As Black as Ebony by Salla Simukka

just imagined it all? What if the letters had never existed? Or the text messages? Or the stalker?
    What if it had all just been in Lumikki’s head?
    Lumikki jumped against the fence, grabbed it with her fingers and the tips of her shoes, and climbed over. She continued running. As she reached the main road that ran along the shore of the lake, someone shouted after her.
    “Hey, baby! The party’s just getting started!”
    A group of middle-aged men, apparently just leaving a Christmas party at the marina. Their elf hats and red noses suggested as much, anyway. Lumikki just kept on running. She would have liked to run away from everything, away from her life, away from the madness that her days had turned into.
    She still didn’t have any answers. She still didn’t know who was stalking her.
    When Lumikki opened her apartment door, she felt like collapsing on the floor and crying. How much could a person endure? How much did she have to carry on her own? Where was the point after which a person just broke?
    Lumikki was in such a state of confusion and distress that she realized too late there was a smell that didn’t belong. By the time she noticed, her hands were already twisted behind her back in a tight grip, a leather glove was shoved in her mouth, and her sleeve was pulled up.
    Lumikki’s last awareness was of the sharp point of a needle pressing against her bare arm and something being injected into her vein.
    Then the world was replaced by blackness.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, EARLY MORNING

The shadow hovered sometimes closer and sometimes farther off. Its silhouette was indistinct and shifting. She couldn’t quite make out its shape.
    Lumikki tried to focus. Everything was so blurry. Her head ached and her arms and legs felt heavy like in a nightmare. Her eyelids wanted desperately to fall back shut. She forced them open.
    Lumikki was lying on her back. She moved her left hand away from her body and it struck an obstacle. The same thing happened with her right. And both legs. She managed to lift one of her hands up far enough to discover a barrier there too. Strange. She could still see up and to the sides. Or she would have been able to if everything weren’t so cloudy. Cloudy eyes, cloudy thoughts, neither of which she could seem to focus.
    “And it wasn’t long before she opened her eyes.”
    The voice came from above Lumikki. It came from the shadow that moved. Lumikki had the vague realization that the voice was familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
    “I knew you would be stronger than the princess in the story. No poison could affect you for very long. You’re a fighter. You’ve been fighting your entire life. You’ve fought against me valiantly too. You didn’t show your fear. You didn’t tell anyone.”
    The fog began to clear a little from Lumikki’s head. Finally, she realized what was blocking the slow, labored movements of her arms and legs. She was in a casket. In the glass coffin from the play.
    “But now your struggle is over,” the shadow’s voice continued. “You don’t have to fight anymore. You can give in now and be mine.”
    Lumikki tried to sit up. She felt as if her veins had been poured full of black lead. Her head banged against the glass top of the coffin. She struggled, managed to lift up her hands, and tried to push the cover off.
    It should have been easy. She knew that. She had done it time and time again in rehearsal. Now the cover didn’t budge.
    “Poor little Lumikki. Sometimes life surprises us. Everything doesn’t go the way we thought. Sometimes you can’t get out of a glass coffin so easily. You see, this isn’t a play. This isn’t a fairy tale. This is real. And in reality, of course, the coffin’s lid is screwed shut.”
    Lumikki tried to make her fumbling mind recognize the voice. It was so familiar. She should have known. She should have been able to think of the name.
    The name was so familiar.
    She had said it so many times.
    She just