by Page Turner
Whatever the case, her family life didn’t feel the same.
And home didn’t feel like home anymore.
Come Home
On the ninth day of their leave, Viv’s phone rang during the thin sliver of time that she was actually awake. Penny and Karen traded worried looks as Viv answered the call.
“Oh, it’s you, Withers,” Viv said. “I should have expected you’d call. You’re like an ambulance chaser. Of course you can’t wait like a decent person would. All the money in the world can’t buy class, can it?” she snapped.
A long pause.
“Not a chance in Hell,” Viv said. “You missed your opportunity.” She hung up the call.
Viv turned to Penny and Karen. “Of course that bitch wants to air a segment about our case now that an arrest has been made. Now that it’s not threatening her financial interests. I’m not having any part of it.”
It was the first words Viv had spoken to either of them in days. With that, she climbed up to their bedroom to go to sleep.
It was 2 pm. Viv had woken up just three hours earlier, at 11 am.
“You know,” Penny said brightly to Karen after Viv had left, “Maybe there’s something to be said for a staycation. What do you say?”
Karen thought for a moment. “I think, Penny… that you could be happy anywhere. And that I could be happy anywhere, so long as I were with you.”
Penny beamed her brightest smile, but as Karen went off to take a shower, she let the smile fall away.
Penny’s cheeks ached from pretending everything was okay. That she was happy. That things were fine.
They weren’t.
She hadn’t seen a spirit since that day.
There had been a point in her life when she’d felt pestered by the undead, positively hounded by them, like a celebrity overwhelmed by rabid fans who were demanding never-ending autographs and joint selfies while she just wanted to eat her meal in peace.
Now she felt like a persona non grata. A has-been. A former medium who had shrunken down to small, perhaps invisible.
And then Penny began to smell something foul. Something that neither Karen nor Viv could smell, when she asked them.
Penny searched the entire house multiple times before she finally zeroed in on the source: The package that she’d received at PsyOps the day of Tender’s arrest.
It was in the front entryway under a pile of coats that had been stacked upon a bench meant to assist them when taking off or putting on shoes but which ended up being a good place to let things accumulate instead.
The ribbon on the package was gone, as was the note that told her to come home, both having wandered off to who knows where, but the fruit was still in the box.
Rotten and rank, she noted as she removed the lid. An overripe artificial sweetness that abruptly took a bitter turn assaulted her nostrils.
Penny held the rotten pomegranate in her hand. She walked over to the trash can. Standing over the bin, she squeezed the fruit in her fingers, softly at first and then with progressively more strength.
Finally, the fruit gave. A smell of decay permeated the room as the sticky innards dripped through her fingers.
She had expected the fruit to be brown and dead-looking inside, as rotten as it was, but it wasn’t. Instead, the fruit was overripe and… seemed almost alive.
Outrageously red and warm.
At that moment Penny felt very much like a shaman engaging in human sacrifice. Is this what it’s like to destroy a human heart?
She shook her head violently as the thought came to her, as if trying to shake the sentiment out of her mind.
She went to the sink. After summoning the hottest water the tap could manage, Penny rubbed her hands together vigorously under the stream until they turned red from rawness. The pillow of soap she’d lathered into existence did little to insulate her from the damage.
Her hands were red, so red.
Her skin burned, which should have bothered her. But instead it felt good.
Penny turned off the tap, finding herself short of breath… and excited? Well, that was weird. What was going on?
No more pomegranates, she promised herself, feeling faint, throwing the box it had come in into the trash as well.
And she meant it. No more pomegranates. She was putting this whole weird chapter behind her. Starting over fresh. Playing house with Viv and Karen. Nursing Viv back to health. Making the most of her staycation. And then going to work every day and doing a solid job.
No more pomegranates. She swore them off resolutely.
That was why she became so troubled when the fruits started showing up on their own. In beautifully woven fruit baskets dropped on the porch, enrobed in crinkly fussy cellophane. The kind whose rustlings would wake the dead from darkness.
When the first basket came, she thought at first a trick was being played on her. But who would the prankster be?
She had told no one of her self-promise to keep away from pomegranates. She’d made a point to not tell Viv or Karen. And while Karen was of course highly attuned to her emotions, it wasn’t like she possessed the ability to pluck such a specific image from Penny’s head.
No, she hadn’t spoken about the experience aloud. She’d kept what she’d done and her powerful revulsion entirely to her herself.
But the basket came at just the right time, in one of the various twilight hours when she was the only one awake. It bore the card with her other name, the one no one was supposed to know.
Panicked, she started a fire in their backyard and sent the tiny slip ablaze, not wanting Karen or Viv to read it. This had of course awoken Karen, who joined her next to the blaze.
“If only we had some marshmallows,” Karen said. “I’m not good at toasting them. Not patient enough. But I bet you anything that Viv is.”
“Maybe I’ll find some soon,” Penny replied, willing her voice to sound as normal as possible, hoping anxiously that Karen wouldn’t spot the one vestige in the fire that could give her true intentions away – a tiny slip of paper curled up and singed.
Karen didn’t. Still, it was too close of a call for Penny.
When the next baskets came with identical cards, Penny ate the evidence each time, swallowing the paper. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was quicker, she concluded, drew less attention.
She dutifully filled the normally scantly filled produce drawers in the bottom of the fridge with pomegranates as they came. The left drawer first and then the right. When both drawers were full, she began to place the fruits on the bottom row of the fridge.
Penny wondered idly if you could pickle or can pomegranates. She couldn’t bear eating them, and while Viv and Karen were eating a few stray fruits here and there, they weren’t going through the batch nearly quickly enough.
“What’s with all the pomegranates?” Viv asked.
“They’re organic,” Penny lied.
“Dumpster diving outside of the natural food store again?” Viv said.
Penny nodded.
She hated lying to Karen and Viv, but she was just starting to feel as though she could manage this strange unwelcome intrusion to her life when the situation escalated once again.
This time there was a messenger at her doorstep bearing the next fruit basket. An entirely unremarkable man that she almost mistook for a complete stranger, except for a few telltale signs around the eyes that let Penny know that it was him. It was Change, the “spirit” who had accosted her that one time in her kitchen with warnings about the investigation. The one whose poorly printed business cards boasted on “shapeshifting services,” whatever that meant.
“Delivery for Rhea Stygius,” the shapeshifter announced, thrusting the basket in her hands, before turning around to walk away.
Penny winced at the sound of her other name, grateful that no one nearby seemed to yet b
e awake.
“Thank you, Change Patterson,” Penny called after him as she regained her composure.
Change spun in place. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to be cute. And don’t keep ignoring this. You’re going to have to deal with this. For once in your life, you’re going to have to deal with something, Rhea. Instead of just changing your name and running away.”
There was a familiarity in Change’s tone that troubled Penny. It was as though he knew Penny well – or rather, that he knew Penny as Rhea well, which bothered Penny even more because she barely knew him. It was very much like hearing the words “Oh! I’ve heard so much about you,” from a complete stranger and not knowing if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
“There’s a point when everyone has to finally come home,” Change said. “I’d say you’re well past that point.”
“Don’t you know,” she said to him, “That telling me not to do something is the easiest way to get me to do it.”
“I sure do,” Change said. “Why do you think I said it?”
Penny scowled at him and didn’t reply. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a response.
After he left, Penny thought about this attempt at reverse psychology, at thrumming up reactance in her. Like all people who don’t like to be told what to do, Penny was greatly angered by the overt attempt at reverse psychology. This set her on a course to reverse the reverse psychology.
How dare he try reverse psychology on her, Penny fumed.
She’d show him, Penny decided. She’d… Well, she’d do what he said.
In that moment, it never occurred to Penny that this could have been what Change intended all along. That he could have been like the villain who puts the poison in his own glass when you’re drinking together, knowing that you won’t trust him and insist the glasses be switched.
No, as happens with most people experiencing an emotional crisis, Penny’s problem-solving field had shrunk down to a single point. No other alternatives existed.
Penny placed the last batch of fruit in the fridge gingerly, knowing what she must do.
She sprinted to the desert willow.
“Okay, Kip,” she said to her old friend. “I’m ready to know. Who am I? Who am I, really?”
Later that morning, Karen and Viv woke up at the same time. The birds were singing outside their bedroom window. They sang the same songs as any other morning but perhaps a bit more quietly, as though they were further away than normal.
The light coming through their bedroom window also seemed dimmer than normal, not as bright or piercing.
“Penny’s gone,” Karen told Viv.
Viv frowned, not sure what to say. They descended the stairs together, holding hands.
On the kitchen table, there was a note in Penny’s handwriting, scribbled on the back of a blank florist’s card:
I’ve gone on a trip. Not sure when I’ll be back. Give Martin my best.
The story continues in
Psychic Inferno
About the Author
Page Turner is the award-winning author of four books. With a professional background in psychological research and organizational behavioral consulting, Page is best described as a “total nerd.” She’s been cited as a relationship expert in a variety of media publications including The Huffington Post, Glamour, Self, and Bustle.
She clearly can’t see the future because she didn’t see any of that coming.
Due to her incurable wanderlust, she has lived many places, but these days she calls Dallas home.