Crystal Clear

Bells rang overhead as the magenta door popped open to an incense-fused waiting room. Behind the counter, Tessa flipped on the open sign and parted the barrier beads to get to the “behind-the-scenes” door she and her coworkers had titled. Inside, the break room glared a sterile white color and droned like an elementary school cafeteria. 

“Yo,” Tessa said to her red-lipped boss. 

Her lips cracked open into a smile, “Good morning, Mystique.” 

Tessa groaned, “Come on, you know I hate that. I thought we agreed we could be called by our real names back here, Omniscious.” 

Omniscious, aka Marge, rolled her eyes, “It’s all the better to get into character before your clients come in, Tes-sa.”

The bell out front clanked. Marge stood and pulled a long flowing wig over her pixie cut, finalizing the look with a beaded crown woven with purples and blues that pressed against the wrinkled skin of her forehead. 

Tessa clunked her near archaic laptop onto the thin wooden table as the door clicked shut behind Marge. Her fingers froze over the glowing keys as she tried to write out why she wanted to be admitted into law school. 

Anything to help me actually be able to help others. I want to make a difference instead of only being able to tell people bullshit about the world manifesting what they need the most when they need it most.

Her acrylic nail aggressively clicked the backspace and the blinking cursor stared back at her. Bejeweled dreads paraded around her arms as she plopped forward in surrender. 

Bells tinkled in the main lobby again, so she slammed her laptop shut. As she slid through the beads leading to the front, her hair caught for the hundredth time on her hair. Yet an even more irritating sight than the beads stood before her: Larry.

“Oh hey Larry. How you doin’ today?” she said through a plastered smile.

“Uhhh, hey there Miss Mystique,” Larry somehow hunched further into himself as he pushed his thin frames up his nose. 

“Couldn’t get enough of me after Friday?”

“Uhh, no, yeah, I actually came because I, uh, well I think my wife is cheating on me.”

Slipping around the counter, Tessa’s hand floated at Larry’s back as she guided him towards the ‘Fortune’ rooms, “How about we explore this further with my usual supplies?”

Larry’s wiry frame slid onto the straight backed wooden chair. Tessa lit the chamomile in the back of the room and pulled out the sun crystals.

With four citrine crystals placed in the four directions around her crystal ball, Tessa reached out for Larry’s palms. As she rotated their spooning palms up towards the sky, Tessa closed her eyes to summon forth the spirits to aid her in reading Larry’s future.

A gust of wind fluttered the curtained door, and the wick behind Tessa’s head flickered out. Nice, Tessa thought, perfect timing for the air to kick in. Her eyes snapped open and stared into Larry’s dilated pupils. Setting his palms onto the table, Tessa’s own smoothed just above the surface of her Caribbean water crystal, waving over as she muttered under her breath about the images the spirits would bring her today.

“Larry, tell me. What did you see?”

Before he spoke, ghostly imagery danced across the room showing a woman in a tight pencil skirt with hair pinned at the nape of her neck, “Well, she left for another business trip Friday night. She’d been dressed for work, so I hadn’t thought much of it,” the images flowed like water as they shifted to show Larry waving bye to his wife.

Tessa’s throat closed on itself as the same woman returned with long flowing hair and a glow about her; Larry continued, “She got back late Sunday night. And well, I know it’s kind of crazy, but, well, she looked different.”  

The wispy images dispersed and faded as Larry came back into focus before Tessa. 

“Uhh, Miss Mystique?” Larry’s voice quivered slightly.

Tessa shook her head, then glanced back down to the crystal ball between them, watching a new set of images. Larry’s wife floated to the surface now in a knee length dress with polka dots. Larry waved goodbye again, and as his wife slipped out the front door, she stepped in front of a new door with the numbers 909 written in golden letters. After his wife knocked, the door flung open, and a woman wearing a silk robe answered. 

“So, do you think it means, uh, something?” Larry’s nervous voice penetrated Tessa’s concentration.

“So-sorry, Larry, what was that?” Tessa shook her head back and forth, squeezing her eyes shut from the tricks her eyes were playing on her. Too much incense. I’ll have to tell Marge to tone it back a bit. 

Larry shifted in his seat, “You-you think I’m crazy. Just like she tells me every time I ask her. She just snaps at me and talks about how she does everything for us.” 

“No! I don’t think you’re crazy Larry. And you shouldn’t let her think you are either. No, I, uh, well the spirits have just been telling me… a number, the number 909. Does that mean anything?”

“909?” he pondered for a moment, sweeping his hands through his hair over and over. “Like apartment 909? Like her best friend Jessica’s place?”

“Ah, yes, perhaps this Jessica is the woman that pops up with the number 909.”

The curtain door rustled, and Marge’s head popped through the opening, “Mystique, your client is here.”

Tessa looked back over at Larry, “This will have to be all for today, Larry. Remember to trust in your instincts.” 

Guiding him back down the hallway, Tessa smiled at her regularly scheduled client Maureen, who did not smile back. Maureen’s eyes were lit with a fire of irritation. Again, Tessa guided her client to the room, adjusted the candles and crystals to match Maureen’s energy, and sat before her.

As Tessa looked Maureen over, she noticed a red aura about her. Since it had been years since Tessa had been able to read auras, she adjusted the lighting in the room to see if her eyes were playing tricks on her. 

Maureen remained silent in the straight backed chair and just stared at Tessa. After Tessa decided that her vision was not in fact playing tricks on her and that she had gotten back her aura reading abilities, she realized Maureen was either holding something back or had very low on energy.

“Maureen, it is good to see you. Your aura today is telling me that you’re unhappy with something. Do you–”

“Oh, cut the bullshit. Is it my ‘aura’ or is it the look painted on my face?” she wagged her finger in Tessa’s face. “I’m onto your shit, Mystique, if that’s even your real name,” spit flew and splattered against Tessa’s cheek on Maureen’s pronunciation of Mystique.

“What? You don’t have anything to say to that? Well, maybe you shouldn’t ever have anything to say about anything. I talked to Janice,” Tessa flinched, “Yeah, she remembers you, too. Apparently I’m not the only one you screwed over with your ‘trust your instincts’ or ‘the spirits tell me you’ll win in court’ crap.”

“Oh, Maureen, I’m so–”

Her hand flew up, “Don’t give me your bullshit apology. I lost everything because of you. My house, my car, my money, and all to that lousy prick who never got up off his ass. All because I listened to you.”

“I’m so sorry, Maureen. Truly. The spirits are–”

“You’re still going to try that crap? Listen to me: I don’t want to hear it. I want to tell you that you’re a lousy psychic, because if you’d been worth anything, you’d have told me to get a better lawyer. Maybe then I’d have a home. Maybe then Janice would still have custody over her kids.” 

Tessa flinched again. Janice had had a similar outburst, but she’d been so calm and quiet in nature that it had come across as a minor hand slapping. But that had been worse than this. Janice’s response had reminded Tessa of her own mother’s calm demeanor when she’d tried to tell off Tessa’s father only to end up being walked all over. 

So, after that, Tessa had decided to become the lawyer that Janice had needed because maybe then she could help more people. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll have Omniscious give you a refund for the last session.”

“And the one before that,” Maureen added.

“And the one before that.”

Marge ordered Tessa to go home after that, claiming that she couldn’t have one of her tellers skulking about bringing all kinds of negative energies into the other tellings for the day. At home, Tessa set up a crystal bath to cleanse the said negative energy from hanging it’s heavy cloud over her head. 

Before Tessa could slip into her steamy oasis, her phone lit up.

“Tessss, open the door,” her sister whined through the speaker. 

Grumbling, Tessa turned the water off, “Coming.”

As she opened the door, Tessa started, “There’d better be a good reason for this. I’d been just about– What the hell is that?” 

Tessa’s sister reached into a bag and pulled out two good sized bottles of wine, “These are our best friend’s tonight.”

“No, June, what the hell is that?” Tessa pointed to the mesh backpack sitting on the ground that meowed at her.

Flicking her wrist, June said, “You mean whom, silly? This is Bumblebee, your new best friend.”

“What? June, what?”

“Yeah, well don’t think much about it,” June pushed in and slammed the door shut behind her, opening the carrier on Tessa’s coffee table knocking over a few crystals in the process. “You really need to declutter from all these useless things.”

“They’re not useless,” Tessa mumbled under her breath as the cat meowed across the room at them. “Why is your cat here?”

“Well, Ted’s allergic and we couldn’t very well keep little Bumble, so I was hoping you’d watch him.”

“Until when? You and Ted break up?”

“Break up?” June stared in horror at Tessa, “As if, we are soulmates.”

“Oh, so this is like an indefinite thing. Like Tessa will you grow old with my cat and die in each other’s arms kind of thing.”

June rolled her eyes, “You are so dramatic. Just until, you know I can get a bigger place and keep Bumble in specific areas.”

“Right,” Tessa mumbled.

“Anywayyy,” June said plopping onto Tessa’s lumpy brown couch, “You still doing that whole for the people thing?” 

“You mean being a lawyer? Yeah,” Tessa said, pouring their glasses of wine in the kitchen.  

“Good. I for one always thought you could do something more with your life than telling people mumbo jumbo about destiny and shit.”

“Hey! It’s not–”

“I know I know, Mom always believed in it and told you you had potential. Blah blah blah,” June flipped through random sounds on the television. “But she’s not here, so I’m all for you doing something different.”

Tessa nodded at her sister’s millionth attempt to persuade her to do something else with her life. What June said was more of a reflection of how she felt about her own life. She’d gone down Mom’s recommended track and ended up working 12 hour shifts as a nurse. And she hated every second of it. 

Pausing before the third episode of The Bachelor could play, Tessa said, “Hey, can I try something? Something super weird happened at work, and I’ve had pretty much all day to think about it and I want to see if it was just a one off thing.”

Loosened up from the half a bottle of wine she’d managed to consume, June said, “Absolutely, you can con me for free any day.”

Rolling her eyes, Tessa grabbed her crystals and crystal ball to set them up in front of her sister. Bumblebee batted at the ball but opted to move on and bat at Tessa instead. As she pulled her sister’s palms into hers, Tessa closed her eyes and centered her chakras. 

When she opened them, she watched in horror at the scenes that played out before her. 

Spectral images wisped into scenes of June in the same cream colored sweater she wore now driving into a tree on the side of the road. The image shifted into an ambulance pulling up beside June’s car, and an EMT zipped a black bag over June’s pale face. 

Before Tessa could look away, an image of a funeral showed herself dressed in all black standing over a closed coffin. 

Stumbling back and jerking her hands from June’s, Tessa fell onto the floor. 

“OOOooo nice, I like the drama you’re going for,” June tossed back the rest of her glass of wine, “Maybe you’ve got it all wrong, you should definitely go for acting.” Checking her watch, June stood up, “Well, it’s getting pretty late, I better–”

“No!” Tessa launched into action, grabbing her sister’s keys and locking the door. 

June gapped at Tessa.

“Just trust me on this one,” Tessa said.

“Okayyy, but I totally get the bed,” June said, bounding for the door to Tessa’s bedroom. 

The next day, June called Tessa as promised as soon as she got home, and Tessa breathed a sigh of relief.

Marge peeked up over her spectacles, “Some good news?”

“Yeah,” Tessa breathed a smile.

“Good,” Marge returned to her crossword, “Now I can feel less bad telling you that I had to knock the extra session you promised that lady off of your paycheck.”

Tessa flinched, “Yeah, I figured,” and mentally ran through the numbers to knock off the money from her LSAT fund. She’ll just have to push it off another month.

The bell clanged out front, and Tessa jumped up to leave the tense room. Out front, Larry returned with more confidence than Tessa had ever seen him with. 

“Larry?”

“Hey Mystique!” Tessa returned his beaming smile and guided him to the back room. 

Setting up the space, Tessa lit the grapefruit candle and set rose quartz around the ball. Larry perked up, “Those are new.”

“Seems you needed something different today,” she smiled as she held his hands. 

When she opened them, no images played out, but Larry’s aura glowed orange. Tessa eyebrows shot up, “Did you find out what 909 was?”

Larry nudged his glasses up his nose, “Yes, it was Jessica’s apartment. Turns out my wife was afraid to tell me that she got fired from her job and had been going to hide out at Jessica’s. You should have seen her face when I laughed out loud in relief.” 

As he spoke, the ghostly images showed Larry moving in to hug and kiss his wife. Relief splaying across all of his wife’s features. The imagery ended with them both looking into the eyes of the other lovingly.

“So, I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for helping me yesterday.”

Tessa’s smile shifted to surprise, “Oh, you’re welcome, Larry.”

Standing up, he shook Tessa’s hand and left, leaving Tessa staring after him. 

Later that day, Tessa opened up her front door with a smile on her face as she looked at the selfie her sister sent of herself in her purple scrubs. She tossed her coat over its hook and flew onto the couch. In the depths of the fabric, a meow yelled above her head.

Sliding her gaze upward, Bumblebee towered above her, “What?”

He meowed again.

“She’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He meowed more insistently. 

Sitting up, she said, “Alright, I’m up.”

He meowed again. And Tessa stared into the sharp feline eyes.

A half a second before it happened, she saw the fate of Bumblebee. 

And what the gas explosion would mean for her.