It wasn't my first choice for how to wake up.

By all I held vile, I vowed it would be Diane's last. A mere pawn in their grasp, the fifty-two cards, with their four suits and thirteen ranks, dictated that decision.

I suspected Diane had been cheating on me for at least the last two weeks. I remembered the good times when we were high on that mountain of love. Passion overcame us and we about drowned in euphoria. Now, none of that remained. How could the fervent feeling so longed for exist? We hardly tolerated the sight of one another, and we had not connected the essence of our beings in an eternity.

Stumbling into the house that night I clutched my shoes in my hand. I arrived long after Diane had passed out on the big four-poster bed she swore kept the warmth in the room on cold winter nights. Should my arms not have soothed her desires? I noticed my portrait, hand-painted by her favorite local artist, some unknown schmuck named Emerson Townsend, turned face to the wall. Peculiar as that seemed, it was all the proof my suspicious nature needed to be confirmed.

Full of malice and petty ways, her spiteful act convinced me Diane possessed nothing left to remind her condescending self of what we once shared. All resilency cast downward under the burden of the heavy weight, my spirits sagged. Out of the kindness of my broken heart, I allowed my wife one last good night's slumber, neither lethargic nor slothful. I knew the peace was a pleasure she would soon no longer experience.

Unstable at best, and full of difficulties, our marriage had been rocky from the start. Perhaps stars got in my eyes, yet I remained idealistic and optimistic we could make our relationship much better. The way the bonds of matrimony should be.

The cards that ruled our house did not approve of Diane, or her unamenable ways, that left her unresponsive to gentle persuasions. They tried to tell me doom resounded. Obstinate as I can be, and adhering to my own opinions, like a fool I would not listen to what they said. That included the last two years of pure misery. By far, they had been the worst. I should have learned the cards never lied.

Surrounded by the utter blackness of the room, and hard to see through its murky gloom, I lit six miniature candles. These I placed in a circle on the top of the red cedar table. They sat sort of like they had been props in a seance in one of those old black and white movies shown on the television late in the wee hours of the morn. My preferred fright night being The Amityville Horror.

Shot after shot, I downed a fifth of courage contained in a Jack Daniels whiskey bottle.

As Jack himself once proclaimed, "A square bottle for a square shooter."

I consumed every drop available to me. That accomplished, I peeled the black label off one teeny piece at a time and counted the memories of a love lost. I felt Diane had ripped away the parts of my ticker in much the same indistinguishable fashion.

Languid, with a disinterest in exertion, I flipped the cards in my hand face up one at a time. The numbers printed on each of them turned to crisp, clear, writing. Distinct, they assured me of the answers to all my questions: who, what, where, when, and why. The whole story unfolded right there in front of my own two eyes. A new piece of information supplied with each card turned up.

The ringing inside my cranium steadily crescendoed louder and louder and louder! My brain felt like the medulla oblongata smashed into the interior of my vertex. Its pinnacle throbbed. No outside source created the sound nor did I know where it came from.

Conflicted, I shrieked vociferously, "Somebody make this terror stop!"

Alone in the silence nobody responded. I swallowed another round of cool liquid for bravery's sake. An unexpected breeze made the flames on the candles flicker, but they did not go out. Now laid on the table, the upturned cards gyrated in quick circles as the urge to kill magnified in significance.

I made my way to the dusty mirror that hung on the far wall of the cubicle I was enclosed inside of. A thrown whiskey glass from a previous engagement had created a crack that ran diagonally through the glass in the speculum. Though hard to shape, the mirror's metal frame was made of the same type of material that constructed the Levithan Parsonstown telescope used to view star nebulas.

Soon, the metamorphosis would transpire and I would be well past the crossroads of the decisive moment. Under the control of the cards, the first change I noticed was the thick and wide, coarse hair on my face flushed out and two enamel fangs elongated.

Mortified, I turned from the sight, then forced myself to look back at my reflection. I observed myself changing back to my human condition, clean-shaven and chisel-chinned. One final glance in the glass and I allowed the cards to have their way.

The moon shone bright above. Before I attacked my prey, I let go a blood-curdling howl and climbed the stairs that led to what would soon become a crimson slaughterhouse.

As I approached, I called, "Oh, Diane. Ready or not love of my life, here I come!"

No, it wasn't my first choice for how to wake up. By all I held vile, I vowed it would be Diane's last.