A deal–with one handshake her fate was sealed. Not her fate exactly, but his–both of theirs. Let me start at the beginning.
            Clara and Nick.
            Clara carrying a notebook in the back pocket of her jeans, jotting down images, characters.
            Brown snow.
            Tall man with a pimple between the eyes,
           Shredded tissue dancing in the wind,
            Hazel eyes like mirrors. Like she could fall into them and only see herself. See Nick.
            Nick carrying groceries for strangers. Having a conversation with a homeless man, cardboard sign dangling between his legs. Give him a dollar and he’ll go away. But Nick gave him five and a sandwich and talked to him for ten minutes. That was Nick.
            Meeting Nick felt like being home for the first time. Not her childhood home, the dingy house her mother painted yellow so it wouldn’t look so sad like makeup over a black eye. Clara felt like her most authentic self when she was with Nick.
           Within two years they lived together. She made him coffee every morning and each evening Nick packed her lunch for school the next day. Clara had upgraded her childhood notebook to a laptop, but only had the time and energy to write on Saturday mornings. Up at 8 while Nick slept late. She’d bring him coffee in bed at ten. She’d read him stories she’d written like a reverse bedtime story.
            Clara and Nick.
            Then came the accident. Clara wondered if the deal with the devil would have come up without it. Would she ever have thought to pray to some otherworldly creature, the power of the universe, supreme being, without it?
            Probably not.
            Ever been in an accident? Not a fender bender, but a real accident, he car is totaled kind? It’s like time stops, but moves faster at the same time. When you close your eyes to think back to it, you see spotty images.
            A ballpoint pen hovering in mid-air.
            The bang, crack, then tinkle of glass shattering and spraying.
            Blood, probably hers, maybe not.
            The fear falling over her at the end, covering her like a blanket.
           What comes next? The sirens and hospital. Doctors telling Clara she’s fine. Just a broken arm, lucky she wasn’t driving. Nick’s swollen face and bandaged head. The beeping of heart monitors and machines she never knew existed. The in and out of a breathing machine. It resembled the fire breather. What do you call , a bellows? Wind-maker? Her dad used to stoke the fire with it in their crumbling brick fireplace.
            Sucking sounds. Could a machine gasp for air?
            Clara’s heart pounding as she sits in her sweat-stained clothes in the metal hospital chair beside Nick’s bed. More beeping. A flatline. Nurses rushing in. Paddles and shouting CLEAR.
            Clara pushes people away to reach Nick. White coats and gray-green scrubs. If she could only hold his hand and whisper in his ear not to go, everything would be okay. “
            Please God!”
            They won’t let her get to him. Calloused fingers grab hers. It’s one of the nurses holding her back. She stumbles back. Falls.
            When Clara awakens, she’s twisted against the arm of the chair watching Nick’s chest rise and fall. What happened? She only remembers snippets of a dream.
            Was it a dream?
            A man with a shadow face.
            “I’ll do anything.”
            “You choose.”
            “My life for his?”
            “No. Your dreams.”
            She imagines everything she’s ever dreamed of: published novelist, tour the world, movies about her characters, interviews with Oprah and Jimmy Fallon. She imagines holding a published book of her stories, a glossy cover with her name on it.
            “It’s all yours.”
            “Nick’s my home.”
            “Are you sure?”
          “Definitely.” But was she?
           Her book is gone. The shadow man holds out his hand.
            Clara gives the shadow man her notebook. It disappears as he grasps it. He waits.
            She pulls her laptop as if out of thin air. It vanishes into his black robe just as quickly.
            A handshake to seal the deal.
            The metal bar of the hospital chair digs into her spine. She’s alone with Nick, as if the nurses and doctors snuck away in the night taking their fire breathing bellows with them. If they were ever there at all. The heart monitor beeps. Nick’s eyes are open, and he smiles at her beneath the bandages. His swollen face almost a sneer. She holds his hand, but cringes at the first touch, her heart racing.
            Calm down. It’s just Nick.
            But is it?
            Reaching into her back pocket for her notebook. Nothing. Maybe she left it at home. But she never went anywhere without it.
            Nick tracing circles along her palm with his thumb. “Read me a story, babe.” His voice sounds different, deep and demanding.
            “I can’t. My notebook and my laptop…” She’s confused. Maybe it’s at home. Maybe she never had a laptop at all.
            She recalls muttered words. The shadow man.
            You make a deal with the devil, you always lose.
            “Then tell me one,” says Nick. He digs his thumb into her palm, his thumbnail drawing blood from the center. “The love story is my favorite. The one where she falls into his eyes like mirrors.”
            The fog. She feels lost. “I, I don’t know. I forgot. I don’t think I write stories. I’m not creative at all.” Suddenly things make sense. “I’m here for you, babe. You’re my guy. The only thing that matters to me. Clara and Nick.”

Rebecca Kamps has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Denison University. She lives Cleveland, Ohio with her family and work as a middle school math tutor. This is her first published work.