Thus and Therefore with and an incorrect Semi-colon.

Spells are tricky things that remedy or destroy. A curse is infinitely more personal than the other as I have lately discovered. A profoundly debilitating year has brought me back to that discover the truth of what happened during the New Orleans Mardi Gras. If a hex had been administered was it done so unintentionally as a good luck charm caste by Boniface the Tarot? Possible, and I like to think that it would have negated the curse applied by Dinah the Inker. Both self-proclaimed New Orleanians I recalled, albeit I was in a bit of an inebriated haze at the time of said encounters.

Being an educated gal that enigma confounds me. The irrational need to change direction disrupted my hitherto successful tried and tested authorship. My reasonably readable professional prose were selling whereas, this very evening, I have realised that Wizardry is not something that I know very much about. There is no doubt in my mind that the feint back to front semi-colon tattooed  on my wrist, changed my luck.

 For one whole year the symbolic Sword of Damocles hung precariously above my head, in place of the huge question mark that it should have been. But then again the enigma that it posed may just have been the answer that I needed. Forget the lie that it enabled professional development, and admit that I committed ethical suicide. There are three elements to this conundrum – all of which are interlinked – all of equal parts. Actually that is not true because Past is partly detached  because Thus and Therefore are quite hazy as they accost my memories with cause- and-effect blah, blah. Past, present and future are unequal.

If Boniface had been waiting for me at his usual spot I would undoubtedly been have up in the hotel room above rather than looking down at the deep end of the extraordinarily expensive French Quarters Courtyard pool. Had they left the illuminations on all night perhaps I would not have been tempted. The lovers canoodling in the recesses of the garden and balconies were too busy to see my shadow or the ripples caused as I slipped into the cold water. I sense a warmth around me, reminding me of a split second when he and I were one. Not a memory of course because we never were more than conversationalists. But the thought was there as though it had once been a reality.

Wrapping my arms around myself I try to remember what brought me to this point. My mounting excitement dashed to find no Dinah, the Tattoo Artist and no Boniface either. I had no one to blame for the artistic interference that had ruined my career. So I rub the offending semi-colon on my wrist which began to smart. The back to front mistake. Three hundred and sixty-five days had passed, I needed closure! Remember, remember!

The whole evening presented itself in a blur of distorted memories. His was a face that came to me often in my dreams but never during wakefulness. Boniface had truly confused me with his foresight that had nothing to do with my chosen path. I was successful, I was young. He was beautiful and so was I.

Too inebriated to drink any more alcohol I had wandered along the popular streets, singling out the Bars and Restaurants that I had for so long put on my wish-list. Stopping at each entrance, listening to the mix of Jazz, Creole or Cajun with a French influence the temptation to enter was great, but Boniface had got under my skin. It wasn’t so much what he said as what he didn’t. For ten minutes we had chatted until he waved away my gesture of payment as though it was an insult. “Take care in the direction you take, your pathway towards success will be decided tonight.”

“Curse the man,” I whispered as I walked away.

A bright light down a narrow alley caught my eye. ‘INK’ it blinked but rather than that which produced a story it was that of tattooing. My laboured breath was mistaken for uncertainty when spotted staring at the sign.

“Girl, you need a semi-colon for sure.” The rolling creole accent came out of the blue. Electrified I nodded. “Spot on!” My British accent sounded harsh and unfamiliar when paired with this exotic tongue. Just a little one. On my wrist.”

“You makin’ a statement girl?” This was exactly what I needed. “I certainly am. To the point I have always said but there are those that don’t agree.”

“Brave of you to admit your shortcomings. Goin’ forward, new beginnings. You earned this so don’t hang back on its size or position. It needs to be seen. Coloured? Two tone or multi?”

I wasn’t really listening. How hard was it to create a semi-colon? “An exclamation that surmounts a full stop. Room to go forward smoothly without shutting the door on dialogue.”

Dinah, that was the name on the back of the chair, nodded with a frown but said nothing as she began to hand me a book of designs. “No, Dinah, a plain semi-colon will be good. Fine, no frills.”

I closed my eyes until the ordeal was over then cradled the medically dressed limb as I rounded the corner into the street. The itinerant float came from nowhere, veering from side to side. Raucous on-board revellers threw intriguing confetti that caused me to put forward both hands to catch some. Hit straight on the sight of the boldly painted exclamation mark on the front caused me to think for a second how ironic the accident felt. The Literary Litterers Float that I had previously admired, was taking me down beneath its wheels.

 Clutching at the confetti bearing exclamation marks  I felt a calm wash over me as I looked up at myself. “This is not happening. My Thus and Therefore are still unlinked.” A stupid thing to share as last words, but I found solace in the notion that there would be a continuation of me in some form or another for a little longer at least.

A whole year had passed, no one told be that there had been a fatality. My injuries, a few broken bones, were irrelevant when a life had been lost, but the news had been broken days later. An arranged flight home and a few weeks convalescing had galvanised me into action. My style of writing was to change. The new Agent who hated his name Stephen, seemed a God-send – he loved my first and second offerings but now, back in the place where the past and present met, he was not so enamoured.

“You are insane,” the Wizard, namely Stephen, had shouted into my ear. Believing it to be too scathing to be a truthful criticism, I laughed into at the abysmal mouth of the cloaked accuser. The hat tumbled under the footfall of the moving throng of party goers. I stooped to retrieve it, laughing at the irreparable damage done; stopped in mid motion to face his anger.

“It’s just a hat O’ Wiz,” but in that split second I saw that I was no longer Anna C. Willerby super-psychic sleuth – Adventurer and Discoverer of Phenomenon as yet undiscovered – I was a Cash Cow that had strayed from safe pastures into the proverbial shit bin. “Lighten up. I liked you as a Wizard. Light, bells and ding-a-ling. Yang to my whatever it’s called. I thought I looked good as an old-fashioned cross my palm with silver rattling gypsy.  Both nice and warm and in keeping with Jackson Square.”

“Really? Leave Jackson out of it, you wanted to promote your idea of Witches and Wizards. It’s on you in in every way including financially. Bottom line being you pay. And about this costume. I am  not okay with it. Bringing back some ghastly memories of your last foray here is ghoulish. I know you had this cloak specially designed and I can tell you here and now I am not wearing it to the Book Signing tomorrow. I look stupid.”

“My, my, you are on a roller tonight. What did you take gypsy Anna Crystal Ball? Why don’t you go spit on someone or tell them their fortune. Or get someone to tell you yours. Although I can do that. By midnight when the carnival floats are gone, and the air is filled with alcohol fuelled stupidity, you will be a washed up nobody with no one to come crying to. I’m done with you and your self-absorbing brush with mortality.”

His glare as I tried to interject inferred that he hadn’t finished. “The float in the shape of a book drove over you. You survived. Mystical confetti rained down on you whilst the crowd saved you from the gory scene of a squished body next to you. Anyway, God’s intervention or your belief that you are gifted resulted in you being spared by some unseen force. Whatever the reason it was no excuse for you to start writing about fantastical novels for kids. You did paranormal occult morning, noon and night beforehand so why pretend you are a damned demon or succubus or Elfess with ring-a-ding. And you sure aren’t going to be Jesus the Redeemer incarnate. He’s dead darling so don’t go all Spiritual on me. Like in that last draft you gave me. Kids don’t need Spirit in their life!”

“Stephen, I don’t pretend to be any of those creatures, or a redeemer, so don’t make me out to be weird.” Guilt bored deeper when the realisation that I had not given the guys demise much thought was apparent. Someone’s son, husband, lover? Whichever and possibly all of the above, luck had been on my side that night and not his. A chilling concept indeed.

“And anyway Agent dear, you went suddenly chilly with my third offering. Supposedly the triumphant ending to the Trilogy.” The raised eyebrow alerted me to a possible mood swing. Part time friend would become part time critique and that was not what I wanted at the moment.

He had been quite smitten with my style which he called a refreshing take on old fashioned Oxford and Cambridge, “a marriage of twelfth century and twenty-first.” Which was a nod to a fact that I had pointed out early on in our acquaintanceship. That the two universities had argued correctness for centuries.

“So,” I had cajoled, “I believe that my compulsive detailed attention to their rules regarding syntax is correct the ‘nth point recurring.” The niggling demons that had suddenly inhabited my mind a year before, that I was right and the rest of the literary world was wrong, had certainly worked their magic. Black magic. I was fucked!

This obsession with punctuation marks and grammar was exhausting. Killing productivity. The underlying inuendo was almost entertaining than the stories themselves. Hence the swerve towards adolescents. But even that didn’t work. I had prayed that my nemesis, the Fortune Teller, would have put me back on track, but he hadn’t been there.

Finding a place to crouch at the side of the Square, I spoke to him quietly in a one-sided conversation. “I died and that changed my perspective. You cannot believe how lost I felt. Alone, I feel abandoned.”

Was it wishful thinking that made his reply convincing? “Anna, tell me everything. You were never alone. What put the thoughts of curses into your mind?” Holding out my wrist, exposing the offending tattoo, I knew that he kissed it tenderly. “There is no curse here. Did your artist use a mirror to do such fine work? Yes, I thought so. The tail goes to the right instead of left. Or did you imply that you were suffering a mental deficiency? Depression for example. I remember you asked me for a reading that would give you help with your writing. A new direction I think. I was positive that you were destined for great things. Why did you get this tattoo?”

“You said you saw us coming together again but why?” Certainly I had been attracted to him but maybe it was more about the mystic elements that I saw around him.

A woman leaned down to ask if I was ok. I answered I believe, but she walked away towards an old man who looked concerned. He came forward, frowned and then smiled in a knowing way. You knew my grandson Boniface.” It was a statement to which I had no answer.

“Listen Anna, I could see more in you and your future than you evidently could.” His voice was fading, perhaps he was being drawn away, in two minds about telling me something.

“I was taking up a Post in Milano as Professore of linguistics. Me, Boniface Betton a Professor. But you know I am named for Boniface. He who brings fortune. The Fortunate one. I used both attributes one year ago, but you as recipient have never known.”

A harsher voice drowned out the last syllables. Stephen had squatted next to her. “Guessed I would find you here. He blew you out didn’t he! Fat lot of good he did you but now you can just get back to the Novelist I took on.”

“I warned you that a foray into adolescent fantasy was ill advised. Endless pages of juvenile wizardry will not appease your current readership who crave psychic mysticism with drama thrown in. Here take my wizards hat and cloak by all means but it will never disguise the ridiculous fact that you have literally lost the plot.”

“And the punctuation sweetheart, too much, think texting, think inside your box and not out. Safety first otherwise you will drown in your own rip-tide. Besides, the genre has been done, dusted and sprinkled with the triumphant fanfare over your chosen grave by those who thought of it first.”

And therein lay my spectral alter ego, the one who knew more than a mere literary Agent. A mortal who supposed nothing more than my ability to make believe believable.

“A watery grave tonight me thinks,” I had interjected scanning the markings on his costume and stupid black hat for an exclamation mark that fitted my mood. And that is when I saw the semi-colon as I feebly held out to still my paralytic fall!

That was then and now I am attempting to end my life. Drawing on my  I realise that I do still have a choice. The semi-colon is etched into my mind. As a wordsmith I realised early on that writing was not made up of ideas and putting those words that came into order, no, I was taken more by all that which accompanied the telling of the tale. The Wizard had been right to reprimand me. However a colon and a semi-colon had confounded me. Surely two full stops, wherever it rests, should mean just that. Stop. I have created an end to what I was about to say. The principal behind a semi-colon is half hearted. Not for me. With no further explanation I whispered to myself, “never go back on your word or question an action. And never a decision.”

Fears continued to drag me downward from the side of the dark pool and into the cold water. Whatever the cause its crushing weight finds me dragged downward to meet my full stop in the darkness of isolation.

Having made the decision to end it all, the paradox of punctuation, and how it changed my life, does suddenly make sense. One misadventure, putting professional faith into a back to front semi-colon, and then receiving a reason halted briefly slowed my fall. A picture formed in my mind. To be crushed to one’s death and survive is a miraculous thing. My life didn’t flash before my eyes; a cartouche unfolded revealing not characters of any form, but the structure that holds manifold character forms of description or descriptive form. Akin, in fact, to some fantastic living manuscript. Words themselves had little meaning because my brain was dying. A face emerged from the story. His face, then his voice. Boniface. It’s all back to front Anna! Caste us backwards together. Remember. Know why you were saved and I was not.”

That silken voice caressed me, seemingly from within the myriad bubbles that amazingly encased me in incandescent light.

Arms tightened around me, pulled me to the light. I thought I was dead, heading towards Heaven’s Gate. No. The old man from Jackson Square urged two men to lay me down. Boniface was kneeling next to him smiling. They were both smiling at a secret that they shared.

“Boniface,” I whispered, “Where were you tonight. I couldn’t see you but I know you must have been nearby.”

Tears streamed down the face of the older man. “He died to save you from the wheels of the float. He rang me to say he had met his true love and would not be coming home.”

Maybe he knew that his grandson was close by. He was a spiritual man who had doubtless seen and heard many things that are never to be explained. I can only say that as Boniface lay beside me, bringing my wrist to his mouth he kissed my insecurities and obsessions away. How I ghost could bring warmth I have no idea but his essence is almost more than I can bear, but that is a fear that will die along with the misconceptions I harboured about a mis printed tattoo and the fear that Thus and Therefore had lost their way.