Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Read online

  “I opened it,” Annette stated. “Even though I don’t remember being Annette Slocum, I was able to open it.”

  “Well don’t just stand there, Miss Redmond,” Nathaniel spun and ordered. “Now that the envelope has been opened, you take a sip of water from the water cooler.”

  Annette took a sip of water from the water cooler as she was instructed.

  “And then you fit the colored-peg into the grid of the Lite-Brite board.”

  “It’s blue,” Annette told him.

  Nathaniel said “I’m sorry?”

  Annette, who was still standing with the peg in hand, said “This peg is blue.”

  “So it is, Miss Redmond.”

  “But the colored pegs assigned to me are orange.”

  Nathaniel massaged the top crook of his nose with his right middle finger and thumb. “Would you please put the colored-peg inside the Lite-Brite?”

  “You really should eat something every once in a while, Mr. Cauliflower,” Annette retorted. “Check your blood sugar level with a temper like that. You might be hypoglycemic.”

  “Peg,” said Nathaniel. “Lite-Brite.” He finished massaging his eyes, showing a look that could only be described as severe indignation.

  Annette then fit the blue-colored peg into the Lite-Brite. For a brief second, nothing happened. They both uncomfortably faced forward awaiting the great transition from the department to a client’s life.

  “So . . .” Annette said. “You never answered my question.” She looked over to Nathaniel on her left who, in his own way, kept staring forward. “Who are the Dandelion Sisters and how do they fit into Mr. Rothchild’s story?”

  Nathaniel, figuring full well she wouldn’t look away, shot his eyes to his right with a stoic expression but said nothing. The office then folded and unfolded with vehement black rage which barely matched the irritability Nathaniel kept within.

  CHAPTER 4: THE FIRST OF THREE EXHAUSTING ENVELOPES

  Nathaniel had been through enough inspirations to know how violent an erupting violet envelope could be. There were violet envelopes he personally worked where it felt as if ten tumbling avalanches simultaneously crunched down steep, snow-capped ridges. He endured several violet envelopes where the initial unfolding pop-up resembled overturned countless tubs of Lincoln Logs. Nathaniel was even tripped up by violet envelopes brushing through with the colossal, collective force of multiple monumental tsunamis.

  In the particular case of Annette’s initial violet envelope, the client’s life folded and unfolded like various glass ornaments plummeting, clashing and shattering into tiny, fractured elements. These rudiments hastily settled themselves into the differentiating details of her dependent’s days, depositing Nathaniel and Annette amidst an unfamiliar, yet imposingly fixed, timeline.

  It was an indoor craft fair with folding tables and chairs strategically placed to display the following: shiny holiday baubles, hand-made ornaments, whittled Christmas figurines of both notable characters from the North Pole and the Nativity, booths selling icing-topped cookies, handsomely prepared gingerbread houses and steaming Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, bubbling black coffee and assorted flavors of warm tea. Soft white Christmas lights, accompanied by red and green colored fabric, masked the speakers overhead which blasted the carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The crowds of shoppers were filled with bustling cheer, toddlers crying from tempered exhaustion, cranky slow-paced in-laws navigating with the aid of canes and walkers, proprietors utilizing dinging cash registers and, naturally, the joyous, deep bellowing laughter of a lively, plump imposter Santa Claus.

  As Annette stood gasping for air in attempts to compose a normal breathing pattern, Nathaniel took an intrepid stance beside her, tackling the inspiration like a seasoned professional.

  “Now see here, Miss Redmond,” Nathaniel told her, coolly beginning the process of interpreting the details. “An inspiration is more than inspiring a specific person in a specific place and time. An inspiration is decoding the meticulous details that Management has laid in front of us to allow for a seamless, effective catalyst. Take this particular inspiration, for example. Here we are inside a craft fair filled to the brim with decorations, sweets and festive music. You may be thinking to yourself that your client might be one of the local harried shoppers, or perhaps one of the miserable-looking part-time employed elves with the green slippers and candy-cane patterned pantyhose. Or perhaps it’s the big guy himself!” Nathaniel gestured to all of these potential individuals to drive home a point: “Amidst these probable patrons are the clues that will eventually lead us to the only one that Management has set us out to inspire.”

  “All right, then,” Annette told herself, taking a few steps to her right. “Clues it is then.”

  Nathaniel was quick to stop her. “No, no, no. You can’t go wandering about aimlessly in search of the clues. There are three reasons to stay exactly where Management has placed you in a violet envelope. The first is the time-clock.” There came a distant roll of thunder which shook the ground and lights on the ceiling. Only the present muses detected it. “A moment in someone’s life is opened for a limited time before it refolds. You don’t have all the time in the world to go hunting for something that may, or may not be, in plain sight. You stay exactly where you are intended to be. Which for us is right here with our feet firmly planted . . .” the thunder came again, this time a little louder, “. . . on this Astro Turf covered floor.”

  Nathaniel went on distributing directions.

  “The second reason is because of a muse’s impulse which usually presents itself as an inherent tug on the heartstrings. This is one of the main reasons we’ve given back the memories. As you don’t have the previous memories of being Annette Slocum, you won’t have the luxury of using such a . . .”

  As Nathaniel was talking, Annette intuitively turned round facing the opposite direction. Nathaniel pursed his lips. He faced her same direction. Before them was a perky white haired, female sales associate clad in an ugly holiday sweater that resembled a disfigured Christmas tree. Between them and the salesperson was a table topped with Christmas ornaments constructed of smashed soda cans strung with red ribbon. Likenesses of Santa’s face had been painted on the exposed aluminum base of each.

  “Hmm . . .” Nathaniel said out loud, trying not to sound too impressed by Annette’s hunch, “very good.” Nathaniel still felt he needed to have a helping hand. He said, as an aside to Annette, “As we’ve discussed before, even though we’ve turned and found a lady selling Christmas ornaments doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re here to change her life.”

  “Of course we’re not here to change her life,” Annette said.

  “That’s right, Miss Redmond, we’re not,” Nathaniel conferred. “What then do your muse heartstrings tell you we should do?”

  “Why to pick out an ornament, of course,” said Annette matter-of-fact with self-reliance.

  Nathaniel frowned, not pleased with Annette’s noticeable smugness. “Well, go on then.”

  “Hello,” Annette said to the sales associate finally.

  “Good evening,” said the sales associate, gleaming with merriment.

  “Did you make these yourself?” Annette asked. “They’re lovely.”

  “Well thank you! And, yes, I do dabble in these kinds of things from time to time. I suppose you could say that I live in Christmas all year long, creating crafts for the holidays, while the rest of the world just goes on with the other seasons.”

  There came another rumble of thunder, this one so loud it was almost deafening.

  “Get on with it,” Nathaniel whispered to Annette.

  “You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Annette told the burgeoning aluminum artist.

  Nathaniel’s eyes grew wide. His face went flush.

  “I mean honestly, honey,” Annette went on. “Here we are after three hours in this hallowed holiday haven and we haven’t found a single ornament that best suits our living room tree. Nate here
hates when all the ornaments are the same shape and color, don’t you darling? So we go to these things every year to find the perfect mismatched trinkets to add to our chaotically ruffled hodgepodge!”

  By now, Nathaniel was beside himself, boiling. Annette was acting the idiot, dramatically telling a ridiculous yarn and for what? All she had to do was find the proper ornament out of the one-hundred and twenty similarly festooned knick-knacks exhibited. Then it hit him. Annette, in flaunting her rusty heartstring deployment, had no idea which ornament to pick and was, most likely, babbling to distract him, and the sales associate, from her obvious lack of foresight.

  “Darling,” Nathaniel offered a smile through gritted teeth, trying hard to play the role he had been given so as not to confuse the sales associate further which, as a result, may ultimately spoil the inspiration. “It’s the one on the left.”

  “Oh, how silly of me,” Annette said with a lilting laugh. “He’s a bit temperamental as you can see. We’ve been shopping for three hours and his blood sugar is getting a tad low. I keep insisting that he carry a piece of cheese with him, or perhaps a hardboiled egg.” She reached for the nearest one on the left but Nathaniel stopped her.

  “No, not that one. Two more up and one more over.”

  The thunder rumbled even more, vibrating the table’s ornaments. The engineer of the ornaments didn’t notice this. Both Nathaniel and Annette knew that the time for fun and games was over. The inspiration was about to refold bringing the craft fair and gaiety down with it.

  Annette picked up the ornament that Nathaniel mentioned.

  “We’ll take this one,” she said.

  The sales associate smiled, opened her cash box and brought out a thin layer of tissue paper. As she did, a final clap sounded, signaling the turn of a page.

  The crinkling, crashing and crumbling of glass ornaments returned, just as it had rushed over them at the beginning. Annette, knowing what to expect, seemed impartial by its uproar. The world around them settled into another time and place. The muses stood waiting for what would happen with the ornament hooked on her index finger fixedly dangling between them.

  “The third reason why we stay exactly where we are in an inspiration,” Nathaniel told Annette, “is because if we were meant to move around, Management would do so for us. You’ll find that any specific location changes are controlled by our employers. Just because an inspiration starts in one place doesn’t mean that it won’t end in another.”

  “With a stolen ornament,” Annette held up the painted face of Santa on the crushed cola can to her eye level and frowned.

  Nathaniel put his hand on Annette’s wrist and lowered it so that her eyes were focused on his. “We don’t steal. It’s not that kind of operation.”

  “And yet here we are with a Christmas ornament that isn’t ours that we didn’t pay for.” Annette turned her head quizzically to the side. “Explain to me again how this isn’t stealing?”

  “It isn’t stealing. Every item that we borrow is eventually brought back to the moment that it was taken. Case in point: the violin that you took from the violinist on your first inspiration as Annette Slocum. It was given to a musically desperate client named Jonathan in a derelict motel room. When the violin served its purpose in issuing his life’s catalyst, that violin was returned to the same initial violinist it had been stolen from as if it had never been taken. You would’ve remembered this if you had regained your old memories of being a Ninth Generation muse!”

  “You’re not making a lick of sense, Mr. Cauliflower,” Annette told him.

  “I knew it was a mistake giving you this inspiration,” Nathaniel barked. “Fiona told me to give you a chance and I had to listen to her! Since you’ve been here, you’ve questioned my knowledge, thoroughly humiliated me by making that sales woman think that I was your husband and, to mortify me further, you’re accusing me of stealing!”

  Annette opened her mouth for what would have been a witty and insulting retort but her words were cut short. In the small amount of time that she and Nathaniel bickered, they almost forgot their mission’s second act. A menacing roll of thunder upset their argument, instantaneously settling them. Together she and Nathaniel gathered stock of their surroundings and grew equally horror-struck at the dwindling seconds that remained for them to complete the task.

  “We’re in a bowling alley,” Annette stated the obvious.

  “We are,” Nathaniel confirmed.

  The bowling alley in which they occupied was no different than any other bowling alley one might encounter on any nightly excursion. The fusty carpet beneath their feet was an appalling mixture of Technicolor patterns that had gone out of style back in the late eighties. The establishment held a mixture of scents: sour Lysol shoe disinfectant, the ancient combined chemicals in bowling alley wax, odorous bowling ball polisher, the stomach-churning stench of stale beer and greasy fried foods, and the lingering unpleasant smell of vaporous cigarette smoke, collected from years past that no amount of fumigation could eradicate. The rolling of bowling balls, cracking of pins and cheers of achievement were almost muted against the backdrop of the booming, thunderously ticking pop-up book countdown. Unlike other bowling alleys, which seemed to stand fortified against the trials of many years, this one was splintering apart, and at an alarming rate. Annette and Nathaniel watched as the walls burst forth with over-spilling out-of-place ornaments. The ground beneath them had, in its own right, begun to putrefy into thin strips of silver tinsel.

  “I see her!” Annette shouted to Nathaniel over the din of the thunder.

  Nathaniel looked in the same direction as Annette to find, only three yards away, a miserable looking middle-aged woman with the name tag that had read “Luanne.” Their client wore wrinkled cargo pants and a frumpy black polo shirt complete with the bowling alley insignia. Luanne’s slightly graying brown hair was tied in a pony-tail fastened with a barrette made of tarnished silver. Luanne’s eyes drooped with heavy bags of disappointment. The look of unhappy concentration as she sprayed a pair of bowling shoes further detailed her dissatisfaction.

  “Well then, Miss Redmond, what’s keeping you?” Nathaniel told her sternly.

  Annette, with ornament in hand, took several steps forward. The ground beneath her became unstable causing her to lose footing. She turned to Nathaniel who tossed his hands forward saying “never mind that, go!” Annette stood upright. With as much agility as she was able, Annette continued the short trek to the check-in counter.

  Thunder signaled the end, circling them like an unbalanced spinning lighthouse beacon in a raging storm at sea. The walls crumbled uncontrollably into a dank abyss caked with rubble. The lights flickered until a handful remained. Nathaniel braced himself as the bowling alley, and floor around them, also gave way. A small circumference of space from the edge of Nathaniel’s heels on one end to the distance it took Annette to sprint to their client was what remained. Beyond that, there was no indication that the world existed; only the rumbling of thunder and the small patch of silver tinseled land in which they fought to stay upon. In the darkness there was the sound of fluttering pages in a book, as if a giant-sized reader was maddeningly flipping the pages to find the passage where they left off.

  Luanne, unaware of her muse’s plight, faced her back to Annette to stuff the shoes into a cubby. The deteriorating floor beneath their feet dipped into a steep forty-five degree angle. Annette lost her balance but grasped on tight to the counter with her free hand letting the hand with the ornament dangle downwards to the growing darkness. She spun to check on Nathaniel.

  He, himself, tumbled and was clawing for a good grasp on the remaining exposed torn strands of carpet fabric, like a neurotic cat about to be dropped into a bathtub filled with water. When secure, his eyes turned to Annette.

  “What are you doing?” he screamed. “The inspiration is about to end! Don’t worry about me! Put the bloody ornament on that counter and let’s be done with this!”

  Annette nodded, pulli
ng herself back up to the counter. Nathaniel watched as Annette swung the ornament by the red ribbon until it landed upon the counter. Annette shouted victoriously, confirming the finished assignment.

  The carpet was not strong enough to hold his weight, and the ground slipped away above him. Nathaniel had been in this situation once before, looking at someone’s face while falling to his death in 1808. The memory that it invoked was extremely repulsive. Consumed by his miserable memory, Nathaniel let go of the carpet and allowed himself to plunge into the subterranean, page-flipping darkness.

  He didn’t have far to fall. Within no time he was returned to the safety of the department, landing harshly into one of Annette’s office swivel chairs. Nathaniel was joined by Annette who landed in her own opposite swivel chair. She looked exhilarated, pumped with adrenaline.

  “We did it!” She told him, exultantly bouncing from her swivel chair.

  Nathaniel did not rejoice. He wasn’t in the mood to congratulate her or to carry on conversation. Being around her exhausted him. Feeling numb, he headed out of her office and sought the solace of his own sanctuary. He needed to be alone. He needed to find a way to smash his memories back inside the cages of his mind. The only way he could do that was to work on his envelopes and immerse himself in that work.

  “Well,” Annette called after him “say something Mr. Cauliflower! How did I do? I’m sure you must have copious notes.”

  He stopped at her office door and, with his back still turned to her, said “one down, couple million more to reassign to your postbox.”

  With that, he was out the door crossing past the other postboxes and open doorless offices. Each muse was housed in their respective rooms and eagerly awaited their envelopes. With the first envelope out of the way, it was time to divvy the rest. Nathaniel swore to himself that it would be a while before he would give Annette her second one. He didn’t have the energy to handle another with her so soon. There were two violet envelopes left to administer to her before their effects would begin to take hold. The Dandelion Sisters had promised Nathaniel, when he had visited them in his seventh life, that the three separate unopened violet envelopes would undoubtedly conjure her stubborn memories. It was a matter of time before Annette would remember being the Ninth Generation muse. Then, and only then, would the real work for her be galvanized.