With a Wicked Pack of Cards

With a Wicked Pack of Cards

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Synopsis: In an alternate universe, in their senior year at Lawndale High, Sandi and Quinn discover that Tiffany has a hidden talent for cards—Tarot cards. But Tiffany is not using her deck for mere card tricks…

Author's Notes: This tale was inspired by the image of an adult Tiffany Blum-Deckler in a “Miss Cleo”-style commercial for psychic services, shown at the end of Is It College Yet? When I first saw this image around Thanksgiving 2002, I thought, how would it be possible for Tiffany to ever have a career like that? The basics of this story were begun at that time, but not completed until now; parts of the original story were later used in an unrelated story, “Winter in Hell.” The title of this tale comes from a line from “The Waste Land,” by T. S. Eliot, in the segment about Madame Sosostris, “famous clairvoyante.” Tiffany is using a Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

This story makes use of a special font for the title and chapter titles, a free true-type font with a nice (and sophisticated) haunting flavor. The font is called Chaucer (one of several with that name, make sure you get the right one) and is available as a free download online, such as Fontage.com or Searchfreefonts.com.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to MTV for the neat future ego.

Messing with the mind can be so dangerous.

—Tiffany Blum-Deckler, “Quinn the Brain”

“I mean, talk about ironic,” said Quinn Morgendorffer, sitting at the desk to Sandi Griffin’s left. “It’s like that song by the girl with that name. I can’t believe Stacy would do such a thing.” She sighed, arms crossed over her chest. “I just can’t believe it.”

Sandi gave her red-haired best friend a sour look. The problem wasn’t entirely that Quinn had said the same thing about ten thousand times over the summer before their senior year. It was that Sandi could believe it had happened, exactly as it had. Stacy Rowe was such a total ditz, Sandi couldn’t see how it could not have happened.

She cleared her throat to make sure her voice box was still in working order. “What runs around goes around,” she murmured to Quinn. “I hope the little traitor’s enjoying her classes at Carter County High with the other mega-losers. I hope that she—”

“Shhh!” Quinn cut her off just in time. Sandi grimaced but left the rest of that thought unspoken. The principal had a zero-tolerance policy against threats and anything that vaguely resembled them. There was no telling which or how many classrooms were bugged. Maybe they all were. Sandi exhaled in frustration. The principal probably wouldn’t have heard anything anyway, with all the noise from students filing into class.

Quinn shook her head, looking both sad and resigned. “She in there with the addicts and the gangbangers and the crazies, right while we’re sitting here talking. Poor Stacy.”

Sandi’s eyebrows went up. “Excuse me? ‘Poor Stacy’? Quinn, dear, are you saying she didn’t deserve to be sent to reform school for what she did?”

“Nooo, I didn’t mean it like that! I mean, what she did was really wrong, but she was so sweet, I just never thought she’d—I mean, I never thought they’d actually send her to—”

“But she did,” Sandi shot back, “and they did, and now she’s there, and that’s it. Good freakin’ riddance.”

Quinn sighed and glanced around the rapidly filling classroom. The first day of each school semester was the only day she and Sandi came to classes early, to stake out their claims on the seats they always wanted in the back of each classroom. Quinn was keeping the seat in front of her saved for Tiffany if she showed up. “I mean,” Quinn went on, “that hoodoo thing she said she did so you couldn’t talk right after—”

“I had a virus,” Sandi interrupted. “That backstabbing little rat had nothing to do with it.”

“Well, she thought she did. What she did was so really wrong, but she felt really terrible about it and—”

“Oh, spare me.”

“Well, she did! I’m not defending her, Sandi, but she really was trying to fix things when she made that drink with that cayenne pepper and that stuff with that big long name she got off the Internet. She meant well, sort of, but it was still really dumb and really wrong and—I mean, I know if Tiffany hadn’t taken the wrong glass, then you’d—”

Without warning the teacher strode in the door, tall and irritable and grim and gray as an old lion. Sandi and Quinn automatically dropped their conversation and sat up in their chairs. Here we go, thought Sandi. One more year down the drain before I blast out of this town and never look back. Bring it on.

“Take your SEATS and can the chatter if you want to graduate next SPRING!” Mr. DeMartino roared over the noise. The class bell rang that moment in the halls to nail down his point. When the bell stopped, the only sounds in the room were those of students putting away backpacks and settling down for class. Almost everyone knew Mr. DeMartino from previous years and had little desire to attract his wrath. Pens, paper, and history books appeared on desktops in place of cell phones, purses, and car magazines.

Sandi scanned the room from her vantage point in the rear. No sign of Tiffany. Damn, was she back in that awful hospital where they made you wear those wretched gowns that showed everyone your butt, or had she not yet returned from visiting her relatives in New Orleans, as she had written she would do over the summer? As DeMartino began calling roll, Sandi abandoned the thought and elected to give Tiffany a personal visit after school, with Quinn in tow. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to put their diets aside for once and go out for ice cream, if Tiffany’s injured throat could take it, and the three of them could have a powwow over the whole episode and put it behind them.

DeMartino had almost finished taking roll when the classroom door opened and Tiffany Blum-Deckler drifted in, wearing a simple but effective outfit of a black sweater, pants, and low boots. She had a purse but carried no books. Delighted, Sandi and Quinn forgot themselves and ran up the aisles from their desks to give their mutual friend a welcoming hug. DeMartino growled and motioned for the girls to return to their seats. Sandi and Quinn did so, but Tiffany hung back. She withdrew a folded paper from her purse and gave it to the teacher, then stood by as he read it in silence.

Mr. DeMartino’s craggy face softened and his eyes grew wide. “My God,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He looked at Tiffany in distress. “Is this condition permanent?”

Tiffany dropped her gaze and gave a barely perceptible nod.

Sandi didn’t breathe. She knew instantly what had happened. That treacherous pigtailed little saboteur, that rotten whoring little shit, that—

Mr. DeMartino gently tossed the note on the cluttered desk behind him. “Take a seat, Miss Blum-Deckler,” he said softly. “Glad you could make it despite... everything.”

Tiffany nodded a last time, then took the desk in front of Quinn at the back of the room. Sandi and Quinn both touched her shoulders for comfort before the teacher thumped his desk for attention and began a lecture on Colonial North American history. Tiffany put her hands over theirs but said nothing in return.

She would say nothing ever again. What everyone had feared all summer had come true. The damage to her vocal cords from Stacy’s poisoned drink was irreversible.

Sandi found she was literally shaking with rage. The only good thing—other than the fact that Sandi hadn’t gotten the drink meant for her—was that Tiffany did not appear terribly upset over her fate. Solemn, yes, certainly the black outfit made that clear, but apparently coping with the disaster. Perhaps her relatives in New Orleans had given her comfort, a special strength to carry on despite her loss. One could only hope.

Tiffany soon released her friends’ hands. The hands withdrew.

It was bad enough that it was a Monday, Sandi Griffin reflected as she reluctantly opened her history book. It was bad enough that it was the first day of classes at Lawndale High after summer vacation, bad enough that the Fashion Club had broken up, bad enough that Sandi no longer had anyone to order around and the halls of Lawndale High were still decorated with those atrocious Ultra-Cola posters encouraging students to study hard and achieve their dreams while they drank enough soda to give them gas for weeks. (Sandi wrinkled her nose.) It was bad enough that Mr. DeMartino was already asking questions of the class as if he expected them to know everything about colonial times already. That she had come so close to taking a poisoned drink that would have destroyed her voice forever, escaping nightmare by simple chance, and a friend of hers was struck down instead by a traitor in their own little club, now that was just—

She heard the faint snap and cackle of something being unwrapped, and she glanced up. Tiffany was stuffing a wad of plastic wrap in her purse. She then opened a colorful cardboard box of what appeared to be oversize playing cards and emptied the deck into her left hand. After putting the box in her purse and her purse on the floor, Tiffany began thumbing through the cards, looking at each in quick succession. Her actions were concealed from DeMartino by the bulk of a football player sitting in front of her.

Sandi frowned. That was a weird-looking deck. The images on the cards were cartoony but disturbing, pictures of people in long-ago clothes surrounded by sticks, goblets, swords, and stars. Her examination of the deck complete, Tiffany looked up to watch the teacher while her hands began doing something below her desktop. By leaning forward a bit, Sandi could see Tiffany was quietly cutting and shuffling the deck with expert hands. When and where had Tiffany learned to shuffle like that? She didn’t even play poker.

“Kevin!” called Mr. De Martino, turning to a football player known to everyone as a moron and class clown. The teacher’s right eye appeared to enlarge as he emphasized certain words in aggravation. “Given that this is the second time you’ve taken this class with me, is there even the remotest chance that you might know the AGENCY that early American colonists believed responsible for acts of WITCHCRAFT?”

“Uh, the immigration agency?” While others in the class snickered, Sandi watched Tiffany work the deck. The mute girl’s hands moved quickly and without error: cut, restack, cut, reshuffle, cut, reshuffle, cut, restack. What the hell was she going? Quinn, unable to see what Sandi did, was passing notes to a boy in the next aisle.

“While I am doing my best to be tolerant and nonjudgmental of your intellectual DEFICIENCIES,” DeMartino snarled at Kevin, “each moment I find it more DIFFICULT to avoid recommending that you be held back yet ANOTHER year!”

“Ms. Li said I had to graduate this year no matter what,” said Kevin with confidence, “but I can still come by and visit. If I’m not working or anything.”

“Please don’t.” Mr. DeMartino scowled at the rest of the class. “Is there any hope of ANYONE here knowing the answer to this QUESTION?” Mr. DeMartino’s pop-eyed gaze swiveled in Tiffany’s direction—and stopped in surprise.

Tiffany had stopped shuffling cards long enough to put up a hand.

“Miss Blum-Deckler,” said DeMartino in mild embarrassment, “under the circumstances it will not be necessary for you to—”

Tiffany waved her hand insistently.

The teacher gave in. “Very well,” he said in a more normal tone. “You may write on the chalkboard if you like. Can you enlighten us, please, as to what agency the early American colonists believed was responsible for witchcraft?”

Tiffany’s raised hand again went under her desk to cut and shuffle her cards one last time as she stared at Mr. DeMartino with unfocused eyes. A second later both her hands came into view. She lightly slapped the deck of cards face down on her desktop, then cut the cards, restacked the deck, and covered the deck with her right hand. She then raised her hand and held it up, palm out, toward Mr. DeMartino. A card was suspended between her fingers.

Mr. DeMartino frowned and took a step closer, squinting at her hand. His eyes then opened very wide. He moved back a step.

“That is correct, Miss Blum-Deckler,” he said. His usual growl was soft with surprise. “An excellent trick. Unorthodox, yes, even uncanny, but you are correct: the early colonists attributed supposed acts of witchcraft to the Devil.”

Tiffany dropped the card she’d held on top of her deck. It came to rest face up. Sandi got a good look at it. Printed on the card was a bestial and obese figure with goat horns on its head and hairy legs. An upside-down star was drawn over its forehead. Written across the bottom of the card were the words: THE DEVIL.

A cold finger ran down Sandi’s spine. Her mouth went dry. What the hell?

Tiffany flipped the card over, then took the deck below her desktop once more. Her fingers began working the deck, shuffling the cards over and over again. Her face was again as blank as a blue sky on a sunny day.

“Now that the magic show is over,” said Mr. DeMartino, regaining his momentum, “can anyone else tell the class what the PENALTY was for a person convicted of witchcraft in colonial TIMES?” He surveyed the room with a glare, noted that almost no one was looking at him, and turned back to Tiffany—who once again had her hand in the air.

“WELL!” he said in a stronger voice. “It seems everyone is still hanging on your every move, Miss Blum-Deckler. Perhaps you would humor us with one more demonstration of your curious new TEXTBOOK. Tell us, if you would, what was the colonists’ penalty for WITCHCRAFT?”

The card deck hit Tiffany’s desktop with a loud slap. Several students jumped. Sandi watched with sudden stomach-churning dread as Tiffany cut the deck, restacked it, and again picked up the top card to show Mr. DeMartino.

Seconds passed. Mr. DeMartino’s face turned white. Everyone else merely stared with open mouths.

“Correct again, Miss Blum-Deckler,” Mr. DeMartino said in a rough whisper. “That is… exactly right. Congratulations.” He shook himself, looked around the room, then said something no one ever remember him saying before. “The remainder of this class will be spent silently reading Chapter One. We will talk more about colonial times tomorrow.” He walked unsteadily back to his desk and sat down in his chair, his face slack. He kept glancing at Tiffany as if expecting something more, but nothing happened.

Tiffany dropped the used card face up on her deck. On it, a knight in black armor rode a white horse as he carried a dark banner. The face inside the knight’s black helmet was a skull. DEATH was printed below the image in capital letters. Quinn stood up to peer over Tiffany’s shoulder at the card. She gasped and sat back down hard.

Sandi watched as Tiffany took the deck from her desk to shuffle it endlessly in her lap. What was going on? With half an hour left to the first class of the day, she was too nervous to do anything other than think. Was that a trick Tiffany had learned? Sandi was willing to consider the possibility that it wasn’t, because she had lied to Quinn about having had a virus that took away her voice the previous spring. The doctors had found nothing that could have caused her speechless condition. It had not been a virus.

Knowing this, Sandi was forced to conclude that Stacy Rowe really had cursed her to lose her voice, after a sharp but trivial exchange between them at Stacy’s birthday party. She’d had no symptoms whatsoever other than being unable to talk for several months. Stacy had confessed everything after her failed attempt to give Sandi a chemical-laced drink near the end of their junior year. Tiffany’s hospitalization riddled Stacy with guilt, and she confessed her sins this time to the police and was arrested. Now Stacy was a juvvie, Sandi had recovered, and Tiffany was mute. Everything was messed up.

Sandi came back around to the central issue: what had Tiffany just done with those weird cards? Was she, too, capable of casting curses and doing other horror-movie stuff?

Belatedly Sandi noticed Quinn passing a note to Tiffany. Tiffany read it, took out a pen to write a long response on the note, then passed it back to Quinn. Sandi waited until Quinn had finished reading before bumping the redhead’s desk with her left foot and nodding at the note. Quinn passed it over with an unreadable expression.

Are you still mad at Stacy? read Quinn’s question.

She made me gain four pounds when I went to the hospital, Tiffany had responded. It took me all summer to lose them again.

Sandi nodded in understanding. Tiffany was pissed beyond belief, and she wasn’t even so much angry at losing her voice as she was that Stacy had made her fat. Waif-thin Tiffany hated the thought of being fat. Her weight hovered just above the level where school authorities would suspect she was anorexic. Stacy had made her fat. That, in Tiffany’s book, was unforgiveable. Sandi knew it for a fact. Tiffany rarely held a grudge, but when she did she never let it go. She was doubtless still trying to find ways to punish a caricature artist at a fair who, a year ago, drew Tiffany to look ridiculous.

None of this resolved whether answering Mr. DeMartino’s questions with card pulls had been a trick or… something else. Something unearthly. Sandi had heard that New Orleans was a haunted city, a city where dark magic lurked in centuries-old places. Believing in ghosts and demons and an unseen world overlapping her own was alien to Sandi’s reality-grounded thinking. Until recently.

Was there one more trick Tiffany could do to…

She had it.

Sandi hunched over her open history book, letting her long brown hair fall forward and block the teacher’s view as she wrote a note. Overcoming a moment of indecision at the thought of doing what she was about to do, Sandi reached forward and gently bumped Tiffany’s upper arm. Tiffany stopped shuffling to reach back and take the note. She read it in a moment, then wadded it up and dropped it in her purse.

Can you use your cards to punish Stacy for what she did to us? the note had read.

Tiffany slowly nodded yes.

Sandi saw that her hands were trembling. There were only ten minutes left in class. Tiffany could do it, or she thought she could. That was good enough.

As Sandi’s nerve hardened, her hands stopped shaking. She was focused. Eight minutes left in class.

Slowly, to avoid attracting attention, Sandi leaned forward over her desk, looking down at the history book without seeing it. Her hair shielded her face from view. When her mouth was inches from Tiffany’s right shoulder, Sandi licked her lips and mouthed three words with just enough breath to make them audible.

Then do it.

Tiffany’s hands stopped moving. She did not glance back at Sandi. Her blank face did not change.

Do it, Sandi repeated. Make her pay. Do it now.

She pulled back, face still down. After a moment she tossed her head, flipping her long hair back. Quinn was giving her the oddest look. Sandi shrugged and shook her head. It was nothing, she signaled. Nothing important.

Tiffany remained motionless for long seconds before her fingers began to move again. She was working the deck, but faster now than before. Her hands split the deck, fanned the two sections together, re-cut and restacked it, repeated the above. The colorful cards flew in her fingers, moving too fast to see. Cut, fan together, cut, fan together, cut—

Tiffany slapped the deck on her desktop, re-cut the deck, then snapped off the top card with her left hand and gave it directly to Sandi without looking at it. Not even trying to hide what she was doing, Sandi took the card and held it up.

Against a night-black sky and ashen clouds, a bolt of lightning had struck the crowned top of a great tower, blasting it apart and setting the ruins aflame. Two figures in robes fell screaming to either side of the burning building.

Sandi looked down at the caption at the card’s bottom. THE TOWER. Sort of obvious. She had been hoping for the Death card, but this one looked effective enough.

She slowly gave the card back to Tiffany, ignoring the eyes of her classmates and Quinn. At a thought, she glanced up at the clock over DeMartino’s desk, memorizing the time.

The bell in the hallway rang. The three friends moved on to their next class. Sandi did not answer a single question Quinn threw at her, only shrugging them off and claiming she had been curious about the cards.

Hours later they were eating lunch together in the cafeteria when word ran through the student body that a former student, Stacy Rowe, had just that morning hanged herself with her own belt in a girls’ bathroom at Carter County High School. It was all over the TV and radios. Sandi did not find out until much later that Stacy had probably died at the exact moment Sandi had looked at the clock in DeMartino’s room. By then it wasn’t important anymore to Sandi. She had all she wanted by then, anyway.

After school Sandi bought Tiffany and Quinn all the fat-free ice cream they could eat, then went home, did her homework, and went right to bed. She could not wait for the next day of class to begin. Her senior school year was going to be great.

Original: 11/29/02; modified ??/??/05, 03/07/10, 05/03/10, 05/19/10

FINIS