The Sooth of the Matter

I’m covered in bandages from head to toe. My arms feel like lead by my sides. I move stiffly. It will be some time before I have full range of motion again. I know not how long it will take me to recover.  

I’m being ridiculous, of course. My arms only hurt from wrapping bandage after bandage around every part of my body. It took me forty-five minutes to achieve this look, and I hold grave fears for my ability to go to the bathroom dressed like this. This is all in the name of my transformation- from average height, average looking, average 30-year-old woman into an average height, average looking Egyptian mummy. 

‘Why?’ you ask. ‘Aren’t those sorts of foolish games beneath you now that you’ve entered your fourth decade? Shouldn’t you be at home, with a bottle of expensive wine, a cigar hanging from the corner of your mouth, sitting by your fireplace on your suede sofa, stroking your purebred canine companion while listening to some sort of jazz, or classical, or synth pop album?’

Look, I don’t have the answers for you. All I know is that this time last year, I had a decent job as a general practice manager, and a boyfriend who had some long-term potential about him. Now, I stare down the prospect of a former workmate’s surprise fantasy dress-up birthday party, single, demoted, looking like a moron and feeling like one too. It’s a fall from grace, no doubt. 

I walk with trepidation through the front doors of Miranda’s house. It’s already brimming with people, most of whom I know, but some that I don’t. I’m right on time. I didn’t want to be early, and be stuck mingling, answering the awkward questions that were sure to come from the people I used to manage. ‘Where are you working now Kirsty?’, ‘That’s a bit of a step down for you, isn’t it? Back to front administration,’ ‘I suppose the pay isn’t as good?’, ‘Is that why you came dressed in that pathetic excuse for a costume? Because you could obtain plentiful lengths of white bandages for free by pilfering them from the practice stocks after hours, blatantly biting the hand that now feeds?’

There are certainly some impressive costumes here tonight. In fact, I’ll have to be discerning to even identify some of my former cronies. But that is a problem for later, because a male voice has just said, ‘Quick, she’s coming, find a place to hide,’ and the lights have been cut. 

I make a dive for a spot behind Miranda’s suede sofa. I don’t realise until too late that it was a bad move. I make an undignified sound somewhere between an, ‘Oof’ and a ‘Bleurgh’ as my nose collides with a shoulder, or perhaps an elbow, or a forehead. I’m not sure, only that it was hard as rock, and that the warm liquid now dripping down over my top lip tastes suspiciously like blood.

‘Oh my God, are you OK?’

I had been rapidly unbandaging my left forearm in order to stuff the bandage up my bleeding nostril- or is it nostrils?- but at the sound of that familiar voice, I freeze. It can’t be, can it? Although, this being my life, it surely would be. Nothing else would make more sense on my current trajectory. Brayden. Former love of my life. I haven’t seen him since he dumped me shortly after my thirtieth birthday. He said he needed some space to work out what he really wanted. It turned out that by ‘space’ he meant he wanted to exist somewhere that earthly communications from me to him could not reach any longer. In other words, he left me on read, and left my dreams in a crumpled heap alongside that four-letter word- ‘seen’- that taunted me for weeks as I stared at it in vain, longing for three blinking dots to appear and ease my agony. 

How fitting it is that I am now crouched behind a sofa with him, with my eyes watering and blood streaming from my nose, unable to fully pronounce all my consonant sounds through my obstructed nasal passages. If there is a God, he long ago forgot about Kirsty Duncombe. In fact, I’m not sure that He every really cared about me at all.

‘B-Brayden, what are you doing here?’ I stammer. 

‘I could ask you the same question. I thought you didn’t work with Mira anymore.’

Mira? Since when has he been on nickname terms with Miranda? My eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough to see that he is looking magnificent, dressed as fae, with pointed ears that must be attached to the shock of long black hair that he wears as a wig over his usual short-back-and-sides. His broad, muscly chest is visible beneath the vest he wears with no shirt beneath it. I wonder if he smells as delightful as he did while we were dating, but with the incapacitated state of my olfactory organ, I will never know.

‘I don’t.’ My mind whirls. ‘How do you know Miranda?’

Brayden doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, ‘I met her at your birthday party last year, remember?’

The room falls quiet as Miranda’s key turns in the lock, and there is no time for further interrogation. The lights come on, and I dutifully force myself into standing as a cry of 'Surprise!’ reverberates around the room. 

Miranda staggers backwards in an exaggerated motion, clutching her hand to her chest, with a wide, delighted smile on her face. She says all the appropriate things like, ‘Goodness me,’ ‘Well I never,’ and ‘How on earth…’ but when her eyes fall on me, in all my casualty ward chic glory, she looks genuinely surprised- unlike the feigned surprise she had just been so aptly feigning. Can you tell I never really liked Miranda? She’s one of those perfect women. Beautiful hair, a sing-song voice that makes her sound so innocent, even when she’s spreading the most heinous gossip as she waits for the kettle to boil in the lunchroom, and the ability to make everyone like her in spite of never doing any work, and secretly being a troll.

I receive a nervous- or is it guilty?- side-eye from my former flame, before he makes for her side. As he leans in to kiss Miranda on the cheek, and then leads her to the bedroom, where I assume a matching fae costume will await her, my stomach turns. I start to feel faint, and I stumble forwards towards the kitchen table, where I slump in a chair. I barely notice the man sitting opposite me, wearing a purple turban, and dark cloak, and it isn’t until he speaks that I’m recalled to a sense of my surroundings, and I observe the crystal ball in front of me on the table. I give an involuntary groan as I recognise the face beneath the turban. Dillon. Practice nurse and office weirdo. 

‘My first customer of the evening. How do you do, my un-dead friend? Was the embalming process not effective, to allow your blood to still run red from your orifices?’

‘Please never say that word to me again,’ I say with a shudder. ‘I take it you’re some sort of psychic?’

‘A soothsayer, my dear. I hold the answers you seek, no matter what they may be- and, about whom,’ says Dillon, with a knowing look. 

‘How long have you known these answers, Dillon?’ I ask, with a bite in my tone. ‘How long has everyone known that my ex has been dating Miranda?’

Dillon gives a sardonic laugh and waves his hands majestically over the surface of the crystal ball, caressing the air an inch above it. ‘A straight answer I cannot give but heed this prophecy.’

His voice moves down an octave, and he crosses his eyes. His ocular-motor control is impressive. I’ll bet it’s a talent he hadn’t realised would come in useful until tonight. 

‘He who wishes age not to weary him will traverse from maiden to maiden in search of the eternal youth he seeks.’

I stare at him blankly. ‘What exactly is in the brownies here?’ I ask. 

Dillon chuckles, but he is not deterred. ‘And now, for your prophecy, oh bandaged one. Hold out your palm.’

I do as he asks, and from beneath his turban, he pulls a cheap ball point pen. Looks like whoever took over as practice manager didn’t share my penchant for good quality stationery. I watch Dillon’s movements as he takes my unbandaged hand in his and inspects it closely. He draws several lines on the ulnar side of my palm, beneath my little finger. 

‘These markings show your true loves- three you will have in your lifetime,’ he says, with his voice lowered again. ‘See here,’ he says, drawing two dots in the centre of my palm, and then carefully circling each, ‘These markings are an encouraging sign. If you were to find another with the same markings on their palm tonight, they will be your fated mate- destined to be ‘The One’.’

I look at my palm, and I look up at Dillon. ‘You’ve just drawn a pair of boobs on my palm, haven’t you?’

Dillon laughs his shrill, tittering laugh that I could never stand, and throws his head back in mirth. ‘Oh, Kirsty, if your mind has led you straight to the gutter, then so be it. If you wish to liken my wisdom to a fine pair of breasts, you go right ahead. In all honesty, it matters not. A truth is a truth- or should I say, a sooth is a sooth?’

‘All I know is I need to go to the bathroom and sort out my face, so you can shove your sooths back in your turban for all I care.’ I stand, and when my head stops spinning, I make for the bathroom. Once I’m there, I realise just what a sad state of affairs I’m in. In the mirror, I see my miserable eyes peeping through the space in the bandages. I can see the pity in them- pity for my own reflection. That’s when you know you’ve reached a new low. The bloodied bandage, still attached to my left arm at the elbow, hangs from my nose. The blood has dried, crusting it in place. The bleeding starts again as I gingerly pull the bandage away from my brutalised orifices. My nose is still straight at least, if swollen. Probably not broken. No, I would have passed out by now for certain if it had been broken. It is only my pride that is fractured beyond repair.

I open the top drawer of Miranda’s bathroom drawer. It feels a little voyeuristic, especially when I encounter her nose hair trimmer. I push it to the side, and extract what I was looking for- a pair of nail scissors. I use them to cut the bandage at my elbow and tuck the end in underneath to secure it. I rinse my face, and carefully pat my nose dry. The bandages wrapped around my face still carry the blood stains. I can’t do anything about that. They will have to remain as a sad reminder of bumping into Brayden. 

I venture forth from the bathroom and make my way back through the throng of guests. Here and there, I am stopped by my former colleagues, and asked all the excruciating questions I had anticipated. I receive a range of responses, from sympathy, to disbelief, to barely concealed mockery as I tell them about my new role at the practice across town. When the tenth person approaches and asks me where I’m working now, I simply answer with, ‘Is this call an emergency? Do you mind if I put you on hold?’ and then keep on walking. 

The hours dwindle by. I wonder how much more of this I can take, but at the same time, like a massive pimple that appears one morning on your chin, I just can’t look away from Miranda and Brayden, acting like love-sick purebred canine companions. I have to scrutinise it, get the magnifying glass out, thoroughly sanitise my hands and pick at it. How long have they been together? How serious is it? What’s that ring on her finger? Has it always been there, or is it new? And how on earth is it fair that when some of us turn thirty, we suddenly need reading glasses and develop a postural drop, while others can turn thirty and somehow become more graceful, more dignified, and no more long-sighted than they were before? Miranda. Oh, how I hate her and her utter perfection.

Eventually, I can’t take it anymore, and as my bladder demands release, I head for the bathroom. I unravel the bandages from my lower limbs. At least it’s a quicker process than it was to bandage them. I relieve myself, and then, with the bandages bunched beneath my arm, I drag my half-mummified corpse outside, where I sit on the back steps of Miranda’s house, rest my chin in my hand, and stare at the stars. 

I don’t look sideways as a figure sits down beside me. If I pretend, they’re not there, perhaps they’ll go away. I know who it is from their breathing pattern. It’s noisy, laboured, mechanical. It’s Darth Vadar. Slowly, I rotate my neck in their direction, giving into my curiosity about who it is beneath the mask. 

‘Who are you?’ I ask. 

With a press of a button on his plastic lightsaber, Darth Vadar responds, ‘I am your father.’

I walked straight into that one. I roll my eyes, but a slight smile curves my lips for the first time all night. The mask lifts, and a pair of friendly brown eyes meets mine. ‘Justin,’ I say, with genuine warmth. One of the junior doctors. He was always so busy seeing patients that we rarely spoke at work, so I couldn’t say I knew him well, but he was always willing to exchange pleasantries when we did cross paths.

‘How’s your night?’ he asks.

‘If there was an option to actually be dead right now, I’d take it,’ I respond.

Justin smiles. ‘It must be a shock seeing Miranda and your ex together.’

‘You’re not wrong.’

‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think he sees her for who she truly is,’ Justin says. ‘Most people don’t, but you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat people less fortunate. It makes my skin crawl, the way she talks to some of the patients.’

I shrug my shoulders. There is nothing to be gained by adding to Justin’s assessment, but I take comfort in the fact that someone else can see through her. ‘That’s very sage, Justin.’ We sit in silence, until I break it. ‘Speaking of sages, did you visit the soothsayer?’

‘If I have one regret on the day I die, it will be that I visited that soothsayer,’ says Justin. 

I laugh. ‘Show me your palm,’ I say. 

Justin holds out his right palm.

‘That’s a fine pair you’ve got there,’ I say, and I hold my left palm out alongside his. 

‘As do you,’ Justin says, obviously impressed by the supple curves of the pen-drawn circles. 

‘I was told that if I found someone tonight with the same markings, they may well be my ‘fated mate’, bound to be ‘The One.’

‘Is that right?’ says Justin. His index finger absent-mindedly caresses my palmar breasts. ‘Perhaps I should take you to dinner then?’

‘I don’t think you have a choice now that you’ve felt me up. And I would be a fool to say no, I suppose, given the prophecy.’ 

What a sudden turnaround in my fortunes. 

Something catches my eye in a dark corner of the garden that we look out over, and I hear a deep, careless laugh. One that I had heard in my dreams for months after the breakup. My eyes fix on the dark-haired male, leaning in close to a witch, who throws her head back in that flirtatious kind of laughter that I have never mastered. He hands her his phone, and her fingers dance across the screen as her phone number magics its way into his contacts. 

‘Another sooth was spoken tonight,’ I say quietly. I drop my voice an octave. ‘He who wishes age not to weary him will traverse from maiden to maiden in search of the eternal youth he seeks.’

Justin raises his eyebrows at me in silent enquiry. Before he can change his mind about dinner, I explain myself. ‘Dillon’s words, not mine. It seems the fae prince is searching for eternal youth in women only under the age of thirty.’

‘Aah,’ Justin says, with a nod of understanding. ‘Miranda meets the same fate as the semi- mummified one beside me.’ 

‘I believe she may, Dark Lord. And as one can tell a lot about how a person treats those less fortunate, I will reserve my glee about that fact for after we have parted company this evening.’

‘Very wise. As will I,’ Justin assented. ‘Can I offer you my assistance in re-bandaging?’

I look down at my black bike shorts. ‘No, thank-you. I think I will lurch my way inside, find Dillon, thank him for making my night, and then be on my way. I might even ask him his going rate for fortnightly sessions. And I will await your dinner invitation with bated breath, not only because I can’t yet breathe through my nose properly, but because I am genuinely looking forward to it. It will be forthcoming, won’t it?’

Justin smiles, replaces his mask and presses the button on the lightsaber. It flashes a vibrant red. ‘I find your lack of faith disturbing.’