Aggie & I

My ideas were never quite good enough. My prose was never quite memorable enough. Which is what landed me in a job bagging groceries and living in an apartment that made a postage stamp seem palatial. Being a writer had always been my dream.

The question nagged at me. Could you really call yourself a writer if you’d never really written anything good?

Yet, this feeling remained. I was a writer. I knew I was. I just needed to find my story. It was out there. Somewhere.

“Ginny, could you come here please?” My managers voice warbled over the PA. I slunk from the break room to the cash. I waded through the molasses of indifference and met my Paris standing with his arms crossed next to the cash register farthest to the left. My heel would be exposed to the elements momentarily as the remaining seconds of my break melted away. I contorted my face into an unconvincing smile, and allowed the passive aggression to win out, “I must have been confused, because I thought my break was fifteen minutes, not twelve and a half. My apologies.”

“I thought you’d like to hear the good news; Angela just called in sick, and we are short staffed, so I thought I’d give you a try on cash. You’ll get the higher salary, and if you do a good job, maybe we can discuss a promotion.”

With that, the arrow was launched, and my heel struck. Achilles staggered, and down she went. In that instant I saw my future flash before my eyes; I would get the promotion, I would start to save my money, start feeling comfortable, safe, I’d meet a decent guy, and after a couple of years we’d get married, I wouldn’t write again, at first because I would be too busy, but eventually it would be because the taste of failure would sting like curdled milk, and my life would become a giant wound too painfully ignored to properly heal. I saw my identity slip away into the abyss of No Frills.

“No!” I shrieked into the abyss. Though, the abyss did not shriek back. The abyss fell away to reveal the form of a very confused and slightly offended manager named Mark, with tiny round glasses and a hot pink lanyard

“Excuse me?” His eyes narrowing.

“Oh. I..I’m sorry. I meant… you know what? Actually, I think… I quit.”

I stepped into the bright sunlight, a free woman. A free writer. Nothing could stop me now.

The adrenaline had all but worn off by the time I stepped over the threshold of my apartment. My apartment that cost money. My apartment that cost a lot of money.

“Vodka.” My voice pierced the emptiness of the room as I staggered to the freezer. I bargained with my motor cortex to cease shaking in order to successfully pour a shot.

The warmth engulfed me from the crown of the head to the soles of my feet. I plopped myself down on the couch, and reached for my little black Moleskine notebook. This had to be the moment. I knew it. If literature and film had taught me anything, it was that in the bleakest of times, the light would beam through the cracks.

The minutes trickled away, as I sat motionless, cap still firmly planted on pen. I began to massage my temples in a Hail Mary attempt to unburden my mind of a brilliant gem locked within.

“I’ve got it!” I lurched up from the couch in excitement. There would be a murderer, and he would kill people in alphabetical order having the town name, and their last name sharing the same first letter.

Madly, I started scribbling an outline. There would be a detective. Perhaps he had a sidekick, with a similar dynamic to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Or of course to Hercule… Poirot… and…

“Shit!” The terrible realisation settled over me like a thick fog. “This is the ABC Murders. This is Christie!” This was not the first time I had unwittingly adopted an idea of Agatha Christie’s.

I threw back another shot of vodka.

“I bet that I could get my job back… if I begged and pleaded.” As I mused aloud, I felt the unmistakable sting of defeat. The tears rolled down my cheeks and clung stubbornly to my chin.

“How did Agatha come up with these.. these scenarios? There’s gotta be some kind of formula.” I stumbled my way to the hall closet, and peered behind the coats and cleaning supplies. There it was. My old Ouija board. Though my goth days were behind me, my hoarding days were not.

I gazed through bleary eyes and stumbled to light a few miscellaneous candles in an attempt to evoke the right mood.

“Spirit of Agatha Christie, I call upon you for assistance. Help this poor soul write a murder mystery.”

I slowly opened one eyelid, and then the other. Nothing. It wasn’t clear what I had been expecting, but the sheer extent of nothingness pulled me back to reality.

“Ok. I think it’s time for sleep.” I dragged myself to the bedroom and flopped down face first, wriggling my feet under the covers and praying that the room would cease spinning.

The weight of the day had settled itself firmly over my chest and the beating of my heart felt reminiscent of war drums. Night withdrew making way for the day’s cool morning light. I continued to toss and turn trying desperately to seduce slumber, but it remained unyielding. Until finally the gentle song of the morning dove, and the penetrating beating of my unflinching heart gave way to sleep’s sweet embrace.

Hours later, I woke with a start, prickling with the distress so singularly associated with sleeping through one’s alarm. As my memory began to recall the events of the previous day, another objectionable feeling seized my attention. A hangover. This was the sort of hangover that was an assault on each and every sense.

“Water.” I groaned, barely audibly, hoping to conjure hydration with a single hoarse utterance. My hand searched the nightstand to no avail, praying that inebriated Ginny had had the prudence to leave a glass of water for her wretchedly sober counterpart.

I dragged my hand back and placed it on my chest. My heart was pounding faster than a cornered beast. The stench of regret oozed out of every pore on my body.

“What’s wrong with you?” I wept, the self pity descending like Scarlett onto the steps at Tara.

“You’re barrelling towards thirty, and are now jobless, helpless, and hopeless. You’re no writer, you’re just a joke!” I twisted myself into the foetal position, the moan still hanging on my lips.

“Well, that’s just no way to talk to oneself, my dear. You must never use such pejorative language when addressing your own person.”

Like a shot my eyes opened, and I was scrambling to my feet searching through bloodshot eyes for the source of this matriarchal British voice. No sooner had I found my footing than I crumbled to the floor, aghast. I felt my blood run cold. My hand shot up to my mouth as if to stifle a scream, but no noise was released. I began blinking uncontrollably, in an attempt to erase the image in front of me, but to no avail. Swaying comfortably in my old rocking chair, grinning down at me with an impish twinkle in her eye… Agatha Christie.

I stared blankly at the figure before my eyes rolled back in my head, and the room went dark.

A torrent of water rushing up my nostrils woke me with a start. I lurched up through a fit of coughing and gasping.

“My word, I am terribly sorry, dear. I meant to wake you from your stupor, not drown you. Goodness, I don’t seem to be the most gracious guest as of yet.”

I craned my neck to see the figure gazing down at me shamefaced. There she stood in all her unearthly glory… Aggie. I brought my face to the floor allowing a few whimpers to pass my lips and remained prostrate.

“Dear? Did you hear me? I am utterly contrite. Please, if you are able, shall we sit and have a nice heart to heart?”

Painstakingly, I rose to my feet, and in a daze motioned her to follow me to the living room. As she sat herself down on my father’s leather wingback chair by the window, I staggered to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

“Uh.. do you do tea? No. Do you… drink tea? Can… you drink tea, rather?”

“I’m a Brit, dear.”

The shock of the situation had momentarily drawn my focus from the cataclysmic hangover I was enduring, but as I sat down on the couch scanning the room to meet the eyes of this spectre, the discomfort became too much to bear. I collapsed into a horizontal position, and shut my eyes. Why couldn’t I have conjured Freud’s ghost instead?

“My dear girl, you seem quite unwell.”

I let slip a snort. “I’d say that’s a bit of an understatement, Ma’am.”

“Well, will you be well enough to start writing?”

At this, my eyes peeled open, and I strained to find her in my peripheral vision. “Write? Write what?” My head swirled and tumbled like a fishing lure on a stormy sea.

“Well, your story, dear! The whole purpose of my visit!”

The kettle whistled from the kitchen startling me into action. I sprang up as if filled with fresh life. “My story! Of course! So… this is really real? You’re real? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, dear. Real enough to be incredibly pleased for a cuppa.” She winked at me. The same twinkle in her eye. I beamed back, and made my way to the kitchen. “A few biscuits too, if you have any.”

Within moments I had a tea bag bobbing lazily in a stained ceramic mug, and a plate of arrowhead biscuits that had expired the previous year.

“Now, tell me what you have so far?” I looked at her sheepishly, and began leafing through my little black notebook thinking that if I managed to manifest a whole ghost, I ought to be able to conjure brilliance from a blank page.

“I see. Well, what do you know, my dear? What subject is dear to you? Something that brings you passion. Something that you love.”

“I love opera. My parents are both in the opera business, and I have been around that world since birth.”

“Well, there you go! You have a starting point. Never attempt to write what you don’t know, dear. It is a recipe for frustration, and failure. I knew about poisons, so I wrote about murder.” She gave me a wink, and sipped her tea. “Oh, dear! You seem like a very sweet girl, but this substance is far from tea.”

She threw back her head to laugh, but the noise that escaped her mouth had the shrill quality of an alarm clock.

I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of my bedroom. “Mrs. Christie?” I called feebly, my senses returning. I chuckled to myself, and looked out the window at the trees swaying in the wind. Dancing rhythmically to the sound of her laughter still echoing dreamily in my ears.

“Weird dream.” Gingerly, I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stretched my tired body. “Opera… a killer at the opera. It could work.” The gears began turning in my mind, and before I knew it, not only did I have the cap off the pen, but a little black book without a single blank page.

“The Butcher of Seville” earned me a publisher, and a $20,000 advance.

I suppose my subconscious had the answer all along… but that doesn’t explain why, on the darkest nights, my old rocking chair sways on its own.