There were double doors into Erica’s office consisting of hand-crafted polished mahogany panels made to glisten by the strenuous efforts of her housemaids. The doors’ brass handles gleamed, as did the other metal artefacts dotted around the room. Indeed, every expensive fitting, every fixture and ornament, from the bookcase that covered one wall from floor to ceiling, to her wide leather-topped desk stank of wealth.
Her maids cleaned the place in the morning hours daily before Erica awoke. She’d never stumbled upon a domestic within her office and was grateful it was made presentable when she wasn’t there, her staff having learned by osmosis that this arrangement met with her approval. She was grateful to them for that. They were good staff and pretty much kept out of her way.
She clicked the heavy office doors shut, and wondered what had just happened. ‘I must be coming down with something,’ she reasoned. Yet, she was as healthy as she’d always been. It was just… well, she’d been daydreaming, and she was normally so focused. And what a dream… it had unsettled her, left a sourness in her mouth.
Such a crazy dream. She was in her office – this office – holding a meeting with three women who may have been crows. She didn’t recognise them, but she was certain she’d known them all her life. They wore black, those women with their olive skin, and their eyes that were dark and penetrating, which gleamed at her from under raven hair.
Erica yawned and stretched. She was overdoing her work, not socialising enough. That was why her mind had drifted into such bizarre territory. She needed to check her calendar and arrange a social event. There was bound to be a charity ball or function to attend somewhere. She smiled a little, uncertain. While she didn’t especially enjoy those sorts of events it never hurt to be seen at them. She was an expert at ensuring her free time earned her almost as much capital as her normal activities did, with the bonus of relaxation for a few hours.
‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘I need some coffee.’
She placed her hand back on the door handle, recollecting as she did so that the appointment she’d just finished hadn’t been scheduled. She paused. Had she been in a meeting at all? The last while was quite a blur. But she was certain she’d just shown people out of her office door.
Unsettled, she gazed back into room. She’d had an appointment with three women. They’d stood in front of her desk while she’d sat behind it. They’d spoken some and she’d listened, mute. Next, they’d danced some wild shamanic fashion, which she was sure she wouldn’t normally have tolerated, and again she’d done nothing but stare at them until they were done. And when they’d left without saying goodbye she’d closed the doors behind them in a slow way, so as not to make too much noise. Why had she done that? She shook her head again.
‘I’ve definitely been working too hard,’ she said. ‘I’m starting to lose the plot. Maybe I need a holiday.’
The dream had been so vivid. Some flaw in her psyche must have caused it. It wasn’t as if she let people into her office as a rule. It was her private working space. Appointments were held elsewhere. She had a meeting room in her house for legitimate business interests and a series of other houses, offices and safe places where she managed her other activities. She would never sully her home by letting any low-life scum into it. The neighbours would never forgive her.
Pieces of the dream’s conversation floated around her mind and she tried to grasp them before they drifted away. Those words were a clue as to why the dream unsettled her so much. She might understand better if only they fit together better, but they were both elusive and disjointed, and refused to co-operate.
She headed into her pristine hallway. A pot of fresh coffee stood on a hot plate atop a fine table, thin tendrils of steam condensing on the mirrored glass above. It had been a great idea of hers to have the coffee stall placed there. It was easy to get at, and refills by the domestics didn’t disturb her work.
She poured the drink into a porcelain cup, the liquid black and unsweetened, and shuffled back into her office, pre-occupied. Perhaps she was drinking too much coffee? Yes, that must be it…
Two feet inside the office she froze.
‘Oh my!’ Blood rushed from her head and her vision blurred. Her cup spilled from her hand, splattering liquid in a grand arc upon the carpet. The cup shattered.
The women were there again, right in front of her. They held a length of thick rope in the air between them and shook their other hands in the air. ‘You had so much,’ one of them said, ‘but you had to have more.’
‘Greed kills,’ a second one intoned.
‘And now it is all over,’ the third one chimed.
Erica blinked tears from her eyes and the women disappeared. Sirens wailed in the distance, their harsh wail growing more audible with each passing second. How many sirens were there? More than one, certainly.
She frowned, wandered over to her bay window and pulled back the slats of the vertical blind. Light flooded into the room. Police cars, three of them, sped up the driveway towards her house. There wasn’t enough time to react, not enough time to run. Her mind was too fuzzy, too full of that dream, and her thoughts wouldn’t come straight. Bleakly, she made a list of all the charges the cops might book her with, as she mentally ordered her many enterprises to consider which one was her undoing. Not that it mattered. If the authorities had evidence to charge for one misdeed, they would find ways to pull the threads of her empire apart, and then the charges would steamroller in to crushed her beneath them.
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