Fates' Folly (20 page)

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your
company, Lolly, Candy and Pop?" Carrie asked.

Putting one hand on her hip, the diva
ballerina struck a pose. "Poppy," she said.

Carrie grinned wide, showing tiny canines.
"So sorry dear, Pop goes so well with the others," she said, not
sounding sorry at all.

"It is the name she asked us to call her at
first, but she didn't like some of the innuendos that went with
it," snickered the second girl, who, down to her clothes, was a
clone of Poppy. Well, almost. She was not as tall, her long blond
hair not nearly as shiny, and her bow shaped mouth, though just as
full and painted the same shade of pink, turned down on one side,
giving her a permanent sneer. Even her large green eyes, identical
to Poppy's, seemed too big on her thinner, sharper angled face. It
was like she was the prototype to the other girl's perfection.

Talk about living in someone's shadow.
Personally, I'd have done everything in my power to look different
which I supposed was exactly what the third girl had done. Her hair
was dyed black and cut in a choppy, chin length bob. Her large
green eyes were circled in kohl and long spidery eyelashes,
matching her black painted and pierced lips that along with her
eyes, worked in exact contrast to her white powdered
complexion.

She also wore dark, skin tight jeans and a
pink top with black shrug. But she had accessorized with battered
combat boots and a belt made of a tarnished silver chain that
jangled with various sized shears- archaic and modern- hanging from
the links.

"Aren't you going to introduce us, Cousin
Carrie?" Poppy asked.

Carrie smiled. "Of course. Girls, this is
Myra Collier-"

"Hades' newest Assassin and champion for the
upcoming Olympian Trials," Poppy said, in a bored unimpressed
voice.

"Friend and confidant to the barbarian,
Caisus Black," Poppy's mini me squealed, jumping up and down.

"Unwilling student to the Celtic warrior,
Barbatus Black, and daughter of Ronnie Lynn Collier," the third
girl solemnly added.

"And recipient of a very interesting,
undecided and unclear future," they all said, unnervingly, at the
same time.

Carrie sighed. "Myra, meet The Fates."

I stood up and walked around my chair to
greet The Fates. "I wanted to meet with you," I said.

"We know," snickered Poppy's mini me. "I'm
Lolly, that's Candy," she said, pointing to herself and then to the
dark haired girl standing beside her. "And, I guess you know," she
poked Poppy in the stomach. "This is Pop."

"Poppy," she said as she casually wrapped
Lolly's hair around her hand and pulled until the smaller girl had
tears in her eyes.

"You are such a bitch, let go!" Lolly
screeched.

Candy laughed.

I took a small step forward wanting to pull
Lolly's hair free. Poppy, still holding Lolly's hair entangled
around her fist, looked at me and smiled. It was an evil smile, and
I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it sent chills down my spine.
Luckily, I was used to high school girls. I folded my arms across
my chest, acted unaffected and smiled back.

"So, what did you girls want to see me
about?" I asked.

Poppy gave me an assessing look from my head
to my toes. "Mainly, we just wanted to see what you looked like, in
person."

Lolly, who was pulling at Poppy's arm, trying
to wrench her hair out of her sister's clutches, stopped her
efforts long enough to turn to me and add, "We had hoped for
better."

The sound of scraping metal caught my
attention, and I turned to see Candy unhook a large pair of rusty
shears from a link of the chain circling her waist.

"Yes, we might have been too eager in our
assessment," she said, snapping the jagged blades, opening and
closing them over and over again, very close to Poppy's hand, where
Lolly's hair was gathered.

"Please," Lolly whined, tears flowing rapidly
down her cheeks.

Poppy slid a finger across Lolly's cheek,
catching several tears. Her beautiful ethereal face wrinkled, as if
in thought. Then, with a tiny shrug of her delicate shoulders, she
let go of Lolly's hair and Candy backed off.

I think I breathed a bigger sigh of relief
than Lolly did. Not very bad ass of me I know, but it seemed like
more was at stake than just long blonde hair. Candy continued to
open and close the scissors, the sound of the metal blades sliding
across one another, the final clink of them snapping shut,
shredding my nerves.

I quietly took a deep breath to regain some
control, at least of myself, if not the situation. Though the
Fates' actions seemed juvenile, typical sibling behavior, the
tension felt thick and strangling.

Lolly ran her fingers through her hair,
working out the tangles. She seemed almost cheery as she turned her
tear stained face towards me and smiled. It wasn't as evil as when
Poppy flashed me her pearly whites, but I still got the point as
she walked the few steps to stand in front me.

"Give me your hand," she said.

I folded my arms across my chest. "No."

She smiled again. I think she was going for
sweet, but it was more of a grimace. "Please, I want to show you
something."

I hesitated, which made her pout. She looked
like one of my students, just a kid, which I guess was why I
finally held out my hand. She held it flat, palm parallel to the
floor, spreading my fingers wide apart. I had a tremendous urge to
change my mind and snatch my hand back, but I was more than a
little curious to see what she would do. Besides, it would do me no
good to let on how much they were freaking me out.

Poppy and Candy walked up to stand on either
side of me. Poppy took over, holding my hand out while Lolly pulled
a small wooden spindle, wrapped with coarse black string, out of
her pocket. She unwound the string a little and, starting at my
thumb, began winding the string around each finger, sometimes
wrapping the entire finger before she went on to the next.

"Lots of twists and turns in mortal lives,"
she said, wrapping my middle finger to the nail bed and back down
again. "Some make humanity stagnant and un-moving," she went on
wrapping two wide loops around my ring finger. "Some are quick
and…” she pulled the string tight so it burned into my skin,
"painful, but allow humanity to move and grow."

She moved onto my pinky and began to wrap my
wrist. "It is all the same, but different, and each life is
tethered at the beginning and continues until it is cut and brought
to an end," she said, wrapping one last loop around my wrist before
unraveling the string out about a foot from my hand.

Candy snapped her shears once by my ear,
before moving them down the string, stopping about an inch from
Lolly's fingers. She opened the blades so the string pulled tight
against the inside of the bottom blade. I gasped, not wanting the
string to be cut. Candy turned at the sound, giving me a wink and
smug grin.

"Myra, pay attention," Lolly snapped. "After
the thread of life is cut, the soul continues on to the Underworld,
where it is caught, judged, and directed until it is tethered once
again."

"We have given you a gift beyond the normal
mortal life," Poppy whispered in my left ear.

I really wanted to swat her, but my right
hand was being extended in front of me by Lolly's string, and
though I could probably manage at least an elbow to Poppy's ribs, I
was scared my movement would pull the black string against the
blade of Candy's shears. I didn't know why, but I desperately
didn’t want that string cut, so I opted for clenching my jaw and
calling her foul names in my head.

"We have seen your beginning and end," Poppy
said. "And we have already risked father's punishment by
interfering and gifting you immortal life."

They were scaring the shit out of me, which
in turn pissed me off.

"Look, I didn't ask for your interference in
my life. I'm certainly not thrilled with my present predicament as
Hades' newest boot licker, which, by the way, scares me a hell of
lot more than the three of you. So, whether the goal of this little
demonstration was to incite my gratitude or scare me, you're
wasting your efforts. Immortality didn't even make my boobs
perkier, I'd rather have continued the trip Sebastian booked me on,
drank from the River of Forget Me Not, and be floating around in
the Field of Asphodel without a care in the world."

"It's called the River of Lethe," Poppy
hissed while Lolly jerked my arm, tugging the string she was still
holding out for Candy to cut.

I couldn't help tensing as the string rubbed
against the blade. I looked over at Lolly, who was glaring at
me.

"You expect us to believe you would prefer a
gray world of nothing, to immortality?" Poppy sneered in my
ear.

I thought about my day so far: I had endured
an encounter with Mrs. Crowell, a work out with Barty and crashing
a young boy's funeral before I had the delightful experience of
watching the God of the Underworld jack-off while insulting me and
berating Riley to the point that he left me. All so I could enjoy
the novelty of being fucked with by three pubescent gods who liked
to hear themselves talk. I could definitely do without
immortality.

I turned away from the sight of Lolly, Candy
and the string, and looked into Poppy's cool green eyes.

"If you bothered to really look at my life
you'd have no problem believing that I'd choose an afterlife of
oblivion." I tried to make my voice sound hard and edgy, but it
came out hollow and tired.

I was still doing my best to stare down Poppy
when I heard Candy's shears snap, a second before I felt a burning
heat where she had moved the blade against my hand, cutting the
string and slicing diagonally across the inside of my wrist.

I watched blood gather and drip into the
string still coiled around my hand and fingers. I looked up. Candy
was holding the long piece of black string that Lolly had
previously stretched out. She stepped forward, grabbing my wrist
and holding it up for me to see.

"You could have always opted for a way out,
you thought about it enough. You were so close that one time," she
said, sliding her thumb across the cut. It stung and there was a
lot of blood, but I ignored it.

She was referring to when I was fourteen and
I had stolen a pocket knife from one of my mama's boyfriends. I
locked myself and my morose thoughts in the bathroom, only to be
interrupted by my mama's screams, when she and the boyfriend had
both reached the mean side of drunk.

Looking back on it, I realized it was
probably a close call. Even now, my chest ached at the remembered
feelings of hopelessness.

She was a bitch to pull forward a memory I
had successfully buried and forgotten long ago, but I wasn't going
to be baited into defending the desperate thoughts of my
adolescence or whining about the shitiness of my life. I told Riley
I could handle them, and I would. So, I plastered a smile on my
face and said, "I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking
about."

Candy didn't react to my comment, other than
smiling as she released my hand and allowed Lolly to step forward
with another spindle. This one was gold with a matching wide gold
ribbon twined around it. She unwound several arm lengths of the
ribbon, smiling at me, a real smile, when she held out the end for
Candy to cut. Holding up a pair of small, shiny gold scissors,
Candy cut the ribbon.

Lolly then folded the ribbon over the frayed
ends of the black string Candy's shears had sliced. Covering the
ugly red slash across my wrist first, she moved on to wrap my hand
and fingers until the black no longer showed. Finished, she took
the last foot of ribbon and held it up for me to take, but I
ignored it.

Lolly said, "We easily see the past and watch
your kind root about in the same predictable paths their ancestors
carved out thousands of years before."

Her words sounded rehearsed, and I tried to
think back on their other ramblings. Were they also rehearsed? Were
they screwing with me for the hell of it, or was this whole thing
some bizarre object lesson?

Poppy took my other hand, forcing it near the
ribbon Lolly was holding up for me to take. "The present, which
should be a wondrous chaos of changing lives, emotions and events,
has become dull and easily predictable."

Candy turned the tiny gold scissors around,
offering me the handle. "The future should be unknown with lives
shifting like a violent storm of our father’s making, but we only
see a placid existence for your kind and a tragic one for
ours."

Poppy began to squeeze my hand to the point
that it became painfully apparent she wasn't going to stop until I
did what she wanted. I didn't want to fight, especially since
they'd probably kick my ass, so I took the damn ribbon end that
Lolly was shoving in my face and tucked it into one of the folds
across my hand. Candy waved the scissors in my face and I snatched
them from her. She smiled. They all smiled, stepping back away from
me.

Poppy said, "We have given you a gift.
Immortality was just the wrapping."

Lolly laughed, "Do your worst, Myra Jane
Collier."

Candy grinned. "And do it fast."

Then they shifted, only a faint whisper of,
"Farewell cousin, Carrie", lingering in the room.

I turned to Carrie, who until The Fates’ last
words, I had completely forgotten about. "What in the hell was that
all about?" I asked her.

Carrie stared blankly at me for a second and
then reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a box of Godiva dark
chocolate truffles. She opened the lid and held up the box. "I'm
not sure what they were trying to accomplish, but anytime the Fates
start interfering with your life, it's not good. To put it
plainly-you're fucked."