Sounding The Current: Chapter 12 – Bloom

Lisa had planned on going straight home after work as part of her new “living moderately” initiative. The use of the Sun card’s theme during the Moon card’s ordeal taught Lisa that she could pull the theme of the card into her life. So she used the Temperance card to tap into some much needed adult moderation. As her rideshare pulled into the drop off area for the club, she realized that her mistake was depending on the card to determine how far to take that power instead of making the decision and drawing the boundary for herself.

How ironic then, Lisa thought, that the card that she was depending on to straighten out her life would smother it instead.

Exiting the car, she tipped the driver just one dollar as she paid for the trip in the app, but gave the driver five dollars in cash with a silent nod of thanks. The driver waved and pulled away as soon as she closed the door. Lisa stood in line to enter the club, which must not have been very busy as the only delay was the bouncers diligently checking IDs and bags as patrons came in.

Most of the patrons did not recognize her which was a relief. She did not want any surprises tonight. However, she did not recognize most of the patrons which was a let-down. She was still hoping to have some type of fun. She found an empty seat at the bar and bought the nightly beer special to have an excuse to sit in it for a while.

The club was neither busy nor popular enough at nine in the evening to warrant dressing up in something special and/or spectacular. Most of the other clubgoers were in street clothes or in relaxed work clothes as Lisa was. Very few people were on the dance floor. Most of the tables, booths, and stools were filled. This was a time to unwind from the work day before surrendering to their nighttime activities of choice.

Lisa took a sip of her beer and regretted not paying attention to the label. A popular beer among the bro-set, the bitterness identified the brew as extremely high in hops. She put the barely touched glass back on the bar and pushed it away from her prompting the bartender to ask if she was okay.

“Yea, it’s just that the beer is way too bitter for me. Lemme order something that doesn’t require a desire to suffer in order to enjoy, please.”

The bartender laughed and took the glass. She brought back something that she promised was a beer, but smelled of raspberries. “No charge, a fair swap since you didn’t really drink any of the other one. But, you have to tell me your opinion of it. It’s something new here but a lot of people avoid it when I tell them the name first.

“That’s fair.” Lisa’s response sounded so odd to her ears. How many times in her life had she complained that something was not fair, and here she is, declaring that something is. The words sounded odd, but they also tasted delicious. It felt nice.

Lisa immediately took a sip. Raspberries dominated the flavor along with something like apples. The fizz hid the alcohol at first, but once it made itself known, the sweet flavor balanced the alcohol’s bite. “Wow! This good!”

“That’s a lambic. For all the dudebros that swear they’re into craft beer, they turn their nose up at this because it’s fruity and low alcohol content. But it’s a nice way to unwind without losing your mind, if you know what I mean.”

Lisa thought of the Temperance card again. “Yea, I know exactly what you mean. I appreciate the introduction.” She toasted the bartender and actually relaxed for the first time since entering the bar.

Now comfortable, Lisa turned her attention back to the other patrons in the slowly filling club. The dance floor was empty save for one sole person slowly dancing with their memories. Some folks were on their phones. Some folks were on their next drink. But off in the corner, Lisa saw someone laying what look like cards out in patterns on the table of a private booth. The cards looked a lot like cards she had seen Rebecca with.

Was there another tarot reader in town? Why wouldn’t there be. Was there a card reader union? Rebecca sometimes talked about other readers but never mentioned any by name. However, Rebecca also kept her personal details to herself as well, so maybe there is a whole subculture in town! There certainly are several cliques and groups online.

“Excuse me, Bartender?” The bartender came over to Lisa when she gestured. “Do you think that card reader…”

“Ugh. She’s back? Thanks for letting me know. I’ll take care of this.”

Before Lisa could say anything more, the bartender gestured to a bouncer who moved quickly to the table. Lisa didn’t hear the conversation at that far table but the body language was obvious. The card reader had to leave. Now.

The card reader gestured to the unoccupied chairs surrounding them. The bouncer gestured towards the door. The card reader crossed their arms and pushed themselves into the chair. The bouncer pointed towards the door. The card reader thumped the table. Other bouncers swiftly scooped up the card reader, their cards, and their bag and carried all outside with silently coordinated determination.

After the group exited the side doors, Lisa turned to the bartender. “I, um, obviously missed something. Card readers are not allowed?”

“Oh, so you didn’t know who you pointed at? The boss really doesn’t like them and doesn’t permit card divination in the club without permission. I don’t know of anyone who has successfully gotten permission. As far as her, she tries to claim that her tarot cards are a form of religious worship, but the only thing I know her to worship is money. She’s been busted a few times by us and by the police for running con games.”

Lisa was reminded of her initial reasons for wanting to learn how to read tarot. “Um, what kind of con games?”

The bartender looked Lisa over. “Either you’re playing at being naive or you really don’t know. Okay, I’ll play. If you were to go over there and buy a reading, she’ll tell you at first that your life is perfect and getting better, but then she’ll say there’s something terrible about to happen and that she’ll make it all go away by doing some voodoo ritual or some thing. Except the ritual costs money, and she’s not doing anything but setting you up to pay her more money for another ritual because of course you’re cursed or something like that.”

Lisa stared at her beer for a few seconds as she listened to the bartender lay out her original plans for tarot reading. Even though she never came close to putting that plan in action and hasn’t even finished learning tarot in the first place, she felt exposed and ashamed. “Oh. If that’s what card readers do, then no wonder no one has gotten permission.”

The bartender leaned in. “Do you read cards? Checking out your competition?”

“Ah! No!” Lisa shook her hands to ward off the accusation. “I had seen someone else read cards elsewhere and I was curious.”

The bartender stood up and sized Lisa up. “Okay. It’s none of my business, but you look like someone who hasn’t gotten bit yet. Card reading, tarot in particular, is bullshit. They’re just paper and ink in the hands of someone who can tell a good story, someone who got game. They can’t foretell when I’m about to fart, much less affect your life. If you want to be told a story, talk to a card reader. If you want to have something in life, work like the rest of us adults.”

The bartender was called away by other money-burdened patrons wanting simple drinks with elaborate titles. Lisa was left alone at the bar as she held her beer glass with both hands. It wasn’t even a full week since Rebecca gave Lisa the handwritten deck. It was a little over six months since Lisa first saw Rebecca reading tarot cards. Lisa realized she until tonight, she had not been in the same room with any other active card reader.

The bartender was so sure of himself, Lisa thought. There was no room in his world for black robe judges walking his dreams and feeling the light of the sun in the middle of the night and having the spirit of the very thing he swears doesn’t exist declare that they were going to install themselves into his life. Lisa would have shared the same sentiment exactly seven days ago.

But now, she has seen a different life and a different way. Her reflection came to an end when she realized she didn’t know what card followed the Temperance card and what themes could now be playing out in front of her to illustrate that card. She turned around again and scanned the crowding floor of the club.

Across the dance floor she saw the assembling band of fellow club goers that she would usually be waiting for. She was surprised that they had not seen her yet, but realized that she would usually be the one to get the table, not the one to wait at the bar. Lisa thought about finishing her drink to join them, but remembered again that she didn’t know what was the next tarot card. As much as she wanted to take a break from all the seriousness, she wanted to finish the cycle more.

Lisa finished the beer and called the bartender over. Giving him the second chip from her entrance fee, she thanked him for his honesty and his opinion. The bartender smiled with pride at having saved another possible victim from the ancient scam that is tarot cards. Lisa took the widest route possible to the door and left the club.

As Lisa walked to the rideshare pickup point, a woman waved her to stop and talk to her. They weren’t far from the door, still in full light from the street, and within shouting distance of the taxies and rideshare, so Lisa stopped to chat.

“I saw you looking at me. I know you didn’t mean to get me kicked out of the club. The look on your face when the bouncers came told me that. Here’s your chance to get your question answered.”

The woman didn’t look like a scammer, Lisa thought. Several layers of lace built up her skirt, and something like crushed velvet was worn under a denim jacket. She had lots of patches with weird symbols sewn onto the jacket, but for all Lisa knew, they could be for indie bands.

“Um. Well. I was just wondering about your cards.” Lisa remembered the bartender’s words and chose not to tell the truth of her curiosity. “I mean, like, can they really tell things about a person?”

The card reader smiled very broadly and very warmly and very graciously. Lisa wondered if this was what it was like to be on the receiving end of a moocher. (Or would that be giving, she also thought.) “My dear, my cards can tell so much about a person, past, present, and future. Let’s go someplace where we can speak comfortably.”

Lisa looked around for a bench to sit on. The city’s insistence to drive the homeless away from profitable downtown meant that there were no benches or even enough of a concrete planter to lean against in the area anymore. When she turned back to the card reader to complain, she caught her breath and tried not to shout.

Behind the card reader was a black robed figure with a featureless mask. The judge looked down at the card reader, back to Lisa, then down at the card reader again.

The card reader interpreted Lisa’s sudden silence as complacency. “Oh, not here, we have so much to talk about that there is certainly no place to have that conversation here. However, I’m sure you are curious about how tarot works, so I’ll tell you what, I’ll pull a card from my deck, right now, for a quick reading.”

It was then that Lisa noticed that the card reader had a deck in her hand the entire time they had been standing out there. The bedecked woman held the deck in her hands as if praying over it, then spreading the cards slightly to pick a card seemingly at random. She turned the chosen card over and appeared surprised to see it.

“Ah! The three of cups! How fitting for someone that was just in a club, don’t you think? How about we find someplace to sit down and talk this over further.”

The judge turned their head as if looking at the deck then lifted their head to look back at Lisa. An idea settled into her mind.

“Wait. Let me pull a card. How do I know if you didn’t already have the cards stacked in a particular order and you picked the card to pull by cold reading me?”

To Lisa’s surprise, the card reader nodded and shuffled the deck on her leg several times. The deck was cut twice and then shuffled several more times. The card reader held the deck out to Lisa, face down. “Please, be my guest.”

Lisa said nothing but glanced at the judge over the card reader’s shoulder. The judge nodded. She shuffled up the order of the deck a few more times until she saw the card reader’s eye twitch. Then she knew she had messed up the order beyond what the card reader could guess. Lisa took the top card and held it up to face the card reader. “Well, what does this card mean?”

The card reader blanched. The woman was not expecting to see whatever it was that Lisa was holding up to face her. “What did you do to my deck? Where were you hiding that? You think this is a joke! You sicced the bouncers on me on purpose! Think you’re going to get in on my turf?!” The card reader slapped the single card out of Lisa’s hands. It fluttered to the ground as she snatched her deck out of Lisa’s other hand.

“As you gave, receive!” The clearly unsettled woman turned and ran to the nearest rideshare driver. Without waiting for acknowledgement, she entered the car as she whispered a destination to the driver who nodded and turned over the engine. The car pulled away as Lisa remained standing stunned on the sidewalk.

As the taillights turned out of sight, Lisa looked at the blank-faced judge that was still standing nearby. The judge turned their head as if to look down at the fallen card. Lisa followed the motion.

The tarot card was laying face up on the ground. A skeleton with a scythe was making a mowing motion over the ground. Bloodless body parts from different men, women, and children littered the ground around the center figure. The roughly written title of the card is “Death”.

“Whoa. Shit. Wait. Yea, that’s right. Death is a tarot card. But why did she freak the fuck out to see it? If she’s a professional card reader, then it would not have been a surprise, right?” Lisa looked up at the judge who also lifted their head to face Lisa. “Unless, she had stacked the deck so the Death card wasn’t in it. But then, either she grabbed the wrong deck or…”

Lisa looked back down at the grounded card. A cheerful fellow was about to blithely walk off a cliff. A small dog jumped at his feet as if to warn him. The professionally designed title of the card was “The Fool”.

“Okay. That’s fucking creepy. I could have sworn that…” She looked up at the judge. “Not here, dude. I’m in public. Lemme get home and then we’ll talk.” The judge nodded, turned away from all light sources, and walked into the darkness. Lisa nodded, turned towards the next available rideshare, and asked to be taken to her apartment’s parking structure.

Once home, Lisa plunked her purse on the coffee table and filled a mug with water. She spent the next two minutes with the mug turning in the microwave and her back to the tarot cards. Lisa had realized that the tarot cycle was now able to continue regardless of whether or not she knew what card was next, and Lisa was struggling to remember what card came before Temperance in a normal list.

She wasn’t too prideful to look up the order of the majors on her phone. She was too terrified to confirm that the next card in her version of the tarot cycle was Death. Too terrified to allow herself to remember reading once upon a blog post that the Death card could signify actual death. Too terrified to consider that maybe the fake card reader might not have been fake after all and she was cursed now. Too prideful to admit any of that to herself.

The tea bag was placed in the mug and the mug was placed on the counter. Lisa stalled further by waiting for the blank face judge’s apparition to make itself visible. Long after it was time to remove the tea bag and just as the mug started to cool, Lisa abandoned the mug and sat at the table with the tarot cards.

Moving the Temperance card to the bottom of the deck uncovered the Death card. Lisa raised an eyebrow as the card that now faced her did not have the same brutality as the Death card that fell to the sidewalk. The background of white and black checkered diamonds confused her sight for a moment until she learned to read around the lines. A horned skeleton was seen in motion moving to the viewer’s left with their hands held up as if in consternation.

Lisa was used to seeing something monstrous in every card by this point, so it was no surprise to see the muzzle of the skull was elongated or that the skull had four short horns. What did surprise her was the thin ribbon of cloth that wound around the figure’s arms and behind their back as a mark of fashion, and the layered, embroidered skirt that was fluffed around the figure’s legs further adding to the illusion of motion.

But what finally softened Lisa’s terror was the wand that was falling into the figure’s hand. From the tip of that wand grew five very peculiar flowers. The vigorously crimson red of their petals were the only color on the card. The flowers struck Lisa as being aggressively present and defiantly alive, as if life itself was Death’s true power.

The keyword card said that the Death card was about “endings, beginnings, and transformation”, which Lisa felt was a soft cop-out after reading so many scary things about the card online. The torn list of catchphrases held a phrase that made Lisa laugh. “Can’t live without it.” That explains the flowers, she thought.

Her laughter unlocked her anxiety, and she allowed herself to acknowledge her fears by crying silently. Finally, she wiped her face and when she looked up, the blank face judge was seated beside her. “There, you are. Took your ass long enough. Okay. Tarot, capital T, what is it about the Death card that I need to know?”

The judge did not answer but turned to the space on the other side of the table. Lisa followed the gesture and was surprised not only to see a chair that she did not have, but to see a small child seated in that chair. The girl held a large teddy bear to her chest as if she was hiding behind it. She waved a little wave at Lisa before returning to clutch the bear with both hands. “Hi.”

Lisa turned back to the judge with every intent to bitch at the figure, but the chair was empty. Slowly, she turned back to the girl, expecting the apparition to be absent as well. The girl was still in the chair but she was looking down at the table. Lisa recognized the child’s facial expression. The girl was expecting to be yelled at for existing and told to go away. Hallucination or not, Lisa wasn’t going to do that to her.

“Hi.” The girl looked up. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if there’s supposed to be anything special I’m supposed to do or anything. What’s your name?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t have a name.” The words were spoken into the bear and almost completely muffled.

“Okay.” Lisa nodded. “I’m sorry, this is very new to me and I’m a little afraid right now. Are you afraid?”

The girl looked up and Lisa’s terror started to return upon sight of the girl’s empty eye sockets. “Sometimes. But you’re not yelling so I’m not afraid right now.”

“Good.” Lisa was barely able to whisper a response. She pulled her sight away from the girl’s face to look at the table. The Death card remained where she had laid it. She remembered what she had asked the blank face judge. “So, um, if this is rude, I’m sorry, but do you have something to do with…” Lisa couldn’t bring herself to say the card’s name so she raised it instead and showed the face to the girl. “With this card?”

“Yea!” The girl was suddenly very happy. “That’s my card! Do you like it? A lot of people draw it very scary and with pointy things to make people hurt and make people think that I’m very scary and very mean but I’m not like that and I don’t want people to be hurting and the lady that drew that card gave me a dress and FLOWERS! I like flowers. I like flowers on the plant they grew from and flowers in a jar and if I could I would draw flowers every day but I can’t draw so…” The girl became sad. “So I wait for people to give me flowers but not many do.”

Lisa sat stunned at the sudden show of life and vigor from the girl even as the child said that the Death card was her card. She turned the card back to stare at the image for a bit before turning to stare at the child. The girl looked human enough. Looked young enough to be in first grade. But she also looked far too thin to be healthy, had no hue of color to her whatsoever, and then there’s the complete lack of eyes to deal with. This is Death?

“Oh. Well.” Lisa quickly looked away from the greedy darkness on the girl’s face and searched for words to say. “I like flowers, too. But I can’t always buy the flowers I like because they cost a lot of money.” Just what does someone say to the personification of Death? “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t understand why you are here.”

The child pulled her teddy bear in front of her face to conspicuously hide behind it. “Do you want me to go away? If you do, you don’t have to yell. Just tell me. A lot of people that can see me are afraid of me. I know you’re afraid of me, too, but please believe me. I’m not mean. I don’t want anyone to hurt or feel sad. But I don’t know how to make people feel better the way they say they want to feel better.”

Though the apparition was talking about dying, Lisa heard echoes of her own childhood words as she apologized then for the sin of existing, the sin of being different than what the family wanted her to be, and the sin of just not going away and letting her family be happy in the way they wanted to be happy.

“I understand.” Lisa’s unbeckoned tears watered her voice. “I do. I hope I’m not scaring you. It’s just, this is so very fu…. uh… different from what I do know. I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t want to hurt you or make you sad, either. I asked that judge a question about you, and the judge made you appear so I would get the answer. And I think I understand the answer, but I can’t put it into words right now.”

Lisa looked at the card and how vibrant the flowers were colored. She thought to break the chilling silence with a question all kids love to answer. “What’s your favorite flower?”

The girl raised her eye sockets over the teddy bear. Lisa forced herself to look at her as if all was normal. “My favorite? ALL OF THEM! I like the red ones and the yellow ones and the white ones and the purple ones that have the same color as the sky when the Moon is out walking and the orange ones that look like the Sun when she is getting up for the day and…”

Lisa did not interrupt the girl describing as many flowers as she could find words to describe. Nor did she notice how cold the apartment had become and how chilled she was herself. Even when her teeth started chattering and the shivers shook her, Lisa remained politely still and quiet to listen to the girl.

“… and there’s this teeny tiny little flower that is no bigger than a drop of water and it’s one of the bestest flowers in the world and…” The girl stopped talking and stared at Lisa. “You should go now.”

Lisa, utterly entranced and delighted by the girl’s enthusiasm for flowers, was barely able to ask why.

“Because you’re not me. Do you know why I like flowers? Flowers wilt and die. Like people. But flowers know they won’t live forever and bloom as bestest as they can bloom while they can. People are always trying not to die even when there is no other thing they can do. And that makes them sad. When flowers wilt, they know their job is done and they can rest. When people die, they are angry with me, even though people are like flowers only a lot louder and a lot more stinky.”

“But you know what comes after the flowers, lady? Seeds! Seeds that make new plants that make new flowers. You’re not ready to make seeds in your life yet, lady. You’re not ready to let some part of you wilt and die. You should go now. Thank you for talking to me. Not many people do. But you should go now. I like you better as a person and not as a flower.”

Lisa’s thoughts were warming up and the terror that grew from her understanding of the girl’s words was thawing out the rest of her, but not very fast. The girl watched Lisa struggle to do anything more than shiver in wracks and jerks. “I know what to do. If you ever want to talk to me about flowers again, you can! Thank you, lady! Bye bye, lady!”

The eyeless child reached over the table and picked up the Death card. “Why do so many people want me to have horns?! If they gave me a flower crown it would be nice to hold the flowers up but no one does!” Laughing, she turned the card over. A dark pall fell over the room, covering everything in thick and viscous shadows.

Lisa’s eyes rolled up as she fainted and fell out of the chair.

“Ow.” Lisa’s head hurt. Her muscles hurt. Her bones hurt. Her everything hurt as if she had been through a vigorous physical challenge and lost. She turned over and hit her shoulder against a chair leg even as her shin hit a table leg. “OW! FUCK!”

She pulled herself away from the table and crawled to the couch. “WHAT EVEN THE FUCK!” The apartment was chilly but Lisa was shivering as if she had been in a freezer for the past several hours. She pulled herself up, sat on the couch, and looked around. The lights were still on. The tea mug was still on the counter where she had abandoned it. Her purse was still on the coffee table and she was still dressed.

As her thoughts resuming moving, she remembered the apparition of the child. She looked at the table to see the two chairs placed as they should be and none other. “I gotta know, dammit.” Lisa forced herself to stand despite the terror returning and moved closer to the table.

The top card of the decorated deck was turned face down and slightly askew over the deck. Just as the eyeless girl had placed it when she turned it over. The holographic treatment of the card back hurt Lisa’s eyes. Though she’d had the deck for nearly a week, this was the first time that she noticed that in the middle of the card back was a design that resembled a six-petal daisy.

She sat down at the table without touching the cards. She shivered again in memory of the chill that the girl brought with her. “Can’t live without it. Heh.” Lisa picked up the card and turned it face up. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. We can talk about flowers anytime.”

Lisa stood and went to the kitchen. She threw away the oversteeped tea bag and poured out the wine dark contents of the mug. She turned off all the lights and double checked the front door locks out of habit before leaving to go to bed. As she stripped before burrowing under the covers, she made a mental note to herself to buy some cheap flowers in the morning to liven up the space.

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