This is not how it was supposed to go

This is not how it was supposed to go, with the whole group gathered around a bonfire reenacting horror stories, plastic plates and glasses strewn everywhere. This was supposed to be their third anniversary, the two of them alone.

Instead, Berti downs another half pint of beer, burps and says: “That's 'cause they went and sold them souls to the devil, y'know what I mean? 'swhy they all croaked”.

Nico bursts out laughing. “The fuck are you talking about, bro?”

“Ya dummy. It's called Club 27, that's what is called. There's a reason all the best musicians died at the same age, no?”

“And how did they make this deal?” Ilenia doesn't even look at them as she speaks, too intent is peeling a banana.

“Here we are, all drinking and smoking, and you're eating fruit?” Gigi looks at her amusingly, sharing a joint with Nico.

She winks at him. “I like bananas.” And then she shoves more stuff into her mouth than is anatomically comfortable to chew.

The three troglodytes burst out laughing, Cinzia does not. She gets a better hold on the guitar and resists the urge to smash it over someone's head. Specifically, on Ilenia’s head, the slut who hits on her boyfriend in front of her. Gigi's head too would do, because they shouldn't be there.

“So how does it work?” Cinzia asks to distract herself.

“Everybody knows, sweetheart. Ya go to a crossroad, offer some of ya own blood, and call the Man in Black.”

“The Man in Black? Who is he, Will Smith?” Nico throws his head back and laughs, again. He almost collapses on the ground from convulsions.

“Dummy. It’s the demon of the crossroads”.

This isn't how it was supposed to go, with Gigi fucking Ilenia like a jackhammer in their camper and her screaming like a porn star.

Cinzia hadn't noticed when Gigi had left on his own to go take a piss, nor had she noticed Ilenia sneaking away. But now here they were, on the night of their anniversary. Cinzia and Gigi's anniversary. They didn't even notice that she opened the door.

Cinzia slams it shut, takes her bicycle from the back of the camper and pedals away.

This is not how it was supposed to go, with her speeding aimlessly on the coastal roads, flanked only by the guardrail overlooking the sea and silent villas, her eyes blinded by tears of anger and humiliation. She doesn't notice the protruding manhole, at least three inches above the standard height.

The front wheel hits the bump, the rear wheel rears up and, a moment later, Cinzia is on the ground. Scraped knees and elbows, blood on a crossroads. As she counts all the limbs present, she watches the blood stain the tarmac.

“Man in Black…” she whispers. Then she shouts it to the night, to the deserted road that has hurt her: “Man in Black, take my blood, help me!”

For a long minute nothing happens and Cinzia calls herself an idiot. An idiot and a cuckold. She bursts into tears again, adding those too to her blood. Then Cinzia forces herself to get up and propping the bike upright again.

“Are you leaving already?”

The voice in the darkness makes her jump. She turns around.

There's a man at the center of the crossroad, dressed in a black trench coat, his face shadowed by a fedora and concealed by sunglasses. He looks like a detective in a black and white film, he even has a cigarette hanging from his lips. He too appears to be in black and white.

Sunglasses in the middle of the night?

“Who are you?”

“Don't pretend you know nothing about it. You're the one who called me.” His voice is rough, like four-packs-of-smokes-a-day rough. “So what will it be, this time?”

“Is it true what they say? Can you make a musician successful?”

“Standard contract, it expires when the contracting party turns twenty-seven, no matter at what age or on which day it was signed”. He's a bored businessman.

“What if I don't want to die so young?”

A grin spreads across the demon's face.

This isn't how it was supposed to go, she thinks as she watches the blood drip onto the camper's floor. Gigi's chest is still, his face growing paler and paler. Ilenia is so high and drunk that she doesn't even notice that she is sleeping in a red lake. Cinzia cleans the handle of the knife and slips it between Ilenia's fingers, closing them around it.

“A life for a life,” said the Man in Black.

Cinzia gets out, picks up the bicycle and starts pedaling again.

Next year she will be the most famous singer of the century.