Me and Marnie

It is all a load of codswollop, this major arcana and minor arcana rubbish. When all is said and done, the cards are just that. Stiff bits of paper with pictures on one side and an eye-watering geometric pattern on the other. They are as much capable of foretelling the future as my big toe. So, when my cousin dragged me into one of those little bothies on the pier, I grinned my disbelief as she crossed Madam Rosita's palm with silver. In the form of a ten quid note.

It is part of the British seaside tradition. Fish and chips, a ghost train, a helter skelter and a gypsy fortune teller. As usual, this Madam Rosita claimed a pure line of Romany blood and wore some sort of idealised gypsy costume, all scarves, gold (or brass) coins and a peasant shirt under a tight bodice. Not to mention the Nike trainers under a swirling skirt. But she was good at the business. She unwrapped the cards from a silken scarf and dropped them into Marnie's hand.

'Shuffle them three times and think of the question you want answered.' Her voice was low and smokey with the nasal twang of the East End. Winter in Whitechapel, once Jack the Ripper's hunting ground, and summer in Southend, making up futures for the punters. She took the cards and laid them out in a complicated tableaux, all the time muttering in some sort of unintelligible language. Then, in groups of three, she turned them over.

'The past.' She announced and gave a generic tale, subtly illiciting information and feeding it back to the gullible Marnie. 'The present.' She turned the next three and frowned, shooting a piercing glance in my direction. Her eyes widened, flickered away and came back to my face. For a moment there was that horror-locked look that people get when witnessing a grisly accident. Then she forced her attention on the cards.

'The ten of swords. The sign of betrayal.' Her voice was steady, quiet, almost a whisper. 'Beware. It comes unexpectedly, a stab in the back.' Her finger traced the next one, a picture card, brightly coloured. 'The Moon, reversed,' her eyes flickered in my direction, 'truth will out.' The last card in this set was upside down, the seven of swords, it looked like a thief, stealing an harmful of blades. 'A confession.'

Marine moved in her chair as if there were pins in the cushion under her. It was dingy in Madam Rosita's den but not so ill lit as to hide her white knuckles as they twisted her scarf around and around and around, throttling her wrists. She gave a weird little giggle and indicated the third set of three. 'I suppose they're the future?' The sneer in her words made them nasal.

'Are you certain...?' Madam Rosita's hand spread over the backs of the cards, shading them from the intensity of Marnie's fixation.

'Do it!' I had heard that curt order so many times. And I still shuddered.

'The Star, the Tower, the Wheel of Fortune.' She flipped them over quickly, each making a little snap as she placed it face up. 'All reversed.' Suddenly, she gathered up all the cards in a rough stack, mixing up the cards and dropping them in their silk shroud. 'Take your money back.' She held out the tenner. 'I won't say nuffin more.' For a long pause she held out the money, her hand shaking.

'Stupid cow.' Marnie snatched it out of Madam Rosita'a hand and flounced out into the open air, dragging me with her. Behind us, the door slammed. Then came the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock. Spitting epithets, Marnie marched to the pub near the end of the pier, where the bar man served her a double gin and tonic. Then another. There was not much change from the ten pound note. And she was repeating her curses. I felt cold.

Her capacity for gin was, as ever, enormous. But the third one began to reveal her inner self. She was not a good drunk. Nor a fighting drunk. Just a vicious, underhand, bully of a drunk. Also vulnerable to being led. I was sober. With care I could manipulate her back out onto the pier's decking. It was that time between the sun sinking behind a dirty cloud and full darkness. Not that the pier in all its gaudy flashing lights, its cloying aroma of chip fat, the hoots and chimes from the amusement arcade was anything but noisily awake.

The end of the pier is where the anglers cast their lines into the grey, bitter waters of the English Channel. It was deserted, the tide rushing in made the fishing bad. I wobbled Marnie to the far rail before she knew where she was. I held her as she leaned over, memories rising up out of the swirling miasma below. Gin fuelled bleakness threw a clinging wrap of depression around her. Remorse? Not Marnie. Not yet. She clung to the rail, her scarlet fingernails digging in to her palms. Fear. The Star, reversed.

I was learning on her back, with all my anger. Holding her there by the tumult of my will. So many times, she had done this to me, pinning me down, spitting vileness, locking me to her with chains of hate. She struggled, slowly gaining awareness of who, what, was freezing the marrow in her bones. She coughed, choking on the sickly smell of my body, recoiling as she heard my words whispering in her ear, as softly as the sea, soughing over the sand. A long interval of stillness came as she came to an understanding of the hopelessness, the inevitability of her fate. The calm before a storm. The Tower, reversed.

There is a strength that we buy with the bartering of a soul. An energy of righteousness. A force birthed from justice. Or revenge. It fizzled along the scant remains that had been my arms. It crackled my decayed bones into bars of whitened calcite. Where flesh had knit my body into living thing, now electric currents knit my ectoplasm into a semi-solid thing. I was granted strength. Straightening, I wrapped my limbs around her, entangling her almost as an octopus would. But I had enough rigidity to heave her over the rail. Still entangled, we accelerated downwards to crash into the sea. Karma. The Wheel of Fortune. Reversed.

Sinking beneath the waves, my cold bones dissolving away, her hot flesh in a frenzy to cling to life, I whispered my name. Frantic, she clawed, if I had skin, it would have been gouged open. Desperate, she kicked and flailed, losing the air from her lungs. I let her rise to the surface. She screamed my name. And another word. All I needed to do was to cling to her and drag her with me, as she had dragged me, so many times. I let her keep her face to the surface, so she could see the boundary between life and death as she passed from one state to the next. Drowning, being held under, is not an easy death. As I full well know.

Dark waters swirled. What had been Marnie waved gently, a monstrous piece of seaweed, caught in the current. But there was one thing that had survived. It floated away, a luminous patch, a greenish mist of water. Yet, before it could dissipate, They came out of the ether, capturing her in a net of barbs and spines. To the ether, they returned.

They are coming for me, next.

1272 words.