THE AMULET PART FIVE

Zev walked alone. His thoughts -exploding, dangerous, wicked- kept him company but often ordered his string-tied body to convulse or twitch uncontrollably. He was a slave to all he'd seen: all he'd done. He was a conduit for the old adage of every action having and equal but opposite reaction. He was a criminal, an exile, a devil. He shuddered, though not cold, beneath his tarnished and frayed trench coat beneath which he still wore his white collar and black Nehru-esque Parishioner's shirt. His filthy pants; they were tacky Chinos nearly gray with miles of road dust and too much grime kicked up from running so often, long ago lost their cuffs to time and tribulations. And on his feet clung the only pair of shoes he could rummage from a local garbage bin as he hid among the shadows and darkness on his way out of who remembers which town: leather sandals nearly split through the soles.

Split through the 'souls'. If there was ever a way to describe how this once-man felt right now as he plodded down another dirt road, that was surely it. Zev stopped. He glanced around shielding his eyes from the bright heat of the early morning as the sun erupted from the mist. He had no idea where he was, but it didn't matter: the Amulet did know. Around Zev's neck -more closely his throat, perhaps- dangled the enormous weight of the Amulet: cursed, hated, and every centimeter of its disk shape evil and rotten. Often it would reverberate through his chest like a low, sorrowful call of some un-human monster. And when it knew where the man -Zev- would stop next, it would glow a sickly, deep, ruby red around its edges and he -Zev- would feel the tug, perhaps a yank, in the direction the Amulet wanted (nay, needed) to go. This was symbiotic relationship between man (former man) and the Amulet; this was how Zev was cursed and forced to live by the cause and the slavery of it. And now, as the sun slowly crept higher in the sky and radiated its warmth the land over, Zev was once again prodded in a new direction to a town he could not yet see. He often thought of fighting it; he would yank the horrid, demonic article from around his neck and toss it asunder and run, run away as fast as he could leaving the Amulet alone for the next poor victim to stumble upon its terror. But, alas, Zev was as powerless as the babe and could do no such thing.

Now, as Zev could see a church steeple rising over the horizon, his heart began to dance near to bursting in his chest. Zev knew, with aid from the unearthly Amulet he wore in punishment around his person, he would eviscerate the poor hovel from stem to stern spilling its collective blood till the roads ran red with it. Zev began to cry in earnest.