I could sense it on her
just as well as she could
sense it...
I'm not talking about the smell
of smoke, though it was something
like that.
Trace wasn't a smoker
like the others
in the house where she was staying
and you could smell that
on her.
Yet there was something more
that she was describing to me...
a sense of evil.
She was convinced
that the man staying
in that same house
was evil
and that somehow
she was contaminated -
dirty, sickening
and I could sense it too.
She was beautiful
and yet at the same moment
somehow I felt repelled
by something about her
or on her...
Though not given to supersition,
I wanted to tell her to bathe
in garlic and holy water,
and to cross herself,
in the name of the Father,
The Son and the Holy Spirit.
I've been in the same room,
myself, with that man
and somehow I still feel
his shadow in my life,
as if he is sometimes
in the same room with me.