A well-dressed man held a group hostage in an elegant dining room at a mansion. They may not have known it, but I could tell he was a vampire. If they didn’t comply with his wishes, which were unknown to me, he would perform unspeakably gruesome acts.

He pointed to what looked like an ordinary coffee mug and handed a girl a twig, almost like cinnamon bark. She, under his control, dropped the twig, a drug or poison, into the cup, although part of me wondered how he would force the people to drink it. I knew him to be evil, though, and in my mind I saw all of them tortured and dying if they drank what was in the cup.

I don’t know if I was the girl, or if I was an opposing power who controlled her, but she tipped the cup so its toxic contents slowly and quietly spilled out. The vampire seemed unaware, and I felt certain she would not be caught or punished.

With the cup, the balance of power seemed to have tipped in my favor.