The Fury

And I gaze at her, smiling, in the dark.

tore off the title page and made it my own.

I’m not really a writer, you see. I have no real talent for anything; except lying. I’m certainly no good at writing stories.

Let’s face it—I couldn’t even plot a murder.

And that, my friend, concludes the sad story of how I came to murder Lana Farrar.

The wind consumed me; and I became it.

I became the fury.

It felt thrilling to have done all this: written this drama, not with pen and paper, for fictional characters on a stage—but for real people, in a real place. All of them, performing in a play they had no idea they were in.

It felt like the first real conversation I’d ever had with another human being. I don’t know how to describe it—for the first time, I felt alive. Not performing at life, you understand, not pretending, not faking it, not almost living … but just living.

To my dismay, I realized I must be the Wizard of Oz himself. I was an illusion—a conjuring trick, operated by a frightened man, cowering behind a curtain.

That evening, over a bottle of champagne, he was christened Elliot Chase.

I was born.

And then, with perfect timing—Lana appeared.

My relationship with Lana Farrar began a long time before we ever met.

It began when I was someone else.

Moments later, Lana lay on the ground, in a pool of blood.