A Fallen Muse by Kamilla Reid

Author:Kamilla Reid [Reid, Kamilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: women's psychological fiction, literary satire
Publisher: CobbleHouse Media
Published: 2023-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Act Four

“Hell hath no prejudice.”

From the 1947 musical, Earn

A squatting mist wrapped its fingers around the Spitehouse, the yard, and all the browning grasses near and far. It amazed Kit that the hottest day of the year could parry with such cold damp the very next morning. In her tiny kitchen, she cradled a cup. Looping letters clung to its ceramic curve: All I need is wooly socks and tea.

She had both down pat. But, surveying the spate of bills in front of her, she decided her cup wasn’t entirely correct. Money would also be nice.

She didn’t need a lot; enough to cover this month would suffice. With the car and the fines, she would not make her chronically frayed ends meet. Stupid fines. Two hundred dollars! She remembered choking when the policeman had handed over the ticket. Him and his stupid bike helmet. Was it her or did every cop in the bike fleet have a double chin? Did any of them even drive a car anymore?

Necessity brought her to the basement, where a tally of empty bottles judged her like the grim cast of a jury. There were a few months worth - milk cartons, juice jugs, bottles. It was a start at any rate, perhaps enough to cover one of Stan’s car payments. She snapped open a garbage bag and set about the inglorious purge.

Her date with Andrew was already forgotten. She had woken with a fiscal hangover that overrode any pleasantries of the night. Bills needed paying, the set threatened disaster, payday was still a week away - or ten, in Hicks Time.

The groan of the old fridge heralded its emptiness. All had come avalanching the moment she woke, as if to punish her for such indulgence.

And it worked. What had she been thinking? She was plainly in no position to date. What could she possibly bring to the table? According to virtually every tome in the self-help section of BookBin, there was a required autonomy before love of the enduring kind could proceed. Full autonomy. Which would probably include more than ‘Just water, thanks’ on a date.

She hauled air into her lungs to temper any further flagellation. There was a fermenting here, she knew. A tempest. If she wasn’t careful, she’d crack right open. She feared the eternity of her tears if they were to be unleashed, the rage that would drown her, and fended each with a rapier of denial.

A third bag of empty bottles and cans was efficiently stuffed, each movement stirring last night’s perfume into her nostrils. The leisure of its application had been surprising, hearkening a time when dresses and fragrance had given her pleasurable pause. She hadn’t worn that particular red number since the Hadean age. It was tighter, naturally, but the zipper held. And when she’d rescued her silver shoes from their tomb, she felt like she was dusting off good china.

At The Apple, she had caved to Andrew’s bid for a bottle of wine. Plums, cherries, and black pepper had pleasantly lazed her tongue, enough to wake her with a dull pulse this morning.

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