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“Where’s Meier?” I asked him sharply.

“Down the hall,” he said. “Saul—”

But I was already gone.

I kicked open the door of the bathroom and he was just finishing up a piss, whirling around so fast he zipped his balls up in his pants and howled in pain.

“Hello, motherfucker,” I said conversationally as I flicked out my knife and pressed it to his throat.

The doctor was sweating, pee dribbling out from his dick and soaking the front of his pants and the bathroom floor.

“We did what you asked, Saul. We did everything you said, now what’s the problem?”

I moved the knife down his throat, raising a thin line of blood as the shiny blade glistened.

“I don't recall telling you to say all those things about Gracie.”

Meier looked panicked, his face gray, sticky with flop sweat.

“Well, how else could we have made it happen? You got what you wanted, didn't you? You're married, aren't you?”

“I find I don't like when people say those kind of things about her,” I said reflectively, curving the blade up again.

Damn, it was just like being a teenager again. Carving Gracie’s name into every surface I saw.

“What do you want from us? What are we supposed to do about that? I can't take it back now.”

I raised my knife, watching the blood drip from that lovelyGon his throat, and leaning my back against the bathroom door.

“Be careful with that thing,” he begged, “You know, you could hurt someone!”

“I don't know if I'm in the mood to be cautious,” I said, wiping the knife on his pants. “Perhaps Gracie would like some appreciation for all the things she's done for this Church. I feel she's not appreciated. You know?”

“Anything, Saul, anything. Just leave us alone.”

I left him with his dribbling dick in the bathroom, but it’s not over. I'm not going to leave them alone.

When I came out, our parents were in the hallway.

“I think you need to leave town,” I said, looking at my father and stepmother. “For your own safety.”

They looked at each other in consternation.

“We did everything you wanted, and you are married now,” Diane protested.

I shrugged. “I can’t guarantee your safety if you stay. I’d leave town but it’s up to you.”

“You're not--you're not a rational man,” Father cried, his spectacles fogging up as he looked incredulously at me. “How could you make this bargain, this deal with us, when you got everything you wanted and you still aren’t happy?”

I looked pityingly at him.

He never understood me, and he never would. I didn’t care about the money I had given them.

I had been raised to have single-minded, absolute devotion to the Eye.

To think of nothing but the Great Serpent.

But that had changed the moment I’d seen Gracie. An entire lifetime of devotion to the Eye had vanished and all been transferred with extreme, dizzying power, toher.