The Witness

TW: grief, death of a parent, a car accident, hit-and-run, domestic abuse, substance abuse, and disturbing supernatural imagery.

Vera stared at the cigarette pinched between her fingers as the first mournful toll of midnight bells echoed through the sodden streets.

It was the last in the pack she had promised God she would never finish if her mother survived. The doctors warned there would be little chance after the car hit her, but Vera held on anyway. Hope felt too small for what she needed.

Faith.

Faith in the God her mother raised her to believe in, kneel to, and plead with. If that faith could not save her mother, Vera did not know what would.

But like every prayer Vera had ever offered, it went unanswered.

After the doctors told her that her mother was dead, Vera walked out into the rain. The city felt hollow, its windows staring like empty eyes. She passed the café where they would have coffee every morning and kept going through Poughkeepsie until the pack was almost empty.

By the time she reached St. Peter’s, it was well past midnight.

The church doors were locked.

Vera sat on the stone steps beneath the crimson sconces, soaked through, and the statue of St. Peter watched over her—keys to the kingdom gripped tight, eyes cast down. The street was empty. The calm felt unnatural.

She put the cigarette between her lips and lifted the lighter.

“Before you light that,” a man said behind her, “I should tell you something.”

Vera flinched so hard the lighter fell from her hand and bounced against a well-polished leather shoe.

He had not been there a moment ago. She was certain of it.

The church doors were still locked. The street was empty. A man in a fitted gray suit stood next to her on the steps, dry as bone in the pouring rain. His shadow stretched impossibly long beneath the red lights. Something about him felt wrong before he ever spoke.

He bent, picked up the lighter, and handed it back.

“You dropped this.”

Vera did not take it.

“Who are you?”

The man smiled. It was a beautiful smile, which made her distrust him immediately.

“I have been called many things. The Demiurge. Belial. The serpent in the garden.”

Her eyes stayed on his. This man was crazy.

“You may call me Samael.”

The air grew dense, chill seeping into Vera’s bones. The church loomed above her as if alive, stone angels glaring down with hollow, sightless eyes. Every stained-glass window glimmered with the faintest red. Vera’s breath quickened.

The old instinct prevailed before she could stop it. Vera made the sign of the cross with quivering fingers.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” Samael said pleasantly.

The rain came down harder. The red lights of the church flashed and grew brighter, staining the stone steps with the color of blood. The water soaked through Vera’s clothes and ran down her neck. Somewhere, a bell tolled—low and mournful—echoing through the empty street like an omen. The scent of wet stone and old incense filled the air.

Samael remained dry.

“No,” Vera said.

His brows lifted. “No?”

“No. Whatever this is, whatever game you’re playing, no.”

She turned and started down the steps.

“That is not the traditional response,” Samael said.

“I’m not interested.”

“You are the latest witness in the continuing trial of humanity.”

Vera stopped. Then she laughed. It came out sharp and ugly.

“Of course I am.”

“The position is rarely convenient.”

“You need help.” She reached for her phone. “I’m calling someone.”

The screen stayed black under her thumb.

“You won’t,” Samael said.

The rain stopped suddenly. One moment, it poured over the street; the next, the world halted. Vera looked down and saw that she was dry.

Behind her, the locked church doors opened.

Samael gestured toward the darkness.

“Shall we begin?”

The church bells rang in answer.

The pavement between Vera’s feet split open. Black oil seeped through the cracks and spread across the steps. Underneath, red figures scratched upward, mouths open in wordless screams, their talons slipping as they tried to escape.

Vera ran. She did not think. Her body chose the church before her mind could argue. She passed the threshold and nearly collapsed inside.

The sanctuary was not as she remembered it.

Every candle burned. The marble gleamed. Saints in their alcoves had been restored, all gold halos and mournful eyes. The church of her childhood, but not as it was—as it must have looked the day someone first believed it could save them.

“The Court recognizes this witness,” Samael said behind her.

Vera turned. “I did not agree to be your witness.”

“Witnesses rarely do.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your testimony.”

“On what, exactly?”

Samael walked down the center aisle as though he owned every stone.

“Humanity, of course.”

Vera laughed again, but this time it was laced with fear. “Ask someone else.”

“We have.”

He glanced toward the pews. Vera followed his gaze and saw them—transparent figures seated among the rows. Men, women, and children dressed in clothes from different centuries. Their eyes were fixed on Vera.

“Every hundred years, humanity is called to testify. Through your testimony, the powers that be decide if your kind receives another hundred years or if the rapture will begin.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?” Samael paused. “You have known love, loss, faith, disappointment, and now, most importantly, you lack the hope required to lie.”

His words stabbed Vera like a knife to the chest.

Samael stepped onward into the aisle of the church that would serve as a courtroom for humanity.

“Offer your first defense.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Then mankind rests, and I may begin my account?”

Something in Vera sprang to life. It was not faith or hope, as Samael had accurately described, but something more familiar.

Her father’s stubbornness.

And his kindness.

“My father,” she said.

Samael inclined his head. The church shifted. The varnished wood aged.

Vera was seven again, though also not. She stood invisible in the nave of St. Peter’s as Father Benedict finished Mass. Her father, Ernesto, walked alongside her younger self in his work jacket, shoulders slumped from a week of labor.

At the poor box, he opened his wallet.

Vera’s eyes welled with tears. Sundays had been her favorite. Her father came home early enough to spend time with her.

Her younger self watched him remove a few wrinkled bills.

“Why do you give money when we have so little? You could’ve bought me a bike with all the money you give to the church.”

Samael scoffed.

Ernesto knelt, his face level with hers.

“You give what you can. You do not need a bike as much as someone else needs food in their belly.”

He slid the bills into the box.

“It is not the things that you have that matter, Vera.” He tapped her chest. “It is what lives in here.”

Ernesto scooped her younger self into his arms and carried her out.

Vera wiped at her face.

“There,” she said. “Charity.”

“Very well,” Samael replied.

The church darkened. Father Benedict entered through the side door. Vera had known him all her life. He had baptized her. Now he knelt before the poor box and opened it. He removed the money—her father’s bills, grocery money, guilt money.

Samael followed the priest, and the scene followed him.

The church walls gave way to brick. Rain returned, black and oily, before it disappeared. They were outside in an alley now. Father Benedict handed the folded bills to a man with sores across his face. The man gave him a small bag. Vera knew what she was seeing before she let herself truly understand.

The priest’s hands trembled as he prepared the syringe.

She looked away as the needle pierced his skin. Samael did not.

“Your father fed an addiction,” Samael said, “and called it godliness.”

Vera’s eyes flared hot with anger. “You are twisting it to fit your narrative.”

“I have only shown what followed.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

Vera wanted to defend her father, his intentions, his sacrifice. She wanted to say that the charity still mattered, even if it was squandered in sin.

But the proof lay slumped in the alley, her father’s charity vanishing into its vein.

Then a woman screamed.

Farther down the alley, beneath a blinking streetlight, a man gripped a woman by her coat. A knife pressed to her throat. Her purse lay on the ground.

Father Benedict did not move.

“Look,” Vera said.

Samael kept his eyes on the priest.

“Look!” she screamed.

A man dressed in a gray hoodie sprinted across the street. He tackled the assailant and wrested the knife from his hand. The mugger ran. The woman fell, sobbing. The man picked up her things and placed the purse in her hands.

“You are safe now,” he told her.

“See.” Vera turned to Samael, vindicated. “You cropped the frame.”

That damning, beautiful smile returned as if he knew more to the story than he let on.

“Did I?”

“You wanted me to focus on Father Benedict, but there was more to see.”

“I wanted you to look at your so-called charity.”

“That was charity, too.” She motioned to the man and the woman exiting the alley together.

“No,” Samael said coldly. “That was appetite—dressed in chivalry.”

The alley changed, and the same black rain from earlier poured down.

Years rolled by.

A kitchen formed around them. The same man and woman stood by the sink, wedding bands on their fingers. He caressed her cheek as she held a baby with mismatched eyes: one brown and one blue.

The man kissed the baby’s head, then his wife.

For one impossible moment, Vera thought Samael had made a mistake. There was a sweetness in the air.

A happily ever after.

Samael, as if sensing her thoughts, waved his hand, and the scene soured before her eyes.

The sound of doors slamming carried through the apartment.

The baby with mismatched eyes became a toddler.

The man’s hand, once protective, held the woman’s wrist too tightly.

“You do not talk to other men,” he yelled.

“I didn’t.”

“I saw you smile at him.”

“I didn’t,” the woman repeated.

His hand struck her face. Bruises already marked her skin in blue, black, and purple—a rainbow of suffering.

“After everything I did for you, this is how you treat me?” the man said, slamming the door.

The woman fell to the floor and wept.

“Love,” Samael said, “is hunger in a pretty dress.”

Vera’s stomach turned from the sight.

“But he saved her,” Vera said, not believing her own words.

“And then he destroyed her,” Samael answered.

After a long pause, Samael asked, “Shall we proceed?”

“No.”

“No?”

Vera came closer to the woman. She lifted her head as if she could see Vera standing there. Her lip was split, blood dripping from her nose.

“Mommy! I am scared.”

The woman froze. Vera saw the fears pass through her: shelter, shame, the arithmetic of money, the neighbors, the priest who spoke of the sacrament of marriage.

Then something changed in her eyes.

A mother’s determination.

Vera knew the woman would not stay. She would defy her circumstances.

The woman stood and took her son into her arms.

“Everything will be okay. We will be okay.”

“Do you want to go visit Nana’s house?”

The boy nodded, wiping his eyes.

The woman packed one bag, then left with her son on her hip and her head held high.

“Strength,” Vera said, summoning some of the bravery from the woman.

“I never claimed humans were not resilient.”

“This isn’t resilience. She was terrified and left anyway. That is strength, courage, and selflessness.”

Samael watched the door close behind them.

“You are learning the procedure of this court.”

“So we’re done? Humanity gets another hundred years?”

Samael smiled that cunning smile again.

“Would you like to know what became of the child?”

“No.”

But the answer came too late.

Black rain poured over them.

The kitchen became a road. Vera knew the intersection before she saw the street signs.

“No,” she said.

Her knees weakened.

“I will not watch this.”

“You will bear witness and provide testimony.”

Before she could argue, a vehicle swerved around the bend. Inside was a kid no more than seventeen. One eye brown. One eye blue.

Her mother had already started crossing the road, cellphone pressed to her ear. Vera remembered every word of their conversation.

The car struck her mother.

It was the crack of bones and the screeching of tires.

Now, Vera could smell it.

Burned rubber. Urine. Blood.

She ran to her mother, but she could not save her. Vera’s own voice screamed through the phone on the pavement.

“Mom? Mom, are you okay? Answer me! Please, Mom!”

The teenager sat behind the wheel, mouth open.

Then he drove away.

Samael stood over Vera.

“The protected child,” he said. “Saved from one violence to become another’s.”

Vera let out a raw cry.

“Enough,” Vera whispered.

“Do you rest your case for humanity?”

She wanted to say yes and put an end to her torture, the addictions, the abuse, the injustice.

Vera lifted her head to Samael to give him his long-awaited answer. She took in the scene around her one final time.

Then she saw it.

“Rewind it,” Vera demanded.

Samael’s expression changed. “What?”

“If you can move time forward, you can play it back.”

“I can.”

“Then do it.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Samael raised one hand and curled his fingers into a fist.

Her mother rose from the pavement. The blood returned to her. The car reversed around the bend. The moment reset.

This time, Vera did not look at her soon-to-be-dead-again mother. She focused on the car.

A little girl ran into the street after a red ball.

The teenager saw her. He swerved. The car missed the girl, lost control, and struck Vera’s mother.

The infernal sound of the crash cleaved the air.

Vera made a noise that was almost a laugh, almost a sob.

“He didn’t mean to. He saved the child.”

“But he killed your mother and then left her to die alone and in pain.”

Vera looked at the boy behind the wheel. His face was white with panic. He was a coward. He was a killer. He was also the reason a little girl was alive.

Her heart lay crushed on the road in the shape of her mother’s contorted body.

“What is your testimony now?” Samael asked.

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

“The truth?” she laughed, but it broke halfway out of her. “That’s your trick, isn’t it? You show me just enough truth to make your point.”

Samael remained silent.

“My father gave money because he believed someone needed it more than we did. The priest used it to feed his addiction. A man saved a woman, only to become the very thing she needed saving from. She saved her son. Her son saved a child and killed my mother.”

Her voice trembled, but Vera did not look away.

“All of it is true. Every part. But you stop the story where it suits you.”

Samael’s lips curved upward as he asked, “Is mankind innocent?”

“No.”

“Good?”

“No.”

“Evil?”

“No. Not only.”

The church bells began to ring, though there was no church around them anymore.

“We are saints and sinners,” Vera said. “Cowards and martyrs. We destroy what we love. We save strangers. We run. We stay. We are cruel, and we are merciful, and most of the time we do not even understand which we are being until the damage is done.”

Samael’s smile faded.

“Testimony accepted.”

Fear overtook Vera, icy and absolute, as if the world itself mourned for all creation. She knew she had dealt humanity its final blow. She had not won. She did not even know if winning was possible. Still, something in her had changed—some desperate defiance against the void. It was stronger than hope or courage. Life was beautiful and worth living, even as the heavens threatened to collapse and the end drew near.

“This session is concluded.”

“No.” She moved toward Samael. “What does that mean for us? Do we get another hundred years, or did I bring about the end of days?”

“You will see.”

He snapped his fingers.

Vera woke in her bed.

She bolted upright, gasping.

She was home. She ran to her window and pulled open the curtains.

It was morning. People moved along the sidewalk. Cars rolled through intersections. The world had not ended.

Just a dream, Vera told herself.

Then she saw the pack of cigarettes on her nightstand.

Inside was one cigarette.

The last one.

Vera stared at it for a brief moment. Then she crushed the pack in her fist and threw it in the trash—her vow to never pick up another as long as she lived.

The need to see the reality around her took over. She showered, dressed, and rushed out.

Poughkeepsie looked the same as before. Dirty sidewalks and steam rising from vents. Men argued near the deli. A woman laughed into her phone. Church bells rang the hour.

Nothing had changed.

Yet, everything had.

Her feet took her to the café where she and her mother had gone every morning.

Across the street, at an outside table, Samael sat with a cup of coffee.

Vera’s steps halted.

He saw her.

Of course, he saw her.

Slowly, he raised his cup to her in acknowledgment.

A man bumped into Vera’s shoulder, breaking her gaze.

She moved around him.

The chair was empty.

Vera crossed the street and ran to the table.

The coffee remained.

Vera lifted the cup with both hands and read the note beneath it.

The Court is adjourned for a hundred years.