Dreamt someone trying to be bitchy, tracked me down to one of my public camping spots and handed me an angel themed tarot deck. While they stood there gloating about the levels of horror and cognitive dissonance I was sure to be experiencing, I thumbed through the cards passively. The box said it was a tarot deck, but the deck didn’t have the right heft.
Their triumphant laughter slipped into awkward and nervous chuckling. Bystanders were looking at them oddly. After all, who laughs evilly in public anymore? I started counting cards.
“So… what’s the reaction you expected out of me? Am I supposed to freak out and throw the cards in your face because they’re pictures of angels? Did you miss my lecture about cards being only paper and ink? They’re not even well printed, I can see the halftone dots at a normal viewing range. If I hold them close, the image breaks apart like I’m looking at a Seurat painting. The card stock itself is okay. Looks like they can handle my normal abuse of tarot cards. But there’s something a little off about them and it is nothing paranormal.”
“I know you don’t like angels!”, was all they could say.
“So your idea of a good time is to track down someone you don’t like and intentionally throw something in their face meant to cause a fear reaction and a panic attack? That’s what you call a good day? Making someone shit their pants in public because you think it’s funny? So you’re going to show me how stupid it is to have a dislike of angels by using them to embarrass me? Are you fucking shitting me?” The bystanders, always loving a good drama, tsked behind the asshole’s back and not so quietly spoke amongst themselves about how evil it was to use angels to hurt people. Their judging of the instigator was delicious.
“I’m more offended you used a Doreen Virtue deck for this bullshit, than the bullshit itself. There has got to be some kind of cosmic irony going on, when you use the deck of someone that intentionally left out all the so-called scary cards, to try and scare someone. Or did you think I was so phobic of anything angelic that the mere sight of a feathered teddy bear would fuck me up? Bitch, I have seen angels that would give Giger nightmares. I have been kissed by a thousand sharp toothed mouths. I have seen some faceless shit, angels with more eyes than stars in the sky, and have watched as an angel passed overhead and the land died because of it. You insignificant fuck.”
I slammed the reassembled deck on the table and slid it towards them. “You wanted to get a reaction out of me, grats, shithead. You got one. But it is not fear. It is disgust at you for your ignorance and your attempted bullying. I do not fear angels. I think I have made that quite clear. Not the pretty ones, not the horrific ones, not the ones that can be represented, not the ones that are indescribable. I. Do. Not. Fear. Angels. I’m just fucking tired of their bullshit as well, that’s all. So take your Trolling Deck of a Thousand Denials, and get the fuck out of here.”
The instigator muttered something about the deck being a gift before turning and leaving the coffeeshop. The deck remained on the far end of the table as I returned back to my work. I heard it being picked up. One of the bystanders was going through it. “I collect angel themed stuff. May I buy this off of you?”
“Hell, you can have it. It is useless to me.”
“Because it is about angels?”
“Because it is an incomplete tarot deck. Seventy cards. A tarot deck should have seventy-eight. It is missing the Hanged Man, Death, Devil, Tower, Judgement, 5 of Cups, 3 of Swords, 9 of Swords, 10 of Swords, and 5 of Disks. Cards that make some folk uneasy to see because it implies they had a hand in the mess. And you know how some people don’t like to be told stuff like that.”
They nodded. “Yea, I know a few like that myself. Can’t accept that they are their own worst enemy. So… how much? I want to be fair. Angels are watching, you know.”
I looked up at them. Their face was full of mirth. I relaxed and laughed with them. “Well, technically, you found it. I did not accept it, and the bastard denied ownership. So it belongs to whoever claims it first, which would be you. But, since angels are watching, and you want to be fair in your accounting, how about you buy me a coffee and we’ll call it even.”
Coffee was acquired, and here the dream ends.
I just realized that the Trolling Deck of a Thousand Denials angel tarot deck in last night’s dream had 70 cards, but I identified 10 missing cards. I’m going to chalk this up to two things:
- Dream logic.
- The bastard was really annoying the hell out of me, so I could easily have included the title card and publisher’s card in the count and not noticed.
(68 tarot cards + 2 extra cards = 70 cards total.)
Either way, it was still very stupid of them to try and use a Doreen Virtue deck to scare me. The day is almost done and I am still offended by the choice of weapons.