Subject: RE: Leaving early today
OMG TEMPERANCE
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:35am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Forza, Geraldine; Justia, Marie
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
I AM SO FUCKED
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Date: Friday 13 June, 10:37am
From: Justia, Marie
To: Forza, Geraldine; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
Kaiser just ran into Vikki’s office.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:38am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Forza, Geraldine; Justia, Marie
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
OMG. AND???
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:38am
From: Justia, Marie
To: Forza, Geraldine; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
And nothing. I can’t hear anything. Geri, can you hear/see anything?
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:38am
From: Forza, Geraldine
To: Justia, Marie; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
No, nothing. Totally quiet. He’s just staring at her computer. She’s staring at him.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:38am
From: Forza, Geraldine
To: Justia, Marie; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
Oh wait. He’s yelling now. Something about kittens???
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:38am
From: Forza, Geralding
To: Justia, Marie; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
Kittens? WTF??
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:40am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Forza, Geraldine; Justia, Marie
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
OMG I can hear him now.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Forza, Geraldine
To: Justia, Marie; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
He’s yelling. He’s saying he’s going to kill Mammon. Temperance, I think he’s going to Mammon’s office. HIDE.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Mammon, Stanley
To: Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
Temperance, please come to my office IMMEDIATELY.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Justia, Marie; Forza, Geraldine
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
OMG
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Forza, Geraldine
To: Justia, Marie; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
TEMPERANCE HIDE
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Forza, Geraldine
Subject: Out of office
Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office. I will respond to your email as soon as I return.
Sincerely,
Temperance Williams
Executive Assistant to Stan Mammon, VP - Arcana Enterprises
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Justia, Marie
To: Forza, Geraldine; Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
TEMPERANCE ARE YOU OKAY???
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Justia, Marie
Subject: Out of office
Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office. I will respond to your email as soon as I return.
Sincerely,
Temperance Williams
Executive Assistant to Stan Mammon, VP - Arcana Enterprises
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Mammon, Stanley
To: Williams, Temperance
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
Temperance. NOW.
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:41am
From: Williams, Temperance
To: Mammon, Stanley
Subject: Out of office
Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office. I will respond to your email as soon as I return.
Sincerely,
Temperance Williams
Executive Assistant to Stan Mammon, VP - Arcana Enterprises
-----
Date: Friday 13 June, 10:42am
From: Justia, Marie
To: Forza, Geraldine
Subject: RE: Leaving early today
It looks like Temperance has left the building.
-----
***
Anne Chaconas was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and made it her mission from around the time she was three years old to move to the United States (where, she told anyone who would listen, all the music was in English, which automatically meant life was better—flawless toddler logic, people). She fulfilled her mission at eighteen when she moved to Connecticut to attend a small private university in New Haven. There she bounced from major to major, finally landing on Literature (and guaranteeing herself absolutely no job prospects upon graduation but absolutely exceptional cocktail party conversational skills).
After realizing people down South were much nicer (and the food was much more fried), she moved there in 2007. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, two kids, four cats, two dogs, and entirely too many books. She is a work-at-home mom, and spends her days making things in the Crock-Pot, changing shockingly awful diapers, getting sunburned at the park, and working on her prose and for her marketing clients during those 45 minutes when the kids' naps overlap and those fleeting hours after they go to bed.
Anne writes many things, but has found her true love in humorous non-fiction and parenting essays. She is currently working on two books, Embrace Your Weird (a how-to guide on how to be happy from someone not academically qualified to write such a guide) and A Stork Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (a collection of essays, limericks, and assorted musings on pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood, and other unnatural acts).
She also swears. A lot.
You can stalk her online at about.me/annechaconas.
***
THE DEVIL
Hoarder
By Patti Larsen
Jane hovered near the rickety wooden yard sale table, discomfort clear in every line of her body. The thumb and index finger of her right hand absently reached for the gold band no longer gracing her left ring finger, though the indent of twenty years of marriage remained.
Annie bumped her shoulder from behind, a little smile on her face. “You look like someone’s torturing you,” Jane’s younger sister said, tossing her blonde bob, mascara laden lashes winking. Jane hated how great Annie looked, fit and happy. Diamonds of happy matrimony glinted from her hand, a slap in Jane’s face.
It just wasn’t fair. Why did her life have to fall apart? But she forced a little smile and shoved her shoulders down from the tense mountains they made on either side of her ears.
“Sorry,” she said, even as she hated the automatic reaction of apology left over from years of trying to make Bob happy and never succeeding. “I haven’t been to one of these before.”
Annie swung her designer bag over her shoulder and grabbed Jane’s arm, pulling her closer, fake nails digging into the soft flesh of her arm even through her jacket.
“A little retail therapy,” Annie said, lip-gloss shining in the sunlight of the br
ight June morning. Jane shifted sideways, out of the path of a pushy older woman who pawed through the offerings on the table, “never hurt anyone.”
Retail therapy used to be Jane’s favorite when two incomes kept her comfortable, if not happy. But now Bob was gone, the cheating Angela with him—what were best friends for?—Jane hadn’t been able to afford much in the way of new clothes or nick-knacks for the house until she’d gotten her very unstable feet under her at last.
The woman behind the table smiled at her, rumpled and weary, the strained, almost bitter undertone making Jane retreat a little even as her eyes settled on the sweet statuette perched near the cash box. A lovely mermaid smiled at her, iridescent shell sparkling in the sun. The painted maid’s hair glowed richly red, eyes clear blue, darling smile showing perfect white teeth as her flawless human body blended into the carefully painted scales of her fishy green tail. Jane’s hand went unconsciously to her own hair, once that gorgeous shade, now faded to brown and threaded with gray. Her limber, attractive young body was long gone, too. One of the reasons Bob left her, he said.
Jane’s eyes burned with tears as Annie, unknowing, uncaring, left her there staring at the statuette. The sudden need to flee, to hide in the small house she’d barely been able to afford on her own and never come out driving her back from the table.
Until the old woman pushed her again. Something inside Jane snapped in that moment as the woman’s grubby paw reached out to take the statuette. To touch Jane’s precious memory. In a move nothing like her normal passive and quiet nature, Jane shouldered the old woman aside and grasped the mermaid in her hand, holding it out, shaking slightly, to the woman behind the table.
“How much?”
***
Annie’s lack of enthusiasm over the statue, which she deemed ‘quaint’, did nothing to deter Jane. She’d found a side of herself previously unknown, an aggressive side okay with getting what she wanted. The surge of joy and excitement buying the mermaid brought her was as powerful as the rush of a heroin injection.
Jane ensconced the statuette next to her bed, where she could look at it before she slept and where it would be the first thing she woke to each morning. A reminder of the new Jane. As she fell into sleep that first night, she was positive the statuette smiled just for her.
Life became the passion of the purchase. Jane’s job working as an insurance technician allowed her to do so from home, and afforded her enough money to indulge in her current favorite past time—yard saling. Anticipation of each weekend’s goodies was only partly satiated by the exploration of thrift and dollar stores she discovered after timidly Googling the topic.
Annie wrinkled her nose immediately the next time she came to visit at the pile of goodies Jane eagerly showed her, perched on the spare bed.
“What do you want all this junk for?” Just seeing Annie handle her precious discoveries with her filthy, clammy hands made Jane’s newfound temper boil.
Their visit didn’t last long.
An introvert by nature, it was easy for Jane to fall into a happy routine over the next six months: working all morning with a quick trip to the thrift shop over lunch before finishing her day. It became harder and harder to keep her time in the stores down to the half hour she’d booked herself, turning quickly into two and sometimes three hour marathons she paid for by working well into the night. But to Jane, it was worth it.
When she realized she could no longer sleep in her own bed because it was full of things she just had to have, Jane paused. A flicker of concern passed through her mind, but only a flicker. The moment her eyes settled on the mermaid, doubt faded and her happiness came back. Jane scooped up the little statuette and carried it to the living room, setting it on the end table beside her recliner. She often dozed in the chair for a few moments after supper looking over classified and yard sale adverts, so it seemed logical to make it her full-time sleeping place.
Especially if it meant she had more room for her stuff.
The first time she heard the statuette whispering, Jane thought it was the television. But no, that soft, sweet voice, the words she couldn’t quite make out, they came from the mermaid. Crazy? Maybe. But Jane wasn’t willing to admit it. Not when hearing the statuette’s lovely murmuring gave her such peace. It was so much easier to fall asleep to the sound and she welcomed it.
Even better the first time she answered it. Opened her eyes in the deep of the night to that glittering blue gaze. “You’re so beautiful,” Jane said, stroking the mermaid’s perfect hair, the ceramic warm to the touch. “I wish I looked like you.”
It was easy then to tell the aquatic maid everything, to let go of all of her hopes and fears and dreams and old pains, to weep at last for the loss of her marriage and the pathetic hopelessness of Jane’s existence.
“Until I found you.” She kissed the mermaid’s little head and hugged her close.
And the mermaid whispered happily back.
Annie wasn’t welcome any longer. Not after the disgusted look on her face, the snide comments about how hard it was to walk down the hall. Her realization Jane slept in her chair. Jane put a stop to her visits right then and there, using some of her newfound passion to muscle her normally dominating sister out the front door.
It was with great satisfaction Jane slammed it in Annie’s shocked face.
The statuette approved, the whispering congratulatory. Jane beamed in joy as she pulled herself over the piles of wrapping paper, blankets, a toy house, scrapbooking supplies and tupperware dishes, into the kitchen for a celebratory snack.
Jane rifled through the plastic bags full of new groceries she’d set on top of the old, deciding on a chocolate bar, nose wrinkling slightly at the scent of rotting food, quickly gone from her mind as she returned to her chair and held the statuette while her mouth tingled, full of yummy sweetness.
Work fell to the wayside. How could she focus on other people’s problems when she had the statuette to talk to? Bills piled up, her phone cut off, internet. There, she couldn’t work anymore anyway. She just managed to keep the lights on by applying for social assistance, meals in her stomach from the food bank. The part of her cringing in shame over using such services wasn’t nearly as loud as the thrill she felt buying more things.
Jane ignored the ringing of the doorbell, never answering, knowing it was Annie or one of the nosy neighbors who complained all the time about the stuff piling up in the front yard. They needed to mind their own business. Until she heard a man’s voice telling her it was the police knocking. Jane blinked into the sunlight, scowling at the two young officers.
“We’ve had calls,” the first said, while the other looked over her shoulder into the house. His face judged her, raised her anger while his partner went on. “From the neighbors.”
About the smell, he said. And the condition of her property. Jane turned and, for a brief heartbeat, everything stopped for her. She saw the mess. But not for long enough. Not with the mermaid tucked carefully against her chest in one protective hand.
Jane made empty promises to the officers, about cleanups and garbage bins, before closing and locking the door on them. Returning to her chair and the statuette.
Always the statuette.
Jane was sleeping when someone broke the door down. She pushed her way through the piles near the entry and found Annie, backed by a crew in masks and gloves.
“We’re here to clean this up,” Annie said, hand over her nose, horror on her face. “Jane, you have to or the city will make you move.”
No, no. Never. The phone was in her hands, 9-1-1 called, the police summoned.
Trespassers. Defilers. The cops came, Annie fought, Annie pleaded.
Annie left.
Just how Jane wanted it.
As Jane turned in triumph, shimmied her way back to her chair, her arm bumped the wobbling stack of magazines she’d placed on top of the old books she piled on the six bags of curtains she rescued from destruction. The mermaid fell from her grip while Jane re
ached for her, terror seizing her heart, the statuette bouncing over the heaped-up garbage, coming to land against the bones of a small animal.
She had a...dog? Jane’s mind snapped open. No, no dog. A raccoon, it looked like. Jane tipped her head back, looked up. A gaping hole in her ceiling disgorged insulation from the blackness. When had that happened? She staggered back, eyes going wider and wider as she stumbled away from the horror before her.
And saw. For the first time. All of it. Smelled, tasted the rot in the air, the heavy pall of waste and decay. Looked down at herself, her unwashed body, the stringy length of her hair falling over a filthy sweatshirt she’d never seen before. Fell to her knees and sobbed into her hands, barely able to stand the stench of herself as the piles and heaps and stacks closed in around her.
Jane stumbled to her feet, heading for the door, reaching for the distant knob, Annie’s name on her lips.
Stop.
The whisper. A voice now. Jane paused, heart pounding in her chest.
Don’t.
“I can’t live like this.” Her hands shook, mind reeling as she understood she’d been talking to a statuette, she’d most likely gone insane and, instantly, blamed Bob automatically before the voice spoke again.
More.
Jane’s mouth gaped open, the reek of her own breath making her dizzy as she ran her tongue over teeth fuzzy with plaque and worse things.
“No more.” She hugged herself. “I’m done.”
More.
Jane took a step toward the statuette the smiling face of the mermaid now somehow changed, bitter, angry. Morphing into evil. Jane crouched to touch it.
Yes.
She fell back, panting, grasping desperately about her as the voice, clear now, demanding, pulled her in to madness. Jane felt some fabric, jerked free a rotting t-shirt, wrapped it around her hand and lifted the statue. The draw of the siren’s call through the flimsy material wasn’t reaching her anymore.
Her awakened horror was stronger.
“Enough.” Jane turned toward the door again, heading down the hall. “Enough.” As she climbed over piles, panting, tears now trickling down her face, her true strength finally won, and she screamed at the statuette, “ENOUGH!”
The door was so close. Outside beckoned. Fresh air, a new life. Leaving this behind...Jane found herself smiling through her tears. Yes, she’d lost it for a while. But she could start again.
Allegories of the Tarot Page 16
