Free Dark Dreams by Michael Genelin

again. After all, the police officer who’d put him in the hospital was still living across the street; he only enjoyed beating his wife when there was no one to stop him. Jana had thought briefly of moving, but she was not going to be forced out by a cowardly wife-beater, or by the anger of his victim.
    She walked through her unlocked front door.
    At first she didn’t know what was hanging from a red ribbon tacked to a ceiling beam in the middle of the room. It swung slowly back and forth in the air current. Jana slowly closed the door behind her, stepping closer to the object. A simple necklace of gold links was dangling from the ribbon. Hanging from this chain was a diamond. The diamond was the size of a small candy egg. Jana turned a lamp on, moving closer to the necklace to examine it.
    The facets glittered sharp and bright, demanding to be looked at, with a piercing luminosity that seemed to grow sharper and brighter as she focused on the gem. The stone looked even larger from up close. It seemed to consume the light in the space around it. It had its own life, demanding to be looked at.
    Jana managed to pull back, forcing herself to look away. Someone had been in the house, and perhaps was still there. She snapped her holster open, ready to use her gun if she had to, cautiously but quickly going through the house to make sure she was alone. Then she walked back to the gem.
    The diamond was still there.
    It was hypnotic. It said, “You want me. You need me. We are meant to be together.”
    Jana was amazed at the effect the diamond had on her. First, greed and lust. Then came a feeling of unease at her reaction. It was followed by dread that she might so easily be corrupted by such a thing. It was crazy, and wrong.
    Why had someone hung the diamond in her home?
    Jana pulled the stone and its gold chain off the ribbon. It felt cold in her hand. She now wanted to cast it off, to throw it away. Anything to get rid of it. Her fear increased. She was a police officer. Whoever had put it in her home had placed her in jeopardy.
    How could such an inanimate object be so threatening? Not only the diamond, but what it represented. Danger. Personal danger. It had been hung in her house for a reason. The stone was too expensive to be a gift. It meant . . . something else!
    Hide it! She started toward her couch, thinking to conceal it under a cushion, then halted. The ludicrousness of hiding the diamond under a cushion jolted her. What was she thinking? She forced herself to stop. Yes, her own department might be kicking down her door at any moment, ready to arrest her for corruption, or theft, whatever crime the diamond would implicate her in. But this was no way to deal with the issue. Jana calmed herself.
    She would get out of her wet clothes, take a bath, let the hot water soothe her. She had to think. The cherries were still in her other hand, half crushed. She took them with her into the bathroom, laying them next to the tub, then ran a hot bath. Knocking sounds began emanating from the hot-water heater as if someone imprisoned inside the tank was demanding to be let out. It had been repaired twice before by Brod, the handyman, the man who did repairs for everyone. Unfortunately, he also jury-rigged failing parts so he didn’t have to buy expensive new ones, and sooner, rather than later, the item he serviced would break down again. She listened to the sounds, focusing on them, trying to take her mind off the diamond.
    Jana had purchased a small bottle of bath oil in a little town just over the Austrian border. She poured the remaining contents of the bottle into the tub, regretting for a brief moment that she had none left for her future baths, her regrets vanishing as she slipped into the water. She tried to luxuriate in the heat, 1ying mostly submerged, eating an occasional cherry, safe from the snow-turned-to-sleet outside. The bath oil would smooth her skin, which Peter would like . . . and she wanted Peter to like