by Rose, Rhea
Once they’d twisted themselves into a knot, the serpents—voila -- became rope. They pulled tighter than I’d expected, and I pulled against them, trying to keep them loose to prevent them from cutting into my skin, that was until I realized that my struggles and writhing made Devon even more excited than he already appeared. He threw his backpack and his hoodie on the floor in a crumpled heap and came toward me, pulling on his grungy undershirt
The disarray of his backpack and hoodie sent me into a rage. I hated the way that disorderliness made me feel.
What a mess this situation was at every level!
That disarray made my anger surge so strongly that my heart squeezed, like a stress ball in the hands of a wrestler. I chewed my bottom lip, but with no chance to organize the mess in the corner, I was unable to muster my magical energies, but enough fear and rage settled in my face and eyes to make a scary expression, I guessed, because Devon, took an unsure, backward step.
His hesitation allowed me a moment to summon a voice and I spoke, well, it wasn’t really me, but the words came from my mouth “Ssssnakes,” I hissed at him, with an intonation exactly like his.
The ceiling chains began a slight sway which grew stronger until they clanked together. We both watched in mutual awe as they picked up speed and took on a life of their own, swinging and rattling and chinking together
They became snakes, big ones!
And they began to drop onto Devon. The first one hit his shoulders then fell to the floor, but it leaped back and immediately wrapped itself around his ankles, then another fell and this time it stayed on Devon’s broad shoulders, a third slithered down and wrapped around his waist. He pulled one away and tossed it with super human strength. It hit the wall but wound its way back toward him. He looked at me.
“No, you can't do that,” he said to me, like it was an order. And then another snake fell onto him. He struggled with it, but there were too many.
“Quick fix, make them stick, works like magic crazy glue, snakes ball together all over you,” I said, only this time in Maisie’s voice The words just came to me, like a jingle from a bad commercial.
And my voice sounded a lot like Maisie’s.
Devon screamed. “Maaissie!”
He was furious and wrapped up in snakes that stuck to him like glue. Only his face remained uncovered. He looked over at me -- for an instant I caught sight of his demon nature in his red eyes, and he terrified me -- as I realized he was well and truly bound by the snakes I’d called down from the ceiling, I felt incredibly pleased with myself.
I was still tied to the bed, but Devon’s backpack was directly in my line of vision, and strangely his hoodie was no longer in a rumpled heap, but folded neatly. The items were in the corner on the floor of the room and something told me that my little snakes were going to release me from my predicament a lot sooner than his.
*
But several hours later I still lay on the bed in Devon’s man-cave bedroom, pulling at the ropes on my wrists. I thought about the brick of cash Devon burned. How was I able to repair a broken perfume bottle and turn hanging chains into snakes that entwined someone, but not get myself free?
Beside me, Devon still wrapped in snakes, stood like a mummy, his eyes glaring. Devon’s words echoed in my brain, “You're going to have to work a long time for Maisie to repay that one.” That was exactly what I didn’t want to do! I even hoped that once I got this cash to her she might relent and let me be on my way, but the way things looked at the moment, the three of us; me, Devon and the cash were going nowhere.
I tried to remember exactly what Devon had done when he dragged me in here. I know he hissed out the word snake and he’d snapped his fingers. I’d forgotten that part. Alright, let see if I’m capable of snapping fingers while tied up like this. I tried and while my attempt was weak, it was possible.
I lay back on the bed and tried to relax and ignore Devon’s vitriolic spew describing the things he was going to do to me when he got free. It looked like freedom for either of us was out of the picture.
Chapter 4
Six of Swords: Koldwell that Ends Well
I was beginning to think I’d really screwed myself around by messing with Devon and Maisie’s magic spells and using them to tie up that crazy demonic man.
Devon started talking to the air. He kept mentioning Maisie’s name and whined like a little kid. He begged her to free him. I looked around to see if somehow he’d managed to dislodge his cell phone and speak to her, but there was no chance. He was wrapped up by large snakes, wrapped more tightly than any giant ball of string! I didn’t see any sign of a blue tooth, so Maisie was in his head and it sounded like she was none too happy with her demon-boy, Devon.
“Who you talking to, Devon?” I asked.
He glared at me. I swear his eyes turned redder. The snakes had cocooned him, only his face showed. It looked like he stood in a bulky, squirming sleeping bag. “She’s coming for you,” he said to me.
“Who is?”
“She’s calling you,” he continued. Then he shut his eyes tightly. He squirmed violently, making a horrible groaning and grinding sound with his teeth.
“Devon! What’s going on?” I asked but he was lost to me, focused on something inside him and he didn’t look too comfortable. I got really scared because Devon’s a pretty scary guy, or so I recently found out, and if he was afraid then I was very afraid. “Well, there’s no point in Maisie calling me, my hands are tied and even if I’d had my phone on ‘hands free’ I couldn’t get to my purse,” I explained.
He looked at me with those red eyes, and I swear he shot something at me with his pupils, like he squirted me with his tears, gross! And whatever he squirted, found its target hitting me right in the mouth!
And then I heard her.
*
“Ms. Maisie, you enjoy spa treatment, Ms. Maisie?”
I had a vision. .
A scene of Maisie at the Lotus Land spa in Meadowvale played out before me. The spa was one of my favorite places to go. It was painted a soft bamboo green and areas were made private by exotic, stringy taupe colored curtains. A young Asian woman I didn’t recognize crouched at Maisie’s feet and pulled on her toes. I heard everything they said.
“June, nobody gives a better foot massage than you do. Oh, hell’s bells, there’s my cell phone.”
“You should turn cell phone down when you get treatment, “June said.
“You mean off, June,” Maisie corrected her.
Yer, I mean turn off.”
“Sorry, June. This is important. I’ve got to take this call. Then I’ll turn it off.”
“Okay, good.”
“Koldwell? Robbed! That asshole. Thanks for the heads up, Ross.”
Maisie pulled her feet out of the warm water and gave the spa girl an apologetic look. “Sorry, June. That was urgent. I'll have to take a rain check on the pedi.”
*
The next thing I knew I’d become disembodied once again and watched Maisie at work with her dark arts back in her gift shop. She had a collection of small cactus plants growing in dry, lit aquariums she kept in the back. She removed one of the small, prickly, round ball-like plants and put it on the work table. She turned on the desk lamp. She carefully took a few cactus spines off the plant. She ground the spines in a mortar and pestle dish and mixed them with another anonymous powder she kept in a locked box under the table. She pushed the lock box aside with one foot and toed up a loose floor board. It was obvious that Maisie used her shop to house the many secret miscellaneous items she required to perform her magic.
She lifted the floor board she’d toed up and reached down and pulled out a second, metal candy box, nothing like the box she’d pulled out that was full of the beautiful canisters of enchanting hairspray; the contents of this box was different, filled with many small dolls made from fabric and colored twine. I’d seen these before when I was a tourist in the south west. They looked very much like Kachina dolls, very detailed and
beautiful. All of them had black hair and eyes and red and orange dresses, striped with blues, yellow and green, little black dots for eyes, nose and mouth, modern versions of the traditional dolls.
She selected one.
The small doll lay on the work table and Maisie spoke to it. “Devon, you got a lot of balls. Try this.” She sprinkled the doll with the dust mixture she taken from her tin and the cactus spine she ground. She put extra pinches of the concoction on the doll’s genital area!
That would explain Devon’s moaning and groaning I would imagine. Then Maisie clapped her hands and the sound was excruciating in my head and the vision went black.
Yet, Maisie’s voice echoed in the dark.
“Jane, you’ve got to show Devon who is boss, or he’ll take you over.”
Omg, she was speaking directly to me!
“Of course, Maisie!” I said aloud, but she didn’t acknowledge.
*
The only way I can explain what happened next is that somehow my consciousness remained dislocated. Maisie had something to do with that I’m certain because she talked in my ear, as if she were a character in a dream and hovered directly outside of my line of vision, right over my shoulder. I figured I was disembodied and like the spirits from a Dickens’s novel, Maisie was flying me, well, my mind, to some place to have me look at something she wanted me to see.
And she was none too happy about the Koldwell robbery because she didn’t shut up about it until we’d arrived at our destination.
Once at our destination, Maisie’s voice abandoned me. I was like a fly on a wall because suddenly I was in someone’s private backroom office. Well, not in it exactly, but viewing it. It looked to be very expensively furnished, perhaps the office of a lawyer or somebody of that stature. The room had dark leather winged back chairs and a Persian, hand knotted carpet. Mahogany shelves full of leather bound books and paintings of European cities, and abstract photos, all hung on the walls. And more stuff like that, the kind of furniture that says permanent, long lasting success. I remember eyeing the fancy, silver-plated water trolley. A moment later I realized there was someone in the room!
Maisie may have told me, but I seemed to know this guy’s name, Malcolm Press. He was about fifty. He looked about six foot two. And not a bad looking older gentleman, I would have dated him. He was an investment banker for Koldwell Bank, Koldwell! Not again, I thought.
He prepared himself for a meeting to account for quarterly losses. At least I think that’s what Maisie whispered in my ear. He moved with the confidence of a successful con. He went to a wardrobe with mirrored doors and pulled down a beautiful silk, burgundy colored robe and put it on, tying it at the waist with a matching silk tie, then brought out a carved wooden box. It seemed to be a puzzle box of sorts because he pushed and pulled out a few pieces of the box before it would open. Once opened it was filled with jewelry. He removed three large rings from the box and placed the silver rings on his hands. The rings slipped easily over his fingers. He adjusted them, and I saw that one held the sculpted form of the symbol for infinity.
He pulled out from the wardrobe, a candle, a few other pieces of what appeared to be ritual paraphernalia and at first I thought he might be a heroin addict, but a more careful look at his items indicated that they were for show and not for go. He arranged the items in a small circle on a nearby side table. There seemed to be several stones or gems, a small shell and more candles. He glanced at his watch then walked over to a roll top desk, pushed it open and took a file from the desk back to the items he’d laid on the table. Then he performed his spell.
“Sanctum safe, rank 'em in place, the quarter moon shine bright, make these figures right.”
For some unexplainable reason I found myself reciting his words to myself, “Sanctum safe, rank ‘em in place…”
Once I ‘d completed the words I knew they were forever stuck in my head just as Maisie’s words stuck with me when she uttered them in the shop to fix my purse, and Devon’s, when he called out the snakes and now Malcolm’s, whoever he was. In my mind’s eye I saw the financial reports, all in the red, but with the uttering of the spell the red became black and the reports changed from bad to good. They distorted before they changed and became blurry, unfocused for several moments and then came back into view as clear as if I were looking at them through a magnifying glass.
This quarter’s gains were very, very good.
Malcolm Press looked very pleased by what he saw on the report. He then grabbed a pitcher of the water from the fancy water trolley and spoke a few more words to the jug of water.
“Just to make sure -- water, soothe the savage beast.” He then placed the water pitcher under his magic robe a moment, performed a few quick magical hand gestures, as if he were dealing an invisible deck of cards and then replaced the pitcher on its trolley. I fully expected his beautiful assistant to crawl out from under the trolley and take a triumphant bow, but that only happens in fake magic shows, this one was real!
I didn’t know if this guy was another major from the deck, but I guessed that he had to be.
Malcolm became distracted when noise came from the next room. I moved out of Malcolm’s space and back to my mind, effortlessly. I went into the next room, where the disturbance came from, to check it out, before Malcolm finished in his office.
Next door a board room, decorated in much the same manner as Malcolm’s office, only more ornate and a much bigger room, with a long table and many leather chairs around it, looked prepped for a meeting. Obviously the decision room.
A small bar set up with coffee and orange juice and a variety of teas looked scrumptious. I tried to help myself but was told that a disembodied consciousness can only observe and not participate in the delights of the physical realm.
A row of tinted windows on one side of the room lit the polished table and from inside the board room everything and everyone on the street outside became a sideshow. I remember many times walking passed this wall of glass from the sidewalk with no hint from the outside that inside Koldwell a large audience of shakers and movers watch the street.
When the double doors to the board room swung open, the magnificent Swiss clock chimed. The twelve men entered and one by one took their seats, but not all immediately sat; a couple of men stared out the window for a few of minutes, three went to the bar and helped themselves to orange juice and toast, another found a washroom and the rest slid into the chairs. They were mainly old men and from the sound of their chatter they were angry old men. They wore suits, grey, and black, one navy. They appeared agitated and impatient, drumming their fingers, clearing their throats, swiveling in chairs. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the teacher that taught this group of males.
A heavy set man, I hesitate to say fat, okay, fattish, called Gordon, drummed his fingers annoyingly on the polished table top leaving a pattern of finger prints. His neighbor asked him to stop, but Gordon proceeded to drum out tunes of pop songs, some of them even I recognized. The man beside him got up and went for coffee. Gordon spoke, “This is going to be bad,” he said. “He’s such an arrogant A-hole. Hey, William?”
William, a cool looking dude among this jury of toadies, had grey hair and wore stylish glasses. He was tall and much thinner than the rest, maybe a little younger, but not by much. He’d brought a rubber band into the room and played with it, really worked it between his thumb and index finger; perhaps he contemplated the limits of the rubber band.
“You're too kind. He's a piece of shit,” William said, and never took his gaze from the elastic band.
The others nodded in agreement with William’s statement and they mumbled in commiseration. William seemed to be a leader amongst this group, although it was hard to tell if he was the boss. Not everyone had taken a seat by the time Malcolm entered, pushing the beautiful silver trolley with a tray of the latest cool, lime and mint fresh, spring water.
A guy named Bruce with big, dated glasses and a ginger comb-over clicked his pen several times w
hen Malcolm entered. “Finally,” he declared. A few others chimed in their support of Bruce’s comment. A few glanced up at the large Swiss clock. It had been fifteen minutes since this group assembled.
Malcolm behaved as if he were the water boy, serving tea to his betters. “A very good afternoon gentleman, profits are positive, Gordon.” His address to the board members sounded very genuine. Gordon sat to attention. Though he was a fat guy, he was also a small and bookish looking man, almost completely bald. In my opinion Gordon’s fringed head needed a good shave.
“Really?” Gordon said full of the disdain. The room went silent. Then William took over.
“Screw you, Malcolm.” But before the situation became a complete mudslinging match, George, a much older, stately-looking fellow, intervened.
“Gentlemen, please, let Malcolm get started.”
Undaunted by the rude welcoming, Malcolm poured each man a glass of water. It ran like liquid silver from the pitcher into the cut crystal tumblers. The glasses looked delicious, beaded on the outer surface with water droplets and decorated with a sprig of mint and a thin slice of lime. I got thirsty watching. Malcolm held up a glass he’d poured for himself. He was about to make a toast to this motley gathering.
“Gentlemen,” he waited a moment until he had everyone’s attention and silence; “I suggest you take a sip of our new investment -- Spring Water, Lime-mint.”
“Stop the bullshit-slight-of-hand, Malcolm. We've seen the numbers for this quarter,” William said. But many of the board members sipped at their water eagerly. It did look irresistible. After a couple of sips the expressions on their faces changed from grumpy to gleeful. Tempers and moods lifted. Those that were very displeased chatted with a neighbor in a friendly way, as if a whole new cast had entered the room.
Another tall, thin, man, one I hadn’t noticed, spoke up. He played with his wedding band. The band seemed to be loose, as if he’d lost weight and hadn’t had the ring resized. His name plate said, Ted. He directed his comments to George, “Try this. It’s amazing, he said smacking his lips.