The Orb and the Peacock Feather

The Orb and the Peacock Feather         by Elizabeth Fenley

“Are you an angel?”

The luminescent woman hovering a few inches off the ground smiled. “No, I am not an angel.”

Tara frowned, uncertain. “Then, what are you? Or am I dreaming?”

“You aren’t dreaming, Tara.”

Tara stepped back on the grass of the deserted field she’d never seen before. She’d been on the crowded sidewalk on her way to school. This was beyond creepy. “How do you know my name? Where the hell am I? How the fuck did you---”

The woman shook her head. “That’s not important right now.”

“Then what, exactly is important?” Tara demanded, hands on her hips in the typical stance of the defiant teenage girl.

“Why I am here.”

The woman was silent for a moment.

“Well? Let’s hear it then. Why the hell are you here? Why are we here?”

“Because it is your turn to be Death for a Day.”

“The fuck? Death? For a day? You’re out of your fuckin’ mind, bitch.” Tara turned to walk away.

The woman appeared right in front of her as she turned. Tara almost ran into her.

“What the---”

“Tara, listen.” She opened her right hand to reveal a golf-ball sized glowing orb.

Tara fell silent, frozen in place. As she tried to move, to speak, she became frantic.

“Relax. Just listen. Once you understand, I will give you this orb, and it will release you.”

And then I swear to god, I’ll cut you for this, you freakish bitch.

“No, you won’t.” The serene woman smiled. “By then you will understand.”

Understand? Uhntuh. Don’t think so. Not happening.

“Yes, you will.”

Shut up and stop reading my fucking mind, dammit!

“This will go faster if you just listen.”

Fine. Consider me listening. Just picture me rolling my eyes and flipping you off.

The woman laughed, a light, breathy sound like distant, gentle jingle bells. “Fair enough. I felt the same resistance yesterday when this happened to me.”

Get on with it.

“Then stop interrupting. My name is Celeste. I’m 22. Yesterday morning I met a man named Gilliam, much the way you are meeting me. He showed me the orb and told me I was to be Death for the Day. Like you, I thought he was insane, and I was scared. He glowed like I do, did not need to touch the ground, and could move through the air without wings. And no, neither of us are high on something and having a bad trip.”

Hadn’t thought of that possibility.

“You’re young.”

No, I’m not. I’m 16. I have my driver’s license, and I’m already taking college level classes.

“Have you taken philosophy or comparative religion?”

Well…um…no. I don’t think they offer that at my school.

“That’s fine, neither had I—and I’ve already graduated from college. Liberal Arts degree, which means I essentially have no marketable skills.” Celeste grinned at her own jest.

Except for the whole death gig.

“Yes, but it’s a one day ‘gig’ that doesn’t pay anything.”

Then why do it?

Celeste shrugged. “Not optional. You get handed the orb, you do your job for the day, and then you pass it on to the next person.”

And why the hell am I the “next person” on the list?

“I have no idea. Like I had no idea why Gilliam chose me. It’s just something you know, somewhere you arrive, and someone you are intended to meet.”

Great. Fuck my luck.

“It’s only for a day.”

Oh, sure, no big deal. Just Death. Just one day. No problem.

“Someone has to do it. And apparently God decided not to burden one soul for eternity.”

So it’s Death-by-Timeshare.

Celeste grinned and shook her head, long blonde ringlet curls bouncing on her shoulders. “Kind of.”

So how does it work?

“Yes, I’m getting to that. Teenagers. You claim to be adults, and you have the patience of toddlers who can’t wait the last five minutes for the cookies to come out of the oven.”

Fuck you.

“Not an option, Tara. Here’s how it works.” Celeste reached into a tote bag—which Tara saw for the first time at that moment—and produced a long peacock feather with the rainbow of blues and greens glowing somewhere between pastel and neon.

What the—

Celeste ignored her and continued. “I will give you this feather as well. You will use it to create Death.”

So it’s like a Harry Potter magic wand feather. Do I say Aveda Kedavra?

“No, and no. You simply hold the orb in one hand, open it to reveal the light and then touch the feather tip to the heart of the person who is to die. Once you have done that, you will be transported to the next.”

So the “winds of universal destiny and pre-determination” just fly me around so I can poke people with a stupid feather and murder them?

“Essentially, yes. But it isn’t murder.”

Yeah, right. “Just their time to go” right?

“Exactly.”

Nope, not gonna do it. Not happening. Take this damn orb-spell-thing off me and piss off. Find somebody else.

“You don’t have a choice—I don’t have a choice. I didn’t yesterday, and I don’t today. It’s simply your turn.”

Tara suddenly found herself unfrozen, one hand closed around the orb, the peacock feather in the other. She was glowing, and her feet didn’t touched the ground.

A now ordinary looking Celeste smiled at her. “Good luck today.” And she vanished.

“Oh, Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. What the actual fuck?” Tara tried to shake the orb and the feather out of her hands, but they stayed firmly in place as if by magic super glue. “You can’t make me do this, you insane bitch!” she screamed into the empty air. “Death is taking the fucking Day Off, you hear me?”

Suddenly, Tara found herself back on the sidewalk. People jostled her on both sides as she stopped, as rooted to the spot as when she had been frozen by Celeste. In her hands, she still had the orb and the feather—and she could not get free of them.

Turning around, she did the only thing she could think of—go back home.

“Mom? Mom!” Tara yelled as she walked through the front door. “Mom!”

“Tara? What are you doing home?” Her mother appeared from around the corner holding Tara’s twin sisters by the hands, their matching coats and shoes on, identical tiny backpacks on their four year old bodies. “You’re supposed to be at school. Turn around and get there before you’re late again. I have to get Emily and Elizabeth to preschool in ten minutes.”

“Mom, something really, really, like really weird happened. I—”

“Go to school now, young lady.”

Tara shook her head in frustration. “Mom, just one minute, sixty seconds, I promise.”

Her mother sighed, tired, frustrated, and already stressed from the chaos of trying to get three children up, fed, dressed and out of the house. “Thirty seconds.”

“Okay, look at this thing in my hand. Can you see it glowing? Am I glowing? How about this big feather? Can you see it?”

Her lips tightened, sending cracking wrinkles radiating from her lips to her frown lines. “Tara, this isn’t funny. I don’t have time for this. Neither do you. Go to school.” Pulling the twins with her, she brushed past Tara to get out the door. “And if you don’t stop this nonsense, I’m going to take away your cell phone, and get you drug tested.”

“But, mom, this weird lady gave me these,” Tara explained desperately holding the orb and the feather out, “and told me it was my turn to be Death today.”

“Tara Scarlet Fillmore, don’t you dare say things like that in front of your little sisters! You’ll scare them. Girls, Tara is just being silly. She’s just making things up. Don’t listen to her.” She glared at Tara. “Get. To. School. This. Instant.”

After her mother slammed the door behind her, Tara stood in the entry hall, staring and the door, with no clue what to do. She slipped off her backpack, hearing the loud thump of huge English Lit and AP US History textbooks and half a dozen notebooks hitting the tile floor.

“Fuck school,” she said to herself as she pulled out her phone and plopped on the living room couch. “Piper will understand.”

“Did you take one of those pills from the party last weekend?” Piper asked, staring at Tara as she sat beside her on the couch. “You know that’s super dangerous. You never know what it might be, or what it might be laced with. My mom told me some urban legend thing about people poisoning aspirin or something on the shelves at the store with like, cyanide or whatever in the 80’s and all these people like, totally died. This is---”

“You don’t see them? You don’t believe me either? Oh, my god, Piper! You’re my best friend! You’re supposed to fucking believe me!”

Piper stared at Tara, who had now jumped up from the couch, waving her hands in Piper’s face. “Tara, chill. You’re totally freaking me out.”

“What am I going to do? Either this is real, and I have to spend my day killing people with a goddamn peacock feather death-glued onto my hand, or I’ve gone completely bat-shit whack-a-doodle-crazy, and I need some serious drugs, a straight jacket, and a padded room! Either way, this is a complete clusterfucking disaster!” Tara collapsed on the couch.

Piper watched helplessly as Tara sobbed, her body shaking the entire sofa. She reached out to pat her friend’s back—it was what her mother used to do when she was upset as a child. “It’ll be ok, Tara. It’ll be ok.”

Tara awoke to find herself in a hospital room hovering off the floor next to a pregnant woman. A man slept in an uncomfortable-looking turquoise vinyl chair.

“What the fuck?”

No one seemed to hear her.

“Hello? Pregnant lady! Husband, boyfriend, baby daddy, dude!”

Nothing.

“Now what the hell do I do?”

Then the peacock feather moved in her hand. “Oh, shit. The feather’s supposed to point to the person I have to kill. Please, not the baby, please, not the baby.”

 The feather pointed toward the sleeping man. Tara found herself pulled toward him.

“No, no, no, no, no. I can’t do this.”

The feather seemed to have other ideas. It pointed itself directly to the man’s heart. Tara tried to pull it back, but she couldn’t fight the unseen force.

The feather touched the man, and before she had to watch him die, she felt herself slipping through space, like she was sliding on a sheet of ice.

This time she found herself in a condemned building, dank, musty, covered in spray painted graffiti over previous layers of graffiti. The smell of piss and body odor was overwhelming; Tara gagged and dry heaved. When she had finished coughing, she pulled her shirt up over her nose with the orbed hand. She saw a huddled figure under a blanket, leaning against a wall. Her hair was long, oily, and ratty. Her skin was yellowed and stretched thin across her protruding cheekbones.

“I am not killing a homeless kid. No way.” Before the feather began to pull her toward her intended victim, closed her hand tightly around the orb, shielding it with her shirt. “I’ll end this whole Death for a Day shit right fucking now.” Tara brought the feather to her heart.

“Fuck you, Death.”