The Volvo of the Vole

My dream fling had just dumped me.

I was speechless, listening to her talk, and then a barn fell on my $100 thousand dollar baby, my Volvo XC90 T8 Excellence.

Then my day really started to suck.

As a general rule, I don’t believe in karma. I believe people do what they do and get what they get. Any divine interpretation of who gets what as decreed by a person’s past actions is a waste of my, and your, valuable time. Time is money, period.

I moved to Hibbing, Minnesota, because I got offered a $500 thousand a year position, as I had figured out a way to extract iron ore from dirt much more efficiently. The company set me and my girlfriend up with lodging, and even gave me a $100 thousand signing bonus.

I spent the $100 thousand on the Volvo. Then I spent far more on Ronda.

For our first, and only, date, I flew her to Paris, where we managed to spend well north of $500 thousand over the course of a week.

I should add that Ronia was not my girlfriend. She was just a fling.

My girlfriend hates me, and she’s our waitress. She had to take the waitressing job due to my no longer being able to financially support both of us.

I hoped she didn’t poison my food. I noticed that she brought both plates to us cold.

I had to admit, she looked good, especially with those thigh-highs. Granted, Ronia looked a thousand times better, but whatever.

I was just figuring out how I could get my girlfriend back when I heard tires screeching in the parking lot. I turned my head, just in time to see a barn crush my XC90.

I rushed outside to survey the damage, only to hear my car alarm sputter and die as two people emerged from the barn. The guy seemed lost but the woman…let’s just say she made Ronia look like white trash.

I checked back to look at Ronia, but she hadn’t even noticed I had gone. Our break-up dinner had been interrupted by a text from her best friend, and she just had to respond. She had been exchanging texts for the last 15 minutes, right after she told me I wasn’t good enough for her.

I was just about to say something sultry to the woman when she zapped me into a vole.

At this point, I feel I should point out that a vole is not a rat, nor a mouse, but is rather a species more conducive to the great outdoors. Whereas mice and rats prefer the comforts of a permanent dwelling, voles prefer to dig their own homes in a convenient patch of someone’s garden.

Being of a mindset to burrow and dig, I scampered out of the parking lot to the woods behind the diner to dig a comfortable hovel for myself and to store food, as I could already sense this winter would be especially brutal.

About fifteen minutes later, right after I had dug a hole deep enough to last through November, I emerged again as an adult human, with the added bonus of being naked with my upper body in a pile of dirt behind the diner.

I also noticed the barn starting to creak, a lot.

I coughed the dirt out of my lungs, tried to shake and swat the dirt from the rest of my body, and stood up, right next to an elderly couple who had just parked their car and were about to open their doors.

I heard the old woman say, “Are you sure you want to eat here? Last time you said it gave you explosive gas.”

Her husband squinted at me, giving me a once-over, and then said, “Maybe we’ll try the place on the other side of town.”

I was kind of impressed that the old guy was able to squeal his tires in reverse.

I saw my clothes in the middle of the parking lot. Since it was just getting dark and the place wasn’t that busy, I figured it would be safe enough to just dress in the parking lot. Right after I had my boxers on, I heard Ronia’s screams from the diner.

Then I saw something like red mist waft from the diner entrance. It was definitely red, and glowing, looking not unlike a stoplight from a distance.

I was relieved to see the diner customers had their attention focused on whatever was happening inside the diner. I continued to get dressed while I tracked the red mist across the parking lot and into the barn.

Before I went back into the diner, I looked back and saw the same glowing red color, a little brighter, from inside the barn.

I entered and walked to the booth where my girlfriend had parked herself, across from the same guy who had emerged from the barn. The guy looked a lot more lucid than he had before, so I asked him directly if that was his barn.

He gave me a look, pointed at my crotch and said, “It looks like your barn door is open.”

I looked down and saw part of my dress shirt peeking through my open zipper. My girlfriend snorted with laughter and I dashed to the men’s room to fix my pants. As I was doing that, I bumped into Ronia and in the confusion got my zipper stuck in my shirt.

She gave a dismissive sniff of disgust as she pushed me aside, adding, “Again? You are so not operating on my level. It’s for your benefit that I’m ending this romantic rendezvous between us now.”

I felt kind of broken then. But I also had a zipper to fix. I continued on my way to the bathroom.

After ripping several holes in an improbably expensive Parisian shirt, I freed the zipper and looked in the mirror.

I looked a mess. I had dirt in places that hadn’t been exposed to that level of filth since I was five years old and learned better. I tried to clean myself up as best I was able. When I was done and resembled a human being again, I emerged from the diner bathroom, triumphant and anticipating horns to herald my arrival.

Instead, Ronia was back to texting her friend, ignoring me completely. I looked and saw my girlfriend outside talking with the barn guy.

The barn gave its last gasp and collapsed into a pile of dust, old wood, lead paint chips, and roofing tiles. When most of the dust had cleared, one of the cupolas that had been on the roof stood ominously in the center of all the debris. While most of the customers contented themselves with watching from the windows, I went one step further and left the diner entirely.

I watched my girlfriend’s face go from slightly skewered to wide with wonder as she listened to barn guy drone on and on. I was about to say something to wreck his ego when he stopped and pointed at the cupola.

“Why is it glowing?” he asked.

He and my girlfriend ran over to the edge of the pile to get a better look. The cupola was now clearly in pieces and had an Amityville Horror-type of red light oozing through the cracks.

A sharp gust of wind ripped what was left of the cupola to pieces, revealing a reddish glowing, very-much intact, brown paper-wrapped box in the middle of the pile.

My girlfriend asked barn guy, “What’s in the box?”

He shrugged his shoulders, adding, “Nothing I brought with me.”

I had had enough. I’d had my car destroyed and been changed into a vole on top of being publicly humiliated. There was Hell to pay, and I singled out barn guy as the guy to pay it. I went up to him and tapped his shoulders from behind.

They both turned and looked at me.

“So that was your barn?” I demanded, puffing myself up as much as I could.

I was at least three inches shorter than my girlfriend now, and I hated it. Stupid thigh-high, high-heeled boots, I thought. But damn, she looked fine in them. And here was barn guy hitting on her. Time to ruin his day.

“I was responsible for it earlier in the day, but that responsibility ceased when the owner took possession of it, and of me, for that matter,” he said, turning to face me. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Nothing,” I seethed. “Nothing beyond restoring my car that got smashed when your barn landed on it.”

“Steve,” my girlfriend looked repulsed as she tasted my name on her tongue. “The barn being here is not this man’s fault. It was the fault of that other woman who he entered the diner with. It was her barn, not his.”

“So where is she?”

“Well,” she looked for the right words. “She kind of dissolved.”

“That’s awfully convenient,” I said, cracking my knuckles as I contemplated the best technique to lay barn guy flat. “But that means it’s still your problem. That was a $100 thousand dollar car.”

“So call your insurance company,” he stated, as he started walking over the pile to get to the glowing box.

“Be careful,” my girlfriend offered to him like a total suck-up.

“It’s not that bad,” he smiled briefly to her. “It’s actually pretty stable.”

He picked up the box and brought it back over to where we were standing.

“It’s surprisingly heavy,” he grunted as set the box down.

The box was tied with an enticing twine knot. It looked elaborate, but it was one of those kinds of knots that come completely undone when a person pulls on one of the strings.

“Is it glowing more?” my girlfriend asked.

At that point, Ronia came out of the diner, spotted me, and clicked over in her heels. The box glowed with a slightly more sinister light.

“Steve, I need you to take me home right now,” she demanded. “Where is your Volvo? Oh, cool box.”

She immediately reached out and pulled the string holding the knot together, causing it to come apart and making the glow the opposite of a warm campfire.

Barn guy and my girlfriend backed up a few feet from it. I stood over the now open box and peeked in.

“Huh,” I announced. “It looks like a mortar and pestle. It’s weird that they’re glowing.”

Barn guy mumbled something to my girlfriend and they both walked quickly to her car.

“Oh!” Ronia exclaimed. “I could use those for my facial wash.”

As soon as she grabbed them, there was a flash and a cackle. My girlfriend’s car screeched out of the parking lot as I looked at Ronia, or rather where Ronia had stood.

There was now a stooped, withered crone standing there. She snapped her fingers and I heard a rumbling as the barn snapped back together, fully restored and reinforced.

The crone raised her face to mine. Both her eyes were cloudy with cataracts as she tried to focus, blinking furiously. She walked around me, patting me assuredly on my shoulders, and, other places.

“Oh, you’ll do,” she cackled. “You’ll do very well.”

She snapped her fingers, and I screamed. It was the last thing I remembered.