100 Unfortunate Days

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100 Unfortunate Days Page 8

by Crowe, Penelope


  Your skin starts to get wrinkles because you don’t smile anymore—not really smile anyway. We wait for someone to look at us the way they did at the basketball game at the college—wait for their eyes to sparkle only for us and we wait to feel so warm and alive. But we never feel that way again and every time we have a little bit of hope, so we can feel that basketball game feeling, but we don’t—we die again. Sooner or later we run out of the ability to rejuvenate and we are finished.

  Day 98

  Some popular superstitions and my interpretations:

  A black cat crossing your path is bad luck. I think any cat crossing your path is bad luck because they are familiars of the devil. The black cats are the worst because they are the most evil. Their souls have been charred and they are diseased and if they scratch you, you will most likely die.

  If there are thirteen people at the dinner table, one will die within the year. This is probably a flat-out fact.

  One out of three or four women get breast cancer. Several are probably just old, someone there is probably brewing some kind of heart disease and accidents happen every day. One of those thirteen is in for it.

  Breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck. This is probably based on the idea that your image contains a part of your soul.

  I don’t believe in any of the traditional superstitions—but I have some of my own. For instance, if I pray too much the devil will get me. If I look at myself in the mirror in the dark I will see something terrible. If I am not around when my children are sick they will get worse. If I want something really bad and I get it, and I will be very unhappy.

  The devil is there at 3:00AM.

  Day 99

  There is a pile of bones in my back yard. Most of them are the bones of people who did not like me. The pile of bones grows almost every day. It is strange to have a graveyard so close to my house. Part of me loves the bones and part of me wants to get rid of the bones. I know I will have to slit my wrists and bleed on the bones to make them go away.

  I wake up every morning before the sun comes up and choose one of the bones from the pile and make a scratch in the palm of my hand. Sometimes the scratch makes me think about the things I have to worry about and sometimes I don’t think of the scratch at all. There are mornings where the man over the fence stares at me while I am in the bone garden. On the mornings he does not agree with the bone that I chose—he slowly shakes his head until I pick another one. Then he shrinks to the size of a mouse and he disappears until the next time. He does not live in the house next door and I really don’t know who he is, yet he somehow looks familiar.

  Most of the bones belong to women. No one else can see the bones, and sometimes people walk right through them. They may make the comment they feel like a crow has just walked over their grave—or they may say nothing at all. The bigger the pile of bones gets the greyer my hair becomes. Each bone equals one grey hair. My hair is almost white now. During a bright sunny day the bones look ghostly…very see-through and almost phosphorescent. They don’t bother me much. But at night they are very solid and reflect the light of the moon. The reflection glows into my bedroom and many nights I cannot sleep.

  As the pile gets bigger I know something is making a home beneath them. I can hear it rattling around as it gets comfortable. It’s funny because I hate the bones, and yet I am mad that something else is making itself a place to live there. Soon I will have to cut myself because the pile is getting to big—cut myself or be covered with bones from fingers, legs, spines and some of the bones may still have flesh on them. I tried to move them, I tried to throw them off a cliff, I tried to bury them but they keep coming back. Last night I looked out my window as the clock ticked midnight and I swear I saw the bones trying to form back into skeletons. I have a terrible feeling they will succeed.

  Day 100

  One day I will have my own house. The inside will be white and the outside will be white. Then I will paint the dining room dark brown and I will put a large gothic white mirror in the middle of the wall. The living room will be pink and the couch will be pinker. The fireplace will be white and my books will be on shelves that run all along the wall to the bedroom. I will be healthy and I will have a job, or at least I will be working and making a lot of money. I will not be tired and I will not have any pets. No one will call me names and I will be happy.

  Afterword

  It is easy to get stuck where you are because as they say, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.

  Aleister Crowley’s tarot card deck contains beautiful images that sometimes represent terrible conditions. For instance, the Four of Cups, or Luxury card shows an image of four golden shining bright and luminous beams, and the meaning of the card is a representation of love that is comfortable, but taken for granted. In the card it is a sign of too much control, and the potential to foul waters that are not allowed to flow.

  We paint our own pictures with the type of house we buy and clothes we wear, but behind our closed doors and inside our hearts we may hold the dark. Our shiny appearances belie our natures, and we are as true as Pontius Pilot. You are not better because you have beautiful clothes and a Mercedes, and you are not bad if you cannot afford a summer home or personal chef.

  We talk behind each other’s backs and feel better when our neighbors fail.

  We fire arrows at those with the newest and brightest ideas yet scorn those that are happy being a secretary or mom or something else considered ordinary.

  We wish everyone the best but ball our fists in private rage when our wishes for them come true and they are blessed with good fortune.

  Someone said we should really be judged by how we act when we think no one is looking. Can anyone say they are good?

  Maybe WE are the devil…

  Recommended Reading

  The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

  An Exorcist Tells His Story by Gabriele Armoth

  One Thousand and One Nights:

  Translated by Edward William Lane, Revised by Stanley Lane-Poole

  Also by the Author

  Absorbed

  A short story

  Absorbed is a short story about a woman named Violet who finds a beautiful but mysterious gift on her front doorstep. Her abusive boyfriend Mick is not too pleased. Read how the present will change both of their lives forever.

  Available at Amazon

  Coming Soon!

  The Daughter of Nostradamus

  Dark and desperate tales. Hold on to your crosses.

  Table of Contents

  100 Unfortunate Days

  100 Unfortunate Days

  Day 1

  Day 2

  Day 3

  Day 4

  Day 5

  Day 6

  Day 7

  Day 8

  Day 9

  Day 10

  Day 11

  Day 12

  Day 13

  Day 14

  Day 15

  Day 16

  Day 17

  Day 18

  Day 19

  Day 20

  Day 21

  Day 22

  Day 23

  Day 24

  Day 25

  Day 26

  Day 27

  Day 28

  Day 29

  Day 30

  Day 31

  Day 32

  Day 33

  Day 34

  Day 35

  Day 36

  Day 37

  Day 38

  Day 39

  Day 40

  Day 41

  Day 42

  Day 43

  Day 44

  Day 45

  Day 46

  Day 47

  Day 48

  Day 49

  Day 50

  Day 51

  Day 52

  Day 53

  Day 54

  Day 55

  Day 56

  Day 57

  Day 58

  Day 59

 
Day 60

  Day 61

  Day 62

  Day 63

  Day 64

  Day 65

  Day 66

  Day 67

  Day 68

  Day 69

  Day 70

  Day 71

  Day 72

  Day 73

  Day 74

  Day 75

  Day 76

  Day 77

  Day 78

  Day 79

  Day 80

  Day 81

  Day 82

  Day 83

  Day 84

  Day 85

  Day 86

  Day 87

  Day 88

  Day 89

  Day 90

  Day 91

  Day 92

  Day 93

  Day 94

  Day 95

  Day 96

  Day 97

  Day 98

  Day 99

  Day 100

  The Next Day

  Recommended Reading

  Also by the Author

 

 

 


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