I'm going to stick with western medicine for a while

“I’ve been doing this for years,” she said. “Just wait and see. Your migraine is going to disappear like that.”

She gently began to manipulate the middle toe of my right foot. It felt strange, like my brain was having a warm blanket nestled into it. The feeling was alien but not unpleasant.

She continued as the migraine that had been ruining my life for the past two years began to melt like a block of ice on a hot sidewalk.

“Aaaahhhhh,” I felt my body relax as the tension began to dissipate. “How?” I managed.

“Like I said, I've been doing this for a long time.” She walked over to the sink to wash her hands.

Now I understood how she could afford such an expensive and well-appointed office in the nicest area of town. I had no idea that reflexology actually worked, I told her.

What else could she cure with her magic fingers, I asked. If it was possible to fix a migraine the doctors had all but given up on, I had to wonder what else was possible. Cancer? Alzheimers disease?

“You can do almost anything with these skills if you have enough expertise,” she said. “People don't think it's real. They think it's hocus pocus. But this is a science over three thousand years old.”

I was putting on my socks and shoes as she spoke.

“Created around 1000 BC, translated to Italian by Marco Polo in 1300 and brought to Europe. People think history is full of quacks and pseudo science. They can't imagine for a second that someone in history was smarter than they are. Especially not someone from thirty centuries ago.”

She smiled and showed me the door.

As I was leaving, she said one last thing that made my skin crawl.

“You know, it's not just for healing.”

I stopped in my tracks.

“What? What do you mean?”

She leaned in close and whispered in my ear, making the fine hairs on the nape of my neck stand up.

“I can hurt people with it too. Do you want to see?”

For some reason I couldn't resist her. I wanted to say no but heard myself say, “Yes.”

She led me down to the basement of her building. There, in a cold dark room, was a man, trembling with fear, tied to a table much like the one upstairs.

“I'll pay anything,” he said. “Please. Just let me go, I have a family.”

She smiled but said nothing. She led me to his bedside, and put her fingers to the same spot where she had touched my middle toe.

He began to gibber and howl, making dying animal noises as his nose began to pour blood. His reddened eyes began to stream tears of crimson.

He made one final shuddering sound, and stopped breathing.

“I make an excellent living this way. Are you interested in learning?” She asked. “Or did you want to join him in the incinerator?”