What do you see when you tear the veil away and stare into the closet? How many skeletons await you in that dark alcove?

What do your bones whisper to you at night, when the veil is the thinnest, when your demons claw from the inside? Every torturous pain you’ve inflicted, another slash of the razor-sharp talon. Your shame a blood-spattered canvas, torn and smeared with black earth.

Your truth cannot stay buried.

There’s a devil with a Tarot deck waiting to challenge your fate.

Everyone has a card, a judgment day, just as everyone has a past. They go hand in hand. A tangled, patchwork quilt of suffering and guilt.

The truly treacherous souls feel nothing at all. They’ve numbed their pain. Some use drugs. Others sex, or money. Poison to leech the infection. But it’s still there—that dark, vile secret, a devouring cancer.

I am not above you—we are the same. Our blood lets red as it pools atop our coversheet. For the devil is a collection of bones and blood, a putrid amassing of all sins. My well is full. The decay has infected my very soul. I’m told, an inoperable aortic aneurysm—a ticking time bomb—is my fate.

I flip Death over, run my finger along the edge of the card.

Even the devil bows to fate.

In doing this for as long as I have, I’ve learned there are two types of people: Those who fear death, and those who welcome it. If you’re curious which type you are, here’s a test.

Imagine you’re given a choice: you can die an excruciatingly painful death, or die a quick, painless death. Now imagine there’s a catch. Die now and suffer no pain. Or die five days from now, and bear the agony of a truly horrid death.

Most people, believing they are brave, or wise, think they will opt for the pain-free demise. But when faced with the choice in the very moment of death, they deny the gift. They fight, and war, and rage against the end…just for a chance at a few more days.

It’s the human condition. We are unable to accept the end—the true end. We want one more day, hour, minute. We will endure the agony for simply the promise of more time.

Is your heart racing? Breaths coming too fast?

Then your decision is made.

For Dr. Ian West, where he once welcomed an easy death, he is now a fighter.

Tasked with an impossible choice, he chose life—and he chose to gift that life to his enemy. He did so with the knowledge of the agonizing pain to come.

Did you make the connection? There was one within the message I had Shaver give to Dr. West. He didn’t understand it then, but I wonder if he sees it now, if he’s finally put all the parts together.

In order to accept this new vessel, he must follow the path that sets his adversary free, forsaking his principles.

In the end, Dr. West’s true adversary was never Shaver; it was always the man without a face—until I gave him one. The bones of revenge haunting Dr. West’s nightmares.

I admit, I might have judged him wrong. I watched, fascinated, as Dr. West sacrificed the kill and spared Gregory’s life. I had thought I’d finally found the grief-burdened man in the cloak that would become my successor.

My salvation.

Before the time bomb in my body detonates, my soul has to be purged of all the sins I’ve consumed.

But…there is a small fraction of time left.

I shuffle my Tarot deck.

I lay the cards out until the Five of Cups appears. It always appears. I smile, wondering which unfortunate soul is struggling with their own five stages of grief.

I ask the cards: who will be next?

* * *

Five of Cups is just one of the many stories in the Cards of Love Collection. Which card will you choose next? Find the entire collection here: