An Eye For Power

Harlow stares at her reflection in the broken bathroom mirror. The redness under her eyes, the bleeding cut across gaunt her cheek. She grabs a tissue and wipes away the blood, staring at the smear of red left behind, a sign that her humanity is is diminishing with every breath she breathes, and she is close to accomplishing the goal she has worked so hard for. 

She walks back to her desk, her knees locking and grinding as her body runs through the rest of her energy. She’ll get her energy back soon enough though… and when she does, her body will be nothing like it is now. 

She will never bleed. She will never grow tired. She will never die. She will be all powerful. 

She wipes off the blood as gently as she can, trying not to smear it and ruin the rest of the page that serves as a tie between her and her father. “I’m almost there dad,” she whispers. 

She looks up at the paper taped to her wall. Some are important pages taken from her dad’s journals, or books she inherited after his death. Others are newspaper clippings she hung up to remind her of her motivation. Why she worked so hard to reach this level of power. Why she skipped out of family dinners with her daughter and ex-husband, sleep, weekends spent with friends that aren’t around any more. 

She still remembers what it was like hearing of her dad’s passing. How he was found dead in his office, likely from his heart giving out due to exhaustion. The pain in the back of her throat after she spent the evening screaming because he was all she had left. The anger at the town’s minimal reaction to the town’s savior’s death. The man who kept this town afloat, getting nothing but a slot on the front page of the paper and a passing word during the mayor’s reelection speech. 

It got worse with that investigator. People warned her about him, that he was asking too many questions about her and her parents, her dad’s old office. He got to her eventually. While before she, with anyone, she was happy to talk about her dad, treating him like a God, the treatment he deserved but never got from the town, she tried to avoid the reporter’s prying eye. Her ex-husband invited him into their home, to their dinner table. It was one of the last dinners Harlow had with her family, before she descended into the mission of finishing what her dad started before he died from exhaustion. 

The article was published shortly after. “JACKSON PAVLVOV FRAUD. HOW HE FALSIFIED HIS STUDIES AND STOLE MILLIONS.” The news spread quickly. Harlow never did find out how that investigator found the evidence he used in the article, or why he would target her family. She assumed it was an old angry business partner, but the claims weren’t true. 

Her dad worked tirelessly on his experiments. As a child, she often wouldn’t see her dad for days on end, only seeing him exit to run to his car to talk to his business partners about his new invention, or random Friday night dinners when her mom was able to convince to spend thirty minutes with his family before digging his head back into his textbooks and journal. 

He wasn’t a fraud. He was a hard worker who one day would literally have the power of a God. He was going to push his family to another level. They would have all the wealth they could ever imagine. They would have more power than nature itself. His scientific experiments are what was leading him to this power. They were what have lead her to this very moment, being at the cusp of achieving the dream her father had implanted in her head forty years ago. 

Harlow’s husband was never as successful as her mother, trying to bring her to the dinner table. Missing nights with her daughter and husband, before he left, was a sacrifice she knew she had to make once she saw those articles, heard those whispers from the neighbors and her old classmates when she dropped her daughter off at school. It is because of that sacrifice that she is where she is today, just hours away from achieving the dream her father implanted into her head forty years ago. 

It’s all coming together. Now, she just needs the last offerings and then… she will be a God. 

She stares downs at her father’s handwriting, comparing it to the textbook beside it on the desk. She never realized how close her father was to achieving this moment. He was just weeks away, but he had a good idea to the steps that were needed to be taken. Harlow made tweaks along the way, using her own knowledge and research to fill in the holes her father missed. It truly feels like he is still here with her, encouraging her moments before she changes her life forever. 

She writes a list of what she needs. It is the same list she has agonized over for weeks, hoping that it is right, so that possessing infinite power is not pushed back a few days if it isn’t. 

Her hand shakes as she writes it out, as she struggles to even hold the pen. She focuses on her breath, as air weighing the size of bricks fills her lungs, making it difficult to breath. Her father’s textbooks warned her of this, of feeling weak as she slowly loses her humanity, as the incantations she casted creates room for divine power in its place, but she never expected it to feel so euphoric. 

With the list in hand, she walks back to her bedroom. Clothes are strewn across the room, as her bed sits absconded in the corner. Harlow can’t remember the last time she truly slept. Maybe it was after Jason left, when she was all alone for the first time, forced to think for the first time since the articles were published. It came at her in a wave, the misery, the heart ache, the grief. It was the only night she allowed herself to sleep the entire night until sun rise, and then… she was back in her office, working as endlessly as her father because if she didn’t, none of this would have been worth it. 

Her husband took their daughter with him, and Harlow didn’t fight it. She was not fit to be there for Harlow, just like her father was never fit to be there for her. Besides, Amy would have been a distraction. And Harlow is not just doing this for herself, but for Amy as well. Surely, Amy does not want her classmates to think her grandfather was a fraud, that their family’s legacy was made up on a bunch of lies easily untangled by a nosy reporter. 

The last time Harlow has seen Amy, it was six months ago. Maybe four. Whenever Valentine’s day was. Amy had brought cookies her students had made, and hoped Harlow would stop working for five minutes to enjoy the holiday, the sun in her face, the age gracing Amy’s. Harlow had one cookie, exchanged pleasantries for five minutes before going back to her office, telling Amy her grandfather’s legacy was not going to fix itself. She listened for Amy to leave. The beat in her chest faster than normal, as she ruminated over the first human conversation she had in person in weeks, before shutting the recent memory down, and going back to work. Amy’s car didn’t leave for another two hours. When Harlow went down in the kitchen to grab a pack of crackers she keeps stashed, she found it clean for the first time since Jason left. She discovered the freshly stocked fridge the next morning. 

Despite always being crammed in her office, Harlow did try and keep usual conversation with her daughter. She called once a week, the phone call never being longer than ten minutes. Amy though, did not believe phone conversations were the same as in-person ones, which is why Harlow knew exactly what she needed to do to get her first offering -the offering of an exiting loved one. 

She had messaged Amy the night before asking if there were any good brunch spots in the area, and if she was available for breakfast. She would never admit to it, but her heart raced more than it had after sending that message. This will be the first time Harlow has eaten outside of her home in ten years. Amy replied almost immediately, and so, their brunch plan were set. 

Now, Harlow just has to ensure that she looks… normal. She doesn’t feel normal, her body quickly aching away, and her physical appearance has also followed. Her gaunt cheekbones point out beneath her skin as though there is no fat left, and the white of her eyes is now a dark grey. Her hair is brittle, although that is likely from her lack of eating, and standing up straight is harder said than down. Just trying to stand up leaves her out of breath, but Amy can’t see any of this or else Harlow’s plan will not work. 

Amy never explicitly said she doesn’t support Harlow’s ambitions left over by her father, but she did always expressing her mother’s health being a priority. If she see’s Harlow in this condition, any chance of Amy being malleable or useful to this entire operation dies. 

Harlow stares at her closet. It is full of clothes that no longer fit, and from twenty years ago. She tries on a few pieces, sitting down on her bed after each one, before deciding a on a dress she knows Harlow remembers. She wore it at Harlow’s school recital. Guilty, it was the last recital she ever went to. She stares at the dress, allowing shame to wash up her shoulders and over her neck and cheeks, before shoving it away. When this is down, there will be no use for shame. Because she will have given Amy the best thing she could ever provide, and that one school recital will no longer be a memory. 

She styles the dress in the best way she can, and works a brush through her hair for the first time in weeks. She fumbles through her old makeup, stuff her own mother would cringe if she saw she was putting it on her face after all these years, but she needs to hide the cut, and the grayness in her skin. 

She stares at herself in the mirror, a reflection of who she once was looking back at her, of when she was naive with skewed priorities. 

She walks outside and calls a taxi, breathing in the warm August air for the first time in years. 

Amy waits for Harlow at a table toward the back. Harlow holds her breath as she forces her body to walk up the steps without falling or looking weak, her grip on the arm rest violently tight. 

She smiles when she takes a seat. Normally, she would be thinking of the time she is wasting, but now, all she is can think about is that if this brunch goes well, she will only be hours away from having divine power. 

“How are you?” Amy asks. She stares at Harlow, her bright blue eyes that she got from her father unblinking. Harlow leans back in chair uncomfortably, feeling as though any work she did on her appearance is invisible in Amy’s eyes. “You… look good.” 

Harlow smiles. “Thank you. You do as well.” 

Amy nods, but an uncomfortable, untrusting look remains in her eyes. “How is… Are you… Are you feeling better?” The words come out as jumbled, like Amy does not really want to say them, and is worried what Harlow will say in return. 

Harlow knows what she means. Jason always made her ambition sound like a sickness that needed to be killed, something that would kill her one day- something that was killing her. She never wanted to think that maybe Amy shared that same sentiment. 

She nods, choking down any comment she wants to make about their upcoming future that would not be possible without her “sickness.”

“I feel fine. Just… thought it would be nice to get fresh air. See you… Apologize for the kind of mother I have been.” Harlow knows that if she wasn’t about to come up on a gold mine of power and prestige, she probably would have to give a genuine apology to Amy, for her lack of presence in Amy’s life. That is it something Amy probably wants to hear, something that will butter her up to where Harlow can maybe get that necklace she have her as a baby. 

“Um…” Amy stares at her in shock, “I don’t know what to say…” She takes a sip of her water to clear her throat. “You know you don’t have to apologize. You always had good intentions, and I know that everything that happened with Grandpa Pavlov was hard… So, you’re not working towards it anymore, are you?” There’s a hopeful tone in Amy’s voice that Harlow can’t miss, even of she wanted to. Her heart concaves as denial tries to remind her of all the good she is going toward her family. 

Reluctantly, she nods. “I um… want to experience life again. With you… and this brunch spot, and fresh air. Dad would have wanted it that way.” 

Slowly, the untrusting nature in Amy’s eyes dim, and Harlow feels like she can breath and not think too deeply on what she has to say next. 

“You know what would be a good reminder?” Harlow whispers. She takes in Amy’s hand and gives it a squeeze. “The necklace I gave you as a baby. You still wear it right? You dad got you an extension so you can still wear it.” 

Amy looks down and then back up. She looks confused, but as she looks into Harlow’s scared face, the face she saw as a kid when Harlow was working endlessly in her office, it diminishes. She nods, lifting her hands to the back of her neck, unlatching the chain. 

“Thank you baby. This will be my reminder going forward, that life with you is more important any amount of power.” 

When Harlow gets home, she lays the necklace on her desk, next to the pen her dad gave her at her high school graduation. She lights a candle, opens the window half way so a bit of sunlight can cascade into the room like the books say, and the settle onto the floor. 

The books state that she needs three things, all of which are sources of love. The first is a source of a love that no longer exits, the hardwood floors of the house she bought with Jason a few years into their marriage, that she now sits, doing her ritual on. The second is a source of an exiting love, Amy’s necklace, the hardest source to find under her past circumstances. And finally, the third source represents a love that will forever be eternal, her father’s journal. 

She settles on the floor, situating her dad’s old textbooks and journals in a circle around her, the necklace and her father’s last handwritten journal in the center. 

Heat circumvents her neck, as air becomes harder and harder to breath. Her father used to say that power is everywhere around them, that it has a mind of its own, and knows when it is being conjured. She imagines it nipping at her skin, ready to take over it next vessel, the one who was able to show that they were worthy enough to harness it. 

She says the incantation three times like the book says, just like she practice. She stirs the pot of liquid it look for five years to find ingredients for and perfect, and then the room itself starts to spin. 

She feels her head become light, as her eyes begin to lose focus. Her skin starts to burn, and everything around her becomes hot, so hot she can’t breath or even think.

DAUGHTER OF JACKSON PAVLOV FOUND DEAD IN HOUSE 

Harlow Pavlov, daughter of ashamed Jackson Pavlov was found dead in her house last Friday, by her daughter after the two met up earlier that day. Amy Mulligan stated that she wanted to check on her mother and bring her food for the weekend, but when she called and did not get a response, she went into her mother’s office, finding her lying on the ground. Pavlov was found with burn marks covering her face, and her hair was fried. Some doctors state it could be suicide driven by stress; remembering the circumstances of Senior Pavlov’s death. Condolences are with the remaining loved ones. 08/21