The Other Judas

[Grand Moff Hissa]

((Crystal Henderson continued from Casting The Runes))

When Crystal laid out her tarot spreads, she had a specific setup she liked. Needed, almost, if she was at home. If she was at school, doing a reading for a friend, that was different. She expected it to be different, so it was fine. Okay. Decent, even. But it was still better done her way. During the pandemic, she gave a lot of friends readings over Zoom, and that felt nice even though tradition said it shouldn't be as good. It was just, to really get in the zone, she needed everything exact.

The base was a purple velvet cloth. Crystal sewed it herself. For a certain value of "sewed," granted. She went to the craft store and bought half a yard of velvet, and thought she'd just use that, but then when she went home the ends where the cut had been made shed these tiny pieces of purple fuzz just everywhere. She tried to ignore it, but she hadn't even used the cloth and there was purple all over her room. Tiny little fibers getting in her things, working into the carpet. It was like they were wiggling their ways into her heart and brain and lungs, but she'd decided this would be her cloth so she wouldn't give up. She refused. She learned to sew. She didn't do a neat or tidy job, but she did it. It was very simple, actually: she sewed one side to the other, like a pillowcase almost, with the fuzzy side facing in. When she'd gone almost all the way around, she turned it inside out, trapping all the fuzzy loose ends within. Then she went on YouTube and taught herself the invisible stitch. Then she watched YouTube for a few hours, and told herself it was because her fingers were sore, and then two days later she taught herself the invisible stitch again and finished the cloth. It came out pretty well, so she immediately lit some candles on it and dripped a little drop of wax right onto her new cloth by mistake. She tried to chip it off, and no luck. She tried to wash it out. No luck. She went to YouTube. There she learned that the real trick would be ironing it out, but Crystal had never once in her life used an iron and wasn't sure her family even had one and wasn't in the right state of mind to ask, so instead she boiled water. As the water boiled, she seethed and cursed herself and the cloth and the candle and the water for taking so long, and finally—finally—it was done and she set the whole pot full of boiling water on a napkin and then on top of the wax spot, and after repeating this process three times it was almost impossible to tell wax had spilled there at all.

Almost.

Anyways, candles were also part of Crystal's spread and she was much more careful with them now. She usually lit three: two small ones, not tea lights but a similar width, just taller and in little glass jars. These stood sentinel to the sides. Then, in the middle, there was a prayer candle.

The prayer candles had come from her mom. Her mom had a friend who ran a little store and who had ordered a dozen jars of pickled onions to sell. But instead of pickled onions, what she got was a big cardboard box full of prayer candles. The company refunded her, but it wasn't worth their time to pick the candles up, and Crystal's mom's friend didn't want to sell prayer candles, so instead she offered them around, and finally Crystal's mom was the person who said yes, because she knew Crystal liked candles and figured she'd take anything if it was free. So Crystal had a whole case of them in her closet. Had had. Now it was half empty, because she burned candles a lot.

The prayer candles Crystal used featured Saint Jude. She at first had used them like any other candle, but then she'd gotten curious. Saint Jude—was that, like, Judas? Like, that Judas? Crystal didn't know much about Catholicism, except insofar as other traditions she liked stole shamelessly from it, but she knew who Judas was. So off to Wikipedia she went, and it turned out, nope, not that Judas. Some other guy. Who also followed Jesus. Also a disciple. And, actually, also named Judas.

Turns out, Saint Jude wasn't super popular, because most people thought he was in fact that Judas. Awkward. Wikipedia said that because of that, Saint Jude was really willing to take, like, any prayers whatsoever, and was a little freer with miracles than the other saints, who could afford to be choosy. So this symbiotic relationship developed between Saint Jude and people nobody else would ever give a second thought.

Crystal couldn't remember what Saint Jude had actually done or what he was associated with before or whatever. It didn't matter. You played the cards fate dealt you. Saint Jude became the patron saint of hopeless causes.

Crystal didn't really believe in Jesus, or not in the Christian way at least. So she probably shouldn't believe in Saint Jude, either. And maybe she didn't. Not exactly. But she did believe that hopeless causes needed something to keep an eye out for them, and why couldn't whatever that was be called Saint Jude? So after that she only burned the candles when she was doing readings or when she really needed a hand. Forgot to write down the due date for an essay in her planner and now eight pages need writing by tomorrow morning? Hey, Saint Jude, what's up? Lost her keys and couldn't find them after a whole entire hour? Saint Jude, buddy, how've you been? Actually asking someone out on a real life romantic date? Well, Saint Jude, thanks for trying, but I guess you can't win 'em all.

The rest of her setup was this glowing sphere lamp she bought at the mall for twenty dollars, which looked like a wizard's orb but was made out of plastic and changed colors when you smacked it with your palm, a plastic skull from Halloween a few years ago (named Yorick; can't go wrong with the classics), and then whatever geodes or small brass statues or chunks of quartz she was feeling at any given moment (had to have a little flexibility). She'd array it all very carefully, and then she'd deal the cards to divine the future.

The church up the hill ahead of her leaned to its right like it might topple over. Probably not for another couple years, though. Crystal's breath came in great billowing puffs. She'd almost forgotten her arms were tired from carrying the gun. She was aware of her movement more by the crunch of her feet on the ground than by any feeling of physical momentum.

She still didn't believe in Jesus.

She hoped her mom would think to light Saint Jude for her.

((Crystal Henderson continued in It's Kind of A Lot))