Page 53 of Together We Rot

“It’s more dangerous if you don’t learn to control it,” she tells me.

I whip away from her and I taste blood on my lips from the scrape of my teeth. “I don’t even know how to do that.”

Cherry gestures in one quick sweeping motion for me to close my eyes. “Pretend you’re outside like you were with me. Ask to be let in.”

On the back of my eyelids, I see nothing but swirling darkness.

I imagine the beast lurking behind a heavy wooden door, trapped within the depths of my mind. Darkness pushes beneath the cracks and curls at my feet, and beyond the barrier, I hear a monstrously large patter of wings.

It holds on, its voice one incomprehensible, insectile scream. The sound lasts only a couple seconds, but those seconds expand until they feel like minutes or hours of suffocation. I wait for more to happen, for the past to flood out and trap me under its weight. For the darkness to overtake me and destroy everything.

But by some miracle, it doesn’t. The darkness recedes and the door stays intact.

I heave for air and fling open my eyes, free at last. It takes me longer than it should to find my voice, but when I do, I pant, “I’m never doing that again.”

Cherry’s no longer looking at me. She’s spreading a row of cards down on the table. It almost looks like a normal deck, but I know it isn’t. The backs of the cards are hand-painted a thunderstorm gray, a smidge lighter than black.

“Why not consult the cards in the meantime, then?” She hums. “Go on, ask a question.”

I gnaw on my cheek, my fingers pushing down on my rib cage to calm my pounding heart. “What sort of question?” So many of them compete inside my thoughts.

She rests her face into her palm. “Anything, really—though, for your sake, maybe get to the point.”

I gulp. “What’s going to happen to me?” I look at her for guidance, but all I get is a barely there nod. Nothing to indicate whether I messed up or not.

She waves a hand toward the deck. “And now, the most important part: choose whichever cards call you and slide them my way.”

Call me? I stare down at the full spread. They’re all identical. No creases or chipped paint or anything. I twitch toward the one on my left, but then my fingers freeze, hesitant. What if I’m overthinking this? What if I pick a horrifically awful card by accident?

I close my eyes, drawing my hand out and sliding forward the cards at random.

Cherry tells me to open my eyes and return my attention to the deck. “Done?” she says, musing to herself.

“Done.”

She flips them over one by one. In place of the cards, I watch the gradual widening of her eyes every time she sees something decidedly bad. “Holy Major Arcana, kid.”

“Is—is that bad?” I ask the words I’ve been meaning to ask this whole time. “Do I need to redraw?”

“No, you picked these cards for a reason. I mean, a bunch of Major Arcana isn’t bad, per se... The cards have a lot to say today. Guess a big problem requires big cards.” Her nail rests on the first card she flipped over. It seems pleasant enough. A bright blue sky, green grass, two dogs barking up at the clouds.

“The moon,” she clarifies, tapping at the card’s title. “You picked this card for your present.”

“What does it mean?” If it’s my present situation, it can’t be good. I wait to hear her say as much.

“It means you’re spiraling. Lost.”

My mother would burn this deck if she knew I was consulting it for anything. I gulp.

“Tarot never lies.” Cherry chuckles, though it’s got a vaguely protective sound to it. “Now on to your problem card.” She flips the next one. “This one signifies the challenge you are trying to overcome.”

She doesn’t need to explain it. I can stare down at the miserable card and decipher it on my own. A skeleton trampling over corpses on a battlefield, Death scrawled underneath.

“Never mind; I hate this.” I’m already wincing and she hasn’t even said anything about it yet. Death couldn’t possibly be flowers and rainbows.

“Death’s never a fun one.” She levels with me, though I catch her rolling her eyes at my melodrama. “But it doesn’t always mean death death. It’s, uh, a metamorphosis of sorts. Plus, paired with the moon, that’s usually a good light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel deal. But yeah, in a nutshell: you’re dealing with an upcoming transformation.”

A transformation sounds almost worse than death. I imagine my skin peeling from my bones and my mouth drawing into one sharp pincer. Eyes bulging from my sockets. Darkness overtaking every part of me.

---