It's Mine.

I was an ER nurse until I turned forty and decided I needed a changed. It had been years eating at me; eating at my motivation, slowing my response to patients laying on the hospital beds, some of them bleeding out. They deserved a quicker response and the monotonies of the job exasperated by the years under my belt grabbing scalpels and sponges, dropped bullets and pieces of glass and random other foreign objects people get stuck in them, wouldn’t allow me to move any faster than a baby tortious being devoured by its rival kin. Every time I needed to move, I envisioned my younger sister pulling at my leg; being the rival tortoise. She’d be all sprawled out on the floor with her hands wrapped around my ankles. Sometimes if I didn’t slow enough, she would sink her little teeth into the thin white skin of my ankle.

Two days after a sibling incident in the hallway left me with psychosomatic teeth marks so deep, they were purple, I answered an ad in the newspaper. It was an ad for a nursing position in the psychiatric facility on the way out of town. I was to go in tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. I’m not sure why I thought I would make a good nurse on a crazy ward but the ad was there, I answered, and they called back.

So, there I was at the corner bar going over my resume, reading through my past work experience like it was a stranger’s. Some of the stuff on it was so old I had to form false memory to share tomorrow if certain bullet points were called upon for further explanation. Smoke from the bartender’s cigarette swirled up through the air almost masking the rotten laundry taste in my scotch.

The area drunk from was there pulling shorter sips than normal up the straw in her high ball. She was there every time I was which wasn't a lot; maybe twice a month but I’d been going for ten years, and so had Terry. An ex used to call her “Terry talks too much if you make eye contact”. He was an ass but not wrong. So, I did my best to avoid the bloodshot greens three stools away. I could’ve sat farther away.

“Hey Frankie! You think maybe you could remake this in a clean glass?” I slid the rocks glass minus one sip to the tender’s side and waited as Frankie glared at me like I was next on a long list of murder victims he’d been trying to complete since the sixth grade. “Don’t look at me like that. A clean glass is not too much to ask.”

He walked over to the glass, picked it up, and tipped it back into his head. The lack of reaction as he swallowed smoothly was not a new trick. I didn’t give him the reaction he was hoping for. He grabbed an empty, filled it and slid it to my side. “$4.50,” he said.

“You just drank mine.”

“There was nothing wrong with it. $4.50.”

Frankie’s was a dickhole; always had been, but the proximity of the bar to my house kept me coming back. If I accidentally fell into a third drink the walk was easy, even in February when the cold air punched you in the back of the nose.

“Would you put it down there?" I pointed to the end of the bar farthest from Terry as I stood. “I need to run to ladies’ room.” Terry smirked at my attempted discreteness.

Frankie followed with a smirk of his own, intensifying it as he turned his head from her to me.

“What is that all about?” I asked. Hers I got. His didn’t make sense.

He paused just for a moment. “You know damn well there aren’t any ladies here.”

“You’re hilarious Frank.”

The bathroom was as grimy as always. My shoes brought up sticky liquids from spilled drinks with every step. It hadn’t been mopped and the smell was similar to my glass with a splash of urine. I did my business and washed my hands. The towel dispenser to my left was not filled: It offered nothing in the manner of assistance. I pulled hard on the paper hanging from my right. A small bit tore from the towel. I pulled harder and with a larger grasp. The last towel dispensed hesitantly with a clunk. Something hard was in there. I pulled at the front of the contraption, one hand on each side. It didn’t budge, so I pulled harder the second time. The front fell harshly and came to a rest after several ear-piercing squeal laced bounces on its round plastic hinges. A small black Moleskine notebook, one of the smallest you can purchase, rested inside. I snatched it up quick and slammed the lid back on the dispenser. Writing revealed itself as I fluttered through the pages, but I didn’t take the time to read it. I stuffed it in my pocket as my shoes made the same sound on the way out as they did on the way in. I was surprised by the lack of woosh as I passed each individual bar stool standing still up against the long bar.

“Hey! Don’t you want your drink?” The greasy bartender hollered.

“No, I don’t feel good. I’m going home. Your bathroom is disgusting by the way.”

The moleskin was burning a hole in my pocket like the fifty cents my father used to give me every morning for the candy store. I tripped on my shoelace halfway home. I didn’t fall to the ground, but I did stumble to the point that everyone else on the sidewalk made a collective “whoa”.

I noticed Terry from the bar as I stood from trying my lace. She was stopped behind me staring into Jensen’s store window display. I’d never seen her walking this way before. In fact, I could’ve sworn the last time I left, she left right after me and turned in the opposite direction; towards the train tracks.

I made it home to my little apartment. It was on the third floor of an ancient brick building lacking an elevator. I wouldn’t be able to live here forever. I threw my purse on the stand by the door and tossed my keys a bit too lofty. They landed in the plant on the far side of the table. I definitely broke some leaves. I plopped on the couch. The plastic crinkled as the absorbed air pushed out tiny cracks whistling a warning under my weight. The plastic had been in this condition long enough for me to start using the escaping air as gauge for my weight gain or loss, fine, my weight gain. There never really was any loss regardless of how much effort I convinced myself I was putting in.

I opened the book holding it flat against the glass tabletop of the coffee table. There were words in black marker across the whole of both pages. The words were Latin. I didn’t remember much from high school Latin, but I could recognize the language. I jumped off the couch and ran to the bookshelf. I scrambled through the books. I knew it was there. I knew I hadn’t thrown it out. I considered during my last purge: it saved itself with the enticement of future usage.

It said something about bringing about the riches beyond the conjurer’s dreams, but It required a sacrifice and as the badly drawn picture indicated, it was a human sacrifice. Maybe I could just pull apart a stick figure. But the weird thing was the sacrifice was depicted after the riches befell what appeared to be a woman conjurer. Couldn’t I just say the words, perform the twirls get the riches and then not do the sacrifice? There was nothing in the book indicating I couldn’t.

I slammed the little book closed and put it down. “This is dumb,” I said out loud. I grabbed the remote, quickly flipped through the channels, realized there was nothing worth watching, shocker. “Satanic rituals it is!” I didn’t believe in the devil or heaven, so really, what harm could it do?

I grabbed the book and stood in the middle of the room. There wasn’t enough room. I had to move the coffee table to fit step three and four in there. My living room was small: it wasn’t made for spells involving a lot of movement. I pushed it back against the couch and stood in the center of the room. Once I finished the movements forming a star, I walked the circle enclosing it, jumped into the center and waited for my riches to materialize. I grew bored and sat, knees up to my chest for a bit but then crossed my legs, to wait even longer.

A ruby appeared on the coffee table a couple minutes into my new position. The vantage point from the floor was bad. I had to stand to get a better look. By the time I was fully prone there was another, a deeper red. I wondered if they were plastic. It didn’t take long to settle on their authenticity. I started to worry about the ritual. Then a diamond like gem came into focus. If I stepped out of the circle would they stop appearing? I was moving my leg out of the circle when a hundred-dollar bill materialized. I put my foot down immediately and stood still, staring. I gasped inhaling a giant gulp of rich air, a response to the breathing I had not been doing. The bills began to pile; one on top of the other. It went on for several minutes.

When it was over there were three piles of hundred-dollar bills tall enough to fall over. I stepped out of the invisible circle and counted my manifestations. Eight hundred thirty-seven thousand dollars in cash and six different gems was my take. I grabbed the black backpack from my closet and stuffed everything inside. I was sliding the last clear diamond like gem in when the knock came. My stomach dropped and fear rushed through my veins. Nobody ever knocked on my door. I eyed the peep hole. The drunk from the bar was on the other side not seeming very drunk at all. How long had it been since I left the bar? Did she follow me? Has she been standing outside the whole time? I pulled the zipper closed and stuffed the bag behind the throw pillows in the papasan chair on the other side of the room. She banged hard on the door. It was not a knock. She was throwing her hip into.

I yelled, “What do you want?”

“You know what I want,” she replied. “You have my Moleskine.”

She slammed into the door. It wasn’t a good door. This wasn’t a good or safe apartment. I wished I had a gun. She slammed again and the door gave way. She walked in like she owned the place. “Give it to me.”

“I didn’t complete it,” I told her as her eyes scanned the little room.

“No shit. You’re still alive.”

She went to the couch overturned the pillows and then headed to the chair. She grabbed the bag, and pulled the Moleskine notepad out, flipped through the pages with a giant smirk on her face and giggled.

“This is mine.”

“All I took was the notepad, the rest of the bag is mine!”

“Ha! No! You did exactly as you were supposed to. You manifested all this money for me. Now you’ll finish the spell.”

“I’m not finishing the spell.”

“It’s not like you have a choice.”

She turned and left out the door. It shut behind her unbroken. I saw the drawings. I only will have ever been an ER nurse.