Nona

His visible self is dressed in an ill-fitting hideous polyester suit, which garners some snickers as he passes.

"Hey, bus driver, can't you let a man get a free ride? Why you always gotta be down on the suffering?"

Nona looks up to see a snake hissing at the driver. It is a big snake, coral colors. But it is obvious in its attempt to deceive. She thinks about its predecessor in Eden, and wonders how Eve could have been such a fool.

"Man, get off the bus now!" the driver hisses back. Lo and behold, the driver is also a snake. She hadn't noticed before. But kind knows kind, and one snake can't get off on another. Just ain't done.

The first snake slithers out the door.

She looks at the citizenry of the bus, and shivers. Not a beautiful person in sight. Not even the children.

When her stop arrives, she pushes through the animals, trolls, and ogres. There are a few vampires, their mouths smeared with their last meals.

The neighborhood has gone down since she and Fred moved to their apartment twenty years ago. Brownstones once diligently cared for now look like old, tired women, their beauty still evident, but barely, under time-and-weather-scarred faces. The young families and hard-working folk with money moved away some time ago. Only the low-incomes and the no-incomes live here, and as with any space where the have-nots congregate, there are predators. Now, though, she is able to see danger before it heads her way. She closes her building door just as a decrepit lion is about to attack. Predators pick up the scent of the weak. But she is not weak. No longer.

Upstairs, she opens the door of her haven. The man is where she left him before heading for bible class, in the chair in front of the television. Fred's favorite chair, with the faded plaid covering, that had provided comfort in his last days. The man sits there now looking through the day's paper. The mirror just behind him is covered with a sheet.

He looks up.

"Good service?"

"No service. Just bible class. Interesting, though," she says. "Nothing like it use to be."

He puts the paper down and looks at her. He is achingly beautiful. "Wouldn't be, now would it. After all, you can see...for the first time. It's just as I told you it would be."

She takes off her coat and puts it in the closet, then heads for the kitchen to make herself dinner. She would offer him something, but each time she does, he only declines, so she has gotten in the habit of just not asking.

"Do you still want to see?" he asks, as he does each day. She is quiet as she opens up a can of tuna, then gives him the same answer as she has for almost three weeks.

"I rather see the truth, then not see at all."

"Then why won't you look in the mirror?" he asks.

He is the devil, sent to torment her, and she knows it. But it does not matter, because she still sees. Better than she ever has before. And she won't give up the gift, even if it costs her her soul. He thinks to trick her and hurt her. But in the end, she will get the better deal.

He cannot take the gift away without her seeing herself as she really is. Those were the terms he gave her before restoring her sight, and then some. That first night he had come, she had screamed, thinking that he was a burglar. She had heard him moving around, his stealth obvious.