Meanwhile, from across the bog, on the right side of the tracks, Bvrenda (with a silent “V”) felt a pang in her chest and clutched the amethyst crystal dangling over her heart chakra. Something horrible was about to happen. She ran upstairs to her seventies retro decorated bedroom furnished lavishly by Ikea and Target. Breathlessly, she shut the door and hurried to her nightstand. Without hesitating, she opened the top drawer and grabbed her favorite Tarot deck. It was wrapped in a vintage Pucci scarf she had stolen from her Uncle Sebastian.
Bvrenda was addicted to Tarot. She began feverishly shuffling the cards. In a hoarse voice, appropriately setting the tone necessary to evoke the gravity of the situation, she called out to the angels of Tarot for divination and clarity pertaining to Mandy Pandy and her proclivities toward Satanism. She cut the deck and cautiously chose the left stack with her left hand, and then re-stacked it on top of the other half. Next, she fanned the deck out in an arch, and began to choose cards one at a time, carefully. It was a highly intuitive process. She ran her left hand over the cards with her eyes closed, feeling heat pulsating from the ones that cried out to be picked.
The cards were laid out face down one at a time in the formation of a pentagram, starting with the top ray and moving clockwise. Having completed this stage of her ritual, Bvrenda took a deep breath, closed her eyes, placed her hand on her amethyst crystal, and prepared for the revelations to come.
The first card she turned over was the Devil. A wicked looking man, smiling somewhat lasciviously and baring horns, seemed to turn and wink at her surreptitiously, as if to say, “Just sign at the dotted line…in blood!” Brvenda heard herself gasp, but she wasn’t at all surprised. Just as she had suspected, Mandy Pandy was exploiting her esoteric knowledge and playing yet another round of “High Satanic Priestess.” “Right again…” Brvenda mused silently to herself, wishing all along that she had been wrong.
The second card was the Five of Cups. Disappointment. An inverted pentagram with cracked empty cups connected by a shimmering hint of butterfly wings indicated a deeply transformational grief that heralded a simultaneous death and rebirth. Bvrenda was a hypertrophic empath possessing the capacity to internalize other peoples’ feelings, and experience them more keenly than her own. The cracked, empty cups depicted on the card reminded her of the look on Mandy’s face when “Tit Day” backfired. “Tit Day” was a power play that Mandy Pandy had been dealing to her classmates ever since they entered puberty in junior high, and it carried over to her conquests at the local junior college.
Essentially, “Tit Day,” was a day strategically chosen by Mandy Pandy on which she would arrive to class braless in something diaphanous and relatively sheer. It was a shock and awe tactic. She reserved “Tit Day” only for classes where she knew that letting the girls run wild would give her penultimate authority over all the other students by making their professor putty in her crafty hands by way of her bodacious mamillia. Of course, “Tit Day” didn’t fool everyone all the time, so Mandy Pandy only pulled a “Tit Day” when she knew for certain that it would work to her advantage. Upon entering Junior College, MP was able to wrangle a merit scholarship, because the chancellor who bequeathed it to her was a spinsterly closet case who never stopped staring at her cleavage the entire time they had their private tutorials in her dingy little office.
Normally, “Tit Day” was a slam-dunk deal. She tested the waters well in advance to make sure that the professor she was stalking had the hots for her, by floating broad innuendos with studied mock innocence, and lavishing sycophantic appreciation upon her target (aka love bombing), until she knew the time was ripe to strut her stuff. When “Tit Day” arrived, Mandy Pandy always came to class late, so she could make an entrance, bust held high, nipples bouncing, grinning like Honey Boo Boo.
The glazed, “deer in the headlights” expression in her eyes with the Cheshire grimace was a remnant from her childhood pageant days. It had been her mother’s one and only dream and raison d'etre to see her mini-self take the crown as the most beautiful child in the world. Or at least in the county. Sadly, Mandy had failed to live up to her mother’s expectations to fulfill her “Cinderella” dreams of a life that she wished she could have lived but never had the looks or the talent manifest for herself by her own merit. Unfortunately Mandy Pandy had an uneven temperament. And she had gotten into so many brawls backstage with the other little girls in the course of her short-lived pageant career, that she was banned from the circuit for life. If only she had known then what she knew now. She should have bludgeoned them with words instead of her fists. Live and learn.
True, she had been a failure as a pageant girl, but Mandy Pandy was destined to be more of a pole dancer than a Miss America contestant. The time bomb tattoo was the point of no return in terms of living up to the high moral and ethical values of the pageant circuit. No amount of makeup could cover it up, and Mandy didn’t see any point in trying to hide the truth. Everybody knew she was hot-wired to explode. It was just a self-portrait. Why not own it? She flaunted it.
“Tit Day” was Mandy’s day to shake her maracas and let all the other kids in class know that from that point on she was in control. And so she was. It worked every time. Everybody kind hated her for it. But her pendulous super powers were amazing. Almost. She intimidated the straight girls and mesmerized the straight boys and lesbians and metrosexuals across the board. But “Tit Day” had been an institution of her own making since junior high school, and since her peers knew the game she was playing, it had become a bit of a joke. Especially among the “straight” boys once Roger helped them understand the rules of the game. Which boiled down to “winner takes all.”
Brvenda had watched it all unfold before her very eyes, that fateful moment when “Tit Day” backfired. Mandy Pandy came to class in nothing but a pair of hot pants so tiny that they looked like they were actually just a pair of white lace panties, and a gossamer blouse that could have been one of Salome’s seven veils. But instead of stopping traffic, as planned, she heard a ripple of giggles from around the room. Professor Butthoale, who was taking roll at his desk, looked up to see what was so funny, and turned red as a tomato when he saw Mandy Pandy silhouetted in the doorway. The expression on his face looked as if he had accidentally opened up a bathroom stall and found her indisposed by mistake. In short, he was embarrassed and appalled, which only made the room titter with even more laughter. And suddenly, what was meant to be a monumental power grab turned on Mandy Pandy tenfold, making her feel like more like Carrie at the junior prom slathered in pig’s blood than the sex goddess that she knew she was. To add insult to injury, there was the A- to contend with. Mandy Pandy had never gotten an A- in an English class in her entire life. She felt violated!
Bvenda realized that she should have seen this coming all along. Returning from her revelry over the five of cups, she made a mental note to herself to always trust her instincts moving forward. The next card she turned over was The Hanged Man. Gazing into the hopeless image of the upside down naked man nailed to an inverted cross superimposed over a gloomy barren labyrinth, she received yet another vision. It was Mr. Butthoale, arguing with Mandy Pandy about the grade he had given her on her essay for the final exam.
“Yes, you did make a clear thesis, and you did support your thesis. And the conclusion was very strong. What I am calling into question is that you didn’t make a compelling enough argument to persuade me that your sociopathic stance was valid. Maybe you should try harder next time.”
Still hovering over this vision, like a phantom fly on the wall, or the ghost of Christmas past, Bvrenda saw Professor Butthoale look away from Mandy Pandy, and then continue working on his computer, as if she didn’t even exist. Then she saw Mandy Pandy give Professor Butthoale the evil eye. As the vision faded, Bvrenda heard Mandy Pandy retort, as she walked out the door, “What you fail to realize is that my essay could have been the perfect answer to an entirely different question.” Which left Mr. Butthoale posthumously scratching his head.
The forth card Brvenda turned over was Death. The image a bare skull with glowing eyes instantly sent Bvrenda tail spinning into a trance, as if she were falling down a rabbit hole of horrible probabilities. What she saw next was truly beyond the pale. Much to her chagrin, Mr. Butthoale appeared before her as a nauseating spectacle, convulsing, slack jawed in a corner with black goo gurgling out of his open mouth.
His eyes were opened wide as cracked saucers in gacked-out reverie. His mouthed appeared to be uttering an unintelligible word as he gasped for air while suffocating and choking in the viscous ooze drooling copiously from his deflated lips. Precipitously, his body jolted violently, as if he had been struck by invisible lightening, causing his helpless form to convulse in wild, grisly spasms. Then he was still. His god-forsaken limbs went as dead and limp as a burnt rag doll that had been set on fire, and then dumped into the toilet to extinguish the flames, before it had been abandoned in a corner to rot.
Reeling from the graphic foreshadowing of Professor Butthoale’s telekinetic murder, Bvrenda was incensed by the very thought of standing by and remaining idle while Mandy Pandy devolved into the world’s most deadly psychic serial killer. Bvrenda was vegan and didn’t even believe in killing black widow spiders. She insisted on capturing them in jars and releasing them into nature where they belonged. Maybe there was still time and hope for Mandy. Bvrenda closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that somehow Mandy Pandy would return to the light.
The five rays of the pentagram reading were incomplete. Although the suspense was killing her, Bvrenda was almost too worked up to turn over the Fifth card. Somehow, she managed to compose herself and find the temerity to carry on. “The truth shall set you free!” She reminded herself sternly. Bolstering all of the courage she could muster, She turned over the next card. It was The Tower. Contemplating the gravity of the situation, she fixed her gaze on the blasted castle turret being consumed by a dragon’s flames in the void of the blackest night.
It is a gross understatement simply to report that upon this revelation, Bvrenda was “woke” by the stark message the oracle had transmitted to her soul in its ancient and archetypal language. The Tower completed the outer circle of the pentagram, and at the precise moment she turned the card over, Bvrenda was overcome by a tsunami wave of psychic energy. In a cold flash, she received a vision that was more real to her than reality itself. The verisimilitude of her vision could only be described as the numinous hyper reality only encountered in the supernatural realm of the twilight zone otherwise known as “high strangeness.”
Bvrenda saw herself transported to the front lawn of Mandy’s house. Standing there, in the ice-cold air of winter, she helplessly watched the dilapidated death trap exploding into brilliant flames of blue, purple, gold, red, and white light. It was a glorious and fiendishly epic wonder to behold! Bvrenda swore she could hear the muffled sound of Mandy’s voice from inside, screaming bloody murder over the roaring blaze. Her cries were razor sharp claws cutting into the silent night, hemorrhaging agony and dread. As the vision faded, Bvrenda thought she heard Mandy crying out her name like a curse.
Bvrenda was terrified of burns and could feel all of Mandy’s pain in the vision as if it were her very own. She drew in a sharp breath and returned fully to her bedroom in “real time,” where there was only one card left to be uncovered to complete the divination of the five pointed star. Last but not least came the deciding factor that connected all of the rays together. It was the sixth card, located at the center of the star. This card would point to the very heart and soul of the matter. What could it be? She swallowed a lump in her throat, closed her eyes resolutely, and turned the card over slowly. Then she took a deep, grounding breath, calling on all of the inner strength and temerity she could muster. When she knew that she was truly ready to embrace her fate, she opened her eyes to face the future. It was The Star! Before here lay a beautiful shimmering angel, radiating crystal love and light to all sentient beings.
It could only mean one thing. Bvrenda herself, truly blessed among varsity cheerleaders, was meant to stop all of these horrible things from happening! SHE was at the heart of the matter! She was the key! She was that single light in the darkness that fills the void with truth, meaning, hope and salvation! Bvrenda suddenly realized that is was time to activate her latent goddess powers and called on her divine and holy name, “Starina Solaris Shatki She Wolf Who Howls At The Blood Moon!”
Of course, she had her doubts. Bvrenda paused for just a moment to consider whether or not she might be over reacting. While wondering this, she stopped and spontaneously primped in front of the mirror before rushing out the door to save the world from Mandy Pandy. She looked positively fetching in her grey wool hunting hat with the fleece lined ear flaps, pink high sheen satin silk bomber jacket with the word “Grrl!” in curly white felt letters emblazoned on the back, and matching hot pink dolphin shorts, knee high pink striped thigh high soccer socks, a white low cut v neck t shirt, the amethyst amulet around her neck, and metallic silver running shoes. As she laced up her shoes, she chanted her favorite Mantra over and over again, “Don’t dream it. Be it!”
Dressed to for action and ready for an adventure, Brvenda checked herself one last time in the mirror, pinching her delicate cheeks furiously, while pursing her lips provocatively, and batting the enormous lashes of her crystal clear blue eyes, which sparkled with hints of turquoise in the light. After applying a generous pick-me-up layer of high sheen Virgin Pussy Pink gloss to her lips, she tossed back her shimmering main of honey golden blond hair, and tilted her hat just so. Damn! She was beautiful! She couldn’t help it! Hell no! She wasn’t over reacting! “Trust your intuition!” She told herself.
Cupping her breasts in her hands and squeezing them together, Bvrenda pressed her lips so close to her reflection in the mirror she could almost make out with her imaginary twin. “God, I’m hot!” She confessed, as humbled by her vanity as she was thrilled by her own reflection in the mirror. Then, composing herself like a ninja in an instant, she was overcome by the urgency of her mission. Like a bolt of supernatural lightening from the blue, Bvrenda shot out the door and on her way to Mandy’s shack which lay across the bog adjunct the bay.
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