: house of cards

[stassi siminski]

Stassi sets down her clumsily made espresso martini on a clumsily written twelve page letter to her ex, the contents of which she can no longer remember though she can still recall the urgency with which she wrote it. Candles cover every surface, some burning down to dangerous levels, their pools of wax widening across cutouts from books, magazines and family photos, scraps of paper absolutely everywhere and perilously close to open flames. The girl herself is dressed in a tiny slip dress and a real fur coat, makeup haphazardly applied though in a way she feels looks intentionally grungy and not like a mistake. She feels good, shaking her hair out in the mirror and letting her club friends know she'd be there soon, though her eyes roll at Beni's final message. Of course she had forgotten about forewarning the doorman so he's let up, though it's obvious as soon as she opens the door that she would rather he hadn't been. "Come in, I guess," she says irritably, walking back into the apartment and collapsing onto the couch, paper crunching underneath her. She leans over to light the cigarette that's dangling from her mouth with one of the candles. "See? I'm fine. You can tell Patrick and be on your merry way now."

[benicio otero]

The afternoon had been knocked off kilter with the realization that Stassi was going through a manic episode. Although Benicio was less than versed in psychology, barely even understanding anxiety or depression, he could overlay prior experiences in their almost four years of friendship to know that something was wrong. This friend often teetered between two extremes, keeping one fit in the dark and one in the light. She had explained her condition to him once after a similar episode but on the opposite end, disappearing for weeks into a pit of her own making. So when Beno arrives at her apartment he is relieved that she is in fact still there, his delay tactics successful during the drive over. In his grip was takeaway from McDonald’s and a small drug store bag, moving wordlessly into the apartment and trying not to let the state of it show on his features. “Hola to you too,” he returned cheerily, taking in the changes she had made. He strolled slowly as he shrugged off his jacket, already knowing that he would hire a maid service when this was all said and done. He licked the pads of his thumb and forefinger, damping out the flame of a candle shielded from her view, nodding to himself as if he praised her sudden decorative urges. When he finally looked to her, those wild eyes and that interesting outfit, he could only put on a grin like nothing was amiss. “Come on, let's not fight. I wanna hang out,” he shifted gears, sitting into a patch of couch he could see from between the papers he nudged aside. “Look, I got your favorite soda,” he said, nudging it toward her and opening the bag enough to waft out that irresistible scent. Who knew what she had last eaten. “Show me your...art?”

[stassi siminski]

The clothes strewn about the place are another blind spot for Stassi, who had started and abandoned perhaps a thousand different tasks in the last 72 hours. She's oblivious to Benicio's discomfort, her irritation with him dissipating in seconds as her mind whirred with a million other ideas and impulses, so easily distracted it would be laughable if the physical manifestation of her disorder weren't all around them. The mention of soda prompts her to scrunch her nose up, shaking her head. "No, no time for that," she says quite seriously, getting up and knocking over the aforementioned espresso martini as she does so, something she also ignores. There's so much going on in her head and she's happy to see him now, to have an audience, forgetting all about her frustration at his betrayal. "It's not art," she whines, rolling her eyes at him. The cigarette continues to burn and she sucks hard on it, trying to focus on what she wanted to show him. It felt very important that she show him a copy of People magazine, opening it to the Sexiest Man Alive spread, John Krasinski smouldering across the pages. She holds this in Beni's face, the fingers on her free hand splayed in apparent dismay. "Please make that make sense. John Kasinski, in 2024... it's a glitch. They didn't mean to do that." She throws the magazine to one side, dropping the cigarette and stomping it out under her Tabi loafered foot. "Everything is glitching a lot lately, it's like they are leaving clues— do you want to come to the Box? All my friends are there already." A pause. "I was there earlier too, I think."

[benicio otero]

He could stop and wonder all the ingredients that went into her up or down spirals, but it was a fruitless endeavor when he stood witness to Stassi zipping around her apartment. Their conversation on the way here had already checked many boxes, but seeing her certainly confirmed the suspicion that she was unraveling. Both extremes were challenging and confusing to confront, this one perhaps more a hassle for all its energy it gave her—to try to escape, for example. Benicio didn’t know what his plan was other than to keep her here and slow her down, delay more until Maya could offer insight. Above all, however, he knew not to threaten hospitalization or invalidate her experience. Instead he tried to play along, avoiding the landmines that might upset or unravel her, addressing each of her needs like a neglected Sim. Her mood seems to swing within seconds, already forgetting the ire of their recent series of texts, oscillating between whatever was in her foreground. “Ok, how about some Gatorade?” he pivots, revealing the unnaturally colored bottle. He figured her attention would swing back to it eventually and find it appealing. In the meantime he rights the cocktail glass in her wake, on his feet again to track her, nearly jumping in surprise at the magazine splayed open in his face. “Damn, I know. They didn’t even ask me. Racist,” he played along, clicking his tongue at People’s obvious miss. The cigarette dies in a strange smell on the floor, another thing to be cleaned later. At her suggestion he shook his head, pretending to check his watch. “Nah it’s too early,” he waved off. “Let’s chill. Put on music or a movie. Where's my fortune reading?”

[stassi siminski]

A lurid bottle of Gatorade is held in her line of vision and she considers it, briefly (and thankfully silently) conferring with the universe as she considered it. With the universe's approval she takes it, drinking it down, the sugary liquid making her realize how very dry her throat had been. "Thanks." His response to her pulling back the curtain on People magazine and its illuminati conspiracy is wasted on him and she sighs, feeling the burden of absolute understanding of all things, including that she and she alone had this knowledge. She also knows not to voice this belief, that it was the kind of thing that had been known to cause people to look at her sideways in the past, or worse. Suddenly she feels overwhelmingly hot and she shakes off the fur coat, throwing it onto the others that were piled on top of her bed as she resumed the pacing that his arrival had disrupted. "No movies." She'd been watching them all day and found that they compounded her ideation too much, made it even more difficult to untangle one thread from another. She makes her way to the record player, making it crackle into life and start playing an old Cure album, her favorite. It sounds almost distorted and she privately wonders what the universe is trying to tell her with that. "Tarot or tea leaves?"

[benicio otero]

A French fry juts out from the side of his mouth, watching Stassi gulp down the icy blue sports drink with the thirst of a rescued desert wanderer. It’s a little victory to see her indulge in sustenance, running a hand over his slick curls as the wound-up doll that was his friend activated again. Three days without sleep must be desperately running against a stream of Red Bulls and who knows what other uppers, Benicio discreetly scanning for white residue surfaces or pills out in the open. Everywhere his eyes landed was a call for help, laundry piles and abandoned crafts and decaying dishes. It’s all so foreign to him that he can only offer sympathy, wishing his friend did not have to suffer her illness—despite her efforts to conceal the evidence. “No movies, more sun,” he compromises, tugging a curtain open to reveal the day. All the candles when she could have natural light, illuminating floating spirals of dust. He extinguishes precarious candles and moves papers away from flames, a poor attempt at tidying that pales to the disaster of her bedroom he briefly catches a glimpse of when she sheds her coat. “Tarot please,” he answers casually, unsure if she would be able to sit still for even a single card. He cleared the coffee table and gave the couch a pat in invitation, rustling into the bag again. “Sit. Let's take some shots,” he teased playfully, shaking a bottle of Zzzquil, its clear and slightly viscous liquid gurgling. It was either that or spike her drink when she wasn't looking.

[stassi siminski]

Curtains drawn back reveal the bustle of the city that was her origin, her comfort, her safe space and her enabler. She's caught off guard by the daylight, expecting bright lights cutting through inky darkness... a tiny trickle of doubt runs through her. Maybe something was wrong. Her skin is pale and the shadows under her eyes more visible now, dotted with flecks of glitter that had dropped from her inexpert application. Tarot comes the answer and she has to search through piles of books, clothes and prescription drugs to try to find one of her many, many decks, eventually finding her favorite, a hand drawn set gifted to her by a friend named Marina. Where was Marina? She should call her. Stassi feels a wave of sadness that she had let the friendship lapse but it's as fleeting as a sneeze, cleared once her friend pats for her to sit down. "Okay, I should really sage these but whatever," she says as she sits, shaking her hair back, shuffling cards and speaking so quickly her words start to trip over each other. "Shots? Okay, sure, I have glasses somewhere—" she looks around the room as if it would be possible to spy shot glasses in this sea of debris. What he's suggesting to shot doesn't land, her attention returning to the cards she's been shuffling aggressively the whole time. "Okay. Ask a question. What do you wanna know about and the cards will explain."

[benicio otero]

Since he can only change her scenery instead of her mind, Beni thinks it is a good start to keep her company and put out all the little fires—figurative and literal, if they happened—that would have otherwise gone unchecked alone. Maya and Pat are moving waypoints in his subconscious, inevitable reinforcements that would hopefully tip the balance away from her present extreme. In the light Benicio can see her pallor and sunken features, remnants of party nights and self-neglect. It’s almost like she’s speaking in fits, whittling down her sentences as she says them, tongue tripping over syllables, words struggling to keep up with her thoughts. What her mind looked like inside, he shuddered to think. “I got you,” he assured, pouring liquid into the dose cup it came capped with and handing it to her surreptitiously. “Salud.” If she didn’t look too closely or focus on the taste, it might elude her senses long enough to settle in her stomach. He had taken it before to put him down after long party nights or steal rest through a fever, a deliciously drowsy pull that beckoned you under. The tarot reading will provide a good distraction, one thing for her to focus on so long as she sat still. “Hmm. How is my album gonna go? I want to know that,” he decided, though he would be finding out within days anyway.

[stassi siminski]

A Forest by the Cure echoes around them, thrumming through her body satisfyingly though it spurs fresh thoughts to bubble up into words, distracting her from the task at hand. "Did you know that this is one of the most committed suicide to songs of all time?" Her throat itches now that she's finished the Gatorade, so she reaches for the soda he also brought, taking a long drag before she turned back to her cards. "When I tried I made sure to put a different album on, because okay, I might not put this song on specifically, but what if people happened to come in when it was on and then they thought I was unoriginal?" It seems silly to think of killing herself now, her depressive episodes so far away from what she currently felt. Like killing a god because of one minor inconvenience. She takes the shot unthinkingly, not flinching, not even registering the taste. "Okay," she says for the millionth time, "album. Album album album."  She holds a hand over the deck and closes her eyes, feeling the energy thrumming through them. She offers him it. "Pick three and give them back to me without looking at them."

[benicio otero]

The music is awful but he keeps the opinion bitten on his tongue, the dark sounds and foreboding words filling the room, direct contrast to the fresh light straining through the window. “Que terrible,” he intones at her factoid, pushing a box of chicken nuggets toward her in hopes that all things in her vicinity would eventually interest her. So far it was working, relieved when she tipped back the sleep aid and he did not have to feign participation. He would try for a second dose later, discreetly shooting off a text to Pat that she was sitting tight in the apartment. “We can listen to mine instead. I’ll translate,” he offered after her strange tangent, trying not to indulge the paranoia that was breaking its way through the cracks. While sat he nudged together piles of her eerie scrapbooking attempts, nothing coherent about it at first glance, a mood board of chaos. The tarot task keeps her focus and draws his when he’s needed, plucking from the splayed deck of card to draw three. As instructed, Benicio held them out for her assessment. “Let's go, bruja. Tell me.”

[stassi siminski]

Suddenly she grabs his wrist, leaning forward and looking at him intently. "Do you think I'm unoriginal?" She's looking at his face intently but without really seeing it, a blur of vaguely familiar features. She's not sure when he got there and if she invited him or not but it doesn't feel important anymore. The sleep aid coats her tongue, prompting her to take another sip of cola and swish it around her mouth. The seconds he takes to draw the cards may as well have been hours and she's already starting to think about where she wants to go, mentally weighing up her options; the Box, Bodega, Pat's, maybe Paris... where was Pat? It felt like she hadn't seen him for an eternity. "Do you know where Patrick is?" she asks as she takes the cards, placing them haphazardly down between them. She taps her chin as she looks at their backs, divining what they were before she turns them over. When she does eventually flip one, it reveals things she was sure she already sensed. "Ah. Upside down chariot. You need to take control of your life... or you have needed to, this card is about your past." Another flip. A sun emblazoned on the paper, gold paint painstakingly applied. "Aw, so your present is fun. You're in creative flow, almost childlike, but it can be exhausting too." She hesitates over the last one. "This one is your future. Are you ready?"

[benicio otero]

“No,” Benicio answers instantly, dark brows curved high in amusement. “I think you are the most original person ever,” he insisted, patting the pale fingers gripping his tattooed wrist. It wasn’t even a placation, either; she was a truly special girl. “Maybe you should make music. What do you think?” he wondered, having only ever heard her singing voice screaming lyrics in the club. “I’ll get you in the studio and you can go nuts,” he offered, another morsel for her imagination to focus on rather than this almost vampiric ‘dark feminine energy.’ On the topic of Pat he shrugs though he knows: “He will be here soon.” His eyes flit over the gilded illustrations on the tarot cards, listening to her reading about his past and present. “Hmm ok, this is good, yes.” He would like to be a believer, he thinks, when people around him talk of fortunes and vibrations and star signs. It certainly did no harm, though he wonders how many questions and directions she had sourced from these cards lately. His head teetered to the side like he was nervous, eyes squeezed shut with a toothy grin. “Be honest.”

[stassi siminski]

Stassi bursts out laughing at the suggestion of her making music. In her current state it was easy for her to believe herself the second coming of Christ, the most powerful being on the planet and even a conduit for the whole universe, but she could not bring herself to believe herself a musician. "If you heard me sing you'd take that back real quick." Still, it pleased her to be thought original. An impulse to ask the cards where Pat is is placated by the promise of him arriving soon, allowing her turn her full attention back to the reading. The tips of her fingertips press against the top of the final card, visions of what it could be flitting through her mind as she focuses her energy on banishing any of the ones with a more negative connotation. When she turns it over the Tower reveals itself, eliciting a sharp intake of breath. "Fuck, I'm sorry," she says, instinctively pushing the card a centimetre or two further away from herself before lifting her fingers as though burnt. She tilts her head and puts a sympathetic hand on his arm. "There isn't a worse card to pull for someone's future." A different Stassi might have been able to put a positive spin on it, but she's not here right now. "Try not to worry. It can mean all sorts of things; danger, chaos... sudden change, upheaval.. total calamity. Now if it was reversed it wouldn't be so bad, but what can you do? The cards are the cards."

[benicio otero]

It’s a good time to be agnostic of the magic at hand when the horror on Stassi’s features precedes her words. A bad omen for the future, the question of his album launch looming now like a dark cloud—if he believed it. At least intrigued by her reaction, Beno showed little on his face at her ongoing interpretation, examining the details of the card: a flaming tower, once mighty and built-up, the only escapes from its heights ending in death. However, left up to his mind, Benicio embraced the symbol of mighty change. “Nahhh,” he waved off, clicking his tongue. “This is still good to me. Better than a boring album.” Too confident in himself to yield to fears of collapse or failure drawn on paper, Benicio reunited his picks with the rest of the cards and shuffled the deck between his hands. “Now you,” he welcomed, copying her shuffling and energy charging routine. “Let me try. Tell me your question.”

[stassi siminski]

The gravity of the card does not seem to land with Benicio, though Stassi has completely forgotten about the album question. "Ben you can't just will it to be good," she says with urgency, imploring him to listen. "This is your warning and you should heed it." Her phone flashes up with a fresh notification and she glances at it for the first time since he arrived, Maya begging her to respond. She does not. Mindlessly picking up the now cold fries and starting to eat them, she lets her thoughts turn to what horrific fate he was going to face. Maybe he would die in a fire, like the one depicted by the card he's now swept up and started shuffling. Maybe he'd lose everything. Distracted again by his prompt for a question, she struggles to think of one, having divined so many answers to the questions of the universe today that it felt as though there were no mysteries left to her. But the cards demanded a question and who was she to deny them their wish? "I want to know if I'll die young." Another thought flits through her mind, snatching up her phone after all, "but hold on, I want to film this, I need to post a TikTok today! Maybe we should go live."