A Day With Bianca

Like a true stowaway, Bianca has slunk into work with me every day for the last two weeks.

Just like Lucifer, she sits on my shoulder and feeds my tired skull a constant feed of terrorist propaganda. Now I know how Eve felt, standing there at the dawn of the world, staring at a crimson apple that would open her eyes to the Knowledge of the Gods. Lucifer knew exactly what to say in order to twist her mind. He did not appeal to her sentimentality or treat her like a child, but rather, insinuated that the gods were withholding something wonderful that rightly should belong to her as well.

Unbeknownst to me, the serpentine Bianca slithers up my leg while I’m changing for work, shaping to the contours of my skin so that those bitter thoughts sound and feel like my own. Denim jeans skim over her black scales and I shift further and further off of center, now wearing a face that pulls the corners of my mouth down as I imagine all of the sniveling faces I’ll have to endure.

All of a sudden, the dark thoughts that I keep to myself morph from macabre indications of my character into a healthy bleeding of negativity -- or so Bianca whispers.

“WHAT IS SHE DOING?” Margot shrieks, gesturing wildly to my car as it trundles away, abandoning her and Jackie in the driveway while Bianca makes sour faces out the back window.

“I don’t fuckin’ know, takin’ her to work, apparently,” Jackie replied, shrugging a shoulder. She casts an annoyingly poignant look to Margot as if to remind her not to ask stupid questions, her eyebrows lifted.

Margot ignores this silent beckoning to shut up and calm down and walks right down the driveway to stand in the middle of the street, waving her arms over her head to try and flag me down in the rearview mirror.

“WAIT FOR ME!”

She jumped up and down, flailing in vain to grab my attention. For once, she is not tutting about like a hen but is in full crisis mode, allowing cars to drive around her as she hold onto hope while I’m stopped at the stop sign.

But, to her dismay, I drove off.

Slumping, Margot slapped both hands onto her forehead and stared at the ground as she trudged up the driveway. “Oh my god, oh my GOD, she’s going to get FIRED! She can’t lose her job! She doesn’t even have a bank account yet for Christ’s sake, and Bianca is just going to fuck everything up, like always!”

Margot has worked herself into a frenzy at this point, nearly tearing clumps of her corkscrew curls from her fuming head.

Jackie’s sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, sipping on a pony-necked beer. The way her entire body slouches against the soft leather suggests that she has not a  care in the world. She’s the roamer, the gypsy, the “I’ll play the hand I’ve got until it’s my turn to deal,” kind of lady who simply knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there’s nothing alive that can get in her way.

“Jesus girl, have a little faith,” she says, settling down into the seat so that her neck was pillowed on the back of the chair, her legs out straight. “She’ll let Bianca out for a little run around the warehouse and then she’ll put her away and feel awful about it for days. It’s been like this ever since she’s had a job. Thought you’d have that written down somewhere, indexed and alphabetized,” she finished, her tone clipping into irritation once again as her eyes lazily slide from a frazzled Margot to the street, where she wished Margot would return.

At work, I walk from the break room and out onto the floor, wearing a special kind of hateful mask that took all day to make. Bianca twisted the right knobs and tempered her flame so that the thoughts merely simmered in the back until the recipe was complete and I was flaky and crusty by the time I clocked in.

“Oh, that’s quite a frown!”

It’s an office lady who has the misfortune of saying something. Some chubby bitch with pumps and silver jewelry who sits on her ass all day while I sweat and toil.

Victim number one, Bianca purrs lowly, her words sliding into my ears as her forked tongue, always saying two things, tickles my doubts away with feather-light touches.

My eyes cut to the woman, who is still looking at me. I wonder if she’s seen Office Space and knows how much she’s reminding me of that lady: Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays.

They’re not the Mondays, lady. I hate my fucking job and right now, I hate you.

Or so Bianca says. She can get pretty butthurt about the smallest things.

Make it quick. Make it sharp.

I suddenly smiled and watched the wrinkles on her face deepen as her smile opens to match mine, revealing straight but yellowing teeth. You can see the glitter in her eye is due to pride at having cheered me up.

And then, after a single second, I let the smile fall right back into the frown she’d first commented on and watched her face scrunch in confusion right as we are about to pass each other.

“Better?” I asked in a dull, club-like tone, maintaining eye contact in order to savor that sweet, sweet pout on her pretty little face.

Looks like “the Mondays” are contagious.

Victim number two, she softly declares as I approach Gary, the first shift man I see for a grand total of 10 minutes a week who originally garnered Margot’s attention because of his sloppy work ethic.

I’ll make him wish he’d done what Margot told him to when he had the chance.

Without preamble, I threw my purse under the table and slammed both hands on the desk.

“Seriously, --”

He cut me off, mocking me in my own tone.

“Seriously, don’t start that again. You’ve been mean to me ever since I met you and I’m just...I’m done with it.”

I can see how nervous I make him immediately and instantly know that I can overpower him: his pupils are dilated, he can’t stop fiddling with things, his posture is starting to slouch, and I am barely getting started.

Maybe he’s been dreading you all day. Looks like he did all the hard work for you.

“You leave this place a mess every time I come in here and I’ve asked you before to clean up your shit before you go! I have to clean up my shit, Ben has to clean up his shit, we ALL have to do it. I don’t have time to clean up after you AND myself, just take care of it before you go!”

“Why don’t YOU take care of it?”

Without missing a beat, I raised a finger and jabbed it in his direction, glaring up at him with full force.

“FUCK you.”

I can see his resolve crumbling like old stone and kick into overdrive. All of a sudden, Bianca’s forked tongue is darting out of my mouth and my heart is pulsing so loudly that all I hear is the steady thump-thump-thump. My whole body is alive and singing as a surge of adrenaline pumps into my system and I plant my feet for the fight.

Gary’s internal compass told him to run, and that he did, though not without failing to frighten me into defeat by threatening to talk to a superior.

You terrify him. You can smell it, I know you can.

I watch him walk away, still playing with my prey like a cat waiting for the mouse to stop struggling. He’s complaining to the man on the other end of the machine, obviously flustered and worked up.

Meanwhile, like the villainous witch I am, I simply smirk and watch the dark spell unfold exactly the way that I...Bianca... planned.

This is what you are, she reminds me, holding my chin between her fingertips as she assumes a humanoid shape again. Her black eyes hold me captive and suddenly I can’t tell if I’m looking at her eyes or staring too deeply into my own pupils. This is what you do best. Don’t let the others distract you with so many pretty shiny things that you forget how deep your blackness goes.

There it is. The reason she slunk with me to work: to show me my baser nature. The lesson she so patiently waited to deliver was as petty and hurtful as she.

Don’t ever forget who and what you are.

Don’t worry, Bianca.

I won’t.