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.

The amusement park glittered of tinsel and lights and whistled with excitement, except nobody was having any fun.  Not on the Ferris wheel that spun around madly, or at mini golf, where a missed put resulted in a clubbing, and definitely not in the line I stood in, the Wheel of Fate.  Every time the strobe light came on, one befell their luck, plummeting down a slide in bloody screams and pitiful sobbing. 
 
The sound of raucous trumpets bellowed and symbols bashed incessantly, while jesters in bright costumes and donkey-eared hats tripped and kicked people.  A bearded man on a unicycle sniggered, as he stuffed pies of worms and slugs into his greasy mouth, and the women in green-striped stilts marched around, spilling bugs and insects over peoples’ heads.
 
As the line moved up, I glimpsed something in the corner of the tent, shadows crouching.  When the strobe lights flashed again, I saw the figures more clearly—giant, brown spiders, with fangs pinched around slimy appendages.
 
Someone pushed me forward.  My time to spin the wheel had arrived.  But the tags were not filled with dollar amounts, prizes, or trips to the Bahamas.  Instead, they listed terrible misfortunes: brain tumor, life imprisonment, meningitis, cancer, paralysis…death by spiders. 
 
Holy fuck.
 
I glanced at the corner of the tent again.  Clusters of black eyes gleamed back at me with waxy, hairy legs that twitched and curled.  I tried to faint by holding my breath.  I didn’t care if I never woke again, just as long as I wasn’t here.  But no such luck.
 
“Spin!” A man shouted at me.  A rat sat perched on his shoulder, the tail flicking around his neck.  I reached for the handles of the wheel when I realized with the disabling drunkenness of fear that they were sticks of bone.  Before the lady in stilts dumped something on me, I gave the wheel a whirl, hard and fast, and crossed my fingers.
 
C’mon cancer, cancer, cancer, bankruptcy, swine flu!
 
Not the spiders…please.
 
The wheel came to an abrupt halt, the ticker, a skeletal hand, stopped on a BLANK label.  That couldn’t be good.
 
“HA!” the man roared, pointing his finger at me.  It stretched grotesquely and landed on my nose, flattening it against my face.  My mind mimicked the Ferris wheel, screams and all.
 
“You…,” he paused, narrowing yellow eyes on me.
 
I didn’t dare speak.  Nothing would come out right — it hadn’t for the ones before me.
 
“You have nothing!” He laughed and hacked up phlegm.  “Doomed to a life of emptiness,” he said, shooing me away with his filthy hand.
 
The strobe lights flashed again and before I slipped down the slide, I flipped off those spiders.  Then, I found myself in the middle of white space.  No walls, no trees, no sky.  Nothing but white fuzz. 
 
I walked, and sat, and walked some more, for hours or days I couldn’t tell.  It was like a bad case of writer’s block.  The whiteness started burning my eyes and the silence stung my ears.  I looked at my hands—they were turning white too, fading into nothing. 
 
Then, something appeared on the horizon. 
 
I started to run jubilantly towards it, but a noise slowed my pace and clenched at my heart.  Was that trumpets I heard?  And the murmur of laughing…no…a snigger?  The tip of a tent emerged as I got closer. 
 
Oh, gawd.  Fuck that.
 
I wheeled around, running back into the emptiness.  Nothing was better than some things.

© 2009 Erin Cole