[1:15] Lavender Valley

Before you knew it you said, “I’m sorry but I already talked to Sophie. She offered me a job at her salon and I told her…yes. I’m sorry.”

“Damn,” Heather said. She waited to see if you were going to change your mind. “Well, it was great to meet you anyways! Welcome to Lavender Valley. Listen, I gotta run. I am spinning all kinds of plates today. I rushed over here with the few moments I had for this long shot Swing and a miss!” She laughed. “Sophie is great by the way, you'll like working for her. But if for some reason it’s not a fit  let me give you my card, just in case.”

She reached into her purse and rifled around for a few seconds then handed you a black card with pink lettering that read Pure Couture. 

“Again, pleasure to meet you and I’ll get out of your hair! I hope to see you around!” she said as she popped on her sunglasses and started for the exit. You say goodbye and slowly close the door to your apartment. Stunned. 

Two job offers. Incredible. 

You immediately texted Sophie back telling her that you would love to take the job. Her response was immediate and begging to see if you were able to come in today. It was a surprise but you were eager to get out of your routine and go to an actual job. 

Luxe was hidden away down a brick paved alley between two larger buildings that had probably been there for a century or more. It shared the space with a trendy indie coffee shop and quiet little book and gift store. There were some tables along one wall, with a few people sitting there with their coffees, reading and chatting. It was surprisingly busy for being just past noon on a weekday. 

You walked into the pulsing of house music and the smell of fresh flowers. Luxe was an odd blend of modern and classic styles. The walls and floor were pale pink marble with dark red veins crawling through them. A heavy band of white, pink and fuchsia faux peonies flowed up the walls in clusters and masses. They formed arches around back lit heart shaped mirrors, the arched windows, and framed shelves of high end shampoos and hair products. 

One wall belonged to the hairdressers. There were five chairs in total. Against the other wall were stations for doing nails or lashes and other things you weren’t totally sure of. 

There were two hairdressers working on clients when you entered. Even though the door made a tone they didn’t look up. Sophie was nowhere to be seen. One of them called out that someone would be with you in a moment. Her tone was exasperated. You didn’t have to wait long. Sophie came exploding out from the back room.

She was wearing all black. Black fitted jeans, a black tight corset top, a loose sweater and black stiletto boots. She wore half a dozen necklaces which were a mixture of pendants, pearls and chains. All gold. She wore long dangling earrings and a lot of jangly bracelets. Also all gold. She was wearing her long blonde hair down, and it fell around her shoulders in gentle, glossy waves. 

She rushed over and gave you a big hug. “You are a freakin’ life saver. I have been doing double duty for the last two days with clients and answering the phone and it’s been a mess.” 

“Yeah! Thank you for thinking of me.” 

She scoops her hand around your back and leads you deeper into the salon.

“Ladies,” she says loudly, getting the hairdresser’s attention and quickly introducing you, “this is the new receptionist. He’s my neighbor. He might be good or he might be a disaster. I do not know. That is Janette and Kayla. Say hi ladies.” 

They look up for a moment and wave before going back to their clients. Janette was petite, tall, and with blonde hair down to the middle of her back. You got the vibe that she might have been a cheerleader in school. She wore a nude colored sleeveless turtleneck and flared slacks over heels. Kayla looked to be a head shorter than Janette. She had shoulder length, black curls and was wearing a flowing skirt and white tank top. She almost wore as much jewelry as Sophie. 

“Great, with that out of the way, let me now put you to work.” Sophie said, directing you to a small desk near the entrance. She gave a run down of their software. It was straight forward. It took you a few hours to start feeling confident fielding the calls, organizing the schedules and referencing whatever you needed to ask the customer’s questions. By the end of the day you were feeling good. 

By the end of the week you had begun to form your rut. You’d show up at around ten in the morning and put on coffee for everyone. Chit chat with Janette or Kayla whenever they decided to come in and then got to work. The music even started to grow on you. Sophie’s business was doing very well. 

It was a welcome shock when Sophie handed you a check with a bit of a pay advance. You could make rent, buy some decent food, maybe…maybe hit up Ikea and start living like a person again. Your Friday night plans were upended when Sophie, Kayla and Janette all but kidnapped you and forced you to have some drinks with them to celebrate your first week.

You loosened up a bit after a couple of cosmos. It wasn’t the drink you would have picked but they said it was what the bar was famous for and it would be illegal to drink anything else. They weren’t wrong. Even if you did feel a bit self conscious while you sipped the pink liquor out of that dainty glass. But you got over it once you found yourself chatting and laughing and gossiping. For the first time since high school…you were one of the girls. 

 After about an hour Janette ended up leaving with a guy she picked up at the bar. Kayla left shortly after that to spend the night with her fiancé. 

The night was Sophie’s treat. A thank you for saving them and not being a disaster. 

While she went up to settle the tab you grabbed your phone and saw Josh had texted you. 

You two had been checking in with each other every night, though neither of you had smelled the phantom perfume or felt weird at any point during the week. As the week went on, with nothing to report, you began to feel a bit silly. You wondered if he did too. 

You kept your eyes open for anything weird. Lavender Valley, you had to admit, was very normal. People got up, went to work and came home. There wasn’t anything nefarious going. So you two were waiting for something but you didn’t know what it was to trigger a feeling you really couldn’t describe.

“Took a half day at work, spent the afternoon with Andrea. No weirdness. U?” Josh wrote.

“Nope. At the bar with Sophie. No weird. No news is good news!!!” you replied. 

“Yep.” he said.

And that was that. 

Three weeks passed. The nightly texts became every other night midway through week two, then every few nights before finally petering off completely. You got busy at Luxe and Josh was busy with Andrea. You had to admit, you were beginning to doubt that what you felt wasn’t anything more than a panic attack. 

Maybe nothing was going on after all. Maybe you both were overreacting.

It was nearing midnight on a Wednesday and you found yourself waist deep in the unassembled bits of Ikea furniture you couldn’t pronounce. It was supposed to be a couch. Or maybe it was the bed frame? Your phone started to buzz with an incoming text. It was buried somewhere underneath all the chaos so you ignored it and focused on deciphering the cryptic instructions. A few moments later there was another buzz. Then another. And another. 

Finally fed up with the persistent nagging you began to root through the mess for your buried phone but there was a sudden pounding on your door. It was rapid, tense, and anxious. You climbed to your feet but just before you opened it, out of the corner of your eye you spotted the white box containing your earrings. You scooped them up quickly and tossed them in the small coat closet and opened the door.

Josh rushed in, his eyes wide and wild. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He paced past you and into your apartment. He looked different but you couldn’t put your finger on it.

“Something is wrong man, something is wrong. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. We knew it. Weird things have been happening again. So like the other day Andrea had to go away on some business trip. I couldn’t get the PTO to go with her ya know so I didn’t. I couldn't. I stayed behind which is fine. It’s just a few days as she sorts out some business stuff. Alright?” 

You nod, “okay.”

“Okay. So she goes away and it’s not even an hour before there’s a knock on my door and it’s Jennifer. You know Jennifer in 7A I think. She’s shorter and has this bob hairstyle. She is always wearing these big colorful pendants and these teardrop earrings that are simple and unstated but kind of bold. I don’t know. I think she sells cosmetics but not in like an Amway, MLM kind of a way. Never mind that’s not the point. So she comes over. Wants to know if I have water. Apparently there’s some issue in her apartment. So call maintenance, I think, but I don’t say that. We chat for just a minute and she eventually goes back to her apartment. I don’t think much of it. Why would I?

“A couple of hours later Sandra from 9B comes over and knocks on my door. Wants to know if I got mail today. I tell her I did and she is kind of poking her head inside and snooping around. Now my hackles are up. Now I’m seeing some weirdness. She wants to chat too. Small talk stuff. Weather. How Andrea is. That kind of thing.

“So she leaves and I sneak out because I feel like I’m being watched. I sneak out and I go to this little place a few towns over to grab a burger and a beer -  It’s a hole-in-the-wall sports bar - and who shows up? Lydia, Gloria and Carrie. I’ve never talked to them! But they see me and make a b-line over to me. They are chatting with me like we’re friends and want to be buddy buddy. So they join me at the table while I’m trying to watch the game and we end up chatting about Andrea and what we’ve been doing. 

“Which is a whole other thing! I can’t even tell you who was playing! I have not watched any sports since getting with Andy. I don’t think about it. I don’t really even care for all my memorabilia! I’ve been a sports nut since I was a kid. I played little league, high school ball, and I would have played in college but I got hurt. But what is going on? It can’t be that Andrea doesn’t care for it can it? That I’d prefer to be with her? I don’t know. I don’t know.

“So we leave together and I come home and they invite me to the gazebo. It’s a nice night. I guess some of the ladies were meeting there. At this point I’m feeling weird I think. A little bit. But I kind of want to go. But I don’t. I almost do. But I don’t. Then I head home and my head is spinning. I am freaking out. I’m about to text you and another knock at my door. I don’t answer it. But I hear someone, Emma I think, she wants to know  if my cable is out. What. The. Hell. Seriously. What the hell? So I turn off my lights and I sit quiet.

“But they keep coming. I can hear them slowing down and sometimes stopping near my door. Four of them. Different women because some were wearing heels. But it’s like they were listening for me. Like they were monitoring me. That goes on for two days. TWO DAYS! Off and on, throughout the day the moment I get home from work.

“So I’m hiding in my apartment, sneaking out to go to work. It’s like old times and I’m about to text you but I don’t have anything to report. Not really. So I start talking myself down a bit. And to distract myself I start tidying up because my apartment was atrocious and I have this big box of trash that won’t fit in the bin in the building so not more than ten minutes ago I haul it out to the dumpsters in the back. I’m alone. I throw this box away and on the ground I see a Post-it note. This note and I remembered you said you found one that was weird.”

He hands you a gnarled and dirty piece of paper from his pocket and continues.

“Then I see another one stuck to the block wall around the dumpsters. That one was destroyed. But then I notice another one in the grass near the brush line. You know that like an overgrown bit of property between us and, I think it’s a doctor’s office or something. I start looking into the brush, but it’s hard to see, but I do see what I think is a bag of trash just thrown or dragged in there. There’s some Post-It notes and I see what I think is a work jacket or a shirt or something. I know it’s a work shirt because it has one of those embroidered patches that says Eric.

Josh stops pacing and stares at you. You give him a look to tell him you’re not following. 

“That guy! That guy I talked to. Remember? The other guy here. His name is Eric. The one who I haven't seen in months. So I’m about to climb into the woods and get it when this car rushes up to a stop. It’s Rebeka. I think. I met her once. But she pulls up and asks if I’m throwing stuff away and makes small talk. Why is she back by the dumpsters at this time of night by herself? She didn’t throw anything away! What could she be doing? So I pocket that note before she can see and I try to get her to leave but she won’t. Then she insists on giving me a ride back to my apartment. I have to. I don’t want her to know what I saw.”

He resumes pacing. 

You unfurled the weather damaged note and read what you could;

“....oneweek darker bigger. DON’T TOUCH only makes th…s w..se makes them grow. but … …. part of…”

You shrug. Don’t know what to say. Josh stops and rubs his face. You’re not sure, but his beard looks thinner.

Josh rushes toward you so close you could smell what he had for dinner. “This is the weirdness. This is what we’ve been waiting for. C’mon. We gotta get that bag of trash we need to see what’s in it. You be the lookout and –”

“-- Josh! Calm down, take a breath. Whoever is writing these notes, probably Misty, they are erratic and mentally ill. They don’t mean anything. They’re nonsense. I mean the one I had was these broken sentences that talked about hormonal issues and doctors not knowing what’s going on and how…”

You remember then part of the note said something about how they were no longer bald. You looked up at Josh and froze, transfixed by his full head of hair. He was bald before. Wasn’t he? You were pretty sure he was. Right? Also, his dark brown hair was starting to lighten around the temples and a few strands up front. He is about that age though.

“Listen, these Post-its are the best thing we have to figure out what is going on. Now I need your help and we need to go before they find me.” Josh says. 

Just then there was a knock at your door. 

Both of you froze. It was midnight. It was too late for someone to just be dropping by? Could Josh be right? Are they following him? But why? Why would they be following him. 

A few seconds later, another knock.

Then, from behind the door came Sophie’s voice, “Hey, um, I know it’s late but I forgot to tell you there’s a whole bridal party coming in tomorrow. I spaced. Forgot to add it to the ledger but it’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of moment. That’s my bad and I am sorry to dump it on you but I wanted to give you a heads up that it’s gonna be crazy there tomorrow. Are…umm…you around?”

Josh leaned in and whispered tersely, “don’t say anything, she’s one of them.”

You didn’t know what to think…

1.) Josh is Right. Stay quiet, don’t open the door and sneak out and get the trash. Josh might be onto something and you need to know the truth. Maybe those Post-It’s can shed some light to what’s going on?

2.) Pump the Brakes, Josh. You want to honor the pact with Josh but you get roped into a whole thing tonight. You’re still new at Luxe and tomorrow is going to be busy as hell. You can’t afford to be up all night chasing what might be total nonsense. Tell him that tomorrow night we’ll get the trash. 

3.) I…I can’t. Life is going in the right direction finally. You were being paranoid, and you can’t screw it up by giving into that wild paranoia. Besides, a bag of trash and some neighbors dropping by is hardly “evidence”. (Gain a Trait: Betrayed Josh)