Did You Hear?

Written for and winner of 3rd Place in the August 2011 round of the

SURVEY

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"Did you hear....?"

If I heard those words once, I heard them a hundred times.  More than enough to last me three lifetimes.  In fact, I thought I'd bought the farm the last time Suzi came over and casually mentioned some juicy tidbit about Rebecca and her latest squeeze.

Caught by surprise, Kat dropped me.  If it hadn't been for a small corner of that throw rug, I'd have been a thousand shards of ceramic havoc on that beautiful hardwood floor.  That's me being held by the blonde.  Kat's our mistress, CiCi and me.

Suzi always leans in close when she has something particularly succulent to share, and often forgets CiCi is full of hot coffee.  Suzi could be the best agent the CIA would ever hope to have ... and the worst.  Suzi could ferret out the tiniest bit of dirt on a person in a New York minute, something a paparazzi would give his eye-teeth to obtain.  But she could never keep it to herself.  Nope, something this good had to be shared.

Kat was usually the recipient of Suzi's verbal largess.  Of course, we were always there front and center.  No good conspiracy ... uh, talk is complete without a steaming cup of coffee. 

I like to think CiCi and I added a bit of magic to their discussions since we joined their small coffee-klatch.  Kat might have bought a couple of the millions of coffee mugs mass-produced annually, soulless cups designed to hold hot liquids for their masters and mistresses.  Perhaps fate had something else in mind for our Kat when she saw us in the window of that small antique store.  I overheard her tell the owner she was looking for something a little special for her time with a friend.

CiCi and I look to the world like any two nondescript coffee mugs.  We were, however, lovingly shaped, fired and painted in the late 19th Century by a very special lady.  A member of an ancient family of witches, Miss Grace imbued our lumps of clay with the essence of good and evil distilled into a fine powder which when mixed with the clay and heated magnified the true desires of the heart of any who drank from us.  Such qualities grew slowly, yet inexorably with the passage of time.

That Kat found us in that shop was fortunate.  That her good friend Suzi shared a cup of coffee with her regularly was not.

I gathered--and CiCi agreed--that Kat's and Suzi's friendship was often tempestuous.  Kat told Suzi that she disapproved of her gossiping, that she never saw the merits in talking about strangers, acquaintances and even friends in such a manner.  Kat always frowned when she heard those three words.  "Did you hear....?"  She could never stem the inevitable tale that would spring from Suzi's mouth.

But Kat had a gentle soul.  CiCi and I saw plain enough how she continuously sought to divest Suzi of her busybody ways.  I think she feared such talk would one day be Suzi's undoing.

Don't get me wrong--I rather liked Suzi.  She had a knack for seeing the humor in things.  Like the time Suzi told about celebrating Veronica's promotion.  They really painted the town that night--dinner at a swanky restaurant with lots of cocktails.  Then they hit the local night spots and danced until the wee hours of the morning--with lots more cocktails.  In no shape to drive, they decided to walk the fifteen blocks to home.  They couldn't pass up the empty swings in that park.  Veronica caught her high heels in the sand on her way back down ... and spent the next twenty minutes spitting out sand and combing it from her hair.  The heels were the real wreck of the night.

It was probably six months later that we heard Kat crying.  And Suzi wasn't there to comfort her.  It was odd, indeed.

We never heard the whole story.  Kat never spoke about in our presence.  And we never saw Suzi again; she just stopped coming.  We sensed a profound change in Kat, a sadness that tightened around her heart.  She never took us out to share coffee with anyone again.  We felt her pain whenever she ventured into the kitchen.

Some time later, she wrapped each of us carefully in tissue and placed us in a box closing us in darkness.  We heard the scritch of packing tape being pulled from the roll, and sealing us tight.  I can't say how long we were shut away ... but we never saw Kat again.

*  *  *

Rip!

The blinding light of the day raised our dormant consciousness to a level of almost pleasant awareness.  I heard a loud squeal as we were lifted from our prison.

"Hey, JoAnn!" said an excited voice.  "Look what Mom gave me for our dorm room."

"Hey yourself, Emmy," said an indifferent JoAnn, who turned to see Emmy hold each of us in her hands.

That Emmy removed us from that package and placed us next to an old, well-used coffeemaker was fortunate.  That her roommate, JoAnn, had very low self-esteem was not.

Word Count:  854