The Fall

Autumn and Josh conducted their Saturday ritual of shopping at the home and garden store. They made the trip through the country, past the farms and vineyards to the big lot of supermarkets and department stores. Josh had been gardening since their son Kyle had gone to prison. It was Josh’s coping skill, a healthy hobby suggested by their counselor. “Something that will help manage the grief and stress this ordeal has brought upon your family. Something to remind you of the many things in life that are very good.”

Kyle had killed a man during a robbery and had denied culpability to his believing parents. After being confronted by forensic evidence from the state labs the lawyer Josh and Autumn had hired for Kyle negotiated a generous plea bargain. Kyle allocuted to third degree murder and was sent to the Norfolk Office of Detention rather than the state penitentiary.

That was three years ago. Autumn blamed herself throughout, despite Josh’s assurances to the contrary. Kyle had blamed her too. She traced Kyle’s downward spiral to the moment she and Josh had told him that he was meant to have been a twin. Their first child, Andrew, had died in childbirth. The labor had been agony. It had been everything Autumn had been taught to fear from the time she was a little girl. Thirty-six hours of torment and in the end, despite her wishes, despite all the efforts of the doctors and nurses, one of her babies still died, the cord around his throat. Kyle had survived undamaged, save for a birthmark. Autumn and Josh had been grateful for that. When Autumn had urged Josh that they should tell their living son the truth about his birth she had misjudged its impact. He said he had always felt a burden, elusive but as omnipresent as his birthmark.

“You made me a killer,” He had said to her, the last time his mother had visited him.

Autumn had a Caesarian for their next son, Stephen. Stephen was very good. He had graduated college, was established in his career as a public school teacher. He had a wife Autumn liked and a child of his own on the way. They were thankful for Stephen. His successes were a vicarious victory for Josh and Autumn. Despite their tribulations, Autumn and Josh’s love for each other had not soured in the slightest. Their relationship was very good.

Josh parked and they sat in the air conditioning, relishing the cool air before venturing onto the hot asphalt.

“You still have toilet paper on your face,” Autumn picked the bloody spot from where Josh had cut himself shaving that morning..

“Woops,” said her husband.

“You’re not going to go in there with your socks and sandals are you?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“You look like a goof.”

“I do?”

“You do. I can’t be seen with you.”

“Honey, everyone is going to see you with me. Where is your bra?”

She slapped his arm, “it’s hot outside!”

“It’s hot in here,” he raised his eyebrows and purred.

“Put on your shoes!”

The heat was less oppressive than they had anticipated. The sun was setting as they exited the vehicle. The two held hands as they crossed the hard tar and Autumn felt the strength and familiarity of Josh’s rough, calloused fingers. She lifted his hand up to inspect it.

“You should use that pumice stone I bought. And the bristles for your nails.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Josh, I’m serious. Your hands are dirty.”

“Well I’m just going to root around in the dirt planting, anyway. Then Monday I’m going to get back up on the roof and probably smash all my fingers with the hammer.”

“I like it when you’re clean.”

“Yes, darling,”

“Josh! And I don’t like when you joke like that, about getting into accidents. You know I worry about you every day. You should retire.”

“With what money?”Josh scoffed as the cold air conditioning hit them through the automatic doors.

“We have some money.”

“We had some money and we spent it on lawyers. We have investments that we can’t touch because--”

“Of the economy, I know.”

“So why do you--”

“I just worry.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I can’t help it.”

They passed the familiar row of grills and patio furniture hand-in-hand, on the well-tread tile path to soil and mulch. Autumn could feel the slight limp in her husband’s gait that he could no longer mask.

“We wouldn’t even need that much money,” she persisted.

“Three hundred thousand dollars,” Josh said, “we would need three hundred thousand dollars to keep and upkeep the house, the house, live, and handle any of life’s curveballs. We’re going to be grandparents. And we’re still paying for lawyers.”

“It would take that much?”

“To get us to sixty-five and social security, yes.”

She breathed deep and vibrated her lips in exasperation..

“I can work,” Josh insisted.

She pouted playfully at him. “Fine, you just focus on your dirt. I’m going to see if there are any good books.”

“God made dirt, so dirt don’t hurt,” he winked and ambled off disguising his limp as a spring.

Autumn was still developing her own coping skills. She jumped from one project to another. She loved the escape of good fiction but lately everything dredged up bad memories and negative emotions. She had tried knitting, crocheting, weaving, painting, ceramics, journaling, but one by one she would tire of all her hobbies. She did not like it inside stores like this. The fluorescent lights and sterile atmosphere were reminiscent of her worst memories. The hospital where Andrew died. The prison where Kyle refused her. The elementary schools where she had worked before it had become too much.

Autumn foraged through the fiction section but she had read all the mysteries, leaving only the romances and sci-fi’s and vampires, in which she had no interest. She felt a knot forming in her throat. As she moved on to the DIY section the lights seemed to flicker and the knot in her throat transitioned into a sinking feeling in her chest. Then the headache started.

“You made me a killer.”

She tried to breathe it away. The overhead light was dim and flickering. She thought she heard it hissing and wondered if it was the light or her migraine coiling around her temples like a snake, slithering into her ears and resting behind her eyes. Then she saw it.

It was a little black hardcover. Light shimmered across its deep black face. She held it by its flimsy spine. The pages were an aged off-white, the first two blank with no publication date or information. It was void even of a blurb about the author. Though small, it felt heavy. She turned the page and found the title.

Magick Wealth and Power

The Cunning Secrets of the Gods

By Yasser H. Ra

Intrigued, she flipped through the pages, past vivid black and white illustrations, arrangements of triangles, circles, hexagrams, and other shapes that Autumn could not name. She flipped through illustrations of people, constellations, animals.

Interesting…

She turned the page from a drawing of a man and a goat and found her new project.

Instant Retirement

Required Materials:

1 Green Candle

1 Sheet of white paper.

1 Red Pen

1 Grape Leaf

3 inches of string

Take your red pen and on your sheet of paper write the desired wealth. Next, wrap the paper in the grape leaf and tie both to the candle. Light the candle and say “ex nihilo, ad nihilum, terra terrarum est.” Let the candle burn and the desired wealth shall be yours.

She whispered the words and tingled all over. A rough hand grabbed her arm.

“Josh!”

“Got you good that time!” her husband laughed at her, a bag of soil on his shoulder. She slapped his arm.

“What have you got here?”

“The answer to all our problems, dirtbag.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes really. Go buy me a grape leaf.”

“I don’t grow grapes.”

“That’s why I said buy it for me.”

“I don’t think they sell grapes.”

“They sell candles. I need a green one.”

**********************************************************************

Josh drove and Autumn held her green candle close to her chest. She had the pen and paper in her purse. She had written on it “$300,000.00/00,” like a check. The sun had gone beneath the horizon and the planets were appearing in the sky followed by the brighter stars until the whole sky was arrayed in celestial majesty. Autumn searched the stars for a grape leaf. The answer intruded as they drove by the vineyard they passed every Saturday.

“Josh, pull over.”

Josh pulled over and shifted into park by the vineyard’s tall, forbidding fence.

“You okay?”

“Will you climb that fence and grab a grape leaf for me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But why?"

“You see that?” Josh pointed to a sign hanging from the fence, “‘no trespassing,’ climbing a fence is trespassing.”

“Babe, please, it will be so quick. Just scurry up, grab the leaf and scurry back down.”

“What is this even for?”

The book had said not to discuss it.

“Just trust me.”

“There’s barbed wire up there, and it’s probably electrified.”

“That is not an electric fence.”

“You know what an electric fence looks like?”

“It’s not.”

There was fruit hanging beyond the fence, tall enough to grasp, grapes with dark green leaves.

“And what do I get for this?”

Autumn gave him the look.

Josh grunted and sighed and opened the truck’s door. Heat had left the Earth and the air was brisk and chilly. Josh approached the fence and gave it a quick slap to make sure there was no electricity. He put his fingers in the chain links and climbed it like a ladder, rattling the fence against its posts as he ascended. At the top he reached for the leaf and heard a crunch beneath him. He looked down and as he tore the grapes from the vine he saw a black snake raising its head at him. He paused and looked closer at the shape. It roared and breathed fire.

A dragon!

Josh caught his hands on the barbed wire and instinctively released. The shift in weight caused the chain links to detach from the posts and cave in toward the vineyard, catching his legs. He hung upside down from the fence and his hot blood poured from his torso down into his face.

“Josh!” Autumn shrieked, but he had already lost consciousness. Dark red blood pooled beneath him in the dirt.

**********************************************************************

They all came, ambulances, fire trucks, police. Too late. The firefighters declared Josh dead and Sergeant Michaels commenced a death investigation. After taking the farmer’s statement, Michaels arrested him.

“Trespassing or not, you can’t just shotgun a man for climbing your fence.”

He escorted the farmer to the squadcar in handcuffs and helped him lower his head to get into the back seat. He approached Autumn, who felt naked, ashamed, catatonic.

“Ma’am.”

“Yes,” her voice was far away.

“Are you able to give a statement? If not, it’s alright, I can just take your information.

She tried to respond but only a small croak came out.

“Ma’am I’m going to ask you to let the EMTs have a look at you, take you to the hospital.”

“No,” she managed, avoiding his eyes. “No. Home.”

Michaels considered his words before continuing.

“Ma’am, I’m not an attorney and I can’t give you legal advice, do you understand me?”

She nodded.

“This man, his family; they’re wealthy.”

Her eyes fixed on his.

“A wrongful death lawsuit can yield a $100,000 settlement. For the victim of a felony, like you, you’d be entitled to damages in triplicate---”

“You made me a killer.”

She understood and screamed. Michaels had never heard such a scream. Her eyes were open. She understood perfectly. She understood everything although she could hear nothing over the sound of her lamentation.