The Five Tasks of Hera Clees

I only met Aunt Helene once. It was a very brief visit, but I remember her piercing eyes penetrating me in a way that felt very intrusive, demanding that I give up every secret and thought I held in my seven-year-old brain. She was rumored to be extraordinarily rich. Nobody in my family ever cared about the details of how this grocery cashier made her fortune. They all sucked up to her.

You can imagine my surprise when her lawyer contacted me. Why would Aunt Helene leave me anything? She had two daughters and many cats to leave her earthly possessions to.

The lawyer Vince Hagen wasn’t much for pleasantries and got down to business, “Your Aunt Helene left you $20,000.”

I choked in shock, reaching for my water bottle.

“However, there is a stipulation,” he continued.

I laughed nervously, “There always is. Let me guess, I have to spend the night in a haunted mansion?”

“No,” he didn’t smile. He lifted up a small, black notebook, “Your Aunt Helene has assigned you to complete five tasks that are listed in this notebook. Everything you need to know to complete the tasks has been written down into it. You are not to deviate from the instructions in any way. You will report to me after each task to submit proof that you have done it-”

“What kind of proof?” I asked, feeling a bit alarmed.

He sighed, “It depends on the task. Most require a signature or photograph.”

“When you complete the last task,” he continued when I said nothing further, “I will transfer the money to your bank account. It may take 1-3 business days to appear in your account. I am the one who determines if the tasks have been completed. If the tasks are not completed to satisfaction, you revoke your inheritance. You have three months to complete them. If you do not complete them in the allotted time, you revoke your inheritance. Do not lose the notebook, as that will also cause you to lose your inheritance.”

He leaned forward as he folded his hands on his desk, “It is my duty to inform you that you may not find the tasks pleasant to do. They may result in life altering revelations and changes that will be painful but beneficial in the long run. Do you agree to these terms?”

I was silent for a moment. Part of me was tempted to tell him to shove his little black notebook up where the sun didn’t shine. Still, $20,000 was a lot of money! I also admit part of me was intrigued. Finally, I nodded my head, “Okay.”

Mr. Hagen smiled, handing me the black notebook, “Swell! Congratulations, Miss Clees! You just completed your first task!”

The second task wrenched my heart—take an ice-skating class. When I was a little girl, I had loved ice skating. I was considered talented, and I used to enter competitions. I won many medals and trophies. I dreamed of becoming a professional skater and competing in the Olympics.

All that changed when my mother remarried. My stepfather Dean never liked me. He was horrified by the expense of it all. He would watch me during lessons with my coach, taking note of every fall. He would harp on it constantly. I used to love competitions, but I became a nervous wreck around him.

“We’ve invested a lot of money into you,” he would remind me, “Don’t screw it up!”

I fell during a competition twice. After that performance, Dean managed to convince my mother that I didn’t have what it takes, and they shouldn’t waste any more money on me.

There was a painful lump in my throat when I stepped back onto the ice as an adult. I thought I could still feel Dean’s eyes on me. However, as the other adults in my class giggled as they wobbled and fell, Dean’s ghost faded. I was wobbly, but it seemed my muscles still remembered. Pretty soon, I was gliding on the ice. I laughed as tears froze on my face. I started to remember the little girl I had been who had loved ice skating.

The third task was to have lunch with my half-sister Daisy. When my mother first got pregnant, I was excited. I had always wanted a sibling. However, when she was born, Dean decided I needed to learn to make my own way in the world. He threw away all my toys. When I finished my homework after school, I had a list of chores to do. He gave Daisy my room and moved me to the basement. My mother tried to intervene at first, but inevitably she always cowed before Dean.

She would say to me, “He means well. He believes in tough love. You’ll thank him later.”

Dean said I was spoiled, even though it was Daisy who threw tantrums every time she didn’t get her way. I was lazy, even though I went to bed exhausted every night from doing housework. Dean preached that children needed chores to learn the value of hard work, but Daisy didn’t even put her clothes in the hamper. I made Honor Roll, but Daisy was the “smart one”. I was never allowed to hang out with friends or date, and then Dean would tell everyone that I was “anti-social” and unable to make friends, unlike his extremely popular daughter.

Daisy picked up her father’s contempt of me. She enjoyed getting me into trouble. She’d do things right in front of Dean, but he would still punish me.

Daisy agreed to have lunch with me so that she could tell me that Aunt Helene had left her $5,000. Unlike me, though, she didn’t have to do tasks in order to earn it. This was another smack in the face. Once again, I was being forced to work for something that was readily given to Daisy.

I groaned in dread when I read the fourth task—ask Dean for a character reference. Dean had agreed to do it. Mr. Hagen gave me the letter to read, in which Dean regurgitated every insult he had ever directed at me in the past.

My hands shaking in rage, I asked, “Does what he said affect my getting the inheritance?”

“No,” Mr. Hagen said quietly, “The letter is proof that the task was completed.”

“What is the point of this?” I cried, “It just seems so mean!”

“I don’t think Helene’s intentions were malicious. I think she is hoping that knowledge will set you free.”

“I already knew my stepfather hated me! It doesn’t make it hurt less!”

“Miss Clees, we should never let other people define us. People cast us as villains and heroes in their life stories, but that is not who we are. We are actors cast into an unwanted role. Your stepfather made you feel unworthy and unloved. Helene wanted you to see that neither of those things were true.”

When I read the next task, I called up Mr. Hagen and said, “No, I’m not doing this! I don’t care if I lose the inheritance! Aunt Helene was a sadist!”

He sighed, “Miss Clees, this is the last task. Do you really want to quit when you are so close to finishing?”

“Why am I doing this?” I whispered as I drove up to the house. As my shaking hands unlocked the door, it seemed the air got cooler and the birds stopped singing. My footsteps echoed on the wooden floor, disturbing dust, and threatening to resurrect phantoms.

Dean had complained to Reverend Bailey about his troubled stepdaughter. The reverend offered to take me in and provide much needed “spiritual guidance.”

The basement room he kept me in contained a bed with shackles, a bucket with a toilet lid, a basin, and a gallon of water. For months I was abused in that room in every way imaginable.

One day, he stopped coming down with food and water. While trying to capture water droplets from the leak that stained the wall, I noticed that the wood was rotten. I had managed to kick through the wall. The door to the basement was unlocked, for he felt the locked door to my room provided enough security. Though his car was in the driveway, I did not see him. I ran to a neighbor’s house for help.

I worried my allegations would not be believed. Dean certainly didn’t believe me. He told the cops I was a liar, trying to slander the reputation of a man of God.

Fortunately, there was evidence to corroborate my claims. They found Reverend Bailey dead in his bedroom from a heart attack, and they found video tapes of his “counseling” sessions with me. They also found his wife’s body buried in the garden. Everyone had believed she had left to take care of her ailing mother, and no one had questioned it despite not having seen her in three years.

My parents weren’t charged. However, my mother thought it best to send me to live with my paternal grandparents. When she hugged me, she whispered, “I’m so sorry! I should have---”

She couldn’t complete the sentence. She committed suicide later that night. Dean and Daisy blame me for that too.

I sighed in relief as the light to the basement came on. At least I wouldn’t be facing my demons in the dark. Halfway down, I saw that on the wall, someone had painted, “YOU WERE NEVER A VICTIM.”

Furious, I drove to Mr. Hagen’s office and threw the key at his face, hitting his cheek, “That spiteful old woman! She did all of this just to tell me she thinks I’m a liar!”

Mr. Hagen stood up and came around the desk. He gripped my shoulders, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The message that said I was never a victim!” My eyes betrayed me and let loose a torrent of tears.

I was surprised when he embraced me, but I melted into him as his cologne of woodland spices flooded my nostrils. His voice tickled my ear, “You misinterpreted the meaning of her message. You are a strong person, Miss Clees. She formed these tasks hoping you’d see that. She felt you had lost sight of who you were.”

I sniffled, “I thought you said you didn’t know why she did this.”

He smiled, “I lied.”

“I don’t understand why she did this for a relative she had only met once,” I took a tissue he offered and blew my nose.

“It only takes one meeting to make an impression, and you certainly did. She kept tabs on you for years,” he offered me his hand, “Come to dinner with me, and I will tell you about a dirty, shoeless little boy begging for food on a sidewalk that Helene met only once, but years later she would put him through law school.”

As I took his hand, I realized that Aunt Helene hadn’t just made my life richer financially. I felt I had blossomed after years of dormancy. I was free from the shackles of the past and before me was a future of possibilities.