owed was repaid in a year taken off your life. It was assumed that these years came from the end, when you were old and feeble, and so the trade wasn’t unjustifiably horrible. But how many years had Rose traded? How many lives had she ended?
It may have started with her ex-boyfriend, but it hadn’t ended there. The second murder was of her best friend, Gwen.
All her friends had agreed to never use the book again, but Gwen had other plans. As the unofficial leader of their little group she appointed herself the guardian of the book. To her, the Black Fairies were a powerful gift, one that she claimed all for herself. No one else could have it, which meant getting rid of the others.
First Donna was found in a dumpster behind their school. She had been completely skinned and every bone in her body was broken. Next was Mary, who’d gone missing before Donna turned up. She was found hanging upside-down from the top branches of a tree in the woods behind her home. Her eyes and mouth were stitched shut, her arms and legs bound. Christine, the last member of their gang, is still missing to this day.
By chance or choice – she was Gwen’s best friend after all – Rose had been saved for last. But she knew it was only a matter of time before the Black Fairies came for her. She’d been friends with Gwen since they were little, long enough to know she’d choose power over friendship. So she made one last request from the Black Fairies: to stop Gwen. Rose had no choice; it was self defence. Kill or be killed.
Gwen was found a little at a time. She’s been sliced up like bologna. Some pieces of her were in her mailbox, some in the trunk of the family car, others in the dog house. Some slices were never found.
It was a dark time for the town, with so many strange, brutal murders occurring one after another. People from all over were coming to investigate. There was even talk of a documentary. But all that was in the past, one that Rose would never speak of again. She was the last person left who knew about the book and its evil, although she never learned what became of it. As far as she was concerned this dark magic business was over.
But she was wrong.
“I hoped you wished for something nice,” her daughter, Lily said, dragging the cake away to begin cutting it. “Like maybe a lovely young man in your life?”
“Well don’t say anything about it,” said her friend Joseph, “or it won’t come true.”
Rose smiled half-heartily at the sentiment. She’d been wishing for the same thing for the last ten years: just to live for one more year. So far it was working. But how many birthdays did she really have left? The wax numbers on the cake said 60, but that meant nothing. With every candle she blew out she felt an invisible noose getting tighter around her neck.
Her daughter was right however; it would be nice to have a man around, one she could trust and rely on. They were few and far between. Tom had set a bad precedent and few had managed to raise the bar since.
During a college party she found herself the unwitting recipient of unwanted attention from a handsome asshole. He knew he was attractive and assumed he could have any girl he wanted. He set his eyes, and hands on Rose, and wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. Three times he’d groped her before she finally told him off. He called her a bitch and finally took the hint, but everyone had heard the commotion. She’d never been so embarrassed…or so drunk. On a lark she’d called upon the Black Fairies to teach him a lesson. When she’d read in the paper days later about a man found in a ditch, his severed head embedded in his colon, she knew she had made a horrible mistake. She hadn’t even known his name.
That’s what bothered Rose the most; not knowing the names of those she’d killed. It made their deaths seem hollow, trivial – though they were anything but to her now. Was she really so nonchalant about murder in her youth? How could she kill someone without knowing who they were?
A man at her first job had been given her promotion at work. She’d obviously earned it; everyone said so. She might’ve let it go if only he hadn’t rubbed it in her face. The fat woman she witnessed key her car because Rose had parked a little too close and she couldn’t squeeze herself inside. Her next door neighbour, who let his dog shit on her lawn everyday and did nothing about it. He was also a peeping tom, spying on her. She caught him peeking in her window one night and scared her half to death. She put an end to that pretty quickly. The girl who had lived in the apartment above her always throwing the loud parties and filed a harassment suit against her for complaining too much about the noise.
There were others, many others who’d died because Rose couldn’t control her anger, her need for vengeance, her lust for blood. She had lost count how many people had died because of her over the years. A year for each life. This made every birthday terrifying, not knowing when, or even how they would come for her or for. How many birthdays did she have left?
At least one, she surmised, beginning to relax and enjoy the ceremony, feeling safe for another year. She drank, she danced, she exulted in the gift of life.
After the evening wound down and Rose found herself in bed for the night, she went over all the people she’d had murdered, now for all seemingly trivial things. The faces haunted her, but she considered them penance for her crimes.
The last face was of Ray, her ex-husband. When their daughter, Beth, then crack addict, accused him of sexually molesting her, Rose saw a rage like no other. She not only asked, but demanded that the Black Fairies hurt him in the most horrific ways they could imagine. When his body was found days later it tore the family apart. Beth confessed to making it up, a stupid cry for attention. She’d since sought therapy and rehab and has been drug-free for over ten years now.
Rose took it harder, knowing she’d killed an innocent man, one whom she loved dearly. She began anger management classes and turned to religion but nothing made the pain go away. Nothing erased the guilt. So many people; had she misjudged them all?
She was almost asleep when she heard what sounded like wings flapping. She opened her eyes and in the dim light saw small black things floating around her room. Turning to her nightstand, she reached for the light, when pain hit her. It was like nothing she’d ever felt; she couldn’t even breathe. Writhing in agony, the bed sheets twisting around her, she thought she was having a heart attack.
“It’s time, Rose,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.
It felt like she was burning from the inside-out. Rose couldn’t focus through the pain. Was that Gwen’s voice?
“Don’t fight it, Rose,” the Gwen thing said, her voice enveloped in a thick, humming lilt. “Soon you’ll be one of us. That’s what happens when we come for you.”
The slight breeze coming from the flapping wings barely registered for Rose. It felt like her skin was on fire. She opened her eyes but saw no flames. The Black Fairy floated inches from her face, glowing faintly – it had Gwen’s face.
“No,” Rose moaned. “You’re dead. I killed you.”
Gwen chuckled. “They killed me, Rose. This is what happens when we owe the dark creatures of the world.” She flew in a few graceful pirouettes. “Isn’t it wonderful? Now we get to join them. We get to create the chaos, Rose. We are the merchants of suffering.”
Rose grit her teeth through the pain, feeling her legs crumble to powder. All those years spent trying to repent for her sins, all the mourning of her foul deeds, only to be forced to continue with them?
“No!” Rose moaned again. “Just kill me! Please!” she held out to Gwen, beseechingly, begging, only to see her fingers slowly turn to ashes and fall to the bed.
“Now Rose, that’s not how this works. But it’s better this way. You’ll see.”
Within minutes all that was left of Rose was pile of burnt ashes and smouldering remains. Her bed sheets were stained black from the soot. Then, from the ashes, wings broke free, followed by a tiny form. It gingerly took to the air, shook itself clean, and floated up to join the rest of the Black Fairies.
People would later say that Rose died of spontaneous human combustion, a rare and ill-understood phenomenon. No one will ever know the truth of her death, nor the truth of her life; that she was a serial killer. The blood might not have been on her hands, but it was in her soul. Whether she realized it or not, Rose was where she belonged.
The Chris Effect 
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