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systems. It isn’t a smart thing to do, to mock Fate.” She lifted her hand and pointed at her daughter. “The Fates…”
    Sophie rolled her eyes. “Oh my, the Fates? The three old hags with one eye, stirring a caldron? Jesus, Mom, enough. Give it a rest. You’re such a freak sometimes.”
    “That’s Clash of the Titans and all I’m saying is that it isn’t right to make fun of things you don’t understand and even if you don’t embrace it, it is still part of your heritage.”
    Sophie placed her spoon down and crossed her arms in front of her.
    “Honey, I’m sorry," Callie said. “I guess I’ve been watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding again and I’m feeling a bit homesick for Greece."
    “You’re right. I shouldn’t joke about my heritage and I’m gonna be late.” Sophie jumped up, grabbing her book bag and giving her mother a quick kiss.
    “Remember, home tonight,” she called after her, as she watched Sophie shut the wooden gate. She noticed the gate’s paint had begun to peel and made a mental note to stop by the hardware store later to pick up some paint.
    Oh, what I would give to bring back days when everything I did wasn’t an embarrassment to her .
    Lately, everything from the way Sophie crumbled her clothes into her dresser, to the cluttered mess Sophie’s room had become, drove Callie crazy. A few weeks ago, she found several dresses shoved to the back of Sophie’s chest of drawers, dirty clothes mixed in with clean ones and a lost peanut butter and jelly sandwich squashed between the wall and Sophie’s bed. It had been there so long she wasn’t sure if the mold was jelly or the jelly was mold.
    Callie reached down and retrieved her copy of the Columbus Dispatch . On the front page was a story about a murder, with the words ‘Cult Killing’ as the headline. Below the headline was a picture of several bodies draped in bloodied sheets and a close-up of one of the victim’s arms showed a symbol branded onto it. The picture was blurry and Callie couldn’t make out the symbol.
    It looks like… Don’t be ridiculous, Callie. It couldn’t be.
    She stared at the picture a little longer before letting go of a memory she had long since forgotten.
    There is no way that Greek word is branded into that person’s arm.
    Callie remembered the stories of the senseless killing. When people were hunted because they were different.
    But it was hundreds…no thousands of years ago . I refuse to let my imagination get the best of me.
    Callie made up her mind to toss the paper away before Sophie got home, when something in the yard caught her eye. It was a shadowy figure and she turned her head to see who it was, but nothing was there.
    Add to my daughter’s long list of embarrassments that her mother is starting to see things .
    She chuckled to herself, in spite of a sudden drop in temperature making her teeth chatter. It was strange, considering most of the spring had been surprisingly warm. She grabbed the frost-covered doorknob and stopped, her attention being drawn to a small section of garden to her right. A fragile-looking butterfly fluttered past her and landed on a tulip. She couldn’t recall ever seeing one this early in the spring. The insect’s wings, which had some of the most vivid colors she had ever seen, were dazzling in a shaft of sunlight that had broken through the morning cloud cover. She watched it continue to beat its wings, at first slowly and then faster and faster.
    It knows I’m watching it. She was mesmerized by it, as the colors in its wings moved like a kaleidoscope, blinding at first and then hypnotic. She knew she had to be dreaming because the butterfly was quickly growing larger. It was now the size of a large crow.
    She recalled reading somewhere that hallucinations were a warning sign of strokes and wondered if she were about to have one.
    “That and the scent of buttered toast.”
    The butterfly liquefied into an oil-like red substance that dripped onto the