Part Eighteen
A GRATITUDE PLAY
Barbara gathered the Mexicans, who seemed to have recovered quickly enough, and put them back on their pillars.
“Can we have a word with you?” The voice came from above and had to be one of the Medallions. She guessed it was a complaint. It always was.
She looked up. The Medallions were so small she’d been able to suspend them from the ceiling, but it meant they could only see from one angle unless she switched on a fan and let its breeze turn them around. Barbara felt sorry for them. Their owners had donated them, and the thrift store manager hadn’t thought much of them either because they all were from the 50-cent trays. She turned the switch of the fan to Slow, their favorite speed.
“What’s the complaint?” she asked.
Surprisingly, they weren’t complaining — just the opposite. “We want to perform a Gratitude Play,” they chorused. “We are happy to be given a new life.”
“Even one shushpended from a sh—ceiling,” said Bacchus, the god of wine, who had been drinking again. The others frowned at him and signaled for the Peacock Angel to start.
Peacock Angel: “I was a Christmas decoration and trashed after Christmas.”
Unicorn: “I was pinned to a Prom bouquet and thrown out the next morning.”
Hamsa, Nine-Pointed Star, Hermes, and Sikh Dagger: “We were cheap souvenirs from all over the world.”
Yggdrasil, Spiral, Pentacle, and Astrological Signs: “We came from Crystal’s Neo-Pagan Gift Store. It went broke after six months.”
Skull and Crossbones: “I was a divorce gift from the husband. The wife threw me in the trash.”
Azrael: “I was clipped to the neckwear of a motorbike rider. He bought a car.”
The Fairy and Darth Vader: “The kids grew older and laughed at us.”
Seven-Headed Naga: “I was a cigarette case from Cambodia. The owner stopped smoking.”
Memento Mori: (Actually a bottle, not a medallion. Barbara can’t remember buying it and thinks it wandered in by itself like so many items seemed to do now) “I am old, so old I forget what I was, but maybe a funeral thingy . . . ,” it said in a creaky voice, paused, then began again, “I am old, so old—“
The others silenced it and chorused, “We are all so grateful to be here.”
Barbara thanked them as she left, feeling a little like the King of Kings and Lord of Lords after hearing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. She even thought herself capable of dealing with the problems she’d heard about recently with some of the Entities from India.
