Pandora's Card Game

1

Pandora’s Card Game

Fate was playing cards with her sisters, Luck, Chance and Destiny under a crescent October moon.

The outcome is inevitable, Fate thought, carefully placing a card onto the growing pile on the ground between them. She was the oldest. Her hands were veined and worn. Her hair black as sleep, streaked with the salt and pepper of dreams and nightmares, was pulled tightly back from her gaunt face in a severe bun. Fate had thin grey lips long, an aquiline nose and eyes the bottomless indigo of eternity. Like all the sisters, behind her retina was a layer of tissue, a tapetum lucidum or bright tapestry, allowing her, like a cat, to see in near darkness.

Destiny, the second sister, flicked her arm like a Frisbee player, wrists flashing heavy with silvery jewelry that jangled as she tossed her card.  The card revolved in slow somersaults through the warm, still night before settling onto the pile.

Destiny was draped in diaphanous lavender robes that undulated at whim. Her nails were long, polished and blood red. Glossy midnight hair curled round her pale oval face. Her eyes were outlined in kohl, her lids were an iridescent purple, her irises were as dark and unknowable as shadows.

She never blinked - none of the sisters did. They had no need. Like eagles, vipers, and sharks, they had a translucent eyelid - a nictitating membrane - which slid across their eyes without blocking sight. In birds of prey, this sheath protected parents from the dagger-sharp questing beaks of hungry chicks. When falcons dropped, faster than hope, plummeting at two hundred miles per hour towards the earth, it blocked the dust and wind. It shielded sharks' from explosions of bone and flesh. It allowed the sisters to see the future without being blinded by despair.

Chance, the fourth sister, smiled nervously. She was colorless. Eyes clear grey, fine limp mouse brown hair that faded away at her shoulders. Her nails were clean, but bitten ragged. She wore a checkered, washed out pinafore, which might once have been blue and white but was now grey too. I just might have a chance, she thought.

Luck, the youngest, giggled. Luck was always giggling. She was blond as summer, pale as a dream, silly as a wish.  Her eyes were the blue of a robin’s egg. She thought she would win, but then she always thought she would win, after all, luck was with her.

Carelessly she tossed down a ten of hearts; it beat steadily, a red jewel in the night. Her hands were smooth, her nails shell pink with nacreous half-moons. She smelled of lemons and vanilla.

They were playing a game as old as time, as random as life. They did not play by the rules, but all knew when the game was over. Fate always won.

A ring of almost bare, night black trees surrounded them like charred dryads.

A restless wind tugged the few remaining leaves from dark branches. When it stilled, the soft, flat voices of the cards could be heard, echoing as if from a deep tunnel. The cards radiated with light, pulsing waves of color above and below earthly spectra. A glittering rainbow card shuffled sideways, sidling over the ten of hearts.

Stop that, hissed Fate.

The card shrank back, hastily burying itself under the pile.

Rainbows Destiny sniffed, you just can’t trust them.

Rainbows are bridges between worlds, said Luck. Her voice was light and flitting like a songbird.

Fate threw down another card.

The game’s almost over, she said.

A shadow stretched across the sky, reaching fingers throwing the players into complete blackness. Their pupils expanded like water drops in a still pond, but even they could not see in a void. They listened, but the night was silent, no small beasts scurrying for cover or hunting birds. Fate sniffed the air, drawing her lips upward in a feline grimace. The sisters, like cobras, like coyotes, like cats, possessed a finely tuned Jacobson’s organ linking mouth and nose. They could smell life and death, joy and pain, lust and loss. It tuned them to the earth and tides, so that they felt the pull of waves, the shifting of distant sands and the seismic shivers of the hot inner mantle. Fate did not cause earthquakes or tsunamis, but she knew when they were coming.

Now she smelled only a faint putrescence, a foul warm breeze rose from under the earth rustling the cards, lifting and spreading them into a widening fan. The air quivered with electricity. A shadow blew across the sky.

A tiny coronet rolled from the head of the Queen of Diamonds, glinted briefly and was lost in the grass. From the sky a sleek black feathered shape dropped, hard beak splitting ground. Claws struck, shivering the earth. Propelling upward, shimmering wings expanded, spanning the horizon. In its bill, something glistened like a stolen star. Suddenly, as air escaping a balloon, the cards settled back into a heap between the sisters.

Fate angrily snatched up the crownless queen. Without a word, she pulled a heavy jewel from Destiny’s finger and shoved it onto the queen’s bare head.

Destiny opened her mouth to protest, but looking deep into her sister’s eyes, she was silent. I did not foresee this wind, she thought. Nor the marring of a queen or a thieving raven and now, though she will never admit it, I know that Fate did not either. She who knows the outcome of every game…

Chance looked a little worried, but then, Chance always did.

Slowly, Destiny raised a card. It pictured a dark, lovely woman. The woman had hair as long and dark as Destiny’s. She too favored flashy jewelry, kohl liner and dark lipstick. The woman winked at Destiny.

Since our game has come to an untimely end, Sisters, and we have a whole night before us, let us tell stories. Destiny said.

Stories, Chance breathed, We haven’t done that in ages.

Stories, whispered Luck, laughing, I can tell stories. I make stories happen.

Fate’s eyes were unreadable, pupils wide and cat red.

Stories, she repeated.  The dark shadow that I did not see, the ending of a game that has always been played out to the finish… Well … perhaps we should. She lifted a card. Before her stretched a vast desert, sands as fine and white as talc undulated like rising heat into an endless future.

Destiny put down her card and motioned with open palm for her sister to begin…

2

Fate’s Tale: The Sands of Time

In the sands of time, which lie between the past and present, a small boy is wandering. He’d begun the journey as an unpleasant, snot- nosed brat. But by the time he arrives in his mother’s memory, he’s been transformed into a prince - handsome, smart, clean and mother-adoring. By the time he reaches his father’s recollections he’s become athletic, reverent, and father-worshiping. Now, a man, he listens to his parents’ stories. When the little boy finally traverses the vast desert to his fully grown self, his parent’s memories have become his own. He remembers himself, wise beyond his years, brilliant, altruistic, empathetic, helpful, true and kind.

His sister Carol however, still recollects him as an unpleasant, snot nosed brat.

The little boy stares up at her with sad moist eyes. He hopes to change her retrospection, but she does not even see him. She looks right through the place where he hovers.

In her mind’s eye she sees herself; lissome, willowy and wan. Her delicate pale hands move like elegant nesting birds. Her feet dance with an elegance of purpose. Such a girl would never grow up to choose the wrong man, or lie to a lover. She would never take an errant pathway, or get lost in a maze of lost options and incorrect decisions.

Yet here she is, over forty, overweight and unhappy. Her heart bears the remnants of one bad man after another.  She should have gone to university. She should have been in Paris. But instead she had followed the last of the wrong men to Bucyrus, Ohio, Bratwurst capital of the Midwest and stayed there.

       In the Roaring Twenties, Al Capone used to stop off in Bucyrus for a night of sin, at an underground Speakeasy. At the time, Al had been half blind by Bucyrus’ cheap hooch.  But now, when Al’s memories make it across the sands of time and wander as far as Bucyrus, he remembers nights of the best champagne and vodka in the arms of Daisy. The Daisy of his memory is lovely as an orchid, fresh and unspoiled as a sunrise.

For decades, the Speakeasy has been forgotten; a tangled network of underground tunnels weaving twisted roots under the Streets of Bucyrus. Now it is used as a storage space by Cooper’s Cider Mill. They keep the apples there, fermenting between walls so thick, even the spray of Tommy Gun bullets couldn’t penetrate.

Cooper’s apple butter and jellies are sold everywhere in town and have been for generations. David Cooper isn’t lying when he says, it’s just like grandma used to make. David and his mother lived with Grandma in the old white Cooper house in the center of town and Grandma taught David everything she knew.

David ‘s Grandma had sweetened her jellies with illusions so enticing they could make a girl fall head over heels for the wrong man. They were blended with imaginings so beautiful, they could make a man leave everything to follow dreams. They were so smooth, they could make you believe that love was enough to build a life on.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, young girls visited Grandma Cooper, huddling in the moon drenched yard, like wounded birds, outside Dave’s window. They bent, white and helpless as doves in the dark. When his younger self trudges across the sands of time to Cooper’s Cider Mill David will not open the door. Instead, he climbs into Al Capone’s old speakeasy, crouches among the fermenting apples and waits, fingers in ears, until his younger self gets tired of knocking on the door and leaves. He cannot stand to see the little boy who already knows too much about love and heartache.

Bucyrus has hot summers. Hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. Hot enough to melt a dream. The heat drains Carol. She feels her flesh melting. She staggers through town half blind with sweat and misery. She walks through an alleyway hoping for some shade. A hole gapes before her. Damp steps lead into dark, cool earth. Unthinking Carol teeters down. It is cool. She closes her eyes and rests.

Then she hears it … Comon and hear, Comon and hear… Alexander’s Ragtime Band, music washes over her like rain. In the dark, she sees two figures dancing. It is Al Capone dancing with Daisy.

This is not the real Al Capone, or even a ghost. It is Al Capone’s memory of himself. He is tall, handsome and graceful. He cuts a dashing figure so princely it’s dangerous. Carol watches from behind a barrel of fermenting apples. They smell like perfume, like music, like romance and love.

Carol begins to haunt the ghostly speakeasy. Every spare minute of every spare day, she returns to the cavern. She waits for Al, hoping he will return. Hoping he will ask her to dance. She stops eating. Her flesh melts away like tears, like wishes, like aspirations. After so much time underground, Carol has become pale and slender. She blooms like a rare night flower.

One night Al returns. He is everything he and Carol remember. In the dark, Al sees her. She is luminous. Mistaking her for Daisy, he asks her to dance. Around and around they whirl, a gossamer dream, delicate as a sigh.

David is crouching behind an apple barrel, hiding from his younger self. The face of a young girl under moonlight and bleached by sorrow, has driven him from his house. His younger self has invaded his night and left him trembling here, alone in the dark.

David sees Carol and Al dancing, insubstantial as a wish.

Night after night Carol returns to dance with Al. Sometimes Al arrives, handsome as a dream. Sometimes she is alone and lonely. On those nights she waltzes alone, softly humming, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, as if it were a serenade, as if it were a love song. Each night David returns to watch from behind an apple barrel. David imagines that one night, when Al’s memory does not arrive, he will step out. He will hold open his arms to Carol. She will fall into them as if life were safe, as if love could last. But he does not. He is trapped by his younger self and his present fear. David has seen too much heartache. He has cut himself on too many shattered dreams and endings.

       One night, when David is watching, he leans against a barrel. The stacks sway and fall. Apples pour out onto the floor. Some are half rotten and settle like mushrooms onto the earth.  Some are still ripe enough to roll. One spins under the twirling Carol. She trips, toppling against a mountain of crates and tumbling into the thick, thick walls of the speakeasy. Apples spatter everywhere. The stench is almost overpowering. They fill the tunnels with the scent of age, loss and death.

Carol is knocked unconscious. David can barely breathe. Burying nose in arm, holding his breath, he gathers her into his arms and staggers up, up, into the fresh air, into the light. She feels light as a wish, as fragile as longing.

He takes her to the upstairs bedroom in the old Cooper place. He watches her sleep. Without even being aware of it he drifts off, crossing the border between reality and dreams without even taking a step.

Sitting in the stiff-backed wooden chair by the window, he is awakened by sobs. His child self has crossed the desert and stands before him looking out the window.

Peering over the shoulder of his