You could blame it on the Ouija board, I suppose, this whole fascination I have with getting help from others, with needing outside help, with this certainty I have that there’s a way to “fix” me. I don’t even know all the things that are broken but I learn about them slowly and then try to fix them.

The Ouija board was the first time I realized there was something that needed fixing. Typical situation, really, a slumber party of mostly eleven year old girls, someones birthday probably but who would remember that. There was Bloody Mary and Truth or Dare and some movie that I can’t remember now but was probably something rated PG13 that all our parents had given permission for because it was a special occasion or because those ratings have always been bullshit.

Anyway, it wasn’t until we were asking the spirit questions and the Ouija board pointed out that the spirit probably died alone because they didn’t shave their legs that I realized all the girls around me shaved theirs. It just hadn’t occurred to me that something so “adult” would be expected of me at eleven. But that’s cool, all the other girls had shaved legs, message received. Thank you Ouija.

And what eleven year old isn’t willing to jump into all things woman? To be an adult and have freedom, this was the goal, the only goal, unless of course one could talk ones parents into a dog, then a dog was the temporary goal. We already had a dog. So the very next day, at home and showering before bed, I shaved my legs. Uneventful. Lotion applied afterwards. The only exciting part was the feeling of newly shaved legs running through the sheets as I climbed into bed. That was delicious and, I decided, totally worth it.

As I got older there’d be hints here and there about other things I needed to fix. The rise of the internet meant there were now entire search engines at my disposal, a giant Ouija board of information. It was sometimes hard to know which things I needed to fix and which things were broken in others. That could be somewhat satisfying, it turns out, to learn there are things about others that are broken. Do they have a Ouija board to guide them or access to the internet and the gods at Google? Do other people take the time to right their wrongs?

It was through Google that I learned I didn’t have to shave my legs, a relief that came too late as now the habit is firmly ingrained and I am perhaps a bit addicted to the feeling of freshly shaved legs sliding along clean sheets. Regardless, I also learned through my engine searches that I need to know how to cook, a thing which has never appealed to me, but which I now know how to do.

It’s simple really and there’s no excuse. You open your search, type in a few of the major things you have on hand, like “chicken onion mushroom soup” and then you add “recipe” at the end. Simple. All these recipes will pop up with those ingredients and you’re off. Everyone says “if you can read you can cook,” and I guess it must be true cause I somehow manage to feed myself everyday.

The thing is though, you gotta be careful with those recipes and read them all the way through before you start making them because sometimes they want you to have ingredients you don’t have on hand and then you’re in trouble if you’ve already started. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to stop in the middle of something to run to the store. Which defeats the whole purpose of using the internet to find a recipe with ingredients you have on hand.

My point is, I can cook now, ish, and that was something I never would have known was wrong with me if it weren’t for someone like Google pointing it out…well, it wasn’t actually Google that told me I had to cook, it was the people I found on Google while searching for something else. But still.

The thing is, I always think I’m okay, I always think there’s nothing really “wrong” with me, but then I’ll be at a garage sale or a used book store and I’ll come across something like this book I’m reading now, that helped me see what a terrible parent I am. Or I mean, what a terrible parent I would be if I had kids. I don’t even know why I picked up the book to be honest. Who picks up a parenting book when they aren’t a parent? But I did, and I found out I’m terrible at it. Or I would be. But now, because I’m reading this book, I’m not, or I won’t be. Or whatever.

So see, the thing is, my point I guess, is that you never know what you don’t know about yourself and all these things you don’t know can’t be fixed. And if you’re lucky, you start finding these things at eleven years old at a maybe birthday party, and then you just keep finding them forever afterwards. And I mean forever. There is no shortage of things that are wrong with me according to all these searches I do and all these books I’ve found.

Like this newest book I got through a search that told me I shouldn’t eat carbs. Who knew? But this book tells me that not only am I still a terrible cook, I’m also a terrible eater, but I’m fixing both, or I’m going to be able to fix both, as soon as I finish this book. And then I’ll be a good cook, a good eater, and healthier. Plus I’ll be an even better parent than the parents who only read that one parenting book because I’ll know this stuff about cooking and eating which weren’t covered in that book. And if I’m ever the parent of a girl I’ll be able to teach her about Ouija and also about how she doesn’t actually have to shave her legs but if she does the best part about it is clean sheets.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

Obviously everyone has their own tastes and is free to do whatever they wish their own bathroom, but Sheila was having a devil of a time understanding how anyone could have intentionally come up with the disaster she was staring at. As a realtor you see some things, some really awful things, and your job is to put a positive spin on it or find a way to get your client to overlook it.

Sheila had experience with all of this and considered herself an expert, not as a result of inflated ego but because she truly had a knack with people, probably the little bit of psychology she took at the local community college before deciding she didn’t want to listen to people bitch and moan all day for a living. And wasn’t that just ironic, people don’t seem to understand that 90% of her job is listening to clients bitch and moan, and the remaining 10% is taken up by driving, paperwork, and cleaning…so much cleaning.

But this…there was no way to “clean” this into ignorable, there was no way to spin this into positive, unless it was to encourage the clients with a bit more money that this would be the perfect location for the beginning of their remodel. Ugh.

The thing was, it wasn’t dirty. This was not the toilet out of Trainspotting. Sheila would not refuse to use the bathroom if she had an urgent need to go. No, it wasn’t that the bathroom filled you with terror over what disease you might contract just by breathing within it. It was entirely…functional…just not, practical…or attractive.

Sheila’s friend, Megan, was an interior designer, a friendship born when they were in grade school and their value to each other was purely altruistic. They were not so much alike other than being female, of the same age, and in the same third grade class. At that age that’s all it really takes though. They had an instant friendship born of Barbie dolls and pets and the fact that their mothers allowed them to take turns sleeping over at each others houses on weekends.

Megan had a dramatic way of seeing things, a perfect trait for an interior designer, one her clients appreciated. It was more than just flair, although Megan had no shortage of flair, it was a boldness and a surety that would have made her an excellent actress if she wasn’t so content to remain where she was.

Sheila knew she’d have to bring Megan into this house, and into this bathroom. Clearly her wealthier clients would want to do something about it immediately, and she needed some help on how to spin it for the ones who couldn’t afford to.

She grabbed her phone from her back pocket and when it went to voice mail she left the only message she could think to, “Megan? It’s me. I’m going to need your help. Call me or come by…I’ll be here for at least an hour,” and she left the address.

While she waited Sheila proceeded through the rest of the house. She took some pictures and some videos, even though she wasn’t the sellers agent, she knew her buyers well and some of them would request these things. She made notes on her phone, a habit she’d picked up early on, things that were quaint or charming or especially attractive about a property, things that she’d have to remember to gloss over or to ignore entirely if minor enough that their omission wouldn’t be seen as a fault with her as an agent.

Sheila had just finished sending emails with attachments to some of her buyers when she heard the front door opening and Megan calling, “I’m heeeeere!” in a sing-song.

“Oh, thank god!” Sheila said as she walked from the kitchen and embraced her friend. “Thank you for this,” she said, taking the proffered coffee cup and looking Megan directly in the eyes. “I need you to…I just don’t know how to…follow me,” she ended lamely as she walked her friend through the living room, down a hallway, and into the master bedroom. “It’s in there,” she said, pointing through the doorway that led to the bathroom.

Megan smiled, took a deep breath bracing for the unknown, and walked through into the bathroom. She didn’t get far before she shouted, “my god, it’s a bathroom murder!” the word murder echoing off the tiles.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

Her book collection had gotten a bit out of control. It started easily enough, a book here and there at the library book sale, a garage sale, the thrift store. Somehow though she’d amassed a collection that filled three book cases and required her stack books on end tables. It was chaotic. It was also very fulfilling, very soothing. Still and all it was simply too many books, and she decided to organize them, to start reading them, to give away the ones that weren’t favorites.

She decided to tackle the smallest book case first, pulling all the books out, looking at each book and trying to decide if it was something she’d already read or not. If so, and she was going to re-read and/or reference it again, it went on the bottom shelf. If not, and she was actually going to read it, it went on the top shelf, and otherwise it went in a bag to give to the thrift store. She continued through the first bookcase until all the books had been reorganized and found she had zero books to give away, not surprising, and only a couple books on the lower shelf.

“No time like the present,” she murmured, grabbing a book she hadn’t read yet, a lovely leather bound piece, and went to the couch. She opened it and rifled past the mishmash in the beginning to get to chapter one. She had just started reading when she decided a bit of tea was in order. Searching for a bookmark nearby and finding none, she went to splay the book on the couch arm when a piece of paper fell out.

“The universe is always listening,” she said with a smile, grabbing the paper and shoving it in her place in the book and wandering off for her tea.

She returned to the couch with her mug and some cheese and crackers, picked the book up again and took a glance at the paper she’d used as a bookmark. Opening it she found it wasn’t just a piece of paper but a hand written letter. There was no date and the dedication and sign off used pet names. She’d never be able to return it to it’s rightful owner and that made her sad, for the letter was truly beautiful, a love letter that was fairly simple and yet perfectly conveyed the depth of emotion behind every sentence, every promise.

She wondered if she’d ever receive such a letter. If she’d ever write one. She wondered if the book it was in, the one she hadn’t quite started yet, was intentional or simply what was at hand the last time the letter was read. Did the writer of the letter ever send it? Did the recipient ever read it. It was impossible to tell these things as the paper itself had been so perfectly preserved inside the book. There were no smudges or stains from tears, no rips or tears, it had never been crumpled or abused in any way. She had to believe, for herself, that the letter had been loved as much as the writer of it.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

Living in the city she’d always feared strangers looking in her windows, it’s hard not to when your windows face their windows and everyone’s a foot away from each other. She started keeping her blinds closed all the time. She’d leave a dark house for work and return to a dark house in the evening. Weekends were spent in darkness unless she ventured out and she caught herself doing that less and less. She didn’t quite realize it but she’d stopped living and was simply going through the motions.

And then one day she received a phone call. It seems an uncle she could only vaguely remember having heard about, Crazy Mikey, had passed away and she was the closest living relative. He’d left her a few acres with a cabin and come outbuildings in Montana. No, he didn’t owe any taxes and there were no fines as long as she lived there for two years before selling it, which given the report from the solicitor would hopefully be enough time to clean it up.

They call it a decision when you do something like move, but really there was no other logical path to take. She gave her notice to her landlord, sold everything but a few books to help her get where she was going and what clothes she could pack in a suitcase. She took three different flights to arrive in the middle of nowhere and realized the reason she couldn’t find a hotel or any sort of services online for this little town was because there were none. It was little more than an airport and even that was stretching it.

She got off the tiny plane and looked around her at trees. Trees and mountains. And silence. She could hear a hawk or an eagle or something calling in the distance. She could hear something, a tractor maybe, yes, there it was a tractor across the street. If it weren’t for knowing someone was driving that tractor, and knowing a pilot had brought her here, she’d think she was the last person in the world.

“You got someone comin’ to meet you?” asked the pilot.

Startled she turned on an inhale and clutched her book closer to her chest. “Oh, um, no, not really. Couldn’t find any…anything online. I guess I was hoping there’d be a shuttle or a taxi or…something,” she said, her voice getting softer, quieter at the end, as the realization of what she’d just done began to hit.

“Whelp, there’s a farmer over there sometimes lets out for hire his old pickup, but he’s haying so I doubt it’s available today. Where is it you’re going to?”

“I, well, my uncle, Cr…er Michael, recently passed and I’m trying to get out to his, well, my place now I guess.”

There was a beat, a moment when she could tell he was looking at her a bit harder, a glimmer in his eye, “Crazy Mikey was your uncle, huh? Well now, I can take you back up to his place whenever you’re ready.”

“I didn’t realize anyone else called him that,” she said, blushing and wondering if that meant people would think she was crazy, too. Heaving a sigh she said, “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Now he looked at her like she really was crazy, “look ma’am, it’s not my business, but I can’t let you go out there without any provisions. I expect he’ll have some things put up that could get you by, but since he left us at about the time he’d be restocking everything, we don’t really know what’s there. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s best if we stop at the shop and get you some things to get you through til you can get back to town.”

“Oh, a shop? Yes, please, that would be wonderful. Thank you,” she was a bit flustered at the idea that there’d be a shop out here, at the idea that she was going to be living far enough “out” whatever that meant from this place that was already so remote that this stranger was concerned for her welfare, she was a bit flustered by the whole thing really and began to wonder if she shouldn’t have just sold everything and inherited nothing but a few bucks after taxes.

By the time they stowed her bags in the back of the pilots truck, picked up what few groceries she could find at the shop, which turned out to be the farmers stand, and drove out to Crazy Mikey’s cabin it was getting late. Late, but not dark. It didn’t matter that it was nearly ten o’clock at night, the world was nearly light enough to hike in. She couldn’t believe it. Even more than the near daylight quality out, she couldn’t believe where the pilot had brought her.

It was a good thirty minute drive from the airport and all of that through trees like she’d never seen, and following a river she almost couldn’t believe. She’d seen that Netflix show about that nurse in the mountains, what was it, Virgin River! It was like background shots out of the show, only greener, more beautiful, real.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

The building on Vista Street had been vacant for months. Actually, once she did the math she realized it had been years. Almost two, if she was correct, roughly the same time her last relationship went south. But suddenly there was brown paper in the windows, the outside was being painted, the inside renovated, and as she passed the building each day on her way to and from the office she saw how quickly things were coming together. She was very eager to know what it would re-open as: a gym most likely and disappointingly.

And then one day, there was a sign out front:

NOW OPEN
le donjon
Fine French Cuisine et Suite

She went straight home, changed out of her work wear and took a shower, shaving for the first time in months. She got out of the shower and into a little black dress she’d been saving for her next date, but since she had no idea when that would be she decided to treat herself. A quick smear of eyeshadow and a bit of mascara, a flash of lipgloss, lipstick never looked quite right on her skin, and she was out the door with her little strappy sandals clicking away.

She decided to walk as it was only a half mile away and a lovely evening. She rarely got outside anymore it seemed, always at work or at home pretending to sleep on the couch, Netflix inquiring on occasion if she was still watching. The air was perfect, she could finally tell it was autumn, the crispness to the air becoming apparent, cool and clean and promising. She noted the leaves changing and the advertisements in shop windows promising pumpkins and cinnamon and sweater weather.

The restaurant was clearly just opening for dinner when she arrived and she asked if she needed reservations. “Non, non mademoiselle. This is the advantage of opening mid-week, no one is even aware. We expect it will be overflowing this weekend though, eh? Tonight you will have a friend?”

“No,” she replied with a smile, “seulement moi.”

“Ah, you speak French! You’re accent is suberbe! Ou avez-vous appris a parlerfrancais?”

“Merci. I learned in high school and rarely get a chance to practice, you’re very kind.”

“Par ici, mademoiselle,” he said, bowing slightly and waving the menu towards a table for two.

As she walked in, the waiter following discreetly behind her and pulling out her chair, she noted the luxury all about her. Fine carpets, beautiful linen tablecloths reaching all the way to the ground, the cutlery all obviously new and hand polished, the romantic dim lighting and framed artwork strategically placed around to muffle sounds. This would be the perfect place for a date, she thought as she sat down and was gently pushed forward, her napkin swept off the table in front of her and gracefully lowered to her lap for her.

“You may expect the wine list first, no? If you will permit me, I have a recommendation? You peruse the menu first, oui, and I will bring for you the perfect accompaniment for each course. You trust me,” the waiter placed the menu in her hand before continuing, “whatever you pick, you must start with the apero. I will be right back.”

While she was convinced this meal was going to be terrible for her bank balance, she was so charmed by her surroundings and the knowledge that this would be the best meal she’d eaten in perhaps her entire life, that she set to perusing the menu with gusto. Only as she was reviewing the first course, the promised apero not making it onto the menu as more than a given with no description, that she became concerned. Surely there had been a mistake. Typos definitely. Or more like two different documents had been printed at the same time and the printer glitched, printing the two together, for there, listed under “premier cours” were some unexpected entries:

premier cours
quiche lorraine
scalp massage
brie au four
hand massage
tarte a l’Oignon
lower back massage
souffle au fromage

Should she say something to the waiter? He was clearly going to be very embarrassed if this was his restaurant, as she suspected, or owned by his family. But to not say anything, wouldn’t that be worse. She was obviously their first patron and they’d put so much work into this place that she’d hate to see it fail. He was coming towards her bearing a drink and a plate, she had only moments to decide what to do, and then there he was, placing the small glass and plate before her with a flourish and a smile.

“Voila,” he said, “have you determined your meal, mademoiselle?”

She was blushing furiously, but managed to stammer out, “well, ye…er, no…you see mmm I believe your menu may have some errors?”

“Ah non, c’est terrible!” he said bending down to look at her menu, “please, show me this.”

She pointed to “scalp massage” and then to “hand massage” and her index finger was on it’s way towards “lower back massage” when the waiter began laughing. “Ah, no, mademoiselle, no no no, these are not errors. We are a full service restaurant and you Americans are so tense, yes? So much of this stress and working that you do. We want you to enjoy your meal, to relax, and how will you do this in a traditional four or even five course situation if we do not offer these things?” he looked at her expectantly and also as though she were so silly to not see the necessity behind his words, their simple truth. “And so, I will give you some time. You enjoy this pastis and olives and peruse the menu. I shall return anon.”

She was immediately grateful there was no mistake in the menu but also still confused by something that seemed so obvious to him and so out of place to her. She took a sip of the pastis, mmm like drinking licorice, and popped an olive in her mouth, fantastic, before returning to her menu. The second course also had, what she considered to be some oddities, as did the third. Things were progressing from dubious to downright surreal by the time she got to the fourth:

le quatrieme cours
creme brulee
masturbation
apple cranberry galette
anal fingering
tarte figure
oral sex
fromage blanc

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

She’d originally gone in for a check up, a routine annual sort of thing. Blood count, pap, breast exam, the usual. Certainly nothing exciting aside from the one mole she wanted to have checked. Even that didn’t cause a change in heart rate. Speaking of which, her blood pressure was excellent at 120/80. So she was surprised when a few days later her doctors office wanted her to come back in to re-do the blood test.

Still, she wasn’t concerned, her blood pressure still measuring perfect. “What happened to the last sample?” she asked the nurse as a new sample was being taken. “Did the last one get lost?”

With the nurses mask in place there was no way of knowing if she smiled or not, you’d think you could tell by wrinkles around the eyes, but there were none, “I don’t know, I was just told to do a blood draw.” The nurse took the needle out, placed a cotton ball over the drop of blood on her arm, and put a bandage over it. “Doctor should be in soon,” she said as she collected the blood vials, two this time, and the trash, dropping the needles in the big red container, the trash in the trash, and walking out the door. All actions complete in a couple of seconds, all actions completed on auto-pilot.

The key thing, she told herself, sitting on the cold hard exam table, is that I feel fine. No, I actually feel great. Whatever is going on is about misplacement or a quick double check. she had just begun her perusal of the posters lining the walls, “MAKE SURE YOUR DOCTOR SEES YOUR FEET. DIABETES DETECTION…” when her doctor walked in followed by another doctor.

She tilted her head slightly to the left, a thing she didn’t even realize she did when she was surprised or confused. Her doctor was smiling behind his mask, she was sure of it, but the smile didn’t seem like the usual one and as he began to speak she could detect a slight modulation in his voice that wasn’t usually there, stressing some words over others as though they were in a classroom, as though she were a child.

“Good to see you, yes, thank you for coming back in, I know this is highly unusual as we’ve never had an issue with your tests in the past,” he cleared his throat. “This is my colleague Dr. Thinsate and he has been working closely with a new screening test for,” here he spread his hands before her, a universal expression of loss, “I don’t really know what we’re calling it yet, but he can tell you more. Doctor?“

Dr. Thinsate was not smiling. Even with a mask on she could tell there was no smile. He was not interested in putting her at ease, and his stiff back and hands held firmly in front of him showed he did not feel he should be in here explaining anything to her. “Yes, well, it’s a bit of a groundbreaking test you see, and we believe your blood could be a key to our understanding of the results. So, thank you for coming back in, and we’d like you to come back again in two weeks and let us do another.”

She was grateful for her own mask as it hid the pursing of her lips, unfortunately it couldn’t cover her entire face and she was sure her incredulity over that little speech was showing in her eyes and forehead. She purposely looked directly at Dr. Thinsate once more before turning back to her doctor, a very pointed I’m ignoring you action, and asked her doctor, “why do you want me to come back?”

Her doctor cleared his throat again, looked to Dr. Thinsate for help, turned back to her and said, “well, it seems you have something in your blood that helps Dr. Thinsate find a bridge between one type of blood and another.” He looked back at Dr. Thinsate pointedly and when he refused to speak up, her doctor sighed and said, “look, I will tell you I don’t know a lot about this. It’s new and not my field, I am a GP. But it seems there is more than a simple difference in personality between empathic people and those without. Some people think it is a biological difference and your blood,” again he looked at Thinsate who looked only at his hands, “your blood is the first they’ve found that isn’t one or the other.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, “none of this makes sense. You’re saying people are biologically wired for empathy?”

“It’s…it’s possibly more than that. It may be that empathetic people are a different sore of being entirely. I mean we’re all still human, right?” he chuckled, but it was pleading, “it’s just that some of us may be…different.”

She looked from her doctor to Dr. Thinsate and could only agree wholeheartedly.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

The idea that she’d visit a fortune teller wasn’t so far-fetched, it wasn’t something anyone would expect of her, by any means, but she did quite a few out of the ordinary things, or at least they were out of the ordinary to other people. So this visit to the fortune teller wasn’t exactly odd even if only the fortune teller could have predicted it.

There are people who say that fortune telling is false, fake, a sham. That being a fortune teller is really just being observant. Take the best detective on any police force and they could be a fortune teller and make a solid living. It’s really not a bad retirement. And so while people will say these things, it doesn’t necessarily make it true. People like to deal in black and white, never in gray, and it’s much easier to believe a blanket statement like “fortune tellers are nothing more than observant liars,” than it is to believe that some of them might be more.

She didn’t really know what she believed. She’d never sat down to think about it too deeply. This idea that fortune tellers were shams made no difference to her life so why contemplate it. Bit if she had sat down to think about it, if she had taken a moment to review her biases and beliefs, she’d probably have to say that she was closer to a believer than a scoffer, believed in the spiritual and therefore why wouldn’t she conclude there are simply some things we can’t know but it doesn’t disapprove them, that there was that one aunt she had when she was very little who could always tell when family members were sick or in trouble. And so, why disbelieve.

Even so, she hadn’t set out to see a fortune teller, even though it was well within her circle of probability, she hadn’t intended on sitting at this table with this dark haired cackling man who rubs a ball that could just as easily be plastic as glass, who had insisted payment could wait until the end after having seen the cash in her hand first, who was nothing at all like her idea of a fortune teller in his jeans and t-shirt, bare feet, and a table with no cloth over it. Her mind kept sticking on the idea that there was no table cloth as that was somehow a necessary component or as though not having one meant this specific seer was a charlatan.

It was only after he rubbed the possibly plastic ball on the table, only after he grabbed her hand, only after he’d closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling above them painted to look like a sky she noted warily, only after he mumbled before bursting out in laughter that she began to wonder if he was toying with her, if this was his moms shop and he was drunk, playing with her. It was the sharp tone of his laugh, not a deep and hearty joke-well-said laugh like she’d have expected, but a higher almost screeching laugh, as though he was voicing a witch in an animated movie.

She’d decided to leave but before she could stand he opened his eyes and while he ought to have been looking directly at her, directly into her eyes, she could feel the emptiness of his stare, that no one was looking at her even as he clearly was. She began to wonder how quickly she could get out of there, would he stop her, was this how she’d be raped, before the flush of adrenaline rushing through her body could force her legs to stand he began to speak.

All tone was gone, all inflection, he was like a robot, Siri had more personality than this guy. It was like he’d taken a bunch of sleeping pills or like she’d just woken him up and he wasn’t quite awake.

“Your path leads behind the curtain. None will assist you, and you will ask. You won’t come back. There is a woman and you will have to choose.”

At that his eyes closed and his eyebrows came together, his fingers coming up to massage the crinkle they made. When he opened his eyes again he was seeing her. She could feel that he was once again there in the room and rather than this having a calming effect on her now frayed nerves it made tears spring to her eyes and her legs shake with the exhaustion of having run several miles. His eyes became concerned and he ran his hand through his hair before spreading out both hands in a shrugging here’s-your-pizza sort of way.

“Look, I know people are sometimes shocked by what I say, but I have to be clear, I have no idea what was said. This is a private consultation, just you and whatever you heard. People sometimes have follow-up questions and I have to warn you, I can try to help but I’m more lost than you, you at least know why you really came in and that’s usually a clue in whatever you’re told. But I’m getting the feeling that you’re really scared, so if you want to take a minute, I can make us some tea?”

She wanted to nod, she needed to nod, but she still felt frozen. She didn’t realize she was partially raised up out of her seat. No wonder she felt like she’d been running, she was supporting all her weight on bent legs, if this were a date and he went to scoot out her chair she’d still be in the same position, hovering above it, a wax figure of herself. She unclawed her hands from the armrests, stood the remainder of the way, heard the cracking of her knees and reached for her cash, not intending to throw it down but unable to stop herself, her body tense and not responding to her commands.

“No, no thank you,” she heard herself say as she grabbed her purse, and headed stiffly towards the door.

It wasn’t the words she needed help understanding, not that she’d understood them, they made no sense at all, it was the experience she needed explained. What had just happened in there? How had she gone from sitting with a guy at a table to sitting alone as he spoke to her?

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here