Room Three: Mother and Child

Somethings the best solution isn't the one you would want. Sometimes people aren't who they seem.

A young woman entered not long after the businessman had been drug out of the card parlor.  The sunshine came in around her as she opened the door, barely penetrating the dark aura of the shop.

The girl was a young blonde who talked to fast and walked too slow, almost a strut.  She was loud, with a lisp like she had just gotten her tongue pierced.  Her eyes were red-lined, it was obvious she had been crying.  As the door closed you could see a car parked outside, waiting for her.

Even in the dim light of the room you could see the bruises that snaked up her neck.  She slumped and near fell into the chair.

She shook her head in despair.  "I just got married, now I have a kid."  She paused.  "I just don't know how to make the money stretch any further."  Another tear rolled down his cheek.  "What can I do?  How can I change my luck?"

"Let us see what we can do."  Mused the seer, darkly.  A spindly hand pushed the cards to her.  The seer's bone thin fingers slipped back into the wide sleeve of his robe.  The young woman stared into the seer's eyes, sunken back in their sockets.  They glimmered and the wrinkles of his aged-leather skin at the corners of his eyes pinched.  It was as if the mans eyes were smiling at her.

She smiled back nervously as a reflex as she split the deck and drew her cards, the High Priestess and the Lovers.  She gasped slightly and stared at the cards.

"I just want him to go away, he isn't even the father."  Another tear rolled down her face, though young she was already marred with lines of worry.  "I just can't afford to leave him."  She placed her pocketbook on a corner table.  Peaking out of it was the corner of a life insurance policy printed on clean paper.  The seer's eyes gravitated to this and then returned to the woman's face.

In his gravelly voice, the seer spoke.  "Then you have long known what you must do."

The woman lowered her head and smiled grimly.  "Draw another card?"

"Yes."

The woman's hand slid across the rosewood inlaid marble that was the seer's table and hesitantly drew the card of the Sun off the top of the left stack.

"Ah, I see it now.  A chance for a new beginning awaits you."  The woman looked again at the card.  In the valley below the wide and low-hanging sun stood a woman with sun spilling over her shoulders.  But she also saw that the woman was near the horizon and quite small in the scale of things.  Suddenly, the woman became unfocused and the young mother looked away from the card.

 She spoke quickly.  "That man is a...."  Hurriedly, the woman reached for a card to the right.  "Fool?" She said as she saw the card.

The seer chuckled.  "The cards have decided to give an interesting run tonight."  The woman saw her husband clearly reflected in the card as the Fool shook a baby by it's feet, candy falling from it's pockets.

A tear rolled down her chin and onto the card, sizzling as it hit and evaporating quickly.  A plume of purple smoke rose from the card as the Fool dropped his baby to point a finger and laugh at the woman.  She dropped the card in disgust.

"Are all the cards like this; magicked?"

"How else would they draw your fate?  You see, it is a fool who thinks that her hand chooses the cards.  No, it is the mind, pent up fate that draws the cards.  Your hand is simply the holder of the card, as your body is a holder for your mind."

Hesitant now, she drew a card from the stack to her left.  Fifth card.  She knew the rules.  Under the dim light the marble seemed to glow.  

The Hanged.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the card of the Lovers glisten as she lay the card on the table.  The man on the card of the Hanged was clearly her husband, desperately motioning to her for her to stop.  Outside a horn blew, her husband, wanting her to hurry up.

Angry, she looked to the card of the Lover  which, at the time she drew it, had pictured her and her husband holding her child between them, grimaces on their faces.  Now it showed her standing alone, her child clutched to her breast.  Smiling.

Another tear, stinging her face bitterly as it fell.  Was this how she felt?  In her heart she didn't know anymore.  She remembered why she married him, it hadn't just been for the money.  No, she had been happy once with him.  Before the baby came.  It burned him up that he had to take care of the kid when it wasn't his.  She remembered his hands around her neck, child screaming as if it knew.

Filled with hatred she reached for a card from the opposite stack.  She lifted it slowly and dropped it promptly as two gunshot rang out in the streets.  The card of the Hanged lay face up next to the stack.  She never saw it but she must've known.  Immediately, she ran out into the streets.

The seer smiled darkly, knowing fate's work had been done.

Even inside the parlor you could hear the scream, "He's Dead!"  Anguish ever so slightly tainted by triumph.

Reviews

[Miss Shea]

at least something worked out for her. In a way...i wonder if the twist of fate is just as twisted and cruel as life itself.