Darkheart

The Present: Cats & Dogs

"I can't wait to get that asshole out of me," the woman said, and Cris was grateful her customer couldn't see the smirk cross her face. "I've put up with his catting around for fifteen years--fifteen years! And I go to leave him, and he's at my door again, saying God-knows-what as if whatever he's been doing behind my back all this time's been nothing, meant nothing. No way I'm taking him back. I have some pride, you know. This is long overdue."

Cris selected the clear round quartz she always used in her negativity cleansing sessions and turned back to the woman lying on her back on the portable massage table. She placed the crystal above the woman's head.

"I don't normally do this sort of thing," the woman carried on, "but my cousin said you practically work magic, here, so I thought, why not try it? I'll do anything to get him out of my head, at this point."

"I can't promise you won't think of him again after this ritual," Cris noted in a slow, pleasant voice--her business voice. "But I can promise that the bad energy you've absorbed from his presence will be out of your system. You'll be entirely purified of his negativity. He won't be able to affect you at all after this, unless you allow him to work back into your system."

"It'll be my own damned fault if I do. He's never deserved to be anywhere near this system, if you catch my meaning. I can't believe I let him in as much as I did."

Cris tightened her lips and, careful not to sound chastising, added, "All right, Molly. Let it out now, because once we start, we can't have any harsh words or sounds; we even try to empty our heads and hearts of harsh thoughts and feelings. It's difficult to do, so let's conduct some breathing exercises."

The woman on the table, dressed in a tank and yoga pants, a menagerie of crystals resting in a line down her body, nodded in apology. Rather than continue her tirade, she quieted herself, closed her eyes, even, and Cris was grateful for the trust. She'd known of Molly for years. The woman was a few years older than she was, had married her high school sweetheart and stuck around Port Killdeer, adding four or five kids to the population, but everybody in town knew her husband for a philanderer. He could be found any night of the week at Biggie's, the most prominent local bar, and he'd even come on to Cris once or twice there, though she was fairly certain he'd been too drunk then to remember it now.

The early afternoon sunshine moved languidly through the windows in Cris's crystal room, catching facets here and there though not creating the dreamscape of her favorite hour. Cris never made appointments during the sunset, whatever time of year it happened to be. That moment was hers alone. The room was perfectly lit now, though, for a cold January day, ample light in spite of the bitter cold, frosty world beyond her picture windows. The lake itself, visible through the bare trunks and branches scattered amongst the evergreens, resembled a slate gray slab, whitecaps just barely discernible on its slow-rolling surface. Jeremiah's family house was up this way. During that one year of high school, when she'd been a sophomore, she'd spent many a day and night at that big home; being there was, in a way, what had inspired her to seek that sort of seclusion for herself. She knew that Jeremiah's mother still lived in her big old house, all alone. After her daughter's death, she'd become something of a recluse; Cris had used to see her in town quite often, but now, the only time she caught sight of Jeremiah's mother was when the old woman was in town on her way to the Catholic church.

After the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, Cris and Jeremiah had fallen away from each other. Even when they'd gone back to school in the fall, they'd had difficulty facing one another, and it'd been a relief when Jeremiah's mother had pulled him out to homeschool him. Cris hadn't seen much of him at all for the subsequent two years. In fact, the last time she'd seen him had been at their high school graduation. He'd been there in his cap and gown, waited for his name to be called, headed up for his diploma, but when he'd met Cris's gaze in that one awkward moment as he'd walked past her to his seat, he'd reacted as if frightened of her, pulling back into himself, hurrying toward his family.