Volume Three - WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here

“You’re bouncing back from this last treatment, Mel. Maybe something’s finally working.”
“I hope so,” she murmured, sipping the wine he had so gallantly poured. She rested her head on his
shoulder as they watched a movie on television, smiling when he started snoring softly halfway through the
picture.
*****
Nearly five hundred people blew up their balloons, mostly red, ready to for the next step.
*****
Now that Mel knew exactly what to expect, a weight was lifted. It was wonderful to know that her last days
on earth wouldn’t be lived in the torment she’d undergone for months. She didn’t have to worry about how
many pain pills she took because the end was so near. And she didn’t have to dread an unknown future.
Somehow, she didn’t really dread her end.
The next day, Wednesday, Melissa decided to go through her closet and dispose of her clothing and jewelry.
She pulled a box out of the closet and discovered a cache of old photographs she’d forgotten all about. It was
great fun to go through them. Sort of a summing up of her life. She wondered vaguely what would happen to
her photographs, her books, her favorite set of china. Maybe it was the painkiller, but she couldn’t get too
worked up about it.
As she drew a picture of Matt on the beach out of the bottom of the box she heard his voice downstairs. A
glance at the clock showed it to be noon. He didn’t usually come home from his antique shop in the middle of
the day, usually ate in the store and gave the employees a lunch hour.
She was about to call to him when she heard another voice. A female voice. A chuckle, then a grating laugh.
Footfalls sounded on the stairs and Melissa smoothly shoved the box into the closet and followed it in, pulling
the door shut behind her.
The next hour was torture. She hunkered in the dark and listened to her husband confirm her fears, the ones
she had dismissed as irrational. She recognized the society dame’s harsh smoker’s voice and heard the clank of
her bracelets as the mattress – the mattress to her bed -- gave creaking noises and the headboard whacked the
wall in a way Melissa didn’t recall it ever doing.
After some sickening sweet talk they took an interminable amount of time getting reclothed and leaving. As
Melissa heard the front door slam she burst out of the closet and looked at the bed in horror. One of them,
probably not Matt, had made it up so neatly she would never have known. She knew she wouldn’t sleep there
again. She would feign nausea and take up residency on the den couch.
*****
Almost five hundred people gathered outside the shop, Matt’s antiques, their balloons swaying in the slight
breeze, strings becoming tangled. Some of them began to laugh.
*****
She had read about flash mobs in the paper. The first one she heard of, at Grand Central Station, was a
gathering of people who burst into applause at the Hyatt Hotel for fifteen seconds. Others consisted of people
all going to a certain store and asking to see the same rug or pair of shoes. According to one report, the appeal
of the flash mob was its lack of agenda. Folks got the message on their pagers, their computers, or their cell
phones, then willingly, eagerly, convened at the appointed place and time and followed the instructions given on
their various electronic devices.
The gatherings were mostly innocuous, with a few exceptions, one being a photographer who was beaten by
the event organizer. The report in today’s paper, hinting that the fad was likely to die out soon, spurred her to
make up her mind quickly. The idea she’d hatched seemed perfect. The cover it would afford was ideal. She
knew Matt’s gun would be in the drawer at work where he always kept it. There was one at home and one in the
shop. They had both taken the course required by the licensing people when they bought the guns. Matt’s
valuable inventory had decided him to get the first one, then it seemed only right to have one to defend the
house also.