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Daily wordcount: 8,142 (1,942)
Total wordcount: 49,640 (43,440)
On/off target: +1,297 (-4,903)
Yeah... so, if the title is confusing, it's because I've decided to bend the rules to meet my goal. I just want to cross off my 50k words in November goal in my goal book, and I did technically write some last year, and since it's last year's goal and with all the other goals it's cumulative, I figure using words I wrote in a different November is fair game. And it isn't making the story (which I now hate and don't want to spend time on)any less cohesive at this point.
I don't like writing long things. I like drabbles, little short snippets. I'd be fine writing 50k words in November if they were a series of unrelated, 1,667 word short stories. Maybe some would be double-length, maybe some would only be 800 words. If I ever do it again (and I won't!), I think that would be the way I would do it. Unless I had some story already mapped out and planned.
400 words tomorrow for the victory of one less page in my goal book next year! Whoooo-hoooo! Next up, photos blogged. Look forward to some super-random photos this month!
If I had managed to forget how demon-like Steve was because of his cooking and easy-going movie watching, it all came back. His face was twisted in a mask of rage and he flew at me, but stopped as he hit the circle under the flooring. He snarled at me and kept trying to lunge, but couldn't get past it.
"How?" He shrieked. "What did you do?"
"Honestly," I said, hoping the shaking in my voice wasn't too noticeable. "I don't really know. Even faced with a livid demon, as I am, I'm not sure I completely believe. How strange is that?"
His face softened, and he pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"Look, I don't know what over people have told you, but we were getting along just fine. Why would you want to do this to me? I was doing everything for you, you can't say you haven't enjoyed me doing the cooking and cleaning." His tone had turned wheedling, and I had a prickle down my spine as I recognized it.
"I do appreciate it, but you're a demon," I said. "I can't, by your own nature, trust you. And you even lied about it. Making up that cockamamie story."
"Because I knew how you'd react! You're being super-judgmental right now." He huffed. "Can't you open you mind for just a second? Maybe think outside of your narrow preconceptions?"
"Did you kill Melody and Jess?" I asked, staring his straight in the eye. He didn't flinch. But neither did he answer my question.
"I wasn't ever going to hurt you," he said, trying, I thought to sound like he was the reasonable one. Just like he who shall not be named used to do to me way back one. I knew how to spot a manipulator when I saw one. It had taken me a long time to get out of that relationship, and I did still feel some guilt, but I could usually squash it. It wasn't my responsibility, or my fault, and I was never going to be played again.
"That, one, doesn't answer the question, and two, implies that you now will," I said.
"Look, I had to kill them. It was what I was summoned for, yes, and I can't not do it. And no, if you let me go, I won't hurt you. I like you! We're friends! I like watching movies and cooking and chatting. Why would I want to endanger that?" He was alternating between sounding pleading and stern, and it was unsettling. As, I am sure, it was meant to. If anything in the world was a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder, it would be a demon.
"Right, so what were you trying to do earlier?" I asked, casually pulling the pendant out from under my shirt. I tried, but couldn't hide the shaking of my hands. I don't think he noticed, though, as his eyes focused on the pendant and I saw... something I couldn't pinpoint flicker in his eyes.
"Nothing, what do you mean?" But he said to too quickly, and I could tell by the way his eyes darted back and forth that he was nervous.
"No, there was something, you're lying to me. Again. None of this is making me want to trust you," I warned. Not that there was a snowball's chance in, well, hell that I was going to trust him, anyway, but I figured if he could lie to me, I could lie to him.
"Well, if I tell you the truth, you really won't trust me," he said grudgingly. "I was lying for your own benefit."
"Oh really? I think it's more like you're lying for yours," I snapped. I was not taking kindly to the patronizing tone, as if he could pull the wool over my eyes so easily.
"Now, Becca, listen to me, it will be fine, just drop this silly circle business and we can get back to watching the movie, and it will be like none of this ever happened," he said, and something about the combination of the tone of voice and the use of my name about sent me over the edge.
"No, I will not listen to you, you're lying to me, and I can't trust you. That's all there is too it. For what it's worth, though, I am sorry. And I know this is going to haunt me, perhaps quite literally, for the rest of my life. I'll always wonder if you'll find your way back to kill me, so there's that, you can have that as your revenge."
And with that, I spoke the words I had practiced, and there was a thunderclap and a flash, and he was gone. The strange, glowing aura in the room subsided, and all of the flames extinguished. I reached over to turn off the gas burner before too much unlit gas filled up the room, then sat down, shaking. Too bad I hadn't made the tea first, I could really do with a cup right now to calm my nerves! Eventually, the worst of the shaking stopped and I was able to make the cup of tea, laced with a considerable slug of brandy. I sat on the sofa, suddenly very unsure what to do with myself. It hadn't been that long, but the problem with work and then Steve had wholly consumed my life, and the loss of that focus left a void.
I needed a new problem - or better yet, a fun project - to focus on. Tomorrow. If any of my muscles would even move. Now that all the adrenaline had left my body, I started to feel every ache and pain the redoing flooring in a single day will do to you. And, hey, now I had a demon circle permanently in my living room. Great! I wondered if I could get more or less money for that when I went to sell it? I also wondered if there was some way to put up a circle to protect me when I slept. Or just every day. All the time. Was I really going to live the rest of my life this paranoid? Maybe. Now I was suddenly hoping I'd wake up crazy and have this all have been a hallucination. That would be easier. Sort of.
Despite the stress of the whole demon may come back from hell and kill me in my sleep situation, I fell into a deep sleep pretty quickly. Being exhausted will do that to you, apparently. My dreams, however, were... interesting. And a little confusing. I know how they say you can usually correlate the things that show up in your dreams to events in your life, though they may not seem directly correlated. So I suppose, in my dream, being hunted by an army of small mushroom people is probably a correlation to my feelings of helplessness of being possibly tracked down and killed by a demon, but although I was running from the mushroom people, I didn't think they were actually out to kill me. I didn't feel threatened, and if this was my subconscious's way of trying to tell me I shouldn't fear a demon, my subconscious and I needed to have a little sit-down chat because it was being a fucking idiot. I most definitely had something to fear from Steve, or whatever his name was.
I woke the next morning not terribly well rested and decided to make another trip out to see the occult ladies. I'd regained some faith in the first shop I visited, since that pendant really did seem to have worked. And of course I had to visit the second shop, just to let her know it had worked and to thank her for the help with the pronunciation. And maybe to buy something, because I thought it would be a good way to pay her back. Just a candle or some incense or anything.
I was feeling pretty good about my decision, until I got up. My body didn't hurt the way I expected it to, what with all the manual labor and not being used to it, but it felt... off. Ungainly. And when I swung my legs over the side of the bed they hit the floor, instead of dangling there. So either my bed had gotten shorter, or I had gotten taller. Neither of which seemed like an option. I crept the bathroom and ... was not prepared for what I saw in the mirror, as it was not my face. This, I thought, still has to be a dream. Not a bad dream, considering the face I saw was prettier than my own, and... yup, the boobs on this body were bigger and perkier, but still an unsettling dream. A lot of us have probably wished we could wake up with something about us 'fixed' or changed, but do we ever stop to consider just how unsettling that would be? Very, I am here to tell you! Very unsettling indeed. I decided to give sleep another chance, and crawled back into bed, hopefully to wake up in my own body. Though if this time I'd woken in my house but not in my body, next time would I wake up in my body but not in my house?
I didn't get a chance to find out, because as soon as my head hit the pillow, the phone on the night stand began buzzing. I snatched it up and answered it in a surprisingly low and husky voice.
"Hello?"
"Anna, darling, you didn't forget about today, did you? You sound like you're still asleep. We have to be at the boutique by 11 am!" The voice on the other end of the line was droll and upper class sounding, and if the name on the display was anything to go by, someone named Marge.
"I'm not feeling well," I said, and thought about faking a cough but didn't think I could manage it.
"You absolutely cannot - and I mean absolutely cannot - flake on me. You know how delicate I've been since Steve has been gone, I haven't slept right, and I've barely eaten! This is the one thing I've been looking forward to. You have to come. You have to!"
I rolled over and looked at the clock. Nine in the morning. Plenty of time to get... where was I going? And would I be able to fake being... Anna? This was too much on no coffee, my brain was not functioning. I would have to give it a try, any try to fake my way through it. I mumbled an acceptance into the phone, and flopped back down on the bed. And as I did so, I felt myself falling, and falling, and falling... and then, my mind went blank. And it was like I was a completely new character in a completely different story, maybe one that was started the previous year in a fit of inspiration, words scribbled in one November that should rightfully count towards this one...
Is it really cheating? It would be if I was trying to claim rampant victory over NaNoWriMo, which I'm not. Been there, done that, sometimes more successfully than others. But this year, this year I just want to cross that goal off my bloody to-do list, and it's fine if I bend the rules a little. And as such, she suddenly found herself awake in a new body, a new place, with no memories of Steve or Jess or Melody, and feeling lie she'd always been herself...
The week began, as it tends to do, on a Monday. Another crummy Monday where Amanda had to drag herself out of bed and to work. Not that she hated her job - she’d had worse - but nor did she love it so much she was enthusiastic about getting out of bed. But then, she couldn’t imagine any job where she would be enthusiastic about getting out of bed, because sleeping was one of the very few activities she truly excelled at. It was one of the only things she’d stuck with her whole life, unlike the other hobbies that had come and gone. And that, she remembered through the slight haze of a hangover, had been the focus of last night’s wine-fueled YouTube binge, hadn’t it? What promises had she made to herself?
Oh, right. She was going to start eating healthy and exercising, as well as become more environmentally friendly and take up a dozen hobbies including YouTube. And become incredibly famous and be able to quit her job and sleep in every day and make videos into the wee hours of the night. Hey, if you’re going to dream, dream big, right? People did become rich and famous on YouTube, but her lack of ability to stick to anything would probably mean she’d get two crummy videos in and give up. And undoubtedly the inevitable mean comments would get to her. And that would be true of most things she’d want to try, because tastes vary and people are mean.
She sighed and pushed the warm, comfy covers off herself and shuffled to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day. Would today be the day she tried out one of those amazing beauty tutorials she kept watching? No, no it would not. She’d procrastinated getting up so long she only had fifteen minutes to get herself put together and out the door, and of course she had no idea what she wanted to wear. That was another thing she promised herself she’d address, her lack of planning. Preferably with a fabulously decorated bullet journal, as soon as she developed any artistic skills. And learned pretty handwriting. And could actually stick to a plan. But once all those things were in place, then she was going to be more organized!
And if she managed to get on top of things, she would have lunches of leftover gourmet meals she experimented cooking every evening, instead of hastily thrown together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the occasional yogurt and bit of fruit. Not that yogurt and fruit were bad, but hers were never artfully arranged with granola and the latest fad seed. Chia? Or was that last month?
But the only way anything would change would be if she were to make it, and that required some motivation, which was the problem. If she was motivated, she wouldn’t have dozens of unfinished projects and untried crafts and unreached goals. Motivation was the whole problem. It was so much easier to just sit back and watch TV and browse the internet and read books. Though not even that much of the last anymore, it was easier to sit back and be passively entertained by short Facebook videos than to put forth the effort of actually reading.
If she had the energy to put forth effort into anything, she really needed to clean and organize her house, which she had to admit had slipped a bit in the housekeeping department. Again, it was just hard to get motivated to do much of anything. She got home from work and became one with the sofa, and that was it. And that, she admitted to herself, was pathetic. Truly pathetic.
She settled herself in her desk at work, grimacing at the unwashed coffee cup. She’d even gotten slovenly here, and there was no excuse for that. She was stuck at her desk for eight hours a day, and if there wasn’t anyone coming in or calling or any bills to be paid, she sat and stared off into space, or browsed the internet. There was zero reason she couldn’t be productive in that time, at least keep her workspace tidy or optimize the filing system or something. She was in a rut, she realized, and it was bad. Very bad. And the only person that could help herself was… herself.
She’d gotten to this point before, though, where she was fired up about making changes and it never came to anything, because she couldn’t stick to it. It’s easy to dream and fantasize and even to plan, but it’s not so easy to actually get things done. How to you keep yourself going? How do you not burn out? How do you self-motivate?
“How do you get motivated”, she muttered as she typed the phrase into Google. When in doubt, turn to Google! She randomly picked a result and started reading.
“Set goals… I can do that. Make sure the goals interested you. Well, duh. Make your goals public. Not sure what good that would do, I don’t think any of my friends would hold me accountable if I didn’t manage to make my goals, anyway.” She skimmed more sites. “Plot your progress… break goals down into smaller bits… use rewards… I’m not sure the reward thing would work, it’s not like I’d be good at holding myself to it. Don’t do it on your own. I don’t think I can expect any of my friends to help me clean my house, so… that one’s out. Maybe I could get a friend to exercise with me or take a class. Maybe.”
She mentally flipped through her friends, but most of them were either super-flaky and couldn’t be relied upon, or wouldn’t be interested in any of the things she wanted to do. So some of it would have to be on her own. And that would require some self-discipline.
“Start small, focus on one goal,” she read aloud.
“What’s that?” Jamie, the girl from the next office, had come in so quietly that Amanda hadn’t heard her approach.
“Oh my goodness, you gave me a fright!” Amanda feigned a swoon and put a hand over her heart. “Sorry, I was lost in my own head talking to myself.”
“Ah, I do that a lot. It gets awkward when I start arguing with myself, but other than that, I find I can be quite helpful.” Amanda smiled cheerfully. “By the way, I’m here to see if I can steal some coffee supplies. Bossboss over there doesn’t understand delivery times and doesn’t seem to realize that we need to order things before we run out. I’ll bring some back over when our order comes in tomorrow, but if I don’t make a pot of coffee soon, there will be bloodshed, and I don’t want to inconvenience you by having you spend the day answering inane questions from the police. How well did you know them? Was there trouble before? Any idea what this was all over? You know that kind of stuff.”
“You know, I have to admit I don’t know you that well, so you could be a full-on psychopath and I would have no idea,” Amanda admitted. “And you’ve worked there for what, a year?”
“Fourteen months, but who’s counting?” Jamie said cheerily. “We should get lunch sometime and swap horror stories. I’m not sure who has it worse, you with the accountant or me with the lawyer, but it would be fun to try to one-up each other on stories!”
“Oh, you’d win. Tim is… well, there just aren’t any interesting stories. It’s not like he’s helping the mafia with tax evasion or anything. But I’d love to get lunch and hear your stories! Maybe I can live vicariously.”
“Yes! That would be awesome. What’s your number? I’ll text you and we’ll set up a day. Bossboss has me work some lunch meetings so I have to check and see what’s scheduled when, I think I have Wednesday free for sure, but it might be Thursday. I swear, my brain is like swiss cheese these days.”
Amanda gave Jamie her number, and after Jamie had grabbed some coffee supplies and slipped back to her office, she sat back in her chair, dazed. The universe had spoken, and it had definitely confirmed that she needed to make a few changes. A new friend was a great start, though goodness knows if they had anything in common. Jamie was funny, and seemed like she would be great fun to hang around, and maybe she’d pull Amanda out of her shell. In the meantime, she’d take this as a sign and start working on some goals of her own.
She snagged a new notebook from the supply closet and started a list. Think small, she told herself firmly. You know how you overdo things, and then you fail. Make it manageable. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It has to be sustainable. Accomplishing things is good. And you’ve always wanted a bullet journal, and it doesn’t have to be fancy, so let’s start with that.
Twenty minutes later, she’d drawn a monthly calendar and started her first weekly page. It was very simple, with a list of habits to track and daily spots and one box for her weekly goal, which was to get, and keep, the kitchen clean. This was further broken down into subcategories of washing the dishes, cleaning out the refrigerator, freezer, and microwave, organizing the cupboards and drawers, and cleaning the floor. She felt accomplished and happy with her fledgling little bullet journal, and couldn’t wait to get home and clean. She very much doubted the enthusiasm would last the drive home, but it was a good feeling for now. If there was a way she could keep herself motivated, she really needed it now.
“Focus on the goal of cooking,” she told herself. “Cooking in a dirty kitchen sucks. Maybe, if you can keep your kitchen clean, you can do a lot of the experimental cooking, and some day down the line, have a dinner party.”
She was right, by the time she’d gotten home that evening, her motivation had deserted her. The mess of a kitchen that greeted her was depressing, and instead of galvanizing her into action, it depressed her into inactivity. This was the usual way of things, and it was how she’d gotten to where she was now. And that, she scolded herself, is unacceptable. What if she just tackled that pile of paperwork? Old mail and detritus that had accumulated on the corner of the counter. It was unsightly and annoying and, she admitted to herself, a little daunting. It was in that pile because she didn’t really know what to do with it. And that was a habit she needed to break. One pile, she told herself. One pile and then you can zone out in front of the computer or TV. But you have to actually clear up this pile. Not shuffle it somewhere else. Deal with it.
That proved easier said than done, as she knew would be the case. Some items were easy enough, things that could be tossed or quickly filed. Other things proved more tricky. Things she wanted to keep but that had no place. Things she wanted to keep but knew she shouldn’t keep. This took a surprising amount of time, but also, in the end, proved very satisfying. Now, she thought, if only I can remember the feeling of satisfaction, and try to convince myself that it trumps laziness. That in the end, forcing myself to do something will be more worthwhile than the instant gratification of doing nothing. This was an age-old dilemma, and one she was unlikely to find a miracle cure for, but she would try. There were other people who managed to make themselves do things and keep up on chores and activities, why couldn’t that be her?
“Oh, god, I’m turning into a Lifetime movie,” she sighed. “Could be worse, I suppose. I could be turning into a SyFy movie. Or would that be better?”
Her phone beeped and interrupted her musings. A text message from a number she didn’t recognize.
“Lunch Wed?”
“That works!” She typed back, assuming it was Amanda, though she let herself fantasize momentarily that it was some mysterious stranger and she was about to be pulled into a web of intrigue. Though, come to think of it, would it be something she really wanted? Intrigue sounded exhausting. Especially considering the shape she was in. If she was chased by a knife-wielding maniac, she had no chance. Unless it was a smoking, asthmatic maniac with a badly fitting prosthetic leg. Then maybe she’d be able to get away.
Getting in shape was a nebulous goal, one of those they warn you about on those motivational websites. You need something specific and concrete, they say. At the same time, focusing on weight doesn’t work as well and can backfire. So having a fitness goal, while it will probably make you lose weight, will also get you in better cardiovascular health and get you better muscle tone. So what would be a good goal? Small steps, she reminded herself, don’t put “compete in an ironman competition” as your first goal. Though that would probably never be a realistic goal of hers, fitness had never been something that was that important, and she couldn’t imagine devoting that much time to working out, or putting her body through that much trauma. But being able to escape the hypothetical knife-wielding maniac, provided he was not an Olympic caliber sprinter, seemed a reasonable enough goal.
Run a mile, she decided. One mile, jogged, without stopping. 20 or so minutes of plodding along. This seemed like a doable thing.
I picked a bad day to stop drinking. Some would argue there's never a good day to stop, but it's the good thing to do, so you should just pull your head out of your ass and do it. And perhaps good is the wrong word, then, and I should say it would not be an easy day to stop. Because some days are easier than others. Days when you hit all the green lights and you have fabulous hair without even trying. Days when work goes smoothly and they get your coffee order perfect at the little coffee shop. Days when your allergies don't make you look like a sniveling mess and you don't accidentally drop red pasta sauce on your favorite top.
Days when, unlike today, you don't get splashed by a car hitting a pothole of water and break two nails down past the quick. Today was a day I just wanted to get home, take a warm shower, curl up in my coziest pajamas, and have a nice glass of wine and pretend that tomorrow wasn't Monday. I wanted to lose myself in the mildly stupor of tipsiness and funny YouTube videos and pretend that my kitchen wasn't a mess and that I didn't have a pile of dirty laundry that was starting to resemble a monster from a cheesy Japanese monster movie.
I also really wanted my stupid Garmin watch to tell me I was not stressed and that I'd made my step count for the day, but this was not to be. And according to medical professionals, the solution to both those problems was to go for a walk. In the cold. And the dark. Lovely. I get to choose between dying of hypertension and getting mugged.
Okay, not really. I live in a fairly safe little community of small houses where everyone knows everyone else. It's a little pocket of small-town living in the outskirts of a real city, which is usually very nice, except if you ever want to do anything without the entire community knowing about it. I see why some people hate small towns and crave the anonymity of a big city. I live here because it's cheaper and, I admit, I can't move away from Jasper next door. I don't know what I'd do without him.
Jasper technically belongs to Marge and Andy, but neither of them really want to have a dog. They liked the idea of a dog, and they like telling people they have a dog, but they don't actually like the part where they have to entertain him and walk him and brush him. And so, when a storm hit and the fence between our houses got damaged, and Jasper started spending the evenings in my backyard with me, they were okay with that. They could have their parties and he wasn't barking in the backyard. And he's starting to spend more and more time at my house at night, though Marge is home during the day and takes care of him then, as well as taking him to the vet and buying all his food. It's a win-win for me, and I can't imagine ever leaving Jasper.
I know I should just ask them to give me Jasper, and some day I might, but it's convenient to have a dog that has company and someone to look after them during the day. I don't worry what Jasper is doing when I'm at work. Recently he's been spending a few nights here and there at my house, though, so I figure it's only a matter of time until we have to have a conversation about it. Or maybe not. Marge really doesn't like confrontation, and ever since the big begonia battle of '09, she's careful about stirring up any trouble in the neighborhood for fear of another round of temporary ostracization.
And so I made a deal with myself as I pulled into the neighborhood. I could have a drink tonight, and start my tee totaling tomorrow, if I walked Jasper to the park and back. It would only take twenty minutes, and I'd get my steps, and everyone would be happy. Not the least of which would be Jasper.
Resolution firmly in hand, I headed out the door, not at all surprised to see Jasper sitting in the step waiting for me. The dog had an uncanny sense of what was going on, and he was a pretty smart pup. I wondered if I should start agility training for him, if I could find the time. He looked to be at least part Border Collie, and had shown himself to be quite nimble and quick, and would probably excel at the sport. And it would be good for him. And me. I could certainly improvise an agility track in my backyard, the number of dead branches piled in the corner alone would make half a dozen good obstacles.
Gardening, I mused as I hooked the leash to Jasper’s collar and headed off down the street, had never been one of my strong suits. I didn’t particularly like being outside with all that sunshine and bugs and plants that I was inevitably allergic to. Some people might equate the outside with warmth and relaxation, I thought of it as burning and itching. Not in that way, geez, get your mind out of the gutter. I meant sunburn and insect bites! But now that it was fall, and the weather was turning cooler, there were fewer mosquitos and a lot of the days were cloudy, so I didn’t have much of an excuse to not clean up my yard.
Fantasizing about the immaculate garden I would love to have, but never put in the effort to do myself (or pay the money to have someone else do it), I turned the corner to head to the park and about jumped a mile as a series of loud cracks split the night air. Jasper merely turned his head to stare up at me, his dark brown eyes soft and concerned. For a herd dog, he was remarkably calm about loud noises. Maybe he was part hunting dog, as well. I really should start some agility training, I thought.
“What do you think, Jasper? Would you like to learn to run courses and whatnot?”
In response, he gently wagged his tail and turned his head to look back down the road, as if impatiently saying, “Let’s go, we’re almost there!”
“Okay, okay, hopefully none of the kids will come by the park with the firecrackers, though. I really don’t need to deal with that right now.”
We resumed our walk towards the park, and halfway down the block I got another huge scare as a jogger seemingly materialized next to me, running towards the park. I jumped and moved out of the way, and he didn’t say a thing, just kept running.
“I say, he’d better be careful in the dark with all that dark clothing,” I said to Jasper. The dog looked up at me and I’d swear he arched an eyebrow at me. “Yes, yet, pot and kettle, I know I’m wearing all dark colors as well, but in my defense, I did not change from work. Unless he wears sweats to work, he changed into that for his run, and yes, that does make it different.”
If a dog could shrug, Jasper did, then once again impatiently pulled me towards the park. He knew he’d get some off leash time, and even though the park wasn’t that much bigger than the backyards he roamed, it was different, and that made it exciting. And yes, I knew I wasn’t technically supposed to let him off the leash, but there was never anyone in that area of the park and it was well off the road and he was a really good dog. I knew the nosey old Mrs. Delmar would have a fit if she saw it, but she was never out and about this late, so we should be safe.
I was just sitting down on the bench, watching Jasper dash from tree to tree sniffing wildly, when the faint wail of a siren reached my ears. At first, the thought that Mrs. Delmar had seen Jasper and had called the police on us crossed my mind, but I quickly tamped down my rising paranoia with the thought that if she had called the police, they would have sent Animal Control out, and they don’t even have sirens. Do they? I don’t think they do. Most likely it was a car accident at the entrance to the subdivision, being that no one seemed to bother to come to a complete stop before pulling out on to the road and there were so many close calls and the occasional fender bender. Maybe this time it was a more serious accident. There did seem to be a fair number of sirens, and they were getting louder.
I was about to call Jasper over, in case the sirens were, for some odd reason, coming to the back edge of the subdivision near the park and I would need to get him leashed quickly when the leading siren abruptly cut off. I could faintly see some flashing lights, and it looked a few streets over in the direction of the entrance, but not quite right. Maybe someone was having a medical emergency, or someone had broken into a house. Suburbs are safe, comparatively speaking, but there’s crime everywhere nowadays. I sighed and settled back on the bench, content to let Jasper finish running his little fool head off before heading back home and to covertly scope out what all the ruckus was about. That’s the beauty of walking a dog, no one can say you’re just being nosey, even if they know you are. Nope, just out walking the dog, it just so happens our wanderings took us past here, and you can’t prove otherwise.
After another half-hour had passed, Jasper was panting and seemed sufficiently worn out and I hooked him back up to his leash and started walking back towards home and, conveniently, the flashing lights. It must have been quite an accident for emergency vehicles to still be on the scene, and I did hope no one had been badly hurt. I mean, there were a few people I would dearly love karma to kick – hard – in the backside, but property damage would do well enough. Like Earl Skimmer getting a big dent in the side of that ridiculously loud Rat Rod he insisted on racing up and down the streets late at night. Frankly, injuring his precious car might cause him more pain that having an arm lopped off.
As I neared the last corner, I started to feel a bit uneasy. Those lights were close, too close to be at the intersection of the subdivision. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they were very, very close to my house. My heart picked up its pace, even as my feet slowed, dreading what I would find when I turned the corner. Jasper noticed my slowing and turned to look up at me, his eyes quizzical.
“Well, buddy, if walking you saved me from being in my house when it exploded from a gas leak, or caught on fire from shoddy wiring, I will owe you a debt of gratitude no amount of bones could ever repay,” I told him. He just wagged.
Once we turned the corner, though, I could clearly see the activity was centered not at my house, but at Jasper’s. And there was no fire truck, just a half-dozen police cars and an ambulance that was packing up, with no one in the back. As they finished securing their equipment and pulled away, their lights were off and there was no siren.
“That,” I told Jasper. “Is either a really good sign, or a really bad one.”
He sat down and looked up at me, still wagging, and I realized I had completely stopped walking. I stood there for a while, watching the police buzz around the house, putting up crime scene tape and taking pictures. It was definitely a very bad sign the ambulance had left empty.
Not able to put it off any longer, I trudged up to the house. I’d have to walk past their house to get to mine, and since the sidewalk was blocked, I resorted to weaving through the police cars parked willy-nilly in the street. One of the officers stopped me as I was about halfway through the tangle.
“Excuse me, ma’am, can we ask you some questions?” He called loudly.
I nodded, and led Jasper over to where he was standing on the edge of the sidewalk.
“Can I get your name and address?” He asked, flipping open a notepad.
I told him who I was and that I lived next door.
“And were you home all day?” He asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “I work.” I don’t know why I said it so defensively, but something about the way he asked it made me think he thought I was a spoiled rich housewife that didn’t have to work, which bothered me. I mean, I’d love to be a spoiled rich housewife who didn’t have to work, and more power to those that accomplish it, but I just felt like he was looking down at me based on that assumption.
“Okay, what time did you get home?”
“About a quarter to six, I’d say,” I replied. Maybe I’d imagined the hostility.
“And what did you do when you got home?”
“Took Jasper for a walk down to the park,” I answered, gesturing to Jasper, sitting like a very good boy patiently waiting for this silliness of human conversation to be over so he’d get his treat.
“This whole time?” He arched an eyebrow at me.
“Whole time? It’s been, what, half an hour? Forty five minute? Have you ever had a dog?” My tone was acidic, but I couldn’t help myself. “Especially a Border Collie? Jasper is not some little toy-sized purse dog that gets worn out walking out to the mailbox.”
He looked a little surprised at my outburst, and I regretted it. I also belatedly realized I had not asked what had happened, and wondered if that made me look horribly suspicious.
“I’m sorry,” I added hurriedly. “It’s just that so many people shouldn’t have dogs because they don’t put the time and energy into them, and it’s been a long day and I’m frustrated and frazzled. Did someone break into Marge and Andy’s house? I know there have been some car burglaries in the neighborhood lately, but this would be an escalation of crime.”
“Well, yes, someone broke in, but…” he trailed off and, for the first time, looked a little unsure. “Were you close friends with your neighbors?”
I get that he was going to try to break it to me gently, but he slipped up and the past tense question hit me pretty hard. I mean, yes, I had just been casting a fair amount of shade in their direction about Jasper, not that he knew that, but I didn’t want anything horrible to happen to them. What would happen to Jasper now? Would anyone notice if I just kept him? They didn’t have children, and I can’t imagine any of their extended family would want him, so… maybe I could just keep him.
I realize this seems a lot cold-blooded, to worry about the dog when goodness knows what has befallen my neighbors, but I’m sure you’ve already deduced that I like him a lot more than I like them. Jasper had seen me though some tough times in these last six months, and while I could imagine my life without Marge and Andy, I couldn’t imagine my life without Jasper.
At this point, I think the officer realized what he’d said, and took my silence as shock. Which it was, partly.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” he trailed off, then regrouped. “It seems as if someone entered the house at some point during the day, and either was attempting to burgle the home and didn’t realize Mrs. Sedgewick was home, or…”
I nodded as he trailed off again. He didn’t have to say “or they were there just to kill her,” it was really the only other possibility. Or was it?
“Or they were there to kill Andy and didn’t realize she was going to be home, or she was just collateral damage and they didn’t care if she was home,” I said.
“Why would you assume Mr. Sedgewick might have been the intended victim?” He asked.
“Well, he… I don’t know exactly what he did for a living, if I’m honest, but some of the things Marge said led me to believe it’s possible he’d made enemies. Just little quips, nothing too serious and of I asked she’d brush it off with a laugh, but… I mean, I always assumed she did it for the attention, and so I never paid too much attention…” I fidgeted. “I mean, if he was a mafia kingpin I’d have thought he’d have a better house than this, and if he was running drugs he was either keeping a very low profile or was very bad at it. I don’t hate my neighborhood, but it’s pretty obvious it’s pretty solidly lower middle class.”
“So he never mentioned his business?”
“Not really. But he also didn’t make it seem shady or mysterious, like saying he was in the import and export business. He’d just say he worked in a cube in a cube farm pushing paperwork, and he’d throw out some corporate buzz words and people’s eyes would glaze over. No one really care what you do unless it’s exciting. I think he did say the name of a company, once, when someone asked, and it seemed like a law firm because it was a bunch of names, but I think someone asked if it was a law firm and he said something like ‘nothing as fancy or interesting as that’, or some such. I think most people assumed it was an accounting firm?”
He made some more notes in his notebook, and when he remained silent, I felt pressured to talk more, even as my brain was telling me this was an interviewing tactic and I was being manipulated. It’s not as if I had anything to hide, but I was nervous, anyway. Which made no sense, but I suppose even if you are innocent, police can make people nervous. And I was planning on stealing their dog, so perhaps I wasn’t as innocent as I pretended to be.
“Yes,” I continued to fill the silence. “Looking back it seems weird that none of us knew, but whenever it came up something else always came up to change the topic, and the way he deflected the question was very natural and smooth. I don’t think, at the time, you even realized he wasn’t really answering your question. It was odd.”
“Indeed,” the cop replied, then fell silent again. This time, I refused to fall for it, and stood, staring at the house over his left shoulder.
Perhaps I was in a little bit of shock, my eyes didn’t seem to want to completely focus and I felt my brain drifting ever so slightly. I should probably go in and sit down, I thought, but my legs didn’t want to move. The officer was looking at me thoughtfully, but not unkindly.
“Maybe you should go in and sit down, have a cup of tea or coffee or whatever. This has to have come as a bit of a shock,” he said, gesturing at my house in a slight shooing motion.
I would have taken offence at the dismissal except for the fact that I really did want to go sit down, and I was damn sure I’d earned that glass of wine now. I nodded, and finally got my feet moving. I stumbled up my front steps, and it took me a second try to get the key in the lock, but once I was inside, I felt a lot better. I unhooked Jasper, and he ran directly for the kitchen and the dog bowls there, expecting to be fed.
“It’s a good thing I have all this stuff for you already, boy, or it would look suspicious that I suddenly had to run out and buy a lot of dog supplies.”
He cocked his head at me, as if to say, “you really think they’d believe you killed Marge and Andy to get their dog?”
“Stranger things have happened, buddy,” I replied.
His eyes darted from my face to the hand holding the dog food scoop. “Stranger than you holding up my feeding? Come on, woman!”
“Okay, okay, sorry,” I said, pouring his food into his dish. He pounced on it was snout-deep in the kibble like he hadn’t eaten in days. “Dude, not only am I pretty sure Marge fed you very regularly, I know for a fact you ate dinner yesterday, so the starving pooch routine won’t get you more food from me.”
He ignored me and continued to inhale his dinner. I had lost my appetite, and instead opted just for the glass of wine. A very large glass of wine. I took it to my computer desk and sat down to mindlessly scroll through social media sites and watch some entertaining YouTube videos. Or some not-so-entertaining YouTube videos, I wasn’t feeling terribly particular. I was definitely in the mood for some passive entertainment. I didn’t want the effort of even reading, I wanted the content to be shoveled into my brain. And the less thought provoking, the better. This was a baby goats in pajamas kind of evening.
Unfortunately, my fun, relaxing evening took a turn when I went to quickly check Facebook and my Greasemonkey script informed me that I’d lost two friends off my friends list. As I was rarely (okay, never) controversial, I found this odd. The few times it had happened before, the person had temporarily deleted their Facebook page, and always reappeared later. I had yet to fathom the purpose of the temporary deletions, but it happened fairly regularly among a certain subset of my friends list. I had thought about asking them once or twice, but then thought it might feed into the cycle of attention-seeking behavior, so I let it go.
And sure enough, the two missing friends no longer appeared to have Facebook pages. The problem was, the two people were Marge and Andy. I couldn’t fathom why Marge would have had the foresight to delete her Facebook page hours before her death, but I could see why, if Andy were still alive somewhere, he would delete the both of them. I briefly thought about going back outside telling the cops what I’d found, but then simply did not have the energy to get up. They’d figure it out, or not, and it wasn’t my problem.
At least, that’s what I kept trying to tell myself, but the baby goats failed to hold my attention. My mind kept wandering back to the mystery of the missing Facebook...
Total wordcount: 49,640 (43,440)
On/off target: +1,297 (-4,903)
Yeah... so, if the title is confusing, it's because I've decided to bend the rules to meet my goal. I just want to cross off my 50k words in November goal in my goal book, and I did technically write some last year, and since it's last year's goal and with all the other goals it's cumulative, I figure using words I wrote in a different November is fair game. And it isn't making the story (which I now hate and don't want to spend time on)any less cohesive at this point.
I don't like writing long things. I like drabbles, little short snippets. I'd be fine writing 50k words in November if they were a series of unrelated, 1,667 word short stories. Maybe some would be double-length, maybe some would only be 800 words. If I ever do it again (and I won't!), I think that would be the way I would do it. Unless I had some story already mapped out and planned.
400 words tomorrow for the victory of one less page in my goal book next year! Whoooo-hoooo! Next up, photos blogged. Look forward to some super-random photos this month!
If I had managed to forget how demon-like Steve was because of his cooking and easy-going movie watching, it all came back. His face was twisted in a mask of rage and he flew at me, but stopped as he hit the circle under the flooring. He snarled at me and kept trying to lunge, but couldn't get past it.
"How?" He shrieked. "What did you do?"
"Honestly," I said, hoping the shaking in my voice wasn't too noticeable. "I don't really know. Even faced with a livid demon, as I am, I'm not sure I completely believe. How strange is that?"
His face softened, and he pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"Look, I don't know what over people have told you, but we were getting along just fine. Why would you want to do this to me? I was doing everything for you, you can't say you haven't enjoyed me doing the cooking and cleaning." His tone had turned wheedling, and I had a prickle down my spine as I recognized it.
"I do appreciate it, but you're a demon," I said. "I can't, by your own nature, trust you. And you even lied about it. Making up that cockamamie story."
"Because I knew how you'd react! You're being super-judgmental right now." He huffed. "Can't you open you mind for just a second? Maybe think outside of your narrow preconceptions?"
"Did you kill Melody and Jess?" I asked, staring his straight in the eye. He didn't flinch. But neither did he answer my question.
"I wasn't ever going to hurt you," he said, trying, I thought to sound like he was the reasonable one. Just like he who shall not be named used to do to me way back one. I knew how to spot a manipulator when I saw one. It had taken me a long time to get out of that relationship, and I did still feel some guilt, but I could usually squash it. It wasn't my responsibility, or my fault, and I was never going to be played again.
"That, one, doesn't answer the question, and two, implies that you now will," I said.
"Look, I had to kill them. It was what I was summoned for, yes, and I can't not do it. And no, if you let me go, I won't hurt you. I like you! We're friends! I like watching movies and cooking and chatting. Why would I want to endanger that?" He was alternating between sounding pleading and stern, and it was unsettling. As, I am sure, it was meant to. If anything in the world was a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder, it would be a demon.
"Right, so what were you trying to do earlier?" I asked, casually pulling the pendant out from under my shirt. I tried, but couldn't hide the shaking of my hands. I don't think he noticed, though, as his eyes focused on the pendant and I saw... something I couldn't pinpoint flicker in his eyes.
"Nothing, what do you mean?" But he said to too quickly, and I could tell by the way his eyes darted back and forth that he was nervous.
"No, there was something, you're lying to me. Again. None of this is making me want to trust you," I warned. Not that there was a snowball's chance in, well, hell that I was going to trust him, anyway, but I figured if he could lie to me, I could lie to him.
"Well, if I tell you the truth, you really won't trust me," he said grudgingly. "I was lying for your own benefit."
"Oh really? I think it's more like you're lying for yours," I snapped. I was not taking kindly to the patronizing tone, as if he could pull the wool over my eyes so easily.
"Now, Becca, listen to me, it will be fine, just drop this silly circle business and we can get back to watching the movie, and it will be like none of this ever happened," he said, and something about the combination of the tone of voice and the use of my name about sent me over the edge.
"No, I will not listen to you, you're lying to me, and I can't trust you. That's all there is too it. For what it's worth, though, I am sorry. And I know this is going to haunt me, perhaps quite literally, for the rest of my life. I'll always wonder if you'll find your way back to kill me, so there's that, you can have that as your revenge."
And with that, I spoke the words I had practiced, and there was a thunderclap and a flash, and he was gone. The strange, glowing aura in the room subsided, and all of the flames extinguished. I reached over to turn off the gas burner before too much unlit gas filled up the room, then sat down, shaking. Too bad I hadn't made the tea first, I could really do with a cup right now to calm my nerves! Eventually, the worst of the shaking stopped and I was able to make the cup of tea, laced with a considerable slug of brandy. I sat on the sofa, suddenly very unsure what to do with myself. It hadn't been that long, but the problem with work and then Steve had wholly consumed my life, and the loss of that focus left a void.
I needed a new problem - or better yet, a fun project - to focus on. Tomorrow. If any of my muscles would even move. Now that all the adrenaline had left my body, I started to feel every ache and pain the redoing flooring in a single day will do to you. And, hey, now I had a demon circle permanently in my living room. Great! I wondered if I could get more or less money for that when I went to sell it? I also wondered if there was some way to put up a circle to protect me when I slept. Or just every day. All the time. Was I really going to live the rest of my life this paranoid? Maybe. Now I was suddenly hoping I'd wake up crazy and have this all have been a hallucination. That would be easier. Sort of.
Despite the stress of the whole demon may come back from hell and kill me in my sleep situation, I fell into a deep sleep pretty quickly. Being exhausted will do that to you, apparently. My dreams, however, were... interesting. And a little confusing. I know how they say you can usually correlate the things that show up in your dreams to events in your life, though they may not seem directly correlated. So I suppose, in my dream, being hunted by an army of small mushroom people is probably a correlation to my feelings of helplessness of being possibly tracked down and killed by a demon, but although I was running from the mushroom people, I didn't think they were actually out to kill me. I didn't feel threatened, and if this was my subconscious's way of trying to tell me I shouldn't fear a demon, my subconscious and I needed to have a little sit-down chat because it was being a fucking idiot. I most definitely had something to fear from Steve, or whatever his name was.
I woke the next morning not terribly well rested and decided to make another trip out to see the occult ladies. I'd regained some faith in the first shop I visited, since that pendant really did seem to have worked. And of course I had to visit the second shop, just to let her know it had worked and to thank her for the help with the pronunciation. And maybe to buy something, because I thought it would be a good way to pay her back. Just a candle or some incense or anything.
I was feeling pretty good about my decision, until I got up. My body didn't hurt the way I expected it to, what with all the manual labor and not being used to it, but it felt... off. Ungainly. And when I swung my legs over the side of the bed they hit the floor, instead of dangling there. So either my bed had gotten shorter, or I had gotten taller. Neither of which seemed like an option. I crept the bathroom and ... was not prepared for what I saw in the mirror, as it was not my face. This, I thought, still has to be a dream. Not a bad dream, considering the face I saw was prettier than my own, and... yup, the boobs on this body were bigger and perkier, but still an unsettling dream. A lot of us have probably wished we could wake up with something about us 'fixed' or changed, but do we ever stop to consider just how unsettling that would be? Very, I am here to tell you! Very unsettling indeed. I decided to give sleep another chance, and crawled back into bed, hopefully to wake up in my own body. Though if this time I'd woken in my house but not in my body, next time would I wake up in my body but not in my house?
I didn't get a chance to find out, because as soon as my head hit the pillow, the phone on the night stand began buzzing. I snatched it up and answered it in a surprisingly low and husky voice.
"Hello?"
"Anna, darling, you didn't forget about today, did you? You sound like you're still asleep. We have to be at the boutique by 11 am!" The voice on the other end of the line was droll and upper class sounding, and if the name on the display was anything to go by, someone named Marge.
"I'm not feeling well," I said, and thought about faking a cough but didn't think I could manage it.
"You absolutely cannot - and I mean absolutely cannot - flake on me. You know how delicate I've been since Steve has been gone, I haven't slept right, and I've barely eaten! This is the one thing I've been looking forward to. You have to come. You have to!"
I rolled over and looked at the clock. Nine in the morning. Plenty of time to get... where was I going? And would I be able to fake being... Anna? This was too much on no coffee, my brain was not functioning. I would have to give it a try, any try to fake my way through it. I mumbled an acceptance into the phone, and flopped back down on the bed. And as I did so, I felt myself falling, and falling, and falling... and then, my mind went blank. And it was like I was a completely new character in a completely different story, maybe one that was started the previous year in a fit of inspiration, words scribbled in one November that should rightfully count towards this one...
Is it really cheating? It would be if I was trying to claim rampant victory over NaNoWriMo, which I'm not. Been there, done that, sometimes more successfully than others. But this year, this year I just want to cross that goal off my bloody to-do list, and it's fine if I bend the rules a little. And as such, she suddenly found herself awake in a new body, a new place, with no memories of Steve or Jess or Melody, and feeling lie she'd always been herself...
The week began, as it tends to do, on a Monday. Another crummy Monday where Amanda had to drag herself out of bed and to work. Not that she hated her job - she’d had worse - but nor did she love it so much she was enthusiastic about getting out of bed. But then, she couldn’t imagine any job where she would be enthusiastic about getting out of bed, because sleeping was one of the very few activities she truly excelled at. It was one of the only things she’d stuck with her whole life, unlike the other hobbies that had come and gone. And that, she remembered through the slight haze of a hangover, had been the focus of last night’s wine-fueled YouTube binge, hadn’t it? What promises had she made to herself?
Oh, right. She was going to start eating healthy and exercising, as well as become more environmentally friendly and take up a dozen hobbies including YouTube. And become incredibly famous and be able to quit her job and sleep in every day and make videos into the wee hours of the night. Hey, if you’re going to dream, dream big, right? People did become rich and famous on YouTube, but her lack of ability to stick to anything would probably mean she’d get two crummy videos in and give up. And undoubtedly the inevitable mean comments would get to her. And that would be true of most things she’d want to try, because tastes vary and people are mean.
She sighed and pushed the warm, comfy covers off herself and shuffled to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day. Would today be the day she tried out one of those amazing beauty tutorials she kept watching? No, no it would not. She’d procrastinated getting up so long she only had fifteen minutes to get herself put together and out the door, and of course she had no idea what she wanted to wear. That was another thing she promised herself she’d address, her lack of planning. Preferably with a fabulously decorated bullet journal, as soon as she developed any artistic skills. And learned pretty handwriting. And could actually stick to a plan. But once all those things were in place, then she was going to be more organized!
And if she managed to get on top of things, she would have lunches of leftover gourmet meals she experimented cooking every evening, instead of hastily thrown together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the occasional yogurt and bit of fruit. Not that yogurt and fruit were bad, but hers were never artfully arranged with granola and the latest fad seed. Chia? Or was that last month?
But the only way anything would change would be if she were to make it, and that required some motivation, which was the problem. If she was motivated, she wouldn’t have dozens of unfinished projects and untried crafts and unreached goals. Motivation was the whole problem. It was so much easier to just sit back and watch TV and browse the internet and read books. Though not even that much of the last anymore, it was easier to sit back and be passively entertained by short Facebook videos than to put forth the effort of actually reading.
If she had the energy to put forth effort into anything, she really needed to clean and organize her house, which she had to admit had slipped a bit in the housekeeping department. Again, it was just hard to get motivated to do much of anything. She got home from work and became one with the sofa, and that was it. And that, she admitted to herself, was pathetic. Truly pathetic.
She settled herself in her desk at work, grimacing at the unwashed coffee cup. She’d even gotten slovenly here, and there was no excuse for that. She was stuck at her desk for eight hours a day, and if there wasn’t anyone coming in or calling or any bills to be paid, she sat and stared off into space, or browsed the internet. There was zero reason she couldn’t be productive in that time, at least keep her workspace tidy or optimize the filing system or something. She was in a rut, she realized, and it was bad. Very bad. And the only person that could help herself was… herself.
She’d gotten to this point before, though, where she was fired up about making changes and it never came to anything, because she couldn’t stick to it. It’s easy to dream and fantasize and even to plan, but it’s not so easy to actually get things done. How to you keep yourself going? How do you not burn out? How do you self-motivate?
“How do you get motivated”, she muttered as she typed the phrase into Google. When in doubt, turn to Google! She randomly picked a result and started reading.
“Set goals… I can do that. Make sure the goals interested you. Well, duh. Make your goals public. Not sure what good that would do, I don’t think any of my friends would hold me accountable if I didn’t manage to make my goals, anyway.” She skimmed more sites. “Plot your progress… break goals down into smaller bits… use rewards… I’m not sure the reward thing would work, it’s not like I’d be good at holding myself to it. Don’t do it on your own. I don’t think I can expect any of my friends to help me clean my house, so… that one’s out. Maybe I could get a friend to exercise with me or take a class. Maybe.”
She mentally flipped through her friends, but most of them were either super-flaky and couldn’t be relied upon, or wouldn’t be interested in any of the things she wanted to do. So some of it would have to be on her own. And that would require some self-discipline.
“Start small, focus on one goal,” she read aloud.
“What’s that?” Jamie, the girl from the next office, had come in so quietly that Amanda hadn’t heard her approach.
“Oh my goodness, you gave me a fright!” Amanda feigned a swoon and put a hand over her heart. “Sorry, I was lost in my own head talking to myself.”
“Ah, I do that a lot. It gets awkward when I start arguing with myself, but other than that, I find I can be quite helpful.” Amanda smiled cheerfully. “By the way, I’m here to see if I can steal some coffee supplies. Bossboss over there doesn’t understand delivery times and doesn’t seem to realize that we need to order things before we run out. I’ll bring some back over when our order comes in tomorrow, but if I don’t make a pot of coffee soon, there will be bloodshed, and I don’t want to inconvenience you by having you spend the day answering inane questions from the police. How well did you know them? Was there trouble before? Any idea what this was all over? You know that kind of stuff.”
“You know, I have to admit I don’t know you that well, so you could be a full-on psychopath and I would have no idea,” Amanda admitted. “And you’ve worked there for what, a year?”
“Fourteen months, but who’s counting?” Jamie said cheerily. “We should get lunch sometime and swap horror stories. I’m not sure who has it worse, you with the accountant or me with the lawyer, but it would be fun to try to one-up each other on stories!”
“Oh, you’d win. Tim is… well, there just aren’t any interesting stories. It’s not like he’s helping the mafia with tax evasion or anything. But I’d love to get lunch and hear your stories! Maybe I can live vicariously.”
“Yes! That would be awesome. What’s your number? I’ll text you and we’ll set up a day. Bossboss has me work some lunch meetings so I have to check and see what’s scheduled when, I think I have Wednesday free for sure, but it might be Thursday. I swear, my brain is like swiss cheese these days.”
Amanda gave Jamie her number, and after Jamie had grabbed some coffee supplies and slipped back to her office, she sat back in her chair, dazed. The universe had spoken, and it had definitely confirmed that she needed to make a few changes. A new friend was a great start, though goodness knows if they had anything in common. Jamie was funny, and seemed like she would be great fun to hang around, and maybe she’d pull Amanda out of her shell. In the meantime, she’d take this as a sign and start working on some goals of her own.
She snagged a new notebook from the supply closet and started a list. Think small, she told herself firmly. You know how you overdo things, and then you fail. Make it manageable. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It has to be sustainable. Accomplishing things is good. And you’ve always wanted a bullet journal, and it doesn’t have to be fancy, so let’s start with that.
Twenty minutes later, she’d drawn a monthly calendar and started her first weekly page. It was very simple, with a list of habits to track and daily spots and one box for her weekly goal, which was to get, and keep, the kitchen clean. This was further broken down into subcategories of washing the dishes, cleaning out the refrigerator, freezer, and microwave, organizing the cupboards and drawers, and cleaning the floor. She felt accomplished and happy with her fledgling little bullet journal, and couldn’t wait to get home and clean. She very much doubted the enthusiasm would last the drive home, but it was a good feeling for now. If there was a way she could keep herself motivated, she really needed it now.
“Focus on the goal of cooking,” she told herself. “Cooking in a dirty kitchen sucks. Maybe, if you can keep your kitchen clean, you can do a lot of the experimental cooking, and some day down the line, have a dinner party.”
She was right, by the time she’d gotten home that evening, her motivation had deserted her. The mess of a kitchen that greeted her was depressing, and instead of galvanizing her into action, it depressed her into inactivity. This was the usual way of things, and it was how she’d gotten to where she was now. And that, she scolded herself, is unacceptable. What if she just tackled that pile of paperwork? Old mail and detritus that had accumulated on the corner of the counter. It was unsightly and annoying and, she admitted to herself, a little daunting. It was in that pile because she didn’t really know what to do with it. And that was a habit she needed to break. One pile, she told herself. One pile and then you can zone out in front of the computer or TV. But you have to actually clear up this pile. Not shuffle it somewhere else. Deal with it.
That proved easier said than done, as she knew would be the case. Some items were easy enough, things that could be tossed or quickly filed. Other things proved more tricky. Things she wanted to keep but that had no place. Things she wanted to keep but knew she shouldn’t keep. This took a surprising amount of time, but also, in the end, proved very satisfying. Now, she thought, if only I can remember the feeling of satisfaction, and try to convince myself that it trumps laziness. That in the end, forcing myself to do something will be more worthwhile than the instant gratification of doing nothing. This was an age-old dilemma, and one she was unlikely to find a miracle cure for, but she would try. There were other people who managed to make themselves do things and keep up on chores and activities, why couldn’t that be her?
“Oh, god, I’m turning into a Lifetime movie,” she sighed. “Could be worse, I suppose. I could be turning into a SyFy movie. Or would that be better?”
Her phone beeped and interrupted her musings. A text message from a number she didn’t recognize.
“Lunch Wed?”
“That works!” She typed back, assuming it was Amanda, though she let herself fantasize momentarily that it was some mysterious stranger and she was about to be pulled into a web of intrigue. Though, come to think of it, would it be something she really wanted? Intrigue sounded exhausting. Especially considering the shape she was in. If she was chased by a knife-wielding maniac, she had no chance. Unless it was a smoking, asthmatic maniac with a badly fitting prosthetic leg. Then maybe she’d be able to get away.
Getting in shape was a nebulous goal, one of those they warn you about on those motivational websites. You need something specific and concrete, they say. At the same time, focusing on weight doesn’t work as well and can backfire. So having a fitness goal, while it will probably make you lose weight, will also get you in better cardiovascular health and get you better muscle tone. So what would be a good goal? Small steps, she reminded herself, don’t put “compete in an ironman competition” as your first goal. Though that would probably never be a realistic goal of hers, fitness had never been something that was that important, and she couldn’t imagine devoting that much time to working out, or putting her body through that much trauma. But being able to escape the hypothetical knife-wielding maniac, provided he was not an Olympic caliber sprinter, seemed a reasonable enough goal.
Run a mile, she decided. One mile, jogged, without stopping. 20 or so minutes of plodding along. This seemed like a doable thing.
I picked a bad day to stop drinking. Some would argue there's never a good day to stop, but it's the good thing to do, so you should just pull your head out of your ass and do it. And perhaps good is the wrong word, then, and I should say it would not be an easy day to stop. Because some days are easier than others. Days when you hit all the green lights and you have fabulous hair without even trying. Days when work goes smoothly and they get your coffee order perfect at the little coffee shop. Days when your allergies don't make you look like a sniveling mess and you don't accidentally drop red pasta sauce on your favorite top.
Days when, unlike today, you don't get splashed by a car hitting a pothole of water and break two nails down past the quick. Today was a day I just wanted to get home, take a warm shower, curl up in my coziest pajamas, and have a nice glass of wine and pretend that tomorrow wasn't Monday. I wanted to lose myself in the mildly stupor of tipsiness and funny YouTube videos and pretend that my kitchen wasn't a mess and that I didn't have a pile of dirty laundry that was starting to resemble a monster from a cheesy Japanese monster movie.
I also really wanted my stupid Garmin watch to tell me I was not stressed and that I'd made my step count for the day, but this was not to be. And according to medical professionals, the solution to both those problems was to go for a walk. In the cold. And the dark. Lovely. I get to choose between dying of hypertension and getting mugged.
Okay, not really. I live in a fairly safe little community of small houses where everyone knows everyone else. It's a little pocket of small-town living in the outskirts of a real city, which is usually very nice, except if you ever want to do anything without the entire community knowing about it. I see why some people hate small towns and crave the anonymity of a big city. I live here because it's cheaper and, I admit, I can't move away from Jasper next door. I don't know what I'd do without him.
Jasper technically belongs to Marge and Andy, but neither of them really want to have a dog. They liked the idea of a dog, and they like telling people they have a dog, but they don't actually like the part where they have to entertain him and walk him and brush him. And so, when a storm hit and the fence between our houses got damaged, and Jasper started spending the evenings in my backyard with me, they were okay with that. They could have their parties and he wasn't barking in the backyard. And he's starting to spend more and more time at my house at night, though Marge is home during the day and takes care of him then, as well as taking him to the vet and buying all his food. It's a win-win for me, and I can't imagine ever leaving Jasper.
I know I should just ask them to give me Jasper, and some day I might, but it's convenient to have a dog that has company and someone to look after them during the day. I don't worry what Jasper is doing when I'm at work. Recently he's been spending a few nights here and there at my house, though, so I figure it's only a matter of time until we have to have a conversation about it. Or maybe not. Marge really doesn't like confrontation, and ever since the big begonia battle of '09, she's careful about stirring up any trouble in the neighborhood for fear of another round of temporary ostracization.
And so I made a deal with myself as I pulled into the neighborhood. I could have a drink tonight, and start my tee totaling tomorrow, if I walked Jasper to the park and back. It would only take twenty minutes, and I'd get my steps, and everyone would be happy. Not the least of which would be Jasper.
Resolution firmly in hand, I headed out the door, not at all surprised to see Jasper sitting in the step waiting for me. The dog had an uncanny sense of what was going on, and he was a pretty smart pup. I wondered if I should start agility training for him, if I could find the time. He looked to be at least part Border Collie, and had shown himself to be quite nimble and quick, and would probably excel at the sport. And it would be good for him. And me. I could certainly improvise an agility track in my backyard, the number of dead branches piled in the corner alone would make half a dozen good obstacles.
Gardening, I mused as I hooked the leash to Jasper’s collar and headed off down the street, had never been one of my strong suits. I didn’t particularly like being outside with all that sunshine and bugs and plants that I was inevitably allergic to. Some people might equate the outside with warmth and relaxation, I thought of it as burning and itching. Not in that way, geez, get your mind out of the gutter. I meant sunburn and insect bites! But now that it was fall, and the weather was turning cooler, there were fewer mosquitos and a lot of the days were cloudy, so I didn’t have much of an excuse to not clean up my yard.
Fantasizing about the immaculate garden I would love to have, but never put in the effort to do myself (or pay the money to have someone else do it), I turned the corner to head to the park and about jumped a mile as a series of loud cracks split the night air. Jasper merely turned his head to stare up at me, his dark brown eyes soft and concerned. For a herd dog, he was remarkably calm about loud noises. Maybe he was part hunting dog, as well. I really should start some agility training, I thought.
“What do you think, Jasper? Would you like to learn to run courses and whatnot?”
In response, he gently wagged his tail and turned his head to look back down the road, as if impatiently saying, “Let’s go, we’re almost there!”
“Okay, okay, hopefully none of the kids will come by the park with the firecrackers, though. I really don’t need to deal with that right now.”
We resumed our walk towards the park, and halfway down the block I got another huge scare as a jogger seemingly materialized next to me, running towards the park. I jumped and moved out of the way, and he didn’t say a thing, just kept running.
“I say, he’d better be careful in the dark with all that dark clothing,” I said to Jasper. The dog looked up at me and I’d swear he arched an eyebrow at me. “Yes, yet, pot and kettle, I know I’m wearing all dark colors as well, but in my defense, I did not change from work. Unless he wears sweats to work, he changed into that for his run, and yes, that does make it different.”
If a dog could shrug, Jasper did, then once again impatiently pulled me towards the park. He knew he’d get some off leash time, and even though the park wasn’t that much bigger than the backyards he roamed, it was different, and that made it exciting. And yes, I knew I wasn’t technically supposed to let him off the leash, but there was never anyone in that area of the park and it was well off the road and he was a really good dog. I knew the nosey old Mrs. Delmar would have a fit if she saw it, but she was never out and about this late, so we should be safe.
I was just sitting down on the bench, watching Jasper dash from tree to tree sniffing wildly, when the faint wail of a siren reached my ears. At first, the thought that Mrs. Delmar had seen Jasper and had called the police on us crossed my mind, but I quickly tamped down my rising paranoia with the thought that if she had called the police, they would have sent Animal Control out, and they don’t even have sirens. Do they? I don’t think they do. Most likely it was a car accident at the entrance to the subdivision, being that no one seemed to bother to come to a complete stop before pulling out on to the road and there were so many close calls and the occasional fender bender. Maybe this time it was a more serious accident. There did seem to be a fair number of sirens, and they were getting louder.
I was about to call Jasper over, in case the sirens were, for some odd reason, coming to the back edge of the subdivision near the park and I would need to get him leashed quickly when the leading siren abruptly cut off. I could faintly see some flashing lights, and it looked a few streets over in the direction of the entrance, but not quite right. Maybe someone was having a medical emergency, or someone had broken into a house. Suburbs are safe, comparatively speaking, but there’s crime everywhere nowadays. I sighed and settled back on the bench, content to let Jasper finish running his little fool head off before heading back home and to covertly scope out what all the ruckus was about. That’s the beauty of walking a dog, no one can say you’re just being nosey, even if they know you are. Nope, just out walking the dog, it just so happens our wanderings took us past here, and you can’t prove otherwise.
After another half-hour had passed, Jasper was panting and seemed sufficiently worn out and I hooked him back up to his leash and started walking back towards home and, conveniently, the flashing lights. It must have been quite an accident for emergency vehicles to still be on the scene, and I did hope no one had been badly hurt. I mean, there were a few people I would dearly love karma to kick – hard – in the backside, but property damage would do well enough. Like Earl Skimmer getting a big dent in the side of that ridiculously loud Rat Rod he insisted on racing up and down the streets late at night. Frankly, injuring his precious car might cause him more pain that having an arm lopped off.
As I neared the last corner, I started to feel a bit uneasy. Those lights were close, too close to be at the intersection of the subdivision. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they were very, very close to my house. My heart picked up its pace, even as my feet slowed, dreading what I would find when I turned the corner. Jasper noticed my slowing and turned to look up at me, his eyes quizzical.
“Well, buddy, if walking you saved me from being in my house when it exploded from a gas leak, or caught on fire from shoddy wiring, I will owe you a debt of gratitude no amount of bones could ever repay,” I told him. He just wagged.
Once we turned the corner, though, I could clearly see the activity was centered not at my house, but at Jasper’s. And there was no fire truck, just a half-dozen police cars and an ambulance that was packing up, with no one in the back. As they finished securing their equipment and pulled away, their lights were off and there was no siren.
“That,” I told Jasper. “Is either a really good sign, or a really bad one.”
He sat down and looked up at me, still wagging, and I realized I had completely stopped walking. I stood there for a while, watching the police buzz around the house, putting up crime scene tape and taking pictures. It was definitely a very bad sign the ambulance had left empty.
Not able to put it off any longer, I trudged up to the house. I’d have to walk past their house to get to mine, and since the sidewalk was blocked, I resorted to weaving through the police cars parked willy-nilly in the street. One of the officers stopped me as I was about halfway through the tangle.
“Excuse me, ma’am, can we ask you some questions?” He called loudly.
I nodded, and led Jasper over to where he was standing on the edge of the sidewalk.
“Can I get your name and address?” He asked, flipping open a notepad.
I told him who I was and that I lived next door.
“And were you home all day?” He asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “I work.” I don’t know why I said it so defensively, but something about the way he asked it made me think he thought I was a spoiled rich housewife that didn’t have to work, which bothered me. I mean, I’d love to be a spoiled rich housewife who didn’t have to work, and more power to those that accomplish it, but I just felt like he was looking down at me based on that assumption.
“Okay, what time did you get home?”
“About a quarter to six, I’d say,” I replied. Maybe I’d imagined the hostility.
“And what did you do when you got home?”
“Took Jasper for a walk down to the park,” I answered, gesturing to Jasper, sitting like a very good boy patiently waiting for this silliness of human conversation to be over so he’d get his treat.
“This whole time?” He arched an eyebrow at me.
“Whole time? It’s been, what, half an hour? Forty five minute? Have you ever had a dog?” My tone was acidic, but I couldn’t help myself. “Especially a Border Collie? Jasper is not some little toy-sized purse dog that gets worn out walking out to the mailbox.”
He looked a little surprised at my outburst, and I regretted it. I also belatedly realized I had not asked what had happened, and wondered if that made me look horribly suspicious.
“I’m sorry,” I added hurriedly. “It’s just that so many people shouldn’t have dogs because they don’t put the time and energy into them, and it’s been a long day and I’m frustrated and frazzled. Did someone break into Marge and Andy’s house? I know there have been some car burglaries in the neighborhood lately, but this would be an escalation of crime.”
“Well, yes, someone broke in, but…” he trailed off and, for the first time, looked a little unsure. “Were you close friends with your neighbors?”
I get that he was going to try to break it to me gently, but he slipped up and the past tense question hit me pretty hard. I mean, yes, I had just been casting a fair amount of shade in their direction about Jasper, not that he knew that, but I didn’t want anything horrible to happen to them. What would happen to Jasper now? Would anyone notice if I just kept him? They didn’t have children, and I can’t imagine any of their extended family would want him, so… maybe I could just keep him.
I realize this seems a lot cold-blooded, to worry about the dog when goodness knows what has befallen my neighbors, but I’m sure you’ve already deduced that I like him a lot more than I like them. Jasper had seen me though some tough times in these last six months, and while I could imagine my life without Marge and Andy, I couldn’t imagine my life without Jasper.
At this point, I think the officer realized what he’d said, and took my silence as shock. Which it was, partly.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” he trailed off, then regrouped. “It seems as if someone entered the house at some point during the day, and either was attempting to burgle the home and didn’t realize Mrs. Sedgewick was home, or…”
I nodded as he trailed off again. He didn’t have to say “or they were there just to kill her,” it was really the only other possibility. Or was it?
“Or they were there to kill Andy and didn’t realize she was going to be home, or she was just collateral damage and they didn’t care if she was home,” I said.
“Why would you assume Mr. Sedgewick might have been the intended victim?” He asked.
“Well, he… I don’t know exactly what he did for a living, if I’m honest, but some of the things Marge said led me to believe it’s possible he’d made enemies. Just little quips, nothing too serious and of I asked she’d brush it off with a laugh, but… I mean, I always assumed she did it for the attention, and so I never paid too much attention…” I fidgeted. “I mean, if he was a mafia kingpin I’d have thought he’d have a better house than this, and if he was running drugs he was either keeping a very low profile or was very bad at it. I don’t hate my neighborhood, but it’s pretty obvious it’s pretty solidly lower middle class.”
“So he never mentioned his business?”
“Not really. But he also didn’t make it seem shady or mysterious, like saying he was in the import and export business. He’d just say he worked in a cube in a cube farm pushing paperwork, and he’d throw out some corporate buzz words and people’s eyes would glaze over. No one really care what you do unless it’s exciting. I think he did say the name of a company, once, when someone asked, and it seemed like a law firm because it was a bunch of names, but I think someone asked if it was a law firm and he said something like ‘nothing as fancy or interesting as that’, or some such. I think most people assumed it was an accounting firm?”
He made some more notes in his notebook, and when he remained silent, I felt pressured to talk more, even as my brain was telling me this was an interviewing tactic and I was being manipulated. It’s not as if I had anything to hide, but I was nervous, anyway. Which made no sense, but I suppose even if you are innocent, police can make people nervous. And I was planning on stealing their dog, so perhaps I wasn’t as innocent as I pretended to be.
“Yes,” I continued to fill the silence. “Looking back it seems weird that none of us knew, but whenever it came up something else always came up to change the topic, and the way he deflected the question was very natural and smooth. I don’t think, at the time, you even realized he wasn’t really answering your question. It was odd.”
“Indeed,” the cop replied, then fell silent again. This time, I refused to fall for it, and stood, staring at the house over his left shoulder.
Perhaps I was in a little bit of shock, my eyes didn’t seem to want to completely focus and I felt my brain drifting ever so slightly. I should probably go in and sit down, I thought, but my legs didn’t want to move. The officer was looking at me thoughtfully, but not unkindly.
“Maybe you should go in and sit down, have a cup of tea or coffee or whatever. This has to have come as a bit of a shock,” he said, gesturing at my house in a slight shooing motion.
I would have taken offence at the dismissal except for the fact that I really did want to go sit down, and I was damn sure I’d earned that glass of wine now. I nodded, and finally got my feet moving. I stumbled up my front steps, and it took me a second try to get the key in the lock, but once I was inside, I felt a lot better. I unhooked Jasper, and he ran directly for the kitchen and the dog bowls there, expecting to be fed.
“It’s a good thing I have all this stuff for you already, boy, or it would look suspicious that I suddenly had to run out and buy a lot of dog supplies.”
He cocked his head at me, as if to say, “you really think they’d believe you killed Marge and Andy to get their dog?”
“Stranger things have happened, buddy,” I replied.
His eyes darted from my face to the hand holding the dog food scoop. “Stranger than you holding up my feeding? Come on, woman!”
“Okay, okay, sorry,” I said, pouring his food into his dish. He pounced on it was snout-deep in the kibble like he hadn’t eaten in days. “Dude, not only am I pretty sure Marge fed you very regularly, I know for a fact you ate dinner yesterday, so the starving pooch routine won’t get you more food from me.”
He ignored me and continued to inhale his dinner. I had lost my appetite, and instead opted just for the glass of wine. A very large glass of wine. I took it to my computer desk and sat down to mindlessly scroll through social media sites and watch some entertaining YouTube videos. Or some not-so-entertaining YouTube videos, I wasn’t feeling terribly particular. I was definitely in the mood for some passive entertainment. I didn’t want the effort of even reading, I wanted the content to be shoveled into my brain. And the less thought provoking, the better. This was a baby goats in pajamas kind of evening.
Unfortunately, my fun, relaxing evening took a turn when I went to quickly check Facebook and my Greasemonkey script informed me that I’d lost two friends off my friends list. As I was rarely (okay, never) controversial, I found this odd. The few times it had happened before, the person had temporarily deleted their Facebook page, and always reappeared later. I had yet to fathom the purpose of the temporary deletions, but it happened fairly regularly among a certain subset of my friends list. I had thought about asking them once or twice, but then thought it might feed into the cycle of attention-seeking behavior, so I let it go.
And sure enough, the two missing friends no longer appeared to have Facebook pages. The problem was, the two people were Marge and Andy. I couldn’t fathom why Marge would have had the foresight to delete her Facebook page hours before her death, but I could see why, if Andy were still alive somewhere, he would delete the both of them. I briefly thought about going back outside telling the cops what I’d found, but then simply did not have the energy to get up. They’d figure it out, or not, and it wasn’t my problem.
At least, that’s what I kept trying to tell myself, but the baby goats failed to hold my attention. My mind kept wandering back to the mystery of the missing Facebook...
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