Evil Has Never
an excerpt

The first suicide note of Myfanwy Sher was not very long. She had written it when she was thirteen–a perfectly suitable age to be writing suicide notes. However, unlike some of Miss Sher’s peers who also indulged in this pastime, she was perfectly serious about it.
In fact, she had tried to commit suicide a total of twenty three times, starting five years before, at age eight (the three incidents before that were actually accidents, so no one counted them). Despite these many experiences, this was the first time she had known about the practice of writing a note, and so she thought perhaps this was as good a time as any to start. It was simple, and without the frills or drama one might expect from a thirteen year old girl. In fact, it was a harder and colder bit of writing than some world-weary people leave at the age of fifty. It was written on lined school paper with a ballpoint pen and tacked to the door of her bathroom while she calmly ran hot water in the tub. Her mother, fearing another one of these episodes, had installed a small spy camera a week earlier in the ceiling fan, with a live-feed wiring leading into the TV in her bedroom. She managed to come home from grocery shopping just in time to catch her daughter in the act of slipping lower into the darkening water, her head tipped backward as though relaxing. The police made a full report of what had happened in the tape and attached it to their investigation. Myfanwy was sent to the Our Lady of Angels Institute for the first time the following week.

“Do you know of the story of Job, Edward?”
I looked over at him. He stared straight ahead into the mirror and it reminded me of her, so focused on one thing and blocking whatever darkness and evil that might be creeping in around her.
I was Catholic. Job was a way of life for us. And one thing Catholics and Jews had in common was guilt.
“Of course.” I responded.
“Yes, Job.” He sniffed, and replaced his glasses. His eyes were still bloodshot. He put his hands flat on the bar. “The Book of Job. The first short story ever written.”
I mulled that over. Job had always seemed like the longest story on earth to me.
“God and the Devil make a pact over the life of a human. To test the human’s worthiness of soul.” His craggy forehead wrinkled as he squinted drunkenly in the mirror. “I never could imagine why God would be a betting man. What does God have to lose?”
I had no answer for him.
“The Devil wagers God he can corrupt the human. God agrees, but says the Devil may not physically harm the human’s soul, giving him free reign to do anything else. And so the Devil torments the human mercilessly, taking away his family, his home, his health, his love and his sanity. Job, he despairs. But he also has faith that God will deliver him from his trails. Faith that God will save him from the clawed hand of Satan.”
A creeping unease seeped into my stomach. Outside the night was dark, but with every moment and every word, the inside was becoming darker. The laughing and rowdy crowd seemed to fade away with every ominous word Feldman spoke. I imagined the dragons creeping closer to the castle. I imagined Myfanwy huddled in the corner, awake and terrified over the foreboding nightmare when she should have been in her enchanted sleep.
“Why can’t they see what’s in front of them?” Feldman suddenly lamented, nearly wailing it. “Why can’t they see what’s staring them in the face? How can they not understand?”
They. There were so many they’s. And all of them seemed to press in against us from all sides.