Written for the fuda_100 challenge of "sickness." Betaed by Eliza. Title taken from an old saying about...whiskey, actually, if I remember right. Summary taken from a line of dialogue in the movie version of "The Neverending Story."

It's his father's wife Saki meets first, white as a ghost in the lawyer's office. She smiles at him with crimson lips.

"It's only right that you are raised in your father's house," she says.

He remembers his mother's words. "They're unnatural, that woman and her boy." He'd thought it mere jealousy.

They take a sleek, silver car to the Muraki estate. It matches her. He meets her son, who also matches her, a pale omen of death.

"It's a curse," his mother said, crumpling the letter in her spasming fist. "She's cursed me."

Saki's come to return the favor.

~END~