THE WORST OF LOVE  CONTESTANT

I barreled into the parking lot and stepped out of my boyfriend’s monster truck into a cloud of dust, ready to knock his ass in it.  As I marched my way into Larry’s Landing, I headed towards the back of the bar where I spotted him….and her.  They sat close, snuggled in a booth like kittens in a box.  Their eyes popped at my presence.
 
“Hello Brent…Lynette.”  I didn’t need to say anything else, but I did.  “What the fuck?”
 
His eyes darted like beetles, desperately searching for an excuse.  Lynette’s fuchsia lips curled up, like her satin blond hair, as if delighted at the trouble she’d caused.
 
“Suzanne, I uh…I thought you were…,”
 
I cut him off.  “You told me you weren’t going to see this fat slut anymore…isn’t that what you said?  That she was a fat mistake?”  Actually, he never said these things, but apparently, we weren’t playing fair anymore.
 
“What?”  Lynette growled, malevolence ripening in her blue eyes. 
 
The fire needed a bit more fuel, I thought.  “Yeah, he said you were just an easy fuck.”
 
“You prick!”  Lynette stammered, slopping her beer over Brent’s head.
 
He leapt from his seat and mopped his face.  “That’s not true, Lynette.  I never said those things.”  He glared at me.  “Tell her I never said those things.”
 
I looked at Lynette, knowing it was too late.  “Screw you,” I said, spinning around on my black heels and then headed for the door.  Brent rushed after me, but a wink to Eddy, the bouncer who always flirted with me, granted me extra time as his boot wedged into Brent’s shin, flattening him in the doorway. 
 
I jumped back into Brent’s jacked-up Bronco and did an 88 in the parking lot before swinging around to the back of the bar.  Lynette stood in the middle of the road, frozen like a feeble deer.  I barely missed her foot as I came to a stop. 
 
She opened the door, hopped in, and kissed my face.  “God you were great.”
 
“I barely made it that time,” I remarked, speeding away from the bar.
 
“Did you get the apartment set up?” 
 
“Yes.  Are you sure this will work again?”
 
“Like always.”
 
“Because he’s going to kill us if it doesn’t.”
 
“Trust me,” she whispered. 
 
But that was how I got into this mess.
 
****

An hour later, we waited in my apartment, lights off, candles and smudge sticks lit around a pentacle in the middle of the floor.  A dark silhouette advanced across the street.
 
“He’s here,” I said.
 
Lynette soaked a washcloth with chloroform.  “Pull the wire when I tell you.” 
 
We watched Brent creep up the steps and slowly nudge the front door open.  Just as his foot stepped inside, Lynette gave me the cue and I snapped the wire taught, tripping Brent for the second time tonight.  She dove on top of him, covering his face with the washcloth.  His arms and feet flailed for a second before thudding back to the ground.  I felt bad for him, until I remembered his dirty lies.  At least that was how I tried to justify the situation, tonight and all the others.
 
“Okay, drag him into the circle,” Lynette said.  She laid next to him, lacing her fingers in his and dipping their hands into a bowl of water between them.  “Put the coins over the third eye,” she instructed. 
 
I placed a silver coin on both her and Brent’s forehead.  Then, Lynette began chanting, lisping syllables of ancient Latin, when she suddenly dropped unconscious.  The candles flickered and an icy chill slipped across my skin.
 
Within seconds, Brent’s eyes flipped open.  He sat up, looking at me and then to Lynette.  “It worked.”
 
It was Brent’s voice and Brent’s body, but Lynette’s spirit. 
 
He stood, grabbing his balls.  “Nice,” he, rather she said.  Brent walked over to the desk and pulled out a Ruger.
 
“The stores will be expecting you,” I said.  “This is the third time this month.”
 
“All different men, may I remind you,” she said.  “Nobody knows it’s us.”
 
But how many more men would go to jail, taking the fall for her sinful indulgence, even if they were creeps?  I loved Lynette, but I couldn’t live like this, not anymore.
 
She packed the gun into the back of Brent’s jeans and walked over to me, cupping my face with his hands.  “Don’t worry so much.  I have a different plan this time.”  She kissed me and then left the house. 
 
I looked over at Lynette’s body, where Brent’s spirit resided.  “So do I.” 
 
I laid down next to her, placing silver coins over our third eye.  I folded my hands around hers and dipped them into the water bowl.  Then, I hit play on my voice recorder.  The room went black and I woke, feeling somewhat dizzy.  Next to me was me, but now with Brent’s spirit instead of my own.  I went to the mirror, feeling my new curves and combing my blonde hair. 

“Nice.”
 
After I set up the wire and soaked the washcloth with chloroform again, I waited for Lynette’s return.  It wasn’t long before I had Brent’s body back in the center of the pentacle with my body.  However, I couldn’t switch Brent and Lynette — she would hunt me ruthlessly to get her body back, and I couldn’t leave them as is…unless, I swapped them into something else I thought gazing at the fish tank.
 
I covered up all witchcraft evidence and left the house, with two Barracudas in a bucket.  The robberies ceased and no one could ever explain Brent and Suzanne’s comatose state.  Not surprisingly, the Barracuda ate each other in a week.
 
© 2009 Erin Cole
 
Residing in Portland Oregon, Erin lives with her husband and three children.  She is working to publish her mystery novel, Unearthing Jev, and has started a sequel, Wicked Tempest, on accident.  When she isn’t writing, she is thinking about writing, and when she isn’t thinking about writing, she is either in a chocolate induced coma or is experimenting with sensory deprivation.  She blogs at Listen to the Voices.

“What’s this?” Jake asked, holding the card between two fingers and staring at the dealer. 
 
The dealer barely glanced at him, not very interested in getting into it with some gambler, local regular or not.
 
“You said hit you,” she said.
 
“Yeah, but I meant a real card,” Jake said, slapping the offensive piece of waxed cardboard back down in front of her.  It lay staring up at him with garish colors.  On the face, a tower cracked wide open, hit by lightning from a dark and swollen sky and, come to think of it, the thing looked kind of familiar, like those cards Nancy kept on the bookcase and used to tell him things he never believed.  What were they called?  Terror cards.  No.  Tarot. 
 
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the dealer, and shuffled, dealt, round the table again.
 
Jake glanced at the people next to him, an older woman, here alone, two guys on his other side, engrossed in their cards and beer, occasional conversation.
 
“This is one of those Tarot cards,” Jake said, flinging it back.
 
“Are you out of the game, sir?”
 
Jake squinted at her name tag, which seemed to read “Nancy.”  “No.”  He brushed the cards against the table and the dealer tossed him a card.  The game continued.
 
Jake picked up the new card.  The tower put him over anyway.  Sixteen.  A sixteen?  He thumbed the card the dealer had just slapped down.  Death.  Unlucky thirteen.  Jake’s hands started burning.
 
“Don’t go out tonight,” Nancy had said.  “It feels wrong.  It doesn’t feel lucky.  Please, for us,” clinging to him, trying to hold him back, and behind her, looking frightened, Kelli looking on, her nine year old eyes big.
 
“But I’ve been so lucky lately.”  Not pleading but this was for them.  It wouldn’t go on forever, this lucky streak, and the instant he started to lose, he’d quit.  But in the meantime, the winnings were paying off medical bills and credit cards, and paying, just maybe, enough into a high yield fund they’d be able to buy a house in the next couple years, get out of the duplex and into a new house where everything worked, where the pilot light stayed lit and the carpet wasn’t stain-colored.
 
Another card slapped down in front of him.  He couldn’t remember motioning that he wanted one.  He glanced up at the dealer again.  “Kelli,” her name tag read.  The casino around him seemed silent, dreamy.  Jake looked over his shoulder at the lights flashing, coins falling from slots, people’s faces, cocktail waitress raising her brows at him, was she wanted?  He shook his head, looked back down at the card. 
 
Hanged man.  Number twelve.  Didn’t put him over, but this was crazy.  He closed his eyes.  Could he remember anything she’d ever told him about the cards?  Twelve.  One plus two equals three.  Three of them at home, Jake, Nancy, Kelli.  One of the big cards in the pack, like a king or queen, a face card, weighed in more than the others.  And somehow this one was dangerous, too.  Something involving the three of them.
 
It wouldn’t come.
 
Motioned for the dealer to hit him.
 
Sudden cards.  Too many.  Jake started as they pattered the felt in front of him.  The world card, 21 right there, the world staring up at him with Nancy’s face, Kelli’s.
 
Lovers, six, pointing out at him, his face and Nancy’s, entwined, together, crossed with Judgement and the Fool.  He looked up at the dealer, her face blurred out of focus and her name tag reading “KN.”  His hands motioned and the cards pattered down, the chariot, and death, and the Wheel of Fortune.
 
Jake stared at them.
 
He’d quit the minute he started to lose.
 
No way was he going to lose it all.
 
He looked back at the dealer and gasped at her face, a twisted corpse-face, burned beyond recognition, only the name tag readable.
“Wife and Daughter.”
 
Jake ran.
 
“What’s his problem?” one of the guys asked.
 
The man next to him shrugged.
 
#
 
He burst through the door, into the cold of the duplex, and smelled it right away, too sweet, cloying, an instant headache of gas fumes.  The pilot light gone out again, and the fumes were strong and coiling around his face as he ran, past Kelli’s parrot, lying upside down in the cage, feet curled, head limp, past the living room and bathroom and back to the bedroom where Nancy asked “Whaaa—” sleepily and collapsed around his neck.  Dragging her to Kelli’s room, still breathing but he could barely rouse her, dragged them both, not willing to put one or the other down, out into the fresh cold of the night air, coughing, spitting, walking the two woman who were his world while the cards swirled through his head and the lucky streak continued.
 
#
 
He went back to the casino a week later, after they’d had the landlord fix the heat and had filed a report and were actively seeking another place.  The same dealer, and tonight her name tag read “Tanya” and it didn’t surprise him at all.  And it was still there, after all, the lucky streak.  He still felt very lucky.  Picked up the first deal and stared at the cards, motioned against the felt: hit me.
 
Tanya/Nancy/Kelli flicked out the first card to him.
 
Ace of Coins.          

©2009 Jennifer Rachel Baumer

Jennifer R Baumer lives, writes and runs in Northern Nevada with her husband and best friend Rick and a household full of pushy cats.