[ WP ] You gain the ability to see roughly how good or evil someone is based on their aura . A whiter aura means the person is mostly good , a blacker aura means the person is mostly bad . One day , your sweet , loving grandma visits , and you see that her aura is completely pitch black .

I probably should have expected something like this to happen. 
 
 Ever since I'd woken up two months ago with a raging hangover and the freakish ability to tell whether someone was good or not just by looking at them, my entire world had been flipped on its head. At first I had no idea what had happened to me, and was just terrified of the glowing colors I could see surrounding everyone I met, but as time wore on, I began to figure out what they meant. The lighter the aura, the better. I broke up with my girlfriend because her aura was a muddy purple, and she ended up in jail for murder. That was how I found myself sitting in my living room alone one sunny Saturday morning, morosely staring at pictures of Charlotte and I on the mantel and wondering what I'd done to deserve all this. 
 
 Just then, the doorbell rang, and I sprang to my feet, instantly wary. Sure, the weather was absolutely gorgeous out, but that did n't mean someone with ill intentions could n't have come knocking. Slowly I went to the door, peeking out cautiously through the peephole. I could n't see anyone. `` Who is it?'' I called. 
 
 `` Terence,'' a familiar voice warbled. `` It's Grandma! I brought you cookies.'' 
 
 With a surge of relief, I remembered that she had invited herself over to drop off some of her world-class homemade cookies. I had n't seen her since The Freaky began, and I looked forward to eating those cookies again. 
 
 Almost subconsciously, I wondered what her aura would be like, as I did with every new person I met, and decided that it must be something very close to white. After all, this was my grandma, right? But I got the shock of my life when I opened the door smiling to see her familiar figure standing there, clothed in an eerie aura of glowing jet black. 
 
 I lost the smile at that, heart racing as I took an involuntary step back. Though I'd met dozens, no, hundreds of people since The Freaky, I had never met someone with an aura this black. `` Uh...'' 
 
 `` Are you alright, Terrence?'' Grandma asked in her native Mandarin, offering me a smile as she stepped past me into the house. The warmth of her presence, and the constant smile she wore, juxtaposed the evil nature of her aura so strongly I felt a little like puking. 
 
 `` I'm fine,'' I stammered, purely and terrifyingly bewildered. Following my grandmother around the house in a daze while she commented on literally everything ( `` I like the color of these bathroom walls! `` ), I scrambled for a logical explanation. Maybe I had n't gotten enough sleep last night. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I was wrong, and a black aura as pure as this one meant the same as a pure white one, though I'd never seen either. 
 
 Until today, that is. 
 
 As time wore on and Grandma bustled around, I began convincing myself that her aura was nothing but a fluke, ignoring the primal instinct inside me that was screaming for me to run. Pushing it down as hard as I could, I began to relax enough to make light conversation with my grandmother like I always had. 
 
 She was about to leave when it happened. Putting on her shoes, she'd said goodbye to me at the door and turned to adjust her hat in the nearby mirror. I was watching her idly, and so I caught it - as the light shifted, the eyes of her reflection suddenly flickered from gentle brown into a fierce, terrifying black as dark as her otherworldly aura. 
 
 I could n't stifle my gasp of terror, but when Grandma turned around questioningly, her eyes were as kind as ever. But this time, even as I watched her walk away to her car, I could n't shake my belief that something was n't quite right about her. 
 
 Two weeks later, by the time the fiasco with my grandmother had long slipped my mind, my mother and father were found dead in their home, both murdered brutally by someone with a knife. At the crime scene, stricken and grieving, I saw something glinting in one of the police officer's hand. An earring, he said, proof of the killer. 
 
 The moment I realized whose it was, a warm hand landed on my shoulder. 
 
 When I turned around, my grandmother's eyes met mine, as black and as sinister as a midnight shadow. I could feel my eyes widen of their own will as she smiled. 
 
 
 

