Creative Writing | CARD BLUES

In the quiet of the night, the abandoned village on the underside of the forest’s mound reveals itself to you. At its open, rusted gates, the hill above your head welcomes you in with its warning teeth bared over its occupants. Checking your phone, you note the battery has depleted to nothing. The screen remains black– you have to embark without a map. Not that it would’ve helped. Building lights go on far deeper into the tunnel than they should, dimmer than the night out there with its hooting owls and trotting rivers. It’s silent, but full of life. A market of night. You have a directory hidden in your jacket. It had been mailed to you after the death of your cat, Misty. Amongst the scrawled, crossed-out words in those tattered pages, you’d found The Lady. And packed under her name, the rules of her game.

A wish she could grant, if you were patient enough. You’re not one for wishes, but Misty was a beloved family pet.

And you’d found a quick loophole, hadn’t you?

Fruit sellers with metallic eyes guard what you presume to be buckets of rotting apples, as the guide on vendors had strictly said. Upon closer inspection, you find the top layer of apples to be shiny to an alarming degree. You stumble away from them, shrink further into your clothes, and turn up the collar to hide yourself. There are so many of them in the dark, aren’t there? Rows on either side of you. You can see the dots of their eyes following you. Not a single foot stepping out of their own shadows.

You pass: colorless cats amassing in the slants of shelters. Pointed rooftops that reach the crumbling, wet soil suspended aloft. A slight shimmer– you tilt this way and that like a flower seeking the sun. Thick, knotted tree roots with tinging iciness. Like fairy strings posted from pillar to pillar. The dirt is solid like a support beam; it holds. You feel like it will collapse on you either way. A massive wave suspended in time.

You feel something land on your shoulder. A wriggling maggot, in the negative of your shoes, inches toward the bruised plums. It stills when it takes a hefty bite. Your shoes arc over the scattered fruit. A wolf’s howl echoes into the cavern. The fingers of winter press into your spine, buttoning up the knobs. Your fingerless gloves get caught in a jagged nail, and you curse under your breath. Something the villagers don’t appreciate. You hasten and step onto a sturdier, stone-cut path.

There at the end. Or what must be the end as you turn to check the depth of the entrance. Stars observe you through the exit– your lifeline. When you turn your head back, a thick cloak of purple jumpstarts your heart. Where did it come from? It’s obscuring what you’ve been searching for. The pocketbook in your inner lining burns against your chest. Had Misty wanted you here? Why did she know about this place? With one hand, you lift the curtain. Chamomile and something else, something burning, invites you in with a curling, smoky finger.

Dim. Iridescent. That’s how The Lady presents herself: with layered shawls that look like mountains, and watercolors where her face should be. You settle into the chair, facing her long shape as it brushes the tent of her abode. Limbs jointless– with cut strings. You remember your plan. Foolish, or smart, you do not know. It clogs your chest with silt either way.

While cards fly from her hands, left to right, you try to breathe deeply. You attempt to imprint the map into your eyes, a well-trodden shortcut to your reward. The Lady ruffles the cards some more, fanning them over the burnt surface of the table in one swell wave: faces down, patterns on the backs scintillating.

“So… Just flip them and match them, right?” You ask.

A breathy jingle– she deftly nods.

“Right,” you murmur, angling your face to the cards. Her pale, skeletal hands, adorned with muddy jewels, frame the outermost edges. Constantly in your vision: red, yellow, blue. A graveyard hue. You can’t help but think: Is this a way to make it fair for her victims? An unveiled trick with her hands above the table? A smiling nudge to let your guard down? Well, you won’t, will you?

You begin flipping the cards, one by one, from the top column to the middle; then, eventually, to the bottom rightmost corner. Until they’re all staring up at the two of you. Curious pictures the lineup creates: wild brush strokes pencilled in a box within a box. A blonde mermaid blows a kiss your way. An elderly man holds up a mirror to you. Your reflection startles. You slam its matching card atop him– the reflection dissipates. The haze of fear sharpens the lurid squares as you hunt each twin within the sea of paper.

And so you go, matching, with a complete disregard for her rules. The guidelines state you must flip them over: if the second card doesn’t match the first, you have to start all over again. And you’ve gone and capsized them all.

The configurations of souls on the deck look aghast. Dismayed.

You imagine her rising up from her velvet cushion to point at you in disapproval, throwing you out, or pulling a string and flushing you into her dungeon, but all The Lady does is observe your actions with a tilt of silence.

When all the inverted cards have their twins, you are defiant: you puff your chest and raise your chin. The gesture trembles and hitches– you can’t even hear yourself breathing. The Lady drapes her arms over the painted pictures like a hen over her eggs, and offers you another pack of unopened cards. Your hand floats– you think– you take it. And shuffle.

The drag of paper against clammy palms whistles through your sweltering mind. A streak of opaline fur with blue, blinking eyes; the melodic purring that settled over you, the big yawn she’d let out before batting your arm for attention. You’re doing this for Misty.

You return the cards, and the Lady’s arm lifts, the drape of mountains winding down it; the previous deck has already vanished. She bends down into the new set of cards, which dance upon her digits; swirling over forefinger, middle, and ring. Before your eyes, they dance themselves tiny: before your eyes, the ceiling widens under the weight of a thousand archaic lanterns whooshing to life. Wooden, inscribed shelves push out from the pearly dark, groan under the extending wall’s rotation, accommodating for newer and newer space. Your head cranes up and up– there is no end.

The Lady scissions the small square blues across the burnt surface.

Multiplied, the table hosts them snugly. Vestiges of the original cards are split into hundreds less than your pinky finger.
You numbly trace the closest one. The moving figurines are an inky fog, so minuscule they’re impossible to discern, just ants scuttling across the table. This will take hours. You slump– your shadow blocks them. A twitching heartbeat tries to escape the thin wedge of skin.

You can’t do this; you want out of here. Answers be damned. An underlying tempering of nausea slips into your sternum. Nobody’d warned you of this.

The Lady shakes her head when your chair screeches away.

“I give up,” you announce. “Enough. I give up.”

The Lady stands, her spine crackling like fire. Unfurling like a rose. She towers over you, peers at your sweating face. Featureless, blank, smooth; you get nothing from her. You feel no breath on your skin. All you feel is your face rearranging itself: your ears pulling up and up, your nose tugging down into a snub, your vision lengthening and narrowing as the table passes you by, something warm and sharp peeking through your skin.

Did you think surrendering would save you from becoming a cat?

The cold air greets you when she kicks your yowling tail out, and so do the town’s hungry villagers.